Star Force: The Admiral
Author: Aer-Ki Jyr
Date: 2016-12-29T18:30:00+00:00

Prologue

January 29, 2045

Solar System

Earth

“So we have to work with different people?” Jason-025 asked.

“Yeah, but they didn’t say how many or how often,” Paul-024 confