1

May 13, 3638

Titamin System (Voku Firewall territory)

Shamash

Ra-jor dropped from the shield square he was standing on inside the Voku transport and immediately went into freefall, using his flight harness to slow his descent as he and his 15 brothers were thrown into a losing fight. His feet hit tree branches after a few seconds, tripping him up as his forward momentum caused him to roll while the transport accelerated hard above them to escape the Skarron fighter swarms hounding it. Voku attack shards operating off a control spire countered them, but there were so many enemy craft in the air no one was safe, hence the not so gentle drop-off of Ra-jor’s elite phalanx as what was left of the planet was evacuating as fast as possible.

Between the impacts with the plants and his flight harness, the Voku eventually broke their fall and landed on the dry, dusty ground beneath the yellow leaves that obscured the sky. Almost as soon as they touched down they were on the run, and it only took 18 seconds before they encountered the first of the Aronsic ground troops assaulting the last holdout on the planet.

Ra-jor didn’t fire when he saw them, rather maintaining his forward left position in their 4x4 formation. He wore various pieces of equipment over his black body suit, maintaining his agility without having armor on and relying on sturdy energy shields for protection, but given a situation like this his phalanx needed extra defense. Thus he and 7 others were carrying physical shields, his over his left shoulder and extending almost all the way to the ground. It was heavy but necessary, leaving the other 8 Voku free to fire while he and the rest of the shield bearers protected the unit.

Those free to fire did so without hesitation, mowing down the small, but thick creatures with shots from their forearm weaponry and a few larger blasts as they worked their way out of the trees onto the plains around the besieged city where there were tens of thousands of the Aronsic attacking in the other direction.

They were accompanied by many Skarrons, mostly scattered amongst their ground troops as commanders, as several walkers fired from range on the city buildings while the Voku fought a desperate fight to hold out long enough to evacuate those left on the planet. This wasn’t a civilian world, rather a formerly uninhabited one that the Voku had colonized along the border in addition to others taken from the Skarrons prior to the Crusade. They formed the Firewall territory that was taking the hit from the Skarrons and delaying the assault on the Voku’s original worlds.

That meant everyone here were combat troops or logistics personnel, and they were all fighting hard to buy time and slow the seemingly unstoppable Skarron advance, for no matter how many the Voku killed ten times that should show up and keep pushing through the losses. They’d already taken the entire planet save for this last refuge, having to blast through extremely strong deflector shields to do it, and right now the only thing saving the remaining Voku was the massive conglomerate overhead.

And not just overhead, it was literally blocking out all of the sky save for a sliver of horizon, and it wasn’t even in atmosphere. It was the largest Ra-jor had ever seen, and there was an even larger Skarron fleet beyond the umbrella-shaped ship that was cradling the evacuation craft all the while fighting an insane naval battle with most of its weaponry moved to the outward curve.

But beneath it, with the city’s shield generators already destroyed, was the last bit of ‘safe space’ left, except that was a bad name for it. There was a ground and aerial war taking place here of epic proportions and his phalanx had just been dropped on an apparent suicide mission along with numerous others spread at intervals as they counterattacked the Aronsic swarms from behind…with their only avenue of escape being to fight through them to the evacuation transports in the center of the city.

It was a mission that he and the others hadn’t hesitated to take, for they were here to kill Skarrons and their servant Aronsic to delay their advance into true Voku territory as long as they could. They’d been fighting the Skarrons for the past 18 years in heavy combat, and lesser so before as they created the Firewall in preparation for the Crusade that could be seen coming across the stars. It was here to fight the Li’vorkrachnika, but as long as 90% of the Skarron Empire’s military was in one region, they were going to clean house on all their enemies, including the Voku.

As bad as this was, and as numerous and powerful that the Fourth Crusade was proving to be, even the Skarrons weren’t touching Star Force and their fight against the V’kit’no’sat. That battle was beyond even their arrogance and the Skarrons were staying out of it, but everything else on their to-do list in this part of the galaxy was now getting a dose of overkill.

Ra-jor continued to hold his physical shield steady over his left shoulder as the phalanx ran out into the open, shooting their way into the masses until they were literally surrounded by the short infantry that was less than half their 8 foot height. Being that tall they drew fire from hundreds of the Aronsic simultaneously, but the heavy energy shield being produced by Ra-jor’s physical shield in conjunction with the other 7 gave them as much protection as a ground transport so long as they stayed within the necessary range.

And they did, bouncing around a bit as Aronsic passed through the energy shield like it didn’t exist. Ra-jor punched and kicked as many as he shot with his free hand when they got between him and his fellow Voku, for they were spaced far enough apart to allow hand to hand combat without running into each other as they plowed through the inferior Aronsic along with other similar phalanxes nearby, but Ra-jor couldn’t see much of them.

His focus was on his unit and what was ahead, with several of the Skarrons moving towards them. They were even bigger than the Voku, standing taller but massing far more. They were heavy quadrupeds with four insect-like arms arching off their back and capped with heavy weapons that began to track their way.

The lead of this phalanx, Bi-tor, altered their carnage direction towards the nearest one, with all 16 Voku running up on it and splitting up. The huge shield covering them all ended and Ra-jor was free to move more. He switched his shield from ‘emitting’ mode to ‘encapsulation,’ making him almost impervious to incoming damage as it enhanced his own personal shields exponentially.

With that protection he ran towards the Skarron’s front right leg and grabbed hold of it, pinning his right forearm against the yellowish flesh firing into it nonstop as he clung to it. Likewise the other Voku took similar positions around the exposed legs, for this Skarron was not an elite and fully armored, but its flesh was thick and resistant to weaponsfire on its own…yet the Voku weaponry was too advanced. The Skarron was damaged greatly even before two of the fighters in the phalanx jumped up on top of its flat back and shot down between the shoulder joints where the thing’s brain was, for it had no head, only a mouth and eyes inset into the thick torso.

Within a matter of seconds the phalanx had killed and overran it, reforming on the other side with Ra-jor switching his shield back to ‘emitting’ mode and covering his brethren who had their own shields now diminished from the Aronsic shots continuing to come in from all directions. There were so many blue plasma blasts coming towards them the neon flashes overwhelmed the sea of grey muscle, but for the moment the phalanx was alright, for their shield generators were far more advanced than the enemy weaponry.

The Voku continued to punch, kick, and blast a path through the sea of infantry at rapid pace, heading for the closest of the buildings ahead that was already overrun, but before they got there one of the smaller walkers to the far right turned its spherical blue mass and fired on another phalanx. Ra-jor’s brothers split up and went evasive, reforming soon thereafter and continuing forward, but that salvo seemed to get the attention of the other walkers ahead as some of them turned around and started to come out from between the Voku buildings to target the phalanxes.

They didn’t seem to care that they were killing their own infantry with almost every shot, for the Voku were up to their knees with the little Aronsic that were literally jumping over each other to try and tackle the larger aliens, but the Voku were so strong they could flick them off with ease. Many were killed by the blows, but others were literally vaporized by the heavy plasma coming from the walkers. It was blue in color, unlike the white and green the Voku had fought against in the past. Each Skarron region/faction had its own coloration, and no less than 12 of them had shown up in Voku territory thus far.

But their equipment was all the same, despite the color changes, so the Voku knew what they were up against and even as the phalanxes were grouping, dispersing, and grouping again trying to mitigate the ranged walker damage, several Voku fighters zipped in and fired on the nearest one. They shot it enough to get the shields down, then several dark drops were deposited on it…with Ra-jor realizing there were other Voku physically assaulting the mechanized assault craft.

That was even more reckless than what the phalanxes were doing, but at this point there was no good way to fight this enemy. The Voku were hopelessly outnumbered, and if they didn’t delay their advance long enough the landing zones would be overrun and everyone left on the planet would die. So really it didn’t matter where they died, so long as they fought well enough to buy some more time for the others to get out.

Ra-jor didn’t know if he’d make it or not, but he and the other Voku were so incensed at what was happening they truly didn’t care. There were enemies all around them and their mission was to destroy as much of them as they could as a diversion, and that’s exactly what they were doing leaving a trail of dead Aronsic and a few Skarrons behind them while getting some help from the enemy walkers that were killing far more Aronsic than they were Voku.

But Voku were going down, and Ra-jor’s phalanx lost one directly next to him when they had to split. His shields were already down, then a direct hit from the thick blue plasma hit him in the head, burning it off completely in an explosion of superheated body parts that knocked Ra-jor to the side. There was nothing left of Bo-sec to go back for, so he and the others kept moving on until Ti-sov got hit in the leg, with it being blown off below the knee and him dropping to the ground in a roll that had him come up in a stranglehold on an Aronsic that he used to snap its neck.

Ra-jor turned around even as Ti-sov told the others to keep going, but he wasn’t going to listen. The Phalanx moved on, as they should, but Ra-jor wasn’t going to leave Ti-sov. They’d been fighting together for hundreds of years, and if they were going to die in this Crusade then they’d go down together as well, so Ra-jor shot the Aronsic nearest him then dove on top while reconfiguring his physical shield to emit a binary barrier that would cover both of them.

“Leave!” Ti-sov yelled as he continued to shoot and punch from his position on the ground despite the intense pain.

“Why?” Ra-jor asked almost calmly as both of them were fighting so fast and hard it was almost comical with them batting Aronsic out of the air as they jumped at them while having a conversation. “This way I help you kill more before you go down.”

“You fool,” Ti-sov said, using both forearms as Ra-jor shielded for him to shoot, then while standing behind him he took a shot from the nearest walker. His enhanced shield protected them, but it drained it heavily and he knew they couldn’t take very many more of those despite the Voku’s tech advantage.

“Get out of here!”

“Not happening!” Ra-jor said as he saw out of the corner of his eyepiece the walker suddenly fall to the Voku ‘tics’ tearing into it and finally getting inside to kill the crew, so at least they didn’t have that one hammering them. “Skarron on the left!”

“Throw me!”

Ra-jor didn’t argue, leaning over and picking up his fellow warrior by the arm and swinging him halfway around a circle before launching him over the enemy infantry. The jump harness on the Voku helped, launching him up and over a wall of Aronsic to the topside of the Skarron that batted him out of the air with one of its massive arms.

Ti-sov wasn’t defeated that easily, grabbing hold of the arm as it hit him and not letting go. He was flung back and forth, but before the Skarron could remove him the weapon gauntlet on that arm was destroyed by Ti-sov’s forearm gauntlets, and in the distraction Ra-jor pulled an enhanced jump over the Aronsic and got just in front of the Skarron, landing on one of the wide infantry heads and jumping again up on top of the Skarron’s back where he grabbed Ti-sov’s arm and pulled him down there as well, with both of them firing into the hard back skin until the brute went down.

The two of them stayed on top of it, forcing the Aronsic to climb up to get to them, and that was where they held their final defiant battle. Their shields eventually succumbed to the little infantry’s weapons, with no walkers or aerial craft bothering to intervene. When their shields went down the two Voku fought hand to hand until the plasma stings added up and the Aronsic climbed over their dead to get to and finish off both of them…but only after the Voku pair took out over 2,000 of the pathetic enemy infantry.

Bi-tor and 6 of their phalanx did manage to fight their way through the enemy army back to the failing Voku defense line, hopping over the barricades and adding to the defenses as the last few evac transports landed and transformed, opening up into huge chambers that made them look like inflated balls that then lifted off again with as many troops inside as possible.

Bi-tor got into the second to last one, having to kick Aronsic out the door as it closed, then the bloated transport ascended under fighter attack up through the atmosphere and into the void beneath the cover of the massive conglomerate. There were a few weapons batteries on this side that swatted away the fighters that got through to chase them, then the transport was the in the clear and moved through space until it got to the underside of the giant umbrella as it too began to transform.

The far edges began to pull in as the last transports and the Voku fighters were making their way up from the atmosphere, with the weaponry on the outside of those edges rolling under so they could fire on the planet. A curtain of energy fell all around them in a giant ring that was slowly collapsing on the evac site, blasting into the Skarron forces below and deleting them from existence…but along with that pullback of the edge of the conglomerate came the Skarron navy, and they were even more numerous than their ground forces.

Their large and clumsy ships tried to scoot around the edges and get underneath the conglomerate, punching through the waterfall of energy to come through partly damaged, but they were too far away to catch the transports that slipped inside various cavities in the conglomerate and were now ‘safe’ within the hangar bays…so long as the conglomerate didn’t get destroyed.

Bi-tor and the others exited quickly with the help of melting walls as they stood on the floor of the transport that was now the floor of the hangar. He ran off it and further into the massive ship as it continued to transform, with him having to stop twice as he received holographic warnings to hold position while corridors ahead were shifted around him as the giant umbrella slowly became an lengthy orb that was fighting its way through the Skarron fleet on its way to a jump point away from the planet that the enemy did not want them to access.

In the end they couldn’t stop them, with the Voku killing and physically pushing through the enemy ships and sacrificing the outer layers of the conglomerate to get in the clear, then they made the microjump out to the star and from there left the system that was now fully in Skarron hands.

The damaged parts of the conglomerate rotated as it reformed during the jump, then the ship split into 18 different pieces during the coast phase, with each decelerating on their own at the next system. From there they split up, with Bi-tor riding on one piece to another Firewall system under assault and the surviving Voku troops from Shamash being flung back down into a surface fight that had not progressed as far. The Voku still held more than half of Viioran, but the Skarrons had just as many troops here as they had on Shamash, meaning there were plenty for Bi-tor to kill.

And kill he would, along with the rest of his brothers, until they were dead or the enemy ran out of troops.

And no one knew which eventuality would occur first.

2

May 30, 3638

Bavrenti System (Voku Regional Capitol)

Hakibi

“Titamin has fallen, along with Sokuzu and Varetiv,” Renimar Noru-sar said, summarizing the reports as they came up in hologram for Cal-com and his small oracle staff to see. “Six new assaults have begun and 28 worlds are set to fall within two weeks. At this rate, the Skarrons are likely to penetrate the Firewall in no more than two years.”

“Less, I fear,” the Dafchor said, staring at the holographic pinpoints on the starmap of the buffer zone they’d created on the orders of the Elders, and which was the only thing right now protecting his people’s territory from the Skarron Crusade…but for how long?

“We have to disrupt the flow,” Noru-sar repeated. “We can’t stop these numbers if they’re allowed to arrive and the navigational blocks will not be enough. We have to hit them before they get here.”

“All our vessels are tied up in defensive operations. Where would you pull this raiding force from?”

“Everywhere else. It is pointless to guard against other threats when one of this magnitude is before us. Strip the defenses elsewhere and assemble as large a fleet as we can, then pick an appropriate spot in their supply lines and hit it. At the minimum it would delay their arrival, and if we could get them chasing us through their backwater it could prove far more helpful than fighting them directly.”

“I don’t disagree.”

“But you won’t give the order?”

“The only mass of ships that can realistically help are those we have in the Orica Region, and they’re tasked with an Elder mandate.”

“One that has been fulfilled, as far as I have been informed. If they are no longer needed…”

“They may be,” Cal-com said firmly. “The Elders have stated that we are not to get involved in the V’kit’no’sat war against Star Force, but if the reports are accurate and they have also started to target Star Force associates then the protectorates may be in eventual danger, not to mention our own worlds out there. Would you remove their defenses so lithely?”

“Given the situation, yes,” Noru-sar said bluntly. “We have one confirmed opponent and one possible. We have to fight reality and not stay our hand for a potential future that might not come to pass. And if it does, we cannot defeat the V’kit’no’sat. But we may be able to blunt this Crusade long enough to reinforce our worlds enough to prevent the slaughter you know is coming. We are superior to the Skarrons in every way, but with their numbers they negate that strength. We must have more ships and we cannot build them fast enough. They have to come from the Orica fleet. I can see no other way. The Crusade will be on our doorstep soon. If a recall is ordered it must be now in order for the fleet to have time to reach us.”

“Your calculations are not wrong. If that option is necessary, it must be now,” Cal-com said, falling silent as he continued to look at the hologram via his green, crystal-like eyepiece that covered his three small natural eyes and gave him incredibly enhanced vision while also preventing him from being blinded in combat via foreign objects, liquids, or gases.

“Let me fight this from the rear,” the Renimar pleaded. “I can do far more damage from there than trying to hold worlds we have no chance of retaining. Let me choose where we fight and die, not the Skarrons.”

“You believe this is our last stand?”

“The Elders have prepared us well, otherwise we would not have kept them away from our homes so long, but the Crusade is coming for them. We will soon be at the tipping point.”

“You underestimate our empire.”

“I do not underestimate that most of our forces are in the Firewall. Most of our buildup has been there too, and while I admit the legacy defenses are more formidable, if the Skarrons keep coming in these numbers they will overrun us. We must disrupt their movements from the rear. I can see no other hope short of their numbers being bled out, and with the losses the Li’vorkrachnika suffered from the V’kit’no’sat, they will not be doing as much damage as we had hoped.”

“A pity they abandoned that war in favor of Star Force. I would have liked to see them wiped out quickly, but I know the Li’vorkrachnika will not be conquered by the Skarrons so easily and they will fight to the last soldier without surrender.”

“But the Skarrons can divert more towards us because of the areas that the V’kit’no’sat cleared out. And the more resistance we throw up the more they will send.”

“Which makes your suggestion even more perilous.”

“I cannot control their actions, only my own, and this is the best way for me to kill or distract them away from our worlds while we continue to build. Right now the pace of combat is too high. We need to slow this down so we can begin to replace our conglomerate losses.”

“A luxury I do not think we will have.”

“Then we continue as we have been?”

“I know we cannot. I am continually searching for another alternative.”

“If you have not found one by now I doubt one exists. Let me do this, Cal-com. If we are to fall, let it not be because we hesitated. Let us die taking as many of them with us as possible.”

“To do what you suggest will require the abandoning of an Elder edict. I cannot do that.”

“Shall I ask them myself?” Noru-sar challenged, drawing a glare from Cal-com. “We are all going to die if we don’t get more ships here. We have them in Orica. This is our last play unless the Elders know something we don’t, and they might, but if we have to fight this on our own this is our only course of action. I suspect you know that, but if you don’t want to risk defying them then I will. I will take my course of action directly to…”

“No,” Cal-com said flatly. “That is my task. I have been waiting for word from them as to what to do next. Their silence has suggested that the solution was before me to find, but you are correct. A change must occur. If they wish us to defend here to our extinction then we will, but it needs to be a direct order from them, not an inference. If I leave now there will be enough time.”

“Shall I come with you?”

“No. This war is my responsibility, but when in transit I will have to leave oversight to another…”

“Which is why you haven’t gone before?”

“Perhaps.”

“Then go. I will maintain the Firewall as best we can. You can’t win it here. Not without something drastic changing.”

“You have command,” Cal-com said evenly, then unceremoniously turned and walked out of the oracle. He not only left the command center, but the planet entirely, boarding a transport and taking it up to a courier ship that then spirited him across the stars back to the Szequat System, their capitol that contained their homeworld of Nergthen and the secret Elder Lair.

Due to his position as absolute ruler of the Voku, the Dafchor was able to give himself permission to enter and did so wasting the minimum of time before he was alone in the audience chamber. There he did wait, for many minutes, before the Elder showed itself.

Paul had told him their true name was Zak’de’ron, but they’d never said as much to the Voku. They were simply known as the Elders and were responsible for Cal-com’s entire civilization. They’d taken his ancestors under their protection long ago and had groomed them through the millennia before mysteriously growing quiet. The Voku had followed their last orders and the wealth of knowledge given to them during their absence, never forsaking their mysterious benefactors, and had been rewarded for their loyalty upon their return with enhancements for their entire civilization.

But even those had not been enough to blunt the Skarron Crusade at its outset, and the recent years had seen system after system plucked from the Firewall despite the Voku’s huge technological advantage. Hopefully the Elder would have beneficial counsel to offer, for Cal-com did not know what more to do at this point.

“Speak,” the long, slender red-scaled Dragon said, watching the Dafchor closely as it walked forward then laterally, spinning around to lay down on a cushioned pedestal while keeping its head oriented on the smaller Voku.

“I require counsel.”

“The enemy losses speak otherwise. You have acquitted yourself well, Dafchor.”

“Yet it is not enough. They will break through our Firewall soon and there is only one course of action that could possibly stall them, but doing so would violate an order to protect the races in the Orica Region.”

“You wish to withdraw the fleet there to fight the Skarrons?”

“I do not wish it, but it is the last option we have as far as I can determine.”

“Now do you see why I instructed you not to aid Star Force?”

“I do not like standing by and watching an ally fall without aiding them, but if you are referring to the fact that we cannot stop the V’kit’no’sat, I do understand now.”

“Marginally. Their strength is beyond your comprehension, but you may have to fight them eventually.”

“You believe they will attack the Orica Region?”

“It is likely. Star Force is a taint they wish to remove all traces of, and after they achieve more success with them they may hunt down all their allies. The Orica Region may be in jeopardy, and possibly our other servants…though that is unlikely. You are to prepare for that eventuality in case it should come to pass. Organize a relocation safely away from both the V’kit’no’sat and the Skarrons and have such preparations standing by.”

“And what of the Skarrons?”

“The races tasked to your defense are secure for the time being and that will not change in the near future. Keep minimal protection in their systems, but you are free to recall all others as you deem necessary to combat the Skarrons…but be warned. If and when the V’kit’no’sat assault the Orica Region, you are not to aid Star Force in battle, even if they come to your defense. You may fight alongside them in your own systems, but do not waste resources assisting them elsewhere. We may lose the entire region or we may hold onto part of it. The V’kit’no’sat ego will determine the outcome, and you are not to provoke them unnecessarily. Defend yourself if they attack, but know that you will not win any more than fleeting battles. If they attack, fight an organized withdrawal, from the entire region if necessary, but do not waste your people trying to save Star Force. That is beyond your ability to accomplish.”

“If we are able to survive the Skarron Crusade and the V’kit’no’sat follow us back here, what are your orders?”

“If they choose to assault you here, all restrictions are rescinded and you may act as you wish as your race is destroyed. Stand and fight or flee, it will be your choice. I do not think they will come this far unless we give them reason to, thus the only combat against them in the Orica Region must be defensive.”

“I understand.”

“But you do not like it?”

“I do not, but I will obey.”

“Do you think another outcome would occur if you fought alongside Star Force?”

“No. But it feels dishonorable to abandon them in the time of their greatest need. Were they not pre-occupied they would be assisting us in battle against the Skarrons.”

“And you are not pre-occupied at present?”

“Very much so, but your orders are for a tactical reason and my instincts do not like the idea of standing by and doing nothing. Better to die honorably than betray an allegiance.”

“Yet you see the strategic necessity of it. It appears I chose well the first Dafchor of the Voku. You are free to explain the situation to your Star Force allies, to assuage your distaste. They are strategically savvy and will most likely concur.”

Cal-com bowed his head slightly. “Thank you for that.”

“Arrgh,” the Dragon huffed, standing up and walking off the platform as he circled around Cal-com. “I do not like sitting by when a fight is before us. These V’kit’no’sat are our enemy, and I wish to rip their throats out on sight, but we cannot. We have not the strength yet to face them, so I share your distaste with the current situation, but prudence is necessary even if it betrays our innate sense of loyalty.”

“They are your enemy?”

“There is no need for feigned ignorance, for I can see your thoughts. You have learned much from Paul concerning our past. The V’kit’no’sat were once like you, our servants, but much more advanced. We treated them with more respect and autonomy, forming a great alliance that we led but did not completely command. We created it to repel the Hadarak and were successful in doing so until the V’kit’no’sat races betrayed us. They thought themselves our equal and resented our superiority. They betrayed and eventually destroyed us,” the Elder said with considerable fire in his voice.

“Why then are you still here?”

“Many contingency plans were enacted to preserve our race. The deepest of which was myself and others being secured in egg form with a single protector locked in stasis. We were to disappear from existence for such a long time that the V’kit’no’sat would think they were successful. If our other contingency plans succeeded we would be awoken by them…but we were not. The V’kit’no’sat proved to be far more cagey than even we had anticipated. They destroyed all our other efforts at rebuilding, leaving only one survivor and the eggs.”

“Were you conscious in your egg?” Cal-com wondered.

“Partially. My development was stalled by stasis, during which I slept, but I retain a few memories. What do you remember of yours?”

“Nothing.”

“No? I can see something in your mind,” the Elder said, provoking the memory in Cal-com to the surface.

The Dafchor flashed back to his own ‘birth,’ walking out of a tube not unlike the Voku slept in. He was fully grown, as were all Voku at their outset, having developed from genetic material to full status unlike most races in the galaxy that existed for a period of time as infants. Even the Elder was growing larger with the years, as far as Cal-com could determine from the few sporadic visits to the Lair he’d been honored enough to make.

“It is familiar, but I do not understand it,” he said honestly as the memory floated in his mind.

“You are developed in eggs of our own making. Mine was natural. You are fully grown when the hatching procedure occurs, we are not. Your race has been remade into a superior form to mirror our own. You used to have genders and gave birth in much the way the Humans do, but you are no longer hindered by such things. Your egg state is similar to my own, as are your genetic memories…except mine give me knowledge from before I hatched. I remember the civilization that we lost, but one that I never witnessed with my own eyes. I can feel the loss, and it fuels my anger at the V’kit’no’sat. If we can hold our vengeance for later, so will you, Dafchor.”

“As you wish. If we survive this, will we be fighting them in the future?”

“They must be destroyed. How that will be accomplished is uncertain. We have much to rebuild before we can reveal ourselves. Until then, we must be wise and pick the necessary fights. Aiding Star Force now would not be wise, so we cannot, though I am personally pleased by their defiance.”

“Can they survive?”

“Unlikely, but the arrogance of the V’kit’no’sat may allow them to limp on longer than expected.”

“Their withdrawal of troops?”

“Yes. As you know they sent two invasions. The first was stopped, so a much larger force was sent to reclaim Terraxis…what Star Force refers to as the Solar System. Now that they have it, much of those forces were sent back to the empire while leaving a smaller force behind to continue the purging of the broken heretics. They are accomplishing their task, but not as fast as expected. If that delay continues it is to Star Force’s benefit, but their destruction is fated. All it will take is one order to send enough ships to wipe them out, and they won’t require the numbers the Skarrons are using, but they have them if needed.”

“What’s happening to Star Force is what would happen to you if you were revealed?”

“Hmmph,” the Dragon said with disgust. “No. They would send everything they had after us. When we reveal ourselves we must be in a superior position, else we will be destroyed. I trust you understand the importance of the information you have?”

“I am beginning to.”

“You need to know, thus I am allowing it. Star Force is doomed, but their persistence will be interesting to watch. We cannot aid them else we will be destroyed along with them. And while the Voku might wish to go down in a honorable fight alongside them, we have more important uses for you going forward.”

The Dragon stopped pacing and instead headed back to the private chambers adjacent to the audience chamber, arching his neck back and turning his head halfway around as he walked.

“Pull the fleet from Orica and fight the Skarrons with your full might. There is no guarantee of your survival, but Renimar Noru-sar is correct. Send him with our leave to cause as much havoc as possible while you try to preserve what you can of your territory. You will not save it all, so your mission is to save enough of it to remain viable. Keep your eye on the future while you fight the present. Defeat will be your companion in the coming days, but true victory lies in ultimate survival.”

And with that the Elder walked out of view and Cal-com was left standing in place as he tried to wrap his mind around everything that had just been revealed to him.

Defeat. The Voku were going to lose. They were not going to be able to hold the Firewall. So victory must come in a different path…

It didn’t take long for the Dafchor to see his mistake, with him turning and walking quickly out of the Lair. When he got outside he broke into a run, heading for his homeworld’s command center where he got busy issuing orders, including the recall of the Orica fleet, in addition to a lot more unpleasant business.

The Voku were going to lose this war…so he had to play a different game, and was mentally kicking himself for not seeing it sooner. Dying with honor might be the impulsive thing to do, but winning the long game was more important if he could weather what was to come.

Paul was in a similar position, facing defeat after defeat as Star Force began to retreat. Was he playing the long game as well?

Cal-com hoped he was, but he didn’t doubt the Elder’s words. If the V’kit’no’sat wanted Star Force destroyed it would be, and the only hope the Voku had of surviving was to avoid their wrath. If they couldn’t, surviving the Skarrons wouldn’t matter. The empire that had defeated the Elders was one that could not be confronted with any hope of victory…so his focus must be on the Skarrons, impossible as that situation seemed. If the Elder thought there was a way to win the long game then he would find it.

He had to, otherwise the Voku would have to run to the rim and hope the Skarrons didn’t follow, but if that happened there wouldn’t be enough left of them to truly matter.

Or is that what was ahead for the Voku that the Elder had hinted at?

No. Even if it was, Cal-com wasn’t going to let it come to that. He had the enhanced knowledge that the Elders had given him and no other Voku. He would find a way to preserve at least a piece of their territory…even if at the cost of their other worlds.

Grim work was ahead of him, but it was his task and his alone. Others would fight and die, but he had to ensure their deaths were not in vain. The ultimate victory was his responsibility, and he felt the loss of time upon him. He should have consulted the Elder far sooner, but he couldn’t change the past. The future was within his grasp, and he had to start molding it into a loss that would birth a bitter victory.

And that was something the other Voku were not going to understand…but they would obey and it was up to Cal-com to see them through this. At least those that would survive. Most would not, no matter what he did, and he began to steel himself to that fact.

Was this what the Elders felt when they were annihilated? If so, they would know what needed to be done and he had to rely on their judgement and trust in him. They had made him a Dafchor and given him to the Voku to fight this war. He was their weapon in it, and the only hope the Voku had.

Resigned to his fate, Cal-com dove head first into the task and began prepping the other Voku on the homeworld for what had to be done. He’d shoulder as much of the burden as he could. The rest, he hoped, they’d be able to withstand, for he was asking a lot of them.

The Voku were about to be tested in a way they never had before, and it was time to see if they were worth the investment the Elders had made in them.

3

March 30, 3639

Itris System (Star Force Expanded Region)

Stellar Orbit

Renimar Noru-sar was waiting in a courier ship drifting in null space to avoid the traffic in the system. The war between Star Force and the V’kit’no’sat had not reached the Expanded Region yet, and was unlikely to for some time, for it was sparsely populated and little more than a spiderweb of trade routes sprinkled with Star Force worlds that connected between the ADZ and down to the Voku border. Commerce here was basically unaltered since the war began, with a multitude of non-Star Force vessels coming into the system to trade with their empire.

Itris was one of the primary routes for Voku ships traveling to and from the Orica Region, and Noru-sar was waiting here to meet the fleet that was returning to fight the Skarrons. He’d been waiting four weeks already and was beginning to wonder if something had happened when the first Voku conglomerates began to decelerate against the larger of two central stars.

“Finally,” he said to himself as he was summoned to the oracle and observed from there, getting a list of incoming ships soon thereafter and choosing the one he wanted for his flagship. Most were identical in current shape and could be reconfigured as needed or split up into smaller ships, but there was battle damage evident on some coming through that drew his eyes immediately, with a comm to the first senior commander to arrive following shortly thereafter.

“What has happened? I’m seeing battle damage,” Noru-sar asked.

“The V’kit’no’sat.”

“They’re assaulting our worlds?” Noru-sar asked, aghast.

“Not that I am aware. One of our convoys passed across one of theirs in transit. They fired on us immediately and we had to fight long enough to cover our escape. They did considerable damage and we lost several conglomerates.”

“They targeted you immediately?”

“Yes. We did not get close to them, but apparently being in the same star system at the same time was sufficient provocation.”

“What system?”

“Dotoper. It’s uninhabited and they emerged on a different jumppoint as our ships were transitioning through. They hit us. We did not engage, though I personally wasn’t there. The fleet didn’t fully form up until Sarvin, and we’re coming through now as one force. It’ll take several days to get us all through even with the tight spacing. We didn’t want to risk a longer line that the V’kit’no’sat might run into again.”

“Then we’ll get moving immediately. Once I’m onboard my flagship we’ll be departing via Oloson.”

“Will you be at the head or waiting for the others?”

“I will follow. You can remain at the lead.”

“What is our ultimate destination?”

“Beyond the Firewall. We’re hitting the Skarrons where they don’t expect us.”

“We’re invading them?”

“We’re going after their convoys, not their worlds. We have to diminish the numbers attacking our territory.”

“We’re eager for a fight. Especially against ships that are inferior. Those V’kit’no’sat are damn near impossible to destroy.”

“Did we do any damage to them?”

“Scratched two of them. They’re too fast despite their size and chose when to engage and when to flee.”

“I intend to do the same thing to the Skarrons. Have your damaged ships jettison compromised sections here. Our traders can retrieve it. We won’t be passing through a friendly system before we go into battle.”

“Very well. Do you wish us to wait in Oloson?”

“No. We don’t have days to waste. I’m sending you navigation data now. I’ll catch up to the lead before we hit Gvarston. From there we go hunting Skarron convoys wherever we can find them.”

“What speed?”

“As fast as we can without losing ships. The Firewall is nearly breached. We don’t have much time left.”

“Then I’ll depart immediately, with your permission, Renimar.”

“Granted,” he said, ending the comm as his courier ship came closer to one conglomerate in particular that wasn’t moving in conjunction with the others. It was holding position until he got there, then when he boarded the courier ship left to head back to Voku territory.

Noru-sar pulled two more conglomerates out of the flow as they passed through the system, melding them with his as the ships transformed and merged into one another, creating a much larger one with particular commanders he wished to travel with. When the last of the ships came through and Noru-sar was satisfied that the V’kit’no’sat were not trailing them, he ordered his flagship to depart several hours after the end of the convoy. He’d make up time during the stellar transitions and coast phases, pushing his conglomerate a little harder than the rest as he skipped up the long line of ships stretching across two or three star systems at a time as they gradually progressed back towards the war his people were fighting for their lives.

He’d seen a break from the fighting, being out of contact for months as he traveled and waited, and it’d given him a badly needed fresh perspective. The war was wearing on everyone, even those not actively involved in the combat, and bringing in fresh troops was going to be an advantage if they could give the others a break…unfortunately that wasn’t going to happen. The only relief Noru-sar could provide was to diminish the number of enemies they were fighting.

Whether or not he could make a dent in the Crusade numbers was the question of the moment. This had been his suggestion and the Elders had approved it. With Cal-com’s blessing he was being sent to do what needed to be done with no restricting orders, meaning this was all on him.

But Noru-sar wouldn’t have had it any other way. Now it was just him and the Skarrons, and he was going to make them pay a very heavy price to destroy his home.

3 months later…

With the Renimar’s flagship back in the lead, the Orica Fleet dove into a random system beyond the Firewall, having skirted around the edge of Voku territory as they headed for one of the major Skarron convoy routes, stumbling onto another one with a thick line of Skarron warships and transports creeping around the single star in a huge arc as they transitioned from their entry jumppoint to their exit on the far side of the star.

They were stretched out, as was Noru-sar’s fleet. The enemy was not blockading this system or in any semblance of fighting formation. They were simply traveling as efficiently as possible, for pooling in a system and waiting for the end of the line to arrive before the first ships left only wasted time. He had no way of knowing how large this Skarron fleet was or how much of it had already passed through the system, but that didn’t matter now. They were both here, and while he only had a few conglomerates emerging at the moment, he wasn’t going to wait for the Skarrons to see them and start grouping up.

“Battle protocol,” he ordered calmly, with his crew reacting without any hysterics despite their eagerness to get into the fight and the number of ships visible on passive sensors. It would be a few minutes at least before the Skarrons saw them, so the Voku had to act quickly. “Engo formations and immediate dispatch. First assembled on us. Set course once in sync. We’re going in first.”

That pleased the crew, for while Voku Renimars were renowned for their strategic brilliance they usually operated out of positions of safety. For Noru-sar to order his own conglomerate first into battle signaled that he had no doubts as to the outcome…but it also signaled the need for speed, with 8 other conglomerates splitting apart into smaller pieces and forming interceptors. Those interceptors were passed additional gravity drives, leaving the other transforming pieces a bit slower, but carrying more firepower.

The modular nature of Voku ship technology was something that Noru-sar was well acquainted with, but it was still an impressive sight to see as his fleet literally reformed into what was needed for this operation. Even his flagship dispensed several pieces, reducing its size, as it formed the core of an Engo formation, which was essentially one powerful vessel that could pound anything into rubble operating in concert with faster ships that would move out and wound their opposition.

The ‘pounder’ would follow shortly and finish them off, meaning Noru-sar did not expect a full fleet battle in the coming hour or so. The Skarrons were the prey here and they would probably run. If not the Voku could change their conglomerates to better suit a slugging match, but the Renimar didn’t want ships escaping. He was here to prevent as many as possible from reaching the Firewall, and the interceptors could chase down and kill many of them before they got out even if they headed for multiple jumppoints around the system.

He dispatched other Engo formations towards the entry jumppoint and the exit jumppoint while he headed straight towards the closest of the enemy ships, accelerating so fast the sensor signals bouncing off them from the Skarrons wouldn’t reach the enemy until a few seconds before the Voku actually arrived. That required heavy use of already depleted gravity drive capacitors, but every second he could scrape off their response time would diminish the clustering of the enemy ships…which he saw began to happen just before the Voku arrived within weapons range, decelerating heavily as they arced to the left to match the pace of the Skarrons as they were transitioning laterally across the glowing blue orb of the star.

The long range Skarron weaponry couldn’t respond as soon as the Voku’s could, for they outranged the enemy and loosed everything they had as soon as possible, getting in the first few weapon strikes before the ranges closed down quickly as the Skarron ships had a choice to make…fight or try to run. They chose the former, turning into the attacking Voku and slugging it out with disastrous consequences. The Voku ships were so superior they trashed the Skarrons easily, but the strategy was clear, as it had been throughout this war.

It didn’t matter how many Skarrons died so long as they did a little bit of damage. The other Skarrons would add a bit more, then more and more as they died until the Voku eventually fell. It was how a Crusade worked even against superior opponents and was a trap that Noru-sar could not fall into. He issued orders for all his ships to individually retreat when their shields fell below 18% strength.

There would be fights in the future, he knew, where they’d have to slug it out taking armor damage, but today was not that day. He needed clean kills with no losses over the coming hours, and he was not going to risk any attrition beyond energy loss when he had the advantage.

However, that wasn’t true at this moment. The Skarrons had far more ships already in the system than he did, and rather than run all those near the exiting jumpline turned and headed for the nearest Voku conglomerates they could find.

Good, he thought silently. We’re already cutting the reinforcement flow to the Firewall. They want battle so bad they’re going to engage us on sight everywhere. If they’re that zealous I can manipulate them to great effect…I just can’t get caught out.

The Renimar adjusted his orders, pulling back his other Engo formations and using them as bait to get the Skarrons to chase them away from the exiting jumppoint and to distract those coming into the system from grouping up with the others into a massive fleet ball that the Skarrons effectively used. He needed to keep them stretched out as his own ships arrived, but to do that he needed more navigational options that his drained capacitors currently allowed him.

So he began ordering the ships fresh out of their incoming jumps to swing wide and lazily glide into various positions, then use what recharged energy they had to execute maneuvers the Skarrons couldn’t match and hit them on the run all along their convoy string while Noru-sar headed up the concentration of conglomerates that were facing the swell of Skarron ships as they gradually grouped together.

He had his ships reform into Hatar, which were essentially flat circles that had all their weaponry and shields on one side facing the enemy. It was risky if the Skarrons could circle around behind them, but it was the best way to knock down a group of enemies that intended to slug it out, and as more globular conglomerates arrived they appeared to flatten out as if hitting an invisible window alongside the others Hatars.

The Renimar kept a few interceptors and others patrolling the backside of the formation as the wall of what looked like flat flowers extended in all directions, creating a mass of Skarron wreckage ahead of them that the Voku kept pushing back towards the star via tractor beams, clearing the firing lines as new Skarron ships were maneuvering around the dead hulks to pour their plasma and heavy lachars into the Voku ships along with several rail gun rounds.

Their weaponry was inferior, but grouped together in large amounts it was still dangerous and with the rail guns rounds thrown in the Voku couldn’t adjust their shields to energy repulsion only. For what limited technology the Skarrons had, they made good use of it…but so did he, having his ships at the incoming jumpline push Skarron debris into the arrival lane and get some free kills from the collisions.

He had no way of knowing how many ships were still on the way, but already the killcount was rising fast and not one of his ships had seen so much as a hull scratch. As the Skarrons grouped up that was going to be harder to avoid, but he was a Renimar and his naval skill was tailored to just this sort of situation. The fate of his fleet was in his hands, and he had to choose how hard to push, when, and where.

The Skarrons wouldn’t get to decide where the battles took place anymore. Not with this fleet. He would keep them moving from system to system and hitting them in an unpredictable fashion while the Skarrons got to choose the planets they wanted to hit and the Voku had to defend where the enemy chose.

Hopefully wherever these Skarron ships were meant to go would be able to hold out longer now. Noru-sar didn’t know where that was, nor ever would. He was fully in ship hunting mode with the Firewall being a distant memory.

This was where the war was going to exist for him…at least as long as he had supplies to last. He’d have to cycle back to rendezvous with cargo transports eventually, but for now he was fully loaded and outfitted for battle, meaning the space lanes were for him to poach and the Skarrons to defend.

And he intended to keep his massive fleet together as one unit capable of running over any opposition they faced. If the Skarrons retasked fleets to hunt him down, that would serve his purpose even more so by buying time for the rest of the Voku. In order to do that he had to become the biggest nuisance possible, and he was glad he was off to an early start here. Voku scouts hadn’t identified this convoy route before, and he wondered how many more were out there unknown to them.

Hopefully a lot, because he didn’t want to waste time traveling through empty systems. His fleet was here to fight, and they would hopefully be busy as close to nonstop as possible going forward.

4

May 4, 3646

Poxtrov System (Voku territory)

Poxtreen

Bi-tor woke inside a null tube, returning to consciousness after the bare minimum rest required as the battle for the planet continued to rage on. There were so many Skarron troops in play that they could literally attack around the clock for month after month…partly because they were losing troops so fast, but the Voku weren’t. Warriors like Bi-tor had to sleep eventually, so he’d been cycled back into ‘safe’ territory again and forced himself into the rest ward along with many others, only now to be awoken and headed back to the fighting.

He pulled on his clothing and eyepiece, eating and attending to other personal needs quickly before he boarded an aerial transport that took him out to a firebase near the fighting. There he mounted himself in a level 1 Stranom, interfacing his mind with the bipedal mech and marching it out and through the streets of the Voku world. A lot of the population had already been evacuated, but this was not a Firewall world. That barrier had been breached in multiple locations, with Poxtrov having been the first, and the fight here was now already 4 months long.

A third of the planet remained, and the Voku were fighting a slow retreat as the Skarrons threw so many walkers at them that they literally littered the landscape over the ‘conquered’ territory. From the sheer number of the hulks large enough to be seen from orbit, you’d think the Voku were winning…which they were. Every battle they would win, but the attrition and unending enemy reinforcements were allowing them to march their way across the planet and would eventually drive the Voku survivors off at great cost to themselves.

Bi-tor’s interfaced mind had him feeling the Stranom’s movements as his own, but before they got to the nearest fighting he could see one of the Skarron’s largest walkers on the horizon. It was far taller than the Stranom and was comprised of multiple orb-like sections chained together in a long train suspended on many spindly legs that allowed it to walk over top many of the shorter Voku buildings as it rained plasma down on everything beneath and around it.

To combat that, another Stranom nearby rendezvoused with Bi-tor and the two Voku mechs paused slightly as others ran by. They touched one another and the machines began to melt, combining their masses and forming a single larger Stranom with the other pilot coming into view in the cockpit beside Bi-tor with their minds partly meeting one another. They couldn’t sense what each person was thinking, but they could talk to one another without doing so vocally. They split duties, with Bi-tor retaining the Stranom’s motion while the other Voku warrior handled some of the weapons and navigation.

Having someone else watching your back while you moved and fought was an advantage, but that wasn’t why they’d formed up. They needed the extra shields and armor, for when they finally got up underneath the massive Skarron walker they could see other smaller versions moving alongside it…all of which fired on them and the other Stranoms.

Bi-tor moved his Voku-style mech forward, blocking for another smaller Stranom behind them as they ran towards one of the legs, firing on it and trying to melt through a single spot, but while the legs looked spindly and easily snapable from a distance they were in fact quite large. Thicker than a level 1 Stranom, with the Voku weaponsfire only chipping away at the sturdy leg material until Bi-tor got up to point blank range and began melting away a great deal more as he grabbed hold of it and held on as it moved, dragging the Stranom along with it.

Some of the underside turrets shot down on him but the other Stranoms kept the surrounding walkers busy long enough for him to finally burn through enough that the next step snapped the leg off…but the massive walker didn’t go down, for it had many other legs to redistribute its weight to.

Or rather it had, for there were other combined Stranoms going after more legs, and soon the massive walker stopped moving forward as it tried to fight off the anklebiters. When it couldn’t, the segments began to split apart, allowing those with enough legs to walk off on their own and leaving the damaged sections to fall to the ground where they were easy to destroy if the Voku wanted to stick around and pound them.

They didn’t. Just taking them to the ground was enough, with Bi-tor leaving the giant target behind and moving on to other moving ones even as its weaponry continued to fire on them. If they could just hold the Skarrons in place it would be a win, but the enemy was constantly rolling forward, albeit slowly at times, meaning this downed walker was going to be out of firing range of the Voku as their side continued to press forward…their success taking it out of the fight until it could get repaired, and so far in this Crusade the Voku hadn’t witnessed any repair work being done during combat. They simply left their damaged and dying troops behind as they pressed the attack, making it clear they felt everything and everyone was expendable.

Unfortunately, that tactic was a winning one for them…at least as long as their two slave races didn’t turn on them.

There was zero evidence of that even being considered. However the Skarrons worked their hold over the Aronsic and Jenipars, their loyalty was holding and they were throwing themselves at the Voku and dying by the billions to take Bi-tor’s worlds, and he hated them for it. This wasn’t true combat, this was sloppy, inferior opponents that should not be winning. Their insane numbers were allowing them victories and, damn it all, the Voku couldn’t stop them. At least not yet, and there was no way of knowing how many more were coming.

Could they hold this fighting retreat from world to world until they ran out of troops? Unlikely, but there was no way to know how many more were out there. The Voku scouts had reported so many approaching fleets that they couldn’t begin to count them all, and even with the Orica Fleet returning and trying to shoot down as many as they could before they could get to Voku worlds there were still far too many getting through. They had delayed the Firewall breach by an additional 2 years, but now the Skarrons were into the homeland and the combat was even messier in cityscapes that had not been fully designed for fighting.

That was making moving the Stranom from point to point more difficult while the Skarrons were flooding any and all approaches. He was having to stomp through Aronsic as he tried to pull back to another group of Stranoms, even kicking some elite Skarrons in their gleaming armor as they tried to tackle his legs and take the Voku mech down. Fortunately the Stranoms were far more agile than the enemy walkers, but his fell to the ground twice before he fought his way back up to a standing position with Aronsic pouring off the back as they stupidly jumped on his shields trying to use their pathetic mass to hold the Stranom down, but they couldn’t hold on when Bi-tor altered the energy barrier into ‘slick’ form.

His copilot fired a few shots into them, but there were too many to worry about and Bi-tor was just trying to get them back from the horde…which he was able to do a few minutes later, seeing several Voku infantry units firing from range from the buildings and trying to thin the infinite numbers before they too pulled back.

Bi-tor wanted to help them, but he knew the walkers were his responsibility and when he arrived at the waypoint he got a signal from a higher ranking Voku to combine again, with three level 2s coming together with 7 level 1s to form a massive Stranom that stood taller than most of the Skarron walkers, but still was shorter than their largest worm-like machines.

But the weaponry from all the Stranoms was now combined into the arms, with several specialized components that they carried forming 3 complete Stuvjo beam cannons. All three went into the chest, with Bi-tor being given firing control over one of them.

Suddenly he was able to focus on one thing only as he no longer had to drive the Stranom, and he pointed the firing reticle at one of the Skarron’s mid level walkers and let loose a stream of green/orange energy that punched right through the enemy shields and blasted into the armor that was very useful against plasma, but not the more advanced Voku weaponry.

Meanwhile the super Stranom was being targeted by so many walkers firing white plasma that it looked like they were in the middle of a snowstorm. They couldn’t take that much incoming firepower continuously, but for now the draining shields were holding and allowing Bi-tor and others to do a massive amount of damage to dozens of walkers in their forward firing arc as they tried to circle around and surround them as the infantry flow finally caught up and swelled like a thin layer of water around the Stranom’s feet. The stupid Aronisc were even firing on it with their pathetic weapons, but every shot would drain the shields a touch, meaning even the infantry getting stomped on were diminishing the amount of time the super Stranom could hold this position.

Bi-tor didn’t pay much attention to the other weapons aiming down and killing that infantry en mass, for his focus was on the bigger prey his Stuvjo was meant for, but eventually he saw the Stranom turn and began retreating, with his beam cannon shifting from the front torso to the back, allowing him to cover their retreat as they passed through buildings that had once been Voku homes…now reduced to a battlefield with the enemy overrunning them and the walkers punching their thin legs right down through roofs as they walked over or on top of them to get to better firing shots against the giant mech.

But it wasn’t the only one. As they retreated, Bi-tor saw two other giant Stranoms of similar but not identical size acting as stand-in turrets along with several proper ones built into the city structure. Beyond them was another holding line, and one that wasn’t going to fall so quickly.

Bi-tor knew it would eventually, but for now it was going to provide cover for his Stranom as it deconstructed from the massive one, with all the smaller versions breaking apart and running behind the defense lines. His was carrying damaged components and shields that were at less than 7%, but all his weapons were intact and he could use them again if he had a chance to recharge his shields.

That meant he had to pull back while others fought and needed at least a good 12 minutes to get his shields back up fully. Then he’d cycle back to the fighting covering for others as the Voku tried to drag out this battle as long as possible, for the more of their own units and troops they lost, the faster the conquest of the planet would progress…and that would mean the next assault against another system would also come sooner, so every hour they could delay them here was shielding another world.

And the other worlds were constructing additional defenses as fast as they could, but it never seemed to be enough to hold one against this unending stream of Skarrons and their loyal slaves.

Another massive Skarron fleet was passing through a system 4 jumps away from the now broken Firewall. Their ships followed a line from one jumppoint 142 degrees around the central star to the outgoing one, sharing limited information back and forth during the mundane travel until the ships at the outgoing jumppoint suddenly fell silent. No messages came from them and no shared sensors were being relayed until ships further back in the line began to see with their passive sensors the carnage occurring at the outgoing jumppoint.

Battle was evident, but they could not identify the ships attacking them. They were not a match for any ships in their extensive database, but it was clear that they were an extremely advanced race for the Skarron warships were exploding on what looked like single hits, though without active sensors it was hard to be sure. Those were being jammed, and soon that jamming extended further back through the line with the Skarron computer systems suddenly freezing up.

When that happened small ships appeared nearby and fired on them, swinging in and out of the giant Skarron vessels in comparison as they damaged but did not completely destroy them. Rather they were targeting specific points on their hulls that contained communications equipment before the Skarron computers reset and their shields came back up.

Like pilot fish proceeding the sharks, the individual Zak’de’ron free flew through space in nothing but their personal armor ahead of their nest-like vessels that were killing the Skarron ships so fast they never knew what had hit them. Between the sensor jamming and computer hacking, most of them couldn’t even see their attackers unless they looked out an open hangar bay and saw with their own eyes.

The few that did saw coils wrapped around each other, some that moved as the ships transformed slightly to bring different weapons to bear or to take the little fliers back onboard. They were firing cutting beams and pulse weapons, the latter of which would hit solid hull and burn through only to explode within, killing most of the smaller Skarron ships in a single blow once the shields were down.

And those shields were being taken down rapidly by the beam weapons that preceded the knockout blows with such a terrible efficiency that it was almost a beautiful thing to behold. But those few that did, didn’t live to share their vision of that terrible beauty, nor could they transmit what they had seen as the Dragons kept the outgoing jumppoint clogged with dead ships and guardian vessels to insure not a single ship got through as they worked their way back down the line all the way to the entry jumppoint.

The few ships that tried to flee to other jumppoints were intercepted, and with no means of interstellar communication other than by courier, as long as the Dragons kept them here no word would get out that they existed, and they had thousands of free flying Zak’de’ron working to ensure that as the warships progressed all the way up the line then sat at the incoming jumppoint and took out the Skarron ships still entering the system one at a time.

Those vessels literally never knew what hit them, save for the few survivors in the pieces that the warships moved to the side and the free flying Dragons finished off after dragging the chunks of ships out of the jumppoint to give the fleet clear firing lines. The survivors on those ships were ended soon thereafter, with the Zak’de’ron fleet staying put until the last of this convoy came through 18 days later.

When the outflow stopped, the Zak’de’ron ships recovered their free flying brethren then disappeared from view, hiding behind cloaking fields and making their way out of the system by other routes and leaving behind such a massive debris field that no one would even bother trying to clean it up for millennia to come. It would be labeled on various races’ navigational databases as a hindrance akin to an asteroid field and let drift in place, with no one knowing who had caused such massive damage nor caring so long as they didn’t show up again.

And with so many Skarron fleets about and combat happening in hundreds of locations, the destruction of 458,283 ships would eventually be lost in the enormity of the Crusade, preserving the anonymity of the Zak’de’ron as they ‘quietly’ tried to relieve some of the pressure on Voku territory without their knowledge.

5

August 14, 3646

Poxtrov System (Voku territory)

Poxtreen

Bi-tor and 28 other Voku were racing across an open paved plain between two cities, slashing and blasting apart the Aronsic there as they worked their way back towards an enemy landing zone even as a fierce aerial fight was taking place above them and dropping destroyed craft down onto the infantry below. The Voku were not affected, so few in number and agile enough to avoid the crashes, but the Aronsic were so numerous there was literally no place for them to run aside from jumping on top of one another, which didn’t get them far.

The Voku were tired, very tired, but today was different. They were counterattacking rather than fighting a withering retreat. There wasn’t much of the planet left, and the other two in the system had already fallen, but the long string of Skarron reinforcements that had been coming into the system had suddenly ended. At first they thought it was just a pause, but 5 days had passed with no new entries.

The fleet in orbit was beyond huge, but the Voku were constantly diminishing their numbers and losing few of their own save for the desperate battles to protect the surface when another shield generator fell. So long as more Skarron reinforcements were arriving to replace the losses it literally didn’t matter how hard the Voku fought…but if there was even a short pause the scales would begin to tip, and they already were in orbit.

Patches of orbit track were now back on Voku hands, one of which was overtop where Bi-tor was now. Previously they couldn’t have gone this far out because they were no longer under the protective overhang of the planetary shields and from past experience they knew the enemy warships would have no qualms about firing on their own troops if they were able to quickly eliminate Voku units with the same weaponsfire. Mathematically they were correct, for the Voku were so superior they’d end up killing more Skarrons in the long run if they weren’t taken out with orbital bombardment, but that was a cold way to fight and it was clear the Skarrons didn’t care about anything other than winning.

But now was different, for the Voku had naval cover above them that was fighting to keep the enemy fleet from coming in, and their cover wouldn’t be firing down on the Skarron troops while they were holding position. That meant the ground warfare was on its own now, for however brief a period it would be, and the Voku were more than eager to fight an ‘even’ fight, even though they were still horribly outnumbered. It felt even, if only for the fact that there was a slim chance of victory.

Bi-tor’s group had pushed far ahead of where the walkers and Stranoms were fighting, and just ahead was a very active landing zone where fresh troops were being brought down from orbit, albeit having to fly overland a long distance to undercut the Voku fleet far overhead that was arrayed to defend against the outlying fleet with very few weapon batteries left to point down. Once the Skarrons had figured that out they’d continued to reinforce the ground troops en mass, but with so many in play they had to organize carefully and keep certain landing zones clear with the Aronsic the Voku were fighting their way through being forced to move away to allow more to debark the transports.

If those transports could be destroyed on the ground, then this LZ would be obstructed and more troops couldn’t be landed here inside the portable shield generators that were essentially creating tall semi-clear walls around the transports so Voku aerial fighters couldn’t fire into their open holds when the Aronsic were coming out. There were also some anti-air batteries actively firing up through portal shields that would close over top when the transports were on the ground.

All of it was makeshift, but what was ahead of Bi-tor had been designed and honed through battle to a very robust design, though the landing field itself was miles wide, meaning the defensive measures were for large scale attack and there were many overlapping shields that held open walkways for the Aronsic to pour out of…making for an easy route in if the Voku could get there.

Fighting through a sea of Aronsic was commonplace now, and with the phalanx’s additional shielding his unit and others were making progress while more aerial fighters from both sides were falling from the beehive of activity above them. One bounced onto the top shield of the landing zone and slid off it, crunching a group of Aronsic that happened to be shuffling past below, then that top shield opened up and one of the half mile long transports lifted up into the sky with a heavy escort of fighters, making room for another to come down only a few minutes later. The top shield was lowered physically, allowing it to pass through while energy weapon fire would not, then the topside shield reformed completely and the new transport began to unload even more Aronsic.

There were no Skarrons visible in the fields of troops around the LZ, but there were some inside the perimeter guarding/organizing the troop debarkments, including the setup of some more anti-air turrets that were being placed on the outside by Jenipars so the shields wouldn’t have to momentarily lower to allow them to fire through. Whether those were additional units or replacements Bi-tor didn’t know, but it looked like this site was getting more and more fortified as the Skarron advance stalled. Normally they just rushed ahead, but now that the Voku were able to put up more resistance without having to worry about orbital bombardment the Skarrons were adjusting their strategy.

That meant this LZ had to be neutralized now, before it got any beefier, and it looked like the Voku aerial craft were doing little more than keeping the Skarrons from strafing the phalanxes. Bi-tor didn’t know how much longer they’d last, and it was quite possible that they were going to get caught out here and die, which was why he and the others didn’t kill the Aronsic any more than they had to. Speed was required, so they fought a path through and over the dead ones they were shooting down ahead of them, all the way up to the base of the shields that reached all the way to the paved ground.

Another fighter, this one Skarron, slid down and almost hit the phalanx, splintering into pieces that flew everywhere killing dozens of Aronsic. One shard deflected off of Bi-tor’s phalanx shield, but it held firm and only bounced him into the Voku off his left shoulder as they turned and ran along the wall shield to the right, meaning their left flank was no longer taking fire from the tiny plasma pistols the Aronsic were carrying.

The Voku followed the perimeter until they came to one of the outflows that quickly jammed with dead bodies as they fought their way in. More Aronsic climbed over them and down the rising mountain as the Voku fought hard to move mere steps forward as they were protected on the left and right by the shield walls. Behind them Aronsic were circling back to attack them, but it was those ahead that were the worst threat as several explosions ripped through them, one of which buried Bi-tor under a pile of enemy bodies.

He was pinned for a moment, then he managed to kick and wiggle himself partially free, enough at least to get his legs under him and push his way back to the surface where a friendly black arm reached down and helped pull him up…then another grabbed him and both Voku launched him forward like a slingshot using a combination of muscle and flight harness. Bi-tor flew up and over the mass of enemies, falling on the far side and literally rolling down the backside of the mound, crashing through those climbing up and bouncing off the dead they were trampling until he hit the paved ground on the other side with a wash of plasma shots hitting him.

His personal shields held, but his physical shield was lost on the far side with the other Voku. That meant his protection was low, and he knew from past experience that the best place to be was as close to the Aronsic as possible…so he could use their bodies to block ranged shots.

Bi-tor kicked one so hard it flew into the air like an ugly ball, then he slid down onto a knee in the gap, shooting those around him while trying to diminish his height advantage on them, making his silhouette smaller while spinning on his ankles and fighting those around him at more or less their eye level until he got a comm from his unit. His physical shield then flew out over the pile as well, and Bi-tor leapt up into the air to grab it before it hit the ground.

As soon as he did so its enhanced shields covered his body, with him cracking the neck of one Aronsic on landing as he took a much more aggressive posture, making himself a moving turret and plowing through the flow of Aronsic coming off the transports. He did the best he could to disrupt and slow their approach in the somewhat narrow gap between the huge shields.

He was fighting so hard and fast he lost track of time, but eventually the other Voku were able to work their way up to him and the phalanx reformed on the other side of the massive pile of dead, though another one was starting to form around him. Before they could get bogged down in it they pushed through the gap and the interior shield ended, opening up the landing zone before them.

They immediately took off to the left, traveling on the other side of that shield on the open pavement…which was a huge relief after having walked/fought over Aronsic bodies for more than the past half hour to get here.

Getting up to running speed, the slower Aronsic couldn’t keep up as they chased the Voku inward and the outflows from the transports redirected to come after them, but the head start was too much and the phalanx was on one of the anti-air turrets before the Skarron elites could get to them. The regular Skarron troops there were augmented with Aronsic gunners, but neither offered much resistance as the Voku targeted the machinery rather than those operating it, for they’d be replaced within seconds while the turret itself could not be.

After trashing it they moved on to another and another before finally getting to one of the transports and having to weather some of its anti-personnel weaponry as the Aronsic tried to tackle and hold the Voku down to give them better shots. It didn’t work well, but then two aerial fighters came through the topside shield and hovered nearby, firing point blank into the Aronsic that were trying to slow the Voku down.

That hurt, and two Voku were lost after a few seconds of concentrated firing, but they didn’t just sit there and take it. A pair of Dwio orbs flew back and hit one of the Skarron fighters, dropping it to the ground while Bi-tor ran at and jumped up to the other, which apparently thought it was too high for that attack.

Bi-tor grabbed unshielded underside using his adhesive gloves and crawled around the fighter as it began to get more elevation. When he got to an engine vent that helped cool the Skarron’s inefficient anti-grav he fired into it with his forearm weaponry, resulting in the fighter tipping over and flying with only one side elevated, but it still continued to gain height, nearly all the way up to the topside shield, before he managed to take out the other cooling unit.

The fighter dropped slightly, then the emergency override kicked in and had the anti-grav running hot…both of them…and the fighter leveled off as it flew up through the shield.

Bi-tor jumped off immediately, falling back through the energy shield before it switched to physical, and used his flight harness to drift him over on top of the transport as one of its batteries shot him twice. He landed on the hull and raced over to it, punching through the slim armor casing and denting the weapon so badly it ceased to function as he heard a massive explosion overhead.

He glanced back to see the fighter in bits and pieces flying everywhere as a result of the anti-grav overloading. That’s what happened when they weren’t properly cooled, and the pilot had been so anxious to get him off the craft that he’d pushed it too hard in escape when he should have floated down to the surface.

Voku craft wouldn’t explode like that, but Skarron technology, especially their anti-grav, was designed for maximum output in combat and had few safety protocols, which was why he wasn’t going to attempt the same sabotage to the transport beneath him.

Bi-tor didn’t try to get back to the phalanx, for he was already at their intended destination. Rather he ran across the unshielded hull until he found a topside hatch that he blasted his way through and entered the ship, finding a wall of Aronsic and a Skarron amongst them waiting for him.

The wall of plasma hurt his shields, but he pushed through it fast enough to get into melee range and went to work on them. The Aronsic were easy to kill, but one of the claws on the end of the Skarron’s arms got him on the shoulder and pinned him in place long enough that the Aronsic peppered him with enough shots to get through his shields. He felt plasma burns on his chest, but thankfully his body suit absorbed most of the damage as the impact points puffed in little explosions.

Bi-tor twisted free of the death grip before another claw could come around and enhance the hold, then he dove underneath the Skarron rather than going on top of it, making the Aronsic shoot between the thick, elephant-like legs. They weren’t so reckless when shooting at their superior, but Bi-tor was still without shields and he needed a moment to recharge.

Thankfully the Skarron did as he expected, bending its legs and dropping its underside down on top of him. Bi-tor was pinned between the heavy Skarron and the deck plates with the enemy’s body caving in enough that the Aronsic couldn’t shoot underneath. Bi-tor was next to helpless underneath, but the Skarron couldn’t crush him. It wasn’t painless, but Voku physiology was too tough to be overcome by even Skarron mass. Had this one been a bit bigger then it might have been a different story, but Bi-tor played dead and didn’t move or fire as he was pinned beneath it, all the time letting his shield generators recharge.

The Skarron bounced up and down a few times, trying to increase the damage, then it finally stood up so the Aronsic could shoot what was left of the Voku…at which point Bi-tor turned his shields back on and scurried out from under the Skarron. He ignored it and went for the Aronsic instead, taking out the threat of their little pistols while the Skarron had none of its own.

It didn’t take long until this part of the ship was neutralized and only the Skarron remained. It tried to fight hand to hand, but Bi-tor was too fast and delivered plenty of shots onto its back at just the right point, taking it down as the rest of his phalanx finally boarded the ship from below.

He helped them clean out the upper levels where the crew resided even as the main hold was emptied of the fresh troops, but this transport was not going to take off again. The Voku made sure of that as they sabotaged key systems without triggering explosive overloads. They didn’t want the ship destroyed, but rather sitting here and taking up a landing slot that the Skarrons couldn’t use.

Even if they chose to blast it the pieces would still be here in the way, so the functionality of this LZ was already diminished no matter how the Skarrons reacted, but that wasn’t enough. They needed to take it out entirely, so they proceeded to move on to other weapon turrets around the LZ and eventually to the other transports that kept stupidly landing and offloading more troops, some of which other arriving phalanxes just slaughtered as they came out of the holds.

Eventually there was a captured and sabotaged transport at each of the slots, making mass transit to and from the LZ impossible…which was good, for the aerial division soon thereafter gave a warning that it wasn’t going to be able to hold air cover much longer.

Their task done, Bi-tor and the others regrouped and blew up one of the shield generator walls, taking it down and rushing out across somewhat exposed ground before they came to the Aronsic swarms again. They were moving gradually towards distant targets, but it was more like a holding area where they were all corralled and stretched for tens of miles in every direction.

With their air cover about to disappear one way or another, Bi-tor knew their only route of escape was back across that sea of enemies, so with their task done they focused on survival and with the help of another phalanx they fought through them losing a few more Voku on the way.

Bi-tor was one that made it back to the front where there was more traditional combat taking place, but more than a third of the others did not. Desperate times called for desperate attacks, and they’d denied the Skarrons attacking nearby their LZ, meaning the reinforcements would have to walk even greater distance to get here so long as the Voku air cover could keep enough pressure on the enemy transports. If not, they could just set down wherever they wanted.

Bi-tor couldn’t control any of that, he could only do his part and for now the navy was holding their line overhead and the Stranoms were keeping this front line adequately contained. That was the most he could hope for now, so as he and the other surviving phalanx members were met and escorted back to a ‘safe’ zone he held himself together despite the burns on his chest. He didn’t realize until he finally sat down how badly injured he was, not to mention how close to passing out his fatigue was making him.

He’d barely lived through that, and many others hadn’t, but the Voku were winning small victories and as he looked to the sky and the mass of warships above, he wondered just how long this badly fought for stalemate would last. He didn’t expect much, but this was the first time he’d ever seen a stall in Skarron reinforcements in any of the campaigns he’d fought during this Crusade. He knew better than to hope for more, but he couldn’t help it right now. He was near the breaking point and even the slightest bit of relief was too much to ignore.

He and others had to slow the Skarrons as much as possible. The rest of his race was counting on it, otherwise they’d have a free run through the most heavily populated Voku worlds. The Skarrons hadn’t gotten to them yet. Not even close. But every world that fell invited another invasion closer to those densely populated zones that could never be fully evacuated in time.

The fate of their race rested in his and the other defenders’ hands…and right now they needed every small bit of good luck they could get, with the clear naval skies in stellar orbit being the best gift they could have hoped for.

The only question was, how long was it going to last?

6

July 2, 3654

Bavrenti System (Voku Regional Capitol)

Hakibi

Cal-com walked down the hallway out from the oracle, leaving it and his command staff behind. They’d continue to deal with information and movements on the overall warfront, but the Skarrons were here, at Bavrenti, and Cal-com wasn’t going to evacuate ahead of the others. They were going to defend the regional capitol, which was the second strongest system hit by the Skarrons to date, and not just in the Crusade.

The Skarrons had attacked Bavrenti before, back when they were pushing out through the galaxy in far lesser numbers and before the Voku had received their civilization-wide upgrade. Even then they’d never taken it, and if it was finally going to fall to them Cal-com was going to personally kill as many of the bastards as he could before having to retreat.

He knew others wanted him to leave early, but with some 12 billion Voku in this system that were going to be fighting and dying for lack of evac ships, he wasn’t going to leave them until necessary. They were his clone brothers, and where one stood all would. That was the Voku way, so as the naval battle around the star continued to escalate beyond holding and the first large globs of the Skarron fleet moved into orbit overhead and began pounding on the planetary shields, he strode evenly and purposefully through the cityscape, not running, not panicking, as others moved about at a more furious pace making preparations.

He knew the shields wouldn’t breach for hours more, perhaps days, but when they did the Skarrons would come down through the foothold and begin the massive ground campaign to take the planet. Had the original defense fleet been here the Skarrons would have been fighting for weeks just to get to planetary orbit, but that fleet had been pared down greatly over the years with conglomerates sent to fight where the war was. Some had been retained to this system, but not enough.

Had Cal-com not sent those ships earlier the Skarron advancement would have been here by now, so they were well spent in the strategic sense, but for this system it was a sad consequence of having to defend other systems that this one was so weak…navally speaking. As far as the ground defenses went, they had not been diminished save for the number of warriors, and those had been transferring back from the defeats on other worlds, so the ground fight was going to be fully staffed.

Cal-com already knew where the foothold would be, for the Skarrons were only attacking one point on the planetary shields, and the Voku army was repositioning to fight at that location…or rather around it, for they didn’t want to get hit by the weaponsfire when it did finally penetrate. Evacuations of those under the affected area were already underway and the pace of attack seemed to give adequate time if the Voku moved quickly, but Cal-com wasn’t concerning himself with it now. Others could handle those tasks adequately well and he intended to apply his skills in a more personal manner.

His singular march across the cityscape ended at a military base where tens of thousands of Stranom were waiting for their pilots. They were condensed down into approximate squares until activated, and many already were as they began leaving to head towards what would be the warfront in coming days, and while many would be flown out to it, it made more sense for others to simply walk and leave the transports to help the civilian evacuation.

Cal-com walked up to an inert cube and used the controls on his left gauntlet to activate it, with the cube morphing into a bipedal approximation similar to his own body but with significant size alterations in various areas. A doorway appeared on the left leg and Cal-com entered, climbing stairs that melted behind him, resealing the leg as he climbed into the cockpit and sat in the control chair. He could fight standing or in any other configuration he wished, for the cockpit was also morphable, but the march out to the front was going to take a while so he decided to sit.

His Stranom walked out of the grid it was in and moved towards a communal area where others were combining for the trip out, with him signaling many others to him. They walked up to and melted into his own, with the single Stranom growing larger and larger, to epic proportions, until it was taller than many of the surrounding buildings. Some 83 level 1 Stranom eventually fused together, but none of the other pieces had pilots. Cal-com had ordered them to him remotely, meaning he was the sole occupant in the towering machine.

Before combat began he’d pick up additional pilots, but right now he was going to move this monster on his own, with a single step moving it far faster than the smaller ones. Some buildings he actually stepped over as he began to prepare himself for the type of personal battle that he’d not taken part in for many centuries.

But his memories were fresh, as were his skills, and he had no trouble walking his enormous Stranom off towards the horizon as others could be seen making the same journey ahead and behind him as the weaponsfire from orbit was just barely visible in the night sky to the far northeast even from his elevated viewpoint. The Skarrons wanted to hit the primary city on the capitol world, but it held the strongest shield generator segment, so they were hitting the one adjacent to it. That meant it wasn’t too far away and as he continued the nearly silent march of the giant machines he kept watch what was happening in orbit and the carnage occurring at the Skarron’s entry jumppoint as his defense fleet tried to whittle down their numbers as they came in, but there was no way they could stop them all.

18 days later…

Cal-com’s giant Stranom, aflame in multiple locations, punched straight down into the back of a massive Skarron walker, breaking through the yellow armor plates and sinking the hand all the way down into the interior as the weaponry on his Stranom was being fired in all directions by the other pilots inside it with him. He, however, was the one handling the movements of the Stranom, and the Dafchor used the new handhold to rip the entire spherical section off the Skarron ‘train.’

They actually auto disconnected when it was yanked off the ground, splitting the walker in half with both sections skittering around to new locations as Cal-com lifted the damaged segment up over the Stranom’s head, then threw it across the battlefield to where it knocked down four smaller walkers like bowling pins…all of which appeared to be in slow motion due to the massive size of the mechanical combatants in play.

Further to the west there was another massive Stranom fighting hundreds of Skarron walkers with more walking up behind them from landing zones out in the open where the enemy warships could provide covering fire. Right now the fighting was occurring under the farthest edge of the primary defense shield, but beyond that the Stranoms couldn’t go or they’d be blown apart in short order.

That allowed the Skarrons to organize their massive walker formations with a sea of Aronsic and Skarron infantry supporting them. From his point of view, Cal-com felt like the largest person on the battlefield, slow but very, very powerful, yet even this Stranom’s shields were already down over most parts of its mechanical body and the weak plasma weapons of the Skarrons were adding up as the overall size had to shrink each time a chunk of it was damaged. That meant Cal-com’s Stranom would keep fighting for a very long time, but get weaker with each height demotion.

But with the reductions would come additional speed, though right now he didn’t need it. He was able to physically do more damage to the enemy walkers by slow punches and kicks than the weaponry was doing, which was why he and others were fighting in this melded fashion while other smaller Stranom were fighting around his feet.

Unfortunately they were all trampling the Voku buildings that were now evacuated…or at least he hoped. If someone was left down there they couldn’t be saved now, for many of his Stranom’s steps were crunching rooftops in order to get into position to hit the walkers that were doing less damage with their spindly legs making pinhole damage points beneath them.

The destruction couldn’t be helped, but he had to make sure to avoid the infantry locations or he’d accidentally kill his own troops. The enemy didn’t seem to care, for they were rushing Aronsic right under the Stranom’s feet and making the Voku infantry circle around behind the massive machines and away from their flanking positions. It was a chaotic battlefield, but the Voku were masters of warfare compared to this sloppy and dishonorable Skarron army that didn’t care for the fate of its own troops.

Cal-com ran his Stranom three steps forward and turned his right side into a slightly smaller walker, ramming it and essentially tackling it to the ground as many of its tiny legs snapped from the stress overload. He rotated his shoulders and whacked his other arm into the top of one section elbow first and crunched it right through the shields that could not stand up to that much sheer mass.

Before Cal-com could get his Stranom standing again the light went out…literally. It was as if the star in the sky had simply shut off. By the time his machine was standing and firing off shots like a turret, he realized it was the planetary shields. For some reason they’d switched to opaque and were not letting light nor sensor beams pass through. In the distance it was still bright over the enemy landing zones where there were no shields, but for some reason the Voku sensors nearby that could look up through that gap were not functioning.

Cal-com took a quick break from the fighting, letting a subordinate handle the movements as he tried to figure out what was going on. He hadn’t ordered any such action, nor did it make any strategic sense, blinding themselves like this, unless they needed to hide something from the Skarrons in orbit. The Dafchor made some quick inquires but found that no one knew what had triggered the change in the shields, nor could they undo it.

Their links to the navy were also down, so they had no knowledge of what was going on above them until Cal-com started to see parts of Skarron warships falling through the gap and down onto their landing zones by the dozens. A strange sensation began to creep over him, then his suspicion was confirmed as his mind exploded with the voice of an Elder.

Silence must be maintained, but we are here. We cannot remain to be seen, and the blindness will be lifted shortly, but their numbers will be thinned. Make use of it. This is still your fight to be won or lost.

When the voice ended new information was evident in his mind, and suddenly he could see several other attacks the Elders were making against the Skarrons across the interstellar warzone. They were helping the Voku, but no one could know it else word could get back to the V’kit’no’sat, so they couldn’t fight directly. If this system was to be saved it had to be the Voku that held off the enemy. The Elders could wipe them all out, but there would be too many eyes to see, so they were doing the next best thing and aiding where they could.

Cal-com realized the knife-edge they were walking. There were billions of eyes here, and even if you could blind the technological ones it was possible word would slip through from person to person, and all it would take was one report making its way across the stars to imperil the Elders.

They were risking much to aid the Voku, and the enormity of that sacrifice brought tears to his eyes that had to be vented out the bottom side of his crystal eyepiece. The Elders were not just overlords assisting with guidance and technology from afar. They were willing to fight alongside the Voku in battle, risking possible exposure, in order to give them a chance to survive.

Cal-com immediately took back motion control on the Stranom and kicked over a small walker before stepping on it and running towards another bigger one even as a piece of his left arm fell off and a shimmer traveled over the entire Stranom as it shrunk to reappropriate necessary components.

What withering his spirit had taken over the years of constant losses was now gone. The Elders were with them, though he couldn’t tell anyone of it, but it reinforced to him that this war was survivable and that the Voku were important enough to the Elders for them to take a personal hand in the fighting.

Even though the Stranom couldn’t move any faster given its mechanical limitations, Cal-com’s energy level was buoyed and his pace of combat increased as he pushed into the encroaching Skarron ranks and did massive amounts of damage until his Stranom was so diminished in size that there were too many pilots for it to carry without an additional bulge on the chest.

Eventually he had to retreat, with other Stranom covering the withdraw of his now tiny and fat one as the Skarrons continued to pepper the almost weaponless frame as it ran back through the more or less intact buildings to a rally point where additional Stranoms were waiting in cube mode. Most of what Cal-com had left was the interior workings of the original Stranom, and those parts weren’t meant to be in such a dense and small cluster.

Because of that he and the other pilots had to evacuate the ugly mass that was left, then they ran over to the cubes and boarded them, reforming into a larger Stranom but not the full size of what they’d had before. Some of the pilots moved off in level 1 or 2 versions to reinforce weak areas that were of greater priority, but even before Cal-com had moved his new super Stranom off a kilometer a sea of Aronsic surged beneath his feet heading for the depot.

Every weapon on the Stranom fired down on the street, but Cal-com went the extra distance of taking a knee and using the lower right leg as a barrier that crushed some beneath it and forced those on the other side to stop moving and work their way around. He knew there were too many to stop, but he needed to delay their getting to the deactivated Stranom who had no pilots.

After a few minutes he knew it was futile, so he went back to the deactivated cubes and turned them all on, summoning them into his super Stranom and increasing its size beyond all design limits. It was larger than any ever used in battle, and for good reason. It moved so slowly it was little more than a mobile turret, but that was enough to get the Stranom cubes out of harm’s way as what looked to be plasma fire from all the walkers arrayed before them angled up to hit the monster Stranom.

Cal-com was so high up now that he couldn’t use the buildings for cover, meaning he was taking more damage than the Stranom would have if it had been in multiple pieces lower to the ground. That meant this was actually to the Skarron’s advantage, but he had to get the extra cubes away from the Aronsic or they’d lose them entirely.

At the moment there were no more Skarron reinforcements coming into the landing zone, so he decided to make a dangerous gambit. Rather than taking the reserve Stranoms backward out of the fight and depositing them in relative safety, he took his skeleton crew of pilots inside with him and split up the monster Stranom into 6 versions approximately the same size of what he’d been fighting in previously before battle damage had shrunk it.

That meant there were less pilots to man all the weapons, but they’d trained to multi-task and he knew they could be stretched this way if needed. Besides, it was the physical blows that were doing the most damage to the walkers, and with six of them he could most definitely punch through the Skarron lines and get to their landing zones…assuming the warships overhead that were raining down through the shield gap were indeed all disabled or driven off.

He couldn’t know that for certain, but if he could get even partway into that LZ he could wreck so much of the Skarrons’ organization that they wouldn’t be able to mount an assault for days while they tried to clean up the mess. The Skarrons were counting on their rear flank being protected by the warships, and the Elders may have just exposed that weakness now. Cal-com couldn’t know for sure, but the raining chunks of warship were as good a sign as any.

“Follow me, brothers. We push through to the interior now and let tomorrow fend for itself. Let nothing slow you down,” he said to those in his Stranom and the other 5 super ones nearest him while everyone else was fighting just to try and hold position against the waves of walkers. Hopefully he’d be able to take pressure off them, and without knowing how long this reprieve from the warships would last, or even what was occurring in orbit, he knew he had to act swiftly.

To that end he launched his Stranom off at the fastest run it could manage, brushing by two Skarron walkers as he punched them aside and his pilots fired the weaponry at pointblank range as they passed. He could feel their moment of opportunity and wanted to waste no time, even as he ran head on into fresh walkers that had not a lick of battle damage on them and which were reforming their lines to block his path…including one of their largest turning sideways so that it made for a long wall before him that Cal-com shoulder rammed, then punched his way through, breaking the walker in half and opening up a gap that the others followed him through enroute to the back lines where they intended to swing around and attack the walker waves after taking out the massive transport ships that were constantly ferrying them down from orbit.

Except that some of those ships were already damaged from the falling orbital debris, and the further he got out into the enemy the more he could see up through the hole in the planetary shields. He knew, somehow, that his vision of it was not being blocked as everyone else’s was, and the sensors sending information directly into his brain allowed him a glimpse of the Elders’ ships far up in orbit slaughtering the Skarron fleet that had poked the hole in the planetary shields in the first place.

That sight, along with the fact that they were letting him see it, humbled him greatly…along with reinforcing the wisdom and righteousness of their cause. The Elders were the true masters of the galaxy and the Voku were important to them, for what reason Cal-com didn’t know, but his part in the here and now was clear.

The Voku had to survive, and if the Elders had come in person to make sure that happened, Cal-com was going to make certain he did everything he possibly could to make ensure his race survived, both for their sake and for the future purpose the Elders had for them, whatever it may be.

7

Gahmorn Ley-yen was onboard a conglomerate near the entry jumppoint the Skarrons were using to arrive in the Bavrenti System, fighting yet another losing battle as there were too many ships coming through to deal with. Originally they’d been able to stop all those coming through here, but the first wave into Voku systems saw multiple jumplines used so they couldn’t blockade them. Over the course of 2 days no less than 7 different jumplines had Skarron ships arriving, and those that arrived elsewhere eventually transitioned over to this primary jumppoint in order to defend it.

Now all the Skarron reinforcements were coming through here and only here, an unending spigot of ships that kept replacing whatever the Voku destroyed. The key was to stop that spigot, but there were too many ships in the system and the best that the fleet admiral could do was to disrupt the jumppoint and force the Skarrons to bunch up on each other. That gave him some additional kill opportunities, but it wasn’t enough. That said, given this insane war, the Voku needed every advantage they could get, so while there were a lot of Skarron warships over the capitol planet he was out here trying to reduce the inflow and take some pressure off them…but it felt like he was failing miserably.

The actual ship counts would attest otherwise, but at this point it did not matter. So long as the stream of reinforcements continued the system would eventually fall. It was how the Skarron Crusade operated and why it was so dangerous. It was hurting that empire greatly, but if you eliminated all your enemies then it didn’t matter how little of a fleet you had left because there would be no one around to exploit your weakness. The Skarrons were going all in here and many other locations beyond Voku territory, and they were not going to be deterred by losses, no matter how costly, when their great war machine continued to push forward conquering every world they attacked without exception.

The Voku hadn’t been able to hold a single one, despite a few temporary reprieves. When the tendrils of the Skarron fleet reached out to you they came in waves, but if you held out against the waves they eventually turned into an unending stream of ships traveling from far, far away and stacking up in a line that stretched across the stars. It was an awe-inspiring and terrifying way of fighting a war, and so far the Voku didn’t have an answer for it. Ley-yen was going to stay put here and do his duty, reducing the ship count as much as he could, but he doubted…

Everything onboard his ship suddenly cut out, with his sensor displays going blank beyond the immediate ships they were targeting. The Gahmorn didn’t know what was happening, nor did anyone else, then a series of priority orders from the Dafchor came through in a very odd way, but Ley-yen wasn’t going to question it. What he did question was why his sensors were not fully operational.

“Why do we have systems failure?”

“I don’t know,” one of his Oracle staff reported. “But it does seem to be acting in conjunction with our new orders. Our targets are coming through clearly,” the Voku said as a slew of new ships coming through the jumppoint were highlighted…ships that the Voku fleet could not get to without taking massive casualties.

“If this is what the Dafchor thinks is best, then so be it, but there is no reason to blind us. How can he even do that?”

“Unknown, but all other systems appear to be functioning normally.”

“If we are going to our deaths, why be distracted by other matters?” another Voku floated.

Ley-yen’s eyes blinked suspiciously beneath his crystal where no one else could see. “Perhaps. If we survive this I’ll ask him about it, but for the moment we have our orders. Take us to the mouth of the jumppoint in Zarkdex configuration…,” he said, cutting off suddenly. “What is he thinking?”

More clarification of the orders had come through, indicating an approach route that would not get them to the mouth as quickly as possible. It had them going straight through the bulk of the enemy fleet rather than skirting around the edges and flanking the deceleration lane. Ley-yen would have rather tried to brave the incoming side of that lane than go straight into that maw of ships, but he admitted that he could eventually get his fleet through…or at least part of it.

Maybe that was what was required, but he couldn’t even see the status of the planet now. It was all blocked out, and that made this situation even more odd. Dangerously odd, but there was no time to contact the Dafchor. The comm lag was too great, so he either had to follow the orders, amend them, or disobey. He badly wanted to amend them, but without knowing what was going on he could not.

Maybe that was why he was being blinded, but that wasn’t how the Dafchor typically operated. Never, in fact, so whatever was going on had to be something…well, the Gahmorn didn’t know, nor had he any plausible theories, and that left only one choice before him.

Trust Cal-com or refuse the order.

“If we go to our deaths, let’s make them count,” he told his Oracle crew as he confirmed the orders. “Proceed.”

Ley-yen breathed slowly as his fleet reformed, literally, with multiple conglomerates coming together to form larger ones with the purpose of being able to withstand greater firepower while concentrating their own. The crews were moved to more interior locations expecting massive hull damage, with each Zarkdex conglomerate moving in close formation with the others and firing at the targets ahead of them even as the flanking Skarron ships were hidden by the sensor blind.

Revised targeting data came through from Cal-com. Was he out here with them? Did the Skarrons somehow have a link into the Voku data net and the Dafchor didn’t want them to know of his presence? None of this made sense, but as the first Skarron ships in the thickest of the enemy fleet began to blow apart and the conglomerates pushed their way through the debris the Gahmorn noticed something odd. The flanks of his formation were not tanking damage…or rather not much. The Skarrons should have been swarming all around them, closing in from behind and firing from all directions.

The damage indicators only noted limited shield impacts from the sides and nothing from behind. Something was happening out there that the sensor blinds were meant to hide, and whatever it was, was saving his fleet from certain death and getting them to the mouth of the jumppoint where the newest arriving Skarron ships were coming in blind and decelerating along a pre-determined route.

When the conglomerates eventually got there they began targeting the incoming ships one at a time, with enough firepower to snuff them out within seconds as they also fought those nearby, but the sensor blind extended and they could no longer fire at what they could not see. Part of Ley-yen almost ordered his people to start firing manually into the sensor blind, for not being able to see the enemy when they were around your neck was infuriating, but the damage indicators were dropping sharply, so he clenched his fists silently and let it ride as his fleet sat in oblivion save for the tiny slice of space visible ahead of them that had the incoming Skarron ships that didn’t stand a chance arriving at a rate of one every few seconds.

This is what it had been like initially, but then the Skarrons had been bringing in ships on other jumplines where the Voku were not camped out. The Gahmorn had no idea how Cal-com was taking the heat off of his fleet, but if this was to stand then the inflow of Skarron ships were going to be completely neutralized so long as he didn’t lose too many conglomerates. The Skarrons were getting some shots off before they exploded, but it was the rest of their massive fleet that should have been pounding the Voku into crumbs right now that concerned him.

Where were they? And why was this damn sensor blind in place so he couldn’t see them?

Ley-yen didn’t have any answers, but whatever the case was they were ambushing the incoming Skarrons and killing every single ship that came through. That ended up lasting for hours upon hours before the sensor blind suddenly dropped without warning and the Gahmorn almost fell to the floor in shock.

They were gone. All of them. Across the entire system. The entire Skarron fleet that had the Voku in a death grip was gone…or rather reduced to long tracks of rubble that were visible on sensors, but the Voku ships that had done this were not. There was the fleet in orbit of Hakibi, with the smaller worlds of Tadin and Vok without any fleet presence at all. Their planetary shields were almost gone, reduced to a few scattered regions while the main planet was faring much better…except there were no longer enemy bombardment fleets above any of them.

“Gahmorn?”

“I do not know,” he said humbly. “Thanks be to the Elders, but I do not know how this happened. Are there any further orders?”

“No. Nothing.”

Ley-yen looked at the fully functional battle display, seeing the Skarron ships incoming and his own conglomerates handling them. The workload wasn’t too much and the Skarron ships weren’t stacking up. So long as he could continue killing them this fast then…

“We can hold them off indefinitely,” he said whisper quiet, but the entire Oracle was noiseless, so they all heard him. “The Skarrons have no interstellar communications. They rely on couriers…are there any Skarron ships moving out there?”

“Negative. There’s nothing left.”

“If they don’t know, then they’ll keep sending in ships expecting the jumppoint to be secure…”

“How long before a courier is overdue to report and they send someone to investigate?” the primary navigator asked.

“I have no idea how they’re set up, but if these routes are predetermined they may just be sending ships down them blindly with the leading elements organized. Those already reported back that the system was secure, otherwise the other jumplines would still be sending in ships.”

“If they don’t know…” one of the crew said, realizing the full impact.

“Let me make this painfully clear,” Ley-yen said, raising his voice significantly. “I do not know how Cal-com managed this, but our task is clear. We have this jumpline secure and we must maintain a pace of carnage sufficient to keep those ships from grouping up. If we can do that we can hold this system indefinitely. If we fall behind they swell and we slowly return to the situation we were in. We must hold this position with all our might. I want status reports on every damaged system and anticipated failures and weapons depletion. Anything that could reduce our kill power, I want to know ahead of it happening. We cannot waste this.”

“We have a surplus so long as their ship stacking doesn’t intensify.”

“We need enough additional vessels to cover that contingency. Send a message to Cal-com asking for more if he can spare them. There may be debris to police, but if there truly are no more Skarrons left here then…”

The Gahmorn dropped silent as he exchanged glances with his crew. None of them knew how to take this. They were as good as dead one moment, then the entire system just upended itself and returned to Voku hands. Nothing his race had could have done that much damage, and the Gahmorn was at a loss for words, but he and his crew knew well they couldn’t waste this opportunity, for the Crusade was still on in full force with more ships continually coming.

But so long as they were coming through this one jumppoint and only this jumppoint…

“We will get our answers later. For now we have an ambush point to hold. They cannot pass this point again, and if we have to die to secure it, it will be worth our lives,” he said, looking at the near perfect positioning and wall of death they were laying down on the individual ships as they came in and the drifting debris that was passing through the Voku fleet and being moved aside slightly by tractor beams to lessen the impacts on their shields, for the enemy ships were being destroyed before they could come to a full stop and saving the Voku the task of having to pull them out of their firing lines.

“But I will not tolerate any more of us dying if unnecessary. There can be no mistakes. Query every section and every crew member. I need readiness data now,” he said, reaching a hand into the main hologram and using his palm to form a wall between his fleet and the specs of incoming ships decelerating from interstellar jump speed. “We have to hold this line. Hakibi may yet be saved if we can.”

8

November 5, 3655

Bavrenti System (Voku Regional Capitol)

Hakibi

The ambush point had held for 11 months straight, with a never ending stream of Skarron ships coming through and being destroyed immediately, but Cal-com knew it was going to come to an end once the first scout ships started entering on other jumplines and fleeing immediately. The Elders hadn’t stopped them, and the Dafchor assumed they’d left the system or had done all they were going to here. He truly had no way of knowing where they were unless they let him know, but the sensor blind on the Voku ships and planet had long since gone, so he assumed the Elders were too.

They’d given this system an extra year, and that in turn had delayed assaults on other Voku worlds, but this one was once again in peril as additional reinforcement lines started to divert, meaning the Voku had to defend multiple jumppoints simultaneously.

Cal-com had expected that, and his fleet had held off 6 incoming streams before sporadic clumps of fleets began appearing at random locations and fleeing elsewhere in the system before the Voku could get to them. Those fleets eventually grouped up and hit one of the blockades, doing enough damage to allow some of the incoming ships to survive, and from there things snowballed in the Skarrons’ favor.

Rather than defend the planet, Cal-com had chosen to keep 98% of his ships at the jumppoints killing as many Skarrons as they could while they were vulnerable, for some of the jumppoints were still holding and the other Skarrons were ignoring the deaths of their brothers so long as they were tying up Voku ships there. Mathematically Cal-com knew he had to maintain that, even as the planet was subjected to another massive ground invasion after the free Skarron ships had punched right through the weak shield that had been built to cover the hole from the first invasion.

The rest of the planetary defense shield was up and running normally, with the Skarrons not having enough ships to even try taking down another section…not that they would. The ground assault was by far their best option, and Cal-com was trying to knock down as many of their transports as he could with the Voku aerial fighters that were almost impossible for their warships to target from above as they flew into the descending transports and fought directly over the landing zone while small teams of Voku moved across ground on virtual suicide missions to knock down the defense batteries and shield generators that the Skarrons were trying to set up again.

Send too much out and the Skarrons would fire on their own troops to destroy them, so Cal-com had to send too few troops to avoid that bombardment. They knew what they were being asked to do and didn’t hesitate, but he hated not being able to use his fleet to cover them…though if he did, there’d be so many more warships coming through the jumppoints that it would be counterproductive. He either had to fight them over the planet or as they came out of their jumps, the latter of which gave him a huge killcount advantage.

And this wasn’t the only system under attack. 13 more had fallen while the regional capitol held and another 28 had come under new attack, with Cal-com organizing them from afar so long as communications held up. The relays the Voku used were not on any planet, and so far the Skarrons hadn’t bothered to go after them. They seemed focused on overrunning the planets and cleaning up the smaller stuff later, so at least Cal-com wasn’t isolated here, but the situation everywhere was grim despite the invaluable assistance from the Elders.

The Skarrons couldn’t keep up this loss of ships and troops forever, but Cal-com didn’t know how many more were still coming. Maybe the Elders did and they’d tipped the scales enough for the Voku to survive. He hoped that was the case, but they hadn’t said anything to him of Skarron fleet numbers and he couldn’t assume anything. All he could do was hold on as long as possible, making the Skarrons bleed for every system they overran, and play this out the hard way…for as many decades or even centuries that this might last.

3 months later…

Bi-tor was in a sleep cycle between the never-ending fights that had become his life when the pause happened. He woke to find that the incoming stream of warships had stopped, giving the Voku in the heavily populated Viskhe System a temporary relief…or at least it would once they burnt through the ground troops and ships already here, which were many. Pauses in this Crusade were few and far between, and Bi-tor was very grateful to see that this system was getting one.

Of the four planets, two had more than half their surface conquered by the Skarrons with the other two holding out better, but with sizeable chunks of enemy territory within them. Bi-tor was on Niivan, one of the former, and knew that they had a long fight ahead of them, but without more reinforcements to bring in they now had a fighting chance to delay the destruction and evac more people out of the system.

They were already crunched here, with many Voku having to sleep outside of tubes and foodstuff supplies thinning. What they had went to the warriors, for they couldn’t afford to be fighting at anything less than prime condition. If they were even more would die, so the civilians that hadn’t been evacuated in previous years were trying to stay out of the way and wait for a chance to either leave or do something to help, with many of them assigned to construction duties that amounted to little more than moving rubble around to form makeshift barricades and funnels to direct the Aronsic swarms into traps when they progressed into new areas.

So Bi-tor went back to the fight, trying to make the most of this naval reprieve on the ground, knowing the payoff would come in the following weeks or months as the Voku warships were whittling down the huge enemy fleet without having to position at the jumppoints. If they didn’t use everything they had now to engage the Skarrons that were here the enemy might win anyway…and if more started showing up soon then this system was sure to fall, like all the others. Right now getting as many people out and delaying future system invasions was the mission, and all the Voku warriors knew that. It was ingrained into their very existence now, with more and more of them falling to accomplish that ultimate goal.

Bi-tor and the others here were very acquainted with how to fight this Crusade, but every now and then they’d find themselves facing too many and not able to pull back fast enough. Other times someone would make a self-sacrificing move to buy more time for the rest of them, but if they fought smartly and their naval cover didn’t completely evaporate they’d lose territory and equipment but few lives…though the high population levels in this system were forcing them to hold positions longer than they’d like, meaning Bi-tor was pushing close to his own death far too often to try to shield the civilians that were bunching up with few places to run.

Several of the Voku he’d been fighting alongside for years had fallen in the past 2 months and he knew his time might be coming soon, so as the days passed he kept an eye on the sky and the empty jumppoints, wondering how long it would be before the next enemy convoy began to arrive, for when it did he was almost certain he’d go down fighting here, for there was no way he was going to turn and run and leave the civilians to fight this army on their own.

So day by day he fought and waited for the head of that convoy to arrive, seeing the additional ground troops being landed eventually dry up, but the Skarron advance didn’t stall or wither. They kept pushing hard, as if they expected more to come, but they didn’t arrive soon enough and the planet of Ichio was the first to rid itself of the Skarron army even before the naval battles were over.

When that happened the troops there were immediately transferred over to the other three worlds, with Bi-tor’s group getting badly needed reinforcements, but few Stranoms. Most of the fighting now was hand to hand, with the aerial fighters and remaining Stranoms not even paying attention to the infantry horde and focusing entirely on the enemy walkers that still outnumbered them.

Bi-tor was actually engaging the smaller walkers in infantry units, taking down their shields with massed fire then jumping up onto them and clawing their way inside while Aronsic and infantry Skarrons tried to peel them off…but still no reinforcement convoy arrived and slowly the enemy advance stalled to a grinding halt that lasted about a week.

When the collapse came it came fast, and the Skarrons overwhelming numbers broke and the Voku began picking them apart with flanking attacks without going crazy. They knew they had an advantage now, but they weren’t going to get people killed with unnecessary haste. Bi-tor and the others were barely able to contain their rage, now having a chance to actually win a fight, but they held back just enough for prudence sake as they hunted down and killed every enemy unit on the planet…but still no new convoy came.

It wasn’t until the naval battles were also over did they finally get word from Renimar Noru-sar’s fleet out ambushing the numerous convoys on their way to their territory. When the news arrived Bi-tor was out on a debris patrol looking for enemy stragglers. He stopped running and looked to the sky, feeling true relief for the first time in memory. Eventually he took a knee, not losing focus on his surroundings, as he breathed slowly, soaking in the moment.

The Orica fleet was reporting that the Skarron reinforcements were not destroyed or exhausted…but rather they were diverting elsewhere. Some were actually turning around and heading back the way they came by parallel tracks, jumping through systems neighboring the lines they were using to get to Voku territory. Where they were going was still unknown, but they were no longer reinforcing their units fighting the Voku…and were leaving those already engaged in combat to die fighting.

“We live,” he said to no one in particular, then looked up at the sunny sky that saw only a few specs of Voku warships in orbit. “Was the fight too bitter for you? Did you tire of losing so many? Or is there another method to your madness? Someone worth killing more than us?”

Bi-tor stood back up, knowing he still had work to do here and it would unacceptable to die to a lone Aronsic hiding in the rubble because he wasn’t paying attention…or to lose someone else for the same reason.

“How badly did we hurt you? How badly did you hurt us?” he wondered, not knowing the state of the empire save for some basic update maps. How many Voku had actually died he didn’t know, but the number would be painful when he eventually found out.

A prompt on his forearm gauntlet caught his attention and he activated his comm.

“Speak.”

“We have deployment orders,” Sor-vak said. “We’re leaving the planet.”

“To go where?”

“I do not know the system, but word is we’re assembling an invasion force to take back the worlds the Skarrons took from us. I don’t know about the Firewall, but our original ones are not going to be left in their hands.”

“How well defended are they?”

“Not very. I am told their strength was centered on their fleets passing through them. Now without those ship flows they have little to defend themselves with…but they do have extensive industry under construction to supply the Crusade. The longer we wait to strike them the stronger those worlds will grow.”

“Are we expecting to find any of our people there?”

“No,” Sor-vak said regretfully. “This is a hunting campaign. We are going to eradicate them all. No surrenders accepted if they stay and fight.”

“Nor should there be. How soon do we depart?”

“The fleet is leaving in 3 hours. If you don’t get here in time you won’t be coming on the first wave. For some that is best…”

“I will be there.”

“How is your arm?”

“Adequate. I am more than ready to take the fight to them.”

“And we won’t have people to protect this time. I’m looking forward to it as well. Get to the landing zone now if you want to come. Not sure what our equipment situation is, but the orders are coming swift and the Gahmorn says this first wave is a strike force. No understrength units allowed.”

“Thank you,” he said, knowing his arm could take a few more weeks recovery, and that Sor-vak knew that as well.

“We’ll still be outnumbered, and I’d rather have you with me than not. So hurry. Everyone is scrambling.”

“On my way,” Bi-tor said, seeing the location coordinates transmitted along with the audio message and taking off at a run. He was going to have to move fast in order to get there in time, and the ache just below his left shoulder with every arm swing wasn’t going to delay him. This unwinnable war had just flipped, and while others needed to rest and recover he did not.

Exhausted he was, but he’d learned to fight that way long ago and the trip across the stars would allow him and the others to rest enough. When they got to wherever they were going they’d be ready. He just hoped they’d managed to scrape up enough Stranom and other heavy equipment for a proper invasion…but even if they hadn’t, he was ready and willing to fight, with infantry only if necessary, to reclaim their worlds. Without a stream of reinforcements they could take their time, hit where they liked, and win a battle of attrition against any Skarron army, no matter how large.

And without having civilians to defend, they could always choose their battlefields. That alone was enough to send him running across the rubble fields at a frenzy, for despite the relief in him that the war was over, part of him wasn’t content to just let it go. At least not until the Voku had a string of victories to end on and all their systems back…if not a few more for good measure, but that was for the Dafchor to decide. For Bi-tor, all he wanted was in the fight…and some long overdue payback.

9

May 8, 3656

Szequat System (Voku Capitol)

Nergthen

Cal-com entered the Elder’s Lair and stood in the audience chamber waiting for the red dragon to gradually appear from behind a low wall.

“What do you require of me?” he asked as the Elder climbed up onto the soft pedestal and laid down with his head arching up on his long neck higher than the Dafchor stood.

“You have done well, and you will continue to reclaim the systems that were lost…including those in the Firewall and as many beyond as you desire, but do not overreach as you rebuild. Your task is to increase your strength and defenses here while returning as many ships to the Orica Region as prudent. If the V’kit’no’sat strike you there, you must have the strength to delay their victory long enough to evacuate your wards.”

“What of the Skarrons?”

“Their Crusade will trouble you no further, but guard their border wherever you set it and let the losses they suffered be remembered with an iron will evident in absolute dominance. The only reason you do not take those systems is because you choose to not do so. Become a rock so firm that no one will dare oppose you again. Much can be gained from this Crusade in the minds of potential opposition beyond the Skarrons, but only if you are firm now and dictate the future. You cannot afford to be lax while salving your wounds.”

“Understood.”

“As to your lingering question of the Skarrons,” he said, reading the Voku’s mind, “they are too busy to bother with you again. Their core worlds have been invaded, and the Crusade is returning to fight in the systems they left vulnerable in order to mass the numbers they brought here.”

“The V’kit’no’sat?” Cal-com wondered.

“No, but they are indirectly involved. Prior to the invasion of Star Force, the V’kit’no’sat had launched a small taskforce to exterminate the Li’vorkrachnika after they stupidly assaulted one of their outposts and had enough success to draw their death mark. The events at Star Force’s capitol prompted internal divisions within the V’kit’no’sat to explode into a low scale civil war. There is little fighting, but suspicions run high and the forces sent to destroy the Li’vorkrachnika have been recalled. Rather than rally their forces to fight against the Crusade, the Li’vorkrachnika have taken a much more intelligent strategy.”

The Elder produced a holographic map of the warfront between the Skarrons and Li’vorkrachnika, with Voku territory as it was now a small adjunct, testifying to how large a military the Skarrons actually had to accommodate a Crusade across so much contested territory…but it was the far off Skarron territories, of which the Voku did not have full maps, that Cal-com could see now held Li’vorkrachnika markers.

“They do not care for losing systems if it aids their long term goals, and as they did in their war against Star Force, they have abandoned their most valuable worlds to hopeless battles while they send their forces elsewhere. In this case, they have attacked and now have claimed the Skarron capitol and many of their most heavily populated systems, including strikes against their major shipyards. The Li’vorkrachnika are cutting the heart out of the Skarron empire and the Crusade is returning as fast as possible, but the damage has been done…and the Li’vorkrachnika are sparing their own valuable worlds by forcing this retreat. The Skarrons have been outwitted, and even with the damage the V’kit’no’sat did to them, the Li’vorkrachnika are in a slightly superior position.”

“Can they defeat the Skarrons?”

“Difficult to say, for such a war under these circumstances will take millennia to unfold. When the Crusade ships return they will overrun the Li’vorkrachnika, but whether they will fight to hold or push to scorch I do not know. Regardless, the Crusade has been blunted and the Skarrons’ most precious possessions are destroyed. The mass of their empire will sustain them, but the growth rate of the Li’vorkrachnika is superior. Whoever is the ultimate victor in this contest does not matter, for both sides will be so preoccupied with survival that they will be of no threat to you. Voku territory is now safe from both the Skarrons and the Li’vorkrachnika.”

“Until the victor regrows,” Cal-com added.

“By that time the Voku will be so dominant that you will be able to destroy them if necessary…unless the V’kit’no’sat are involved, which is why you cannot aid Star Force. I know you want to, but there is too much at stake and it is a fight that cannot be won.”

“How badly are the V’kit’no’sat divided?”

“Not enough to matter for Star Force. Even a fraction of their overall fleet will be enough to destroy them. If that should change I will give you leave to intervene, but it will not. They are far too powerful.”

“Will their civil war escalate?”

“They will not self-destruct. What is occurring is an internal realignment. Whatever losses they suffer will be rebuilt with time, and even if their war against Star Force is delayed it will not be enough to save them. So far their invasion fleet has not been recalled and their destruction continues, though Star Force is causing more damage than they anticipated.”

“They are very good at that, and while I do not mean to sound disobedient, can you tell me…”

“If you did aid them, how much would it tip the scales? The problem is not in how many ships they send…but in the fact that they can increase that number at will. They will send as many as needed to accomplish the mission, and even if the Voku aided Star Force that would not change. If more V’kit’no’sat vessels were needed to counter your alliance, they would simply send more. Their strength of technology, numbers, and experience is something you cannot contend with, and hopefully will not, but you must prepare if the Orica Region comes under punitive attack.”

“And you still believe that they will not come here?”

“Unless you give them reason to, I do not believe they will bother. If you were to be too successful against them in combat they might take greater interest, which is why you are only to fight if needed to defend your territory long enough to evacuate…and those evacuations must occur quickly. The longer you fight with them the more attention you will gain. They expect people to flee or die, and if you do fight you will suffer heavy losses unless you outnumber them.”

“If it comes to that, how do you suggest we engage them?”

“Numbers. Punitive raids are low priority and usually executed with a single vessel. Have enough ships on site and they will either delay until later or take affront and summon more. With Star Force being their priority target, they will delay…during which you will evacuate. When they return and find you gone, it will not be a challenge to them. That is why you must evacuate everyone if a single system is attacked. If that does not happen, you must hold your territory and ensure that you are not drawn into battle.”

“You said the Li’vorkrachnika received a death mark for attacking a single system?”

“Yes. The V’kit’no’sat are not to be challenged and control many other races through fear. They have the fleet to back up any threat, but there are so many systems in the galaxy that they cannot deal with them all simultaneously. Thus they choose those most notable. You must not become notable.”

“Will they return to finish the Li’vorkrachnika?”

“If they have abandoned the death mark, they will not reinstate it unless there is another incident. They have much higher priorities to deal with currently.”

“Why does Star Force rate so high that they could come after us for simply being associated with them? Why would we rate higher than the Li’vorkrachnika?”

“They are afraid of Star Force. Not because of their strength, but what they represent. They exist because of a violation of V’kit’no’sat rules and possess knowledge and technology from the V’kit’no’sat themselves. They fear what they might grow into given time, and they also fear those who secretly gave Star Force what they could not otherwise acquire on their own.”

“I thought Star Force began with Zen’zat being abandoned. Are not those who abandoned them seen at fault?”

“It is much more important than that. Information was left behind in the ruins of Terraxis and Star Force was able to unlock it. That is worthy of an unyielding death mark on its own, but Zen’zat are forbidden to reproduce, with a death mark that cannot be rescinded. No rogue populations are allowed. The Li’vorkrachnika are minor compared to the heresy inherent in Star Force’s mere existence. Any race that has benefited from Star Force technology or knowledge is thus tainted by the heresy and must be purged. No unsanctioned technology or knowledge must be allowed to escape the V’kit’no’sat, so the closer ties you have to Star Force the greater attention you will receive from the V’kit’no’sat.”

“We have not shared technology.”

“That is why I do not think they will pursue you to extinction. But if you are in their way, or merely nearby, they may swat you down simply for your association with the heretics.”

“I know the V’kit’no’sat are vastly stronger than the Skarrons, but in terms of fleet numbers, how do they compare?”

“V’kit’no’sat vessels are much larger than those the Skarrons use, but in terms of tonnage the V’kit’no’sat have more.”

That sent a chill down Cal-com’s spine. After the endless losses to the Skarrons the Voku had just suffered due to their numbers, he couldn’t imagine facing so many superior opponents.

“It is hopeless,” the Elder said, sensing the necessary realization within the Dafchor. “Which is why you must not engage. Star Force has to face this alone.”

“And it is equally hopeless for them?”

“No. They have technology and power beyond yours. That gives them a small fighting chance and they’ve already proven capable of taking advantage of opportunities and securing victories against the V’kit’no’sat, but they do not have the strength to sustain such things. Their empire will fall. It is simply a matter of time.”

“And if they run?”

“They will be hunted by pursuit that will never relent, but it is possible that some might escape to the rim of the galaxy where they have no presence. They will not be an ally of the Voku for much longer.”

“Thank you for your assistance and guidance. It is badly needed.”

“You are crossing paths with forces beyond you that you cannot fully understand. We have elevated you to a strength you did not attain on your own in order to speed your ascension. As such we have a responsibility to guide you until such a time that you do understand.”

“What do you envision us becoming?”

“Each race must find their own path. We are exploring your potential. The ultimate path has not been concluded.”

“Will we fight the V’kit’no’sat alongside you one day?”

“If so, it will be so far into the future to be worthless discussing now. Put that notion out of your mind. They are a force you must fear and withdraw from. That is your only chance for survival. We cannot intervene with them. Their technology is too advanced to hide ourselves from.”

“How many know of what you did?”

“Only you. Let others speculate as they wish, but we must remain an enigma. Even within the Voku. Tell your Renimars that you know what occurred, but the Elders have forbidden you to discuss the matter. That should satisfy their confusion, if not their curiosity.”

“Thank you for revealing it to me.”

“You need to know, for in the coming ages you will be playing an important role. For now, strengthen the Voku and replenish your losses while guarding against future ones. The time will come when more is needed from your race, and you will be personally guiding them forward at our direction, but for now there is another investment into the future that we wish to begin to make. I require volunteers from the most accomplished warriors, not so many as to weaken you as you reclaim territory, but several thousand that wish to serve us directly. They will most likely never see their race again, and I will not accept any who are not fully committed, thus they must be volunteers.”

“May I ask what they are volunteering for?”

“No. They cannot know. Tell them it is personal service, and that they will be living amongst us. Beyond that you must keep to yourself, but I can tell you that we see great potential in the Voku, similar to another in the past that did not turn out to our expectations. We need to develop, assess, and enhance you over the course of time, and we will begin now. The volunteers will disappear from Voku society, and you will not inquire after them. They will fully be our responsibility and no longer under your command.”

“How many do you wish me to select?”

“Ask as many as you feel are worthy and we will choose from among them, but make it clear that we value the further development of the Voku empire as an equally important priority. We will not siphon the strength from you, and any Voku with ties to the empire should stay there. We only want individuals who are comfortable with a complete break. From those volunteers we will choose based on criteria unknown to you, so do not let a pass be seen as a mark of shame. This is an alternative path, but one that must be fully embraced and cannot be commanded.”

“I will be painfully clear in the distinction,” Cal-com said, getting a weird feeling that the Elder picked up on.

“Your insight does you credit, Dafchor. The Voku are our hope to replace the Zen’zat, and what I have seen during this Crusade bodes well. You are already far superior to the Ter’nat. How far we can elevate you from here is a question we seek to answer.”

“How did the Zen’zat fail?”

“You already suspect the answer.”

“Then why not quietly save some of the Archons as Star Force falls?”

“When their empire is destroyed, where will we get more?”

“Then we are…”

“More than incubators. The Voku Empire is an important asset that we intend to use. You are not mere breeding stock, and that is the basic theory of your potential superiority to the Zen’zat.”

“You do us great honor. I hope we are able to live up to expectations.”

“There is only one way to know for sure, thus I require volunteers for blind service.”

“You shall have them.”

8 months later…

Bi-tor was fighting in the Sitoza System and helping to reclaim the two planets there from Skarron occupation when the order came through, pulling him off the planet via courier ship that took him three jumps to a small Voku convoy where he was deposited along with hundreds of others who had likewise been chosen for service to the Elders.

It was an insane honor even without knowing the particulars, and Bi-tor had already seen enough Skarron ass kicking to satisfy him. The empire was reclaiming what had been lost and the enemy couldn’t put up much resistance without their Crusade fleet that was now long gone, fleeing back to their own worlds where the Li’vorkrachnika had mounted a surprise attack. The Dafchor had assured the Voku that the Skarrons would not be returning, and Bi-tor knew that his fellow warriors were more than a match for the garrison forces they were fighting now.

What the Elders wanted from him he did not know, but he was fully ready to jump into the void to serve them and cutting all ties with the empire didn’t scare him. The Voku served the Elders, and direct service to them was a logical extension of that. The empire didn’t need him, but apparently the Elders did. He could not think why that would be, but he was here and waiting with the others onboard ship when they were summoned to a hangar bay that was open to space.

832 of them were assembled and left there as the ship’s crew left, sealing the doors behind them without a word. Bi-tor held position and waited for several minutes, then a tunnel appeared outside the hangar in space and pushed through the atmospheric shield. It appeared to connect to nothing, but the inside of the tunnel was solid and a voice inside his mind told him to board.

The others moved with him, apparently having gotten the same mental order, and when he stepped onto the deck plates in the tunnel he could feel the presence of the Elders. The technology was alien yet somehow familiar, transforming when the last of them walked onboard to seal up behind them and shrink down to nothing, leaving the Voku standing inside what was apparently an invisible ship far wider than even the hangar doors had been.

Suddenly a wall opened up and Bi-tor could see what he knew to be one of the Elders, though the Voku had never seen an image of one before. Rumors abounded, but what they truly were had never been confirmed. How he knew this was one and not another servant Bi-tor couldn’t say, but when the dragon expanded its wings to full height then rose up into the air without even flapping them he could feel the presence of a very powerful mind connecting with his own.

The yellow dragon hovered there for a long time before finally speaking, and not one of the Voku spoke to ask questions or interrupt. They all respectfully waited, then a flush of new knowledge flowed into their minds answering many questions before the Elder finally spoke.

“Welcome, Voku. Each of you have served us well in the war against the Skarrons, but what we require of you now is another matter entirely. You are here to train and ascend to a level no Voku has ever attained. We require personal servants who are trustworthy warriors capable of working alongside us while also going on solo missions across the galaxy as needed. You are not fit to do that as you are now, but we see potential in you. The coming years will cultivate that potential, but you must use your accumulated skills to press to develop it.”

“It will not occur naturally nor easily, and we will make biological alterations in accordance with your development. What your final form will be even we cannot see, but we cannot advance you beyond your worth. You must prove the worth of your race, and the more worth you display the greater powers we can bestow upon you…thus you will control how useful of servants you become, and you have been chosen from amongst the volunteers because we have seen in you a relentlessness that will be required here.”

“But do not be mistaken. You are already our servants, and if you do not ascend to the heights we hope you are capable of, you will not be turned away. You are valuable as you are now and we will make use of your skills, but our overriding command to you is to aspire for more and never stop improving. What we discover working with you we will use to better train others that will follow. You will be the trailblazers that we learn the most from, which is why we must have your total and unyielding effort. Ascension is amongst the hardest challenges in the universe, and we require those who embrace challenge. Service to us cannot be sufficient for you. You must strive for more, but that is an internal quest only you can pursue, so make of it what you will.”

“As of now, you are no longer Voku,” the Elder said, summoning a pedestal out of the floor that had Voku-style eye pieces laid out on top of it, except these were not green…rather they were a deep red. “Replace your augments.”

Bi-tor and the others walked up to the pedestal, with him removing the green crystal technology that covered his three small eyes. The natural light was a little disconcerting, but not painful. The enhanced vision was gone, but he felt like he was losing a great deal more as he set the green piece down and picked up one of the red ones. He slid the two pylons on the inside of it into the slots between his eyes, linking the new technology to the old implants and immediately gaining access to a plethora of new sensory capabilities that came with the knowledge of how to use them.

“You are now Bo’ja,” the Elder said once the last of them had made the replacement. “What that name comes to mean over the coming millennia is entirely up to you and what you become. Begin.”

Bi-tor needed no further explanation. He knew they were onboard a ship that was taking them to a Zak’de’ron Hive, and there they would be given training as well as tasks to perform, but until they arrived the ‘Elders’ required data on the new Bo’ja, and that meant various forms of mental and physical testing, the first of which was hand to hand combat against holographic opponents.

Bi-tor didn’t receive any additional orders, for they were already loaded into his mind via the implant. He moved through the ship, knowing the location of every corridor and chamber in this configuration and the others it was capable of morphing into, and ended up in one of the observational areas where holographic Skarrons and Aronsic appeared.

Fighting them was engrained into his very core at this point, so he slipped back into a familiar combat mode and began fighting them as the difficulty level gradually rose, knowing that there were many sensors watching him from beyond while the implant monitored various things internally…but that wasn’t for him to worry about. He was to focus on fighting in order to get the necessary data the Zak’de’ron needed, and that’s what he intended to give them.

He didn’t know what they were looking for, but he had his orders and that was more than enough for him. What Bo’ja meant was a hollow term at this point, but he knew they were meant to be a replacement for a previous servant of the Zak’de’ron that had betrayed them. The Zen’zat had not lived up to their potential, and even those who had stayed loyal to the Zak’de’ron when they were all but wiped out had not fulfilled their promise. The Zak’de’ron were grooming the Voku to potentially achieve what the other bipeds never did, and Bi-tor knew this endeavor would be measured in the thousands of years, if not hundreds of thousands.

It was strange, for as he punched and kicked holographic Aronsic aside, he was realizing for the first time who the Elders actually were and how they’d been betrayed by the V’kit’no’sat. Bi-tor knew it like an old fact tucked away into a corner of his mind, not something now being revealed to him.

He didn’t let it distract him, but his purpose here was now crystal clear.

The V’kit’no’sat had betrayed the Zak’de’ron, and their Zen’zat along with them. Rather than rebuilding their own loyal Zen’zat, the Zak’de’ron were wiping the slate clean and starting over, with the Bo’ja intended to replace and hopefully rise to a level the Zen’zat never did. That, more than anything, was what would drive Bi-tor forward over the coming centuries. His mission was to serve and ascend, so to become a more powerful servant and ally of the Zak’de’ron.

It was an honor beyond all reckoning, and both he and the other Bo’ja onboard the ship immediately and fully devoted themselves to the path laid out before them.

The Zen’zat may have betrayed the Zak’de’ron, but there was zero chance that the Bo’ja ever would. How strong they would become Bi-tor and the others didn’t know, but they’d be reliable and fight to the last for the Zak’de’ron without question.

And from the current state of the galaxy, the ‘Elders’ were going to need a massive army to begin to set things right. The Bo’ja weren’t the only elevated servants they had, and there would be many others onboard the Hive when they arrived, but there was a special purpose awaiting the Bo’ja…if they could prove themselves worthy and attain it.

10

June 3, 3679

Unnamed System (Li’vorkrachnika territory)

Unnamed Planet (Subsurface city)

An obscure wall panel covered in the shadow of several large columns suddenly burst into illumination that was a combination of green and orange…the orange from the molten material being cut by a green spike that slowly traced an approximate circle along with a mirror image twin, eventually cutting out a wall plug that was pulled back from view as the molten slag dulled and hardened without any of the Templar denizens taking notice.

There were hundreds in the nearby area and millions within the city buried deep beneath an uninhabited planet that was wreathed in a toxic atmosphere and covered with icy glaciers that were marred by acid rivers. It was located in a ‘pass through’ system, one that saw a lot of Li’vorkrachnika traffic transitioning around the pair of stars at system center, but none coming this far out…save for when they confirmed that the system was clear of any other trespassers. Then and only then would an occasion ship make its way out to the planet to deliver supplies or exchange personnel.

The ships that continually passed through the system would transmit data packets, but no return signals ever came. The Templar city was meant to be invisible to the galaxy, with the majority of all decision making being taken care of by the Templars sent out sporadically to direct the empire while the masterminds ran it.

If changes were needed, another Templar would be sent out and then spread the necessary information, for there was no backtracking to this system and the other handful of ultra secret worlds unknown to any mastermind, and they had to remain absolutely secure to protect the Li’vorkrachnika’s true leaders as they birthed, instructed, and trained the ever expanding Templars to keep up with both the expansion of their empire and the suicides of those caught in the wrong system at the wrong time…for they were instructed to wholly destroy themselves before they could be located, let alone captured.

Secrecy was the lifeblood of the Templar, yet none of them had detected the unauthorized landing on their planet, nor the tunnel dug down and around their clever defenses all the way to the outer hull of their subsurface sanctuary. They also didn’t see those who did so walking through the shadows, for the Templar minds were being distracted by telepathy beyond their reckoning.

The interlopers moved throughout the Templar city until they came to the area reserved for those that led the Templars…known only as the Sovereigns to the few privileged enough to ever hear the word. They were of the same basic proportions as the Templars, with enlarged heads on a simple biped frame, but the Sovereigns had entered their second stage of development that saw them grow in height by a factor of 6, making them literally giants walking amongst the smaller version of themselves.

The Sovereigns were those that produced Templars through biological birth, unlike the genetic replication that the rest of Li’vorkrachnika society operated on, but unlike most races in the galaxy, the Sovereigns were asexual and capable of triggering a reproductive cycle on their own. Their lifespan was limited to only a few thousand years, but their offspring contained their genetic memory, enabling their leadership to continue on in perpetuity and avoid any internal wrangling. The Templar and Sovereigns operated as if they were cells in one massive brain that guided the Li’vorkrachnika forward, with no personal ambitions or internecine.

They were one, and kept apart from everything else in the galaxy in order to preserve their clarity and anonymity as they attacked races superior to their own. The swarm of bodies that was the Li’vorkrachnika’s greatest strength would become meaningless if the Templars were discovered and eliminated, thus the necessity of hidden worlds was the linchpin upon which their civilization relied.

Never before had one been discovered, let alone breached, until now.

There were only four interlopers, but they made their way into the Sovereign-reserved inner sanctum of the Templar city, literally walking within meters of the giants and not being noticed until they chose to be. They knew there would be a virulent reaction, so they remained calm and stationary as they emerged before a pair of Sovereigns that were near to giving birth and cradling their massive weight inside flotation tanks, for when they birthed they would release dozens of tiny Templars at once that were currently inhabiting a pouch along their backs just above their tails.

“Remain calm,” one of the interlopers said as he seemed to appear out of haze, with the others using their telepathy to subdue the reactive emotions as much as possible, but they failed. As soon as the intruder was known both Sovereigns went crazy, screaming with such hatred and fear that those three chambers away could hear through the walls.

Other Templar arrived within seconds…but they saw nothing. The interloper concealed himself again, walking to a wall and staying there while telepathically distracting all those that entered from seeing him, then he continued to talk, but only using his telepathy so they could not backtrack the sound of his words to his location.

We are not here to fight, so calm yourselves, he said in the Li’vorkrachnika’s native language. If we wanted you dead, you already would be. On the contrary, we are here to negotiate a mutually advantageous deal.

The Li’vorkrachnika didn’t listen, instead scurrying around looking for the invaders as more arrived, bringing with them the familiar combat forms that were stationed on the edges of the city to fight in case they were attacked from the exterior. In such a case they were not expected to win, but rather to buy time for the Templars and Sovereigns to escape if possible, but if not, then to buy them time to kill and disintegrate themselves to the point where nothing was recoverable.

The interlopers suspected this, but their telepathy was not capable of reading minds to the degree necessary to withdraw information…only to implant what they wanted, which in this case was false images that concealed the four.

It took many hours and a great deal of patience before the Sovereigns finally decided to talk to the invisible intruders rather than panicking and searching everywhere. Understandable considering they had never laid eyes on another race before, as well as the fact that they knew their discovery would lead to their doom.

But these Li’vorkrachnika were intelligent, and given enough time to take stock of the situation and think, they finally decided to entertain the negotiation that was being floated.

“Who are you?” a Sovereign finally asked, partially shielded behind a wall of troops that didn’t even rise to its waist, making for very ineffective blockers.

We are potential allies here to discuss the future of your race.

“Where are you hiding?”

We are here, and will reveal ourselves if you will not attack us. Your seclusion has made you recklessly reactive, but we will wait as long as needed until you come to your senses. You are fighting a war against the Skarrons that may well be your downfall even if you are victorious, and it would truly be a shame for a race with such potential to face that end merely due to hasty reaction.

“Reveal yourself,” the Sovereign demanded, and not one in the floatation tanks. This one was fully capable of fighting and stood looking down at the ground where all its troops were spread around the chamber.

If I do so and you attack me you will pay a price, but we will not hold your entire race responsible. Look before you, the interloper said as the telepathic trickery ended and his black, scaly body was revealed standing perfectly still looking up at the Sovereign.

Whether it was a conscious choice or instinctive reaction, the Li’vorkrachnika troops didn’t stand still. They attacked him immediately, firing weaponry that soaked into his body while doing limited surface damage…then the intruder leapt off the ground and landed on the chest of the Sovereign, delivering a massive electrical charge that took the much larger alien to its knees.

Then the intruder disappeared again, but not before two standard variant Li’vorkrachnika were bisected by green flashes that left the cuts on their bodies cauterized as they wriggled around on the floor in their death throes.

We will try this again and again until you come to your senses. We are here to negotiate, but we are fully capable of killing you all if necessary. If we have to do that it would truly be a shame, for you were very difficult to locate.

“Who are you?” another Sovereign asked as the one that had been attacked stayed on one knee with his chest blackened and smoking from the electrical damage.

We are ancient, our name unknown to you, but we have knowledge far beyond your understanding and that of your enemies, some of which are impediments to our future goals. If we can come to an agreement, we will fight them by proxy through you. Our anonymity is necessary until we can garner a sufficient powerbase to reassert ourselves publically. You understand this concept intuitively, and we must remain hidden from those that could defeat us until we have weakened them so far to no longer remain a danger. The primary threat is one you are familiar with and lucky to have survived. “We too are an enemy of the V’kit’no’sat,” he said aloud as he reappeared in a slightly different position.

“Wait,” the Sovereign ordered, with the minions and Templars obeying immediately, though a pair of plasma shots did hit the intruder before they could be called off.

The craggy black skin absorbed it and the interloper didn’t attack, merely looking up at the Sovereign with a slight smile on its ugly face. “Better.”

“What strength do you offer that can stand against the V’kit’no’sat?”

“You have survived because they are distracted with higher priorities. You cannot stand against them, and even with our assistance you cannot defeat them directly. Our immediate help will strengthen you in your fight against the Skarrons, and if you are able to survive and prosper, there will be a chance to strike back and destroy the V’kit’no’sat in the extreme long term. We have other associates and methods that will weaken them. We wish you to become strong enough that, while pursuing your own goals, will be able to fight and kill a portion of the V’kit’no’sat empire once they are sufficiently diminished…along with other threats to us that you have not encountered yet, but will if your expansion continues.”

“What proof of this strength do you offer?”

“We found you, didn’t we?” the interloper scoffed. “But from your point of view I would be wondering the same. We are not frauds, and will over time offer all the proof necessary. We, in particular, have an immense knowledge of biotechnology that could aid you greatly in creating…better subordinates,” he said, looking at the minions that were still training weapons on him. “Also, you still using plasma weapons is insulting.”

“They are easier to produce in large numbers,” the Sovereign argued.

“And you expected no combat here, so you saved your upgraded weapons for those that needed them most. Your production facilities must truly be diminished.”

“Sacrifices must be made to ensure victory.”

“And the V’kit’no’sat did far more damage to your infrastructure than you have let the Skarrons know. Had they pushed a bit further they would have broken through your ring of strength and found the mass of systems that you have all but stripped of their defenses. Your strategy was brilliant and caused them to turn back at precisely the right moment, suffering the travel delays yet a second time while you attack their infrastructure strongholds. They will never know how close they came to breaking you, and with our help you will be able to rebuild your strength fast enough to finish the Skarrons before they can gut your empire on the effort.”

“You wish us to have a subservient role?”

“We respect your sovereignty, despite your inferiority, and only ask that you respect our wishes with regards to targets while you continue to expand. It would do no good for you to attack our other associates, for we would have to choose between you and the conflict would diminish us all. If you stay away from those we designate as off limits, we trust that your own goals will run parallel to our own. You will not let the V’kit’no’sat escape your wrath after what they have done, but you don’t have the power to stand against even a small portion of them now. With our help, in time, you will.”

“Assuming you are speaking the truth, what are your goals?”

“To reassume our dominance over the galaxy,” the intruder said lithely.

“And when did you hold this dominance? We know nothing of you.”

“Few do, for we are truly ancient. We were forced into exile by…unforeseen events. We are taking great care in our return and are choosing our associates wisely. We believe you would be a valuable ally in our long term goals, and in the meantime we can assist you with the Skarrons.”

“And if the V’kit’no’sat return?”

“We cannot save you in that eventuality, and would highly recommend that you do not attack them again until you are in a position to win. We can provide you information about them that will instill how powerful they are and why such a battle is hopeless as of now.”

“How do you plan to defeat them in this preferred future? What strength do you have to oppose them?”

“Such things we keep to ourself, but the strength we are offering to you is that of knowledge, technology, and limited guidance. We know much of the other powers in the galaxy. Those that are ripe for the taking and those that are beyond you. Your current method is to engage in order to evaluate, but with the V’kit’no’sat that nearly spelled your doom. Once you finish the conquest of the Skarrons we can offer intelligence of those beyond.”

The Sovereign stepped forward, moving through the minions until he took a knee in front of the intruder and looked directly into the glowing eyes as the severed minions finally stopped twitching and died.

“If your boasts can be confirmed, we will entertain negotiations suitable to our own prosperity.”

“We seek mutually beneficial arrangements, for strengthening you will strengthen us and weaken our common enemies.”

“And what is the name of our potential ally?”

The interloper lazily raised a hand and the other three stepped out of their telepathic shadows into view behind him.

“We are called the Chixzon, and while that name is unknown to you, you have encountered our previous work before. I believe you know them as the Hamoriti.”

“Explain.”

“We created them. And had it not been for a chemical flaw that allowed them to be sedated, the V’kit’no’sat would never have risen to power. We would still dominate the galaxy, but rest assured, we are not relying on the Hamoriti. They are a failed past that has lingered to this day.”

“Star Force now contains and commands them.”

“Only because we have not revealed ourselves. If we call to them, they will respond and follow our orders. They were a menace to you only because we were not here to give them direction.”

“You claim the power to control them?”

“Yes, but they are not part of our plans going forward. The weakness in them still remains and is unfixable.”

“And you have such strength that you can dismiss their power so easily?”

“Wisdom is our power. It allowed us to create the Hamoriti, and it can allow us to enhance your race as well…on terms of your choosing. We are not looking for servants, merely associates with overlapping future goals.”

“You claim a great deal.”

“We have a great deal to offer, but there is no rush. Your war with the Skarrons will take centuries to wage. We can prove our strength to you before you make a final decision.”

“And if we refuse?”

“We would not have revealed ourselves to you unless we were certain that you would benefit from the arrangement. We are not reckless and choose our associates well. You want what we have to offer. Your previous association with the Trinx is known to us. We offer a much larger advancement and ask nothing more than the ability to designate targets that are off limits to you. The rest of the galaxy will be yours to conquer while we advance our own agendas separate from and parallel to yours.”

“And if we still refuse?”

“Then we will look for other associates…such as the Skarrons. We came to you first because we see the vast potential your race has, along with your appetite for conquest. Ambition is a trait that is highly underrated.”

The Sovereign stood, dwarfing the Chixzon, and crossed its arms over its chest.

“Then reveal all of your hidden troops and let us begin proper negotiations.”

“There are only four of us on this planet. Our ship will remain hidden from the prying eyes of those passing through this system other than Li’vorkrachnika.”

“You risked much bringing only four here, little one.”

The Chixzon raised his two armatures above his head and ignited the glowing green tips.

“No…we did not. We do not take risks. Four of us are sufficient to kill all of you, but as I have said, that is not our aim. We would much rather become allies and turn our combined power against the V’kit’no’sat…and others.”

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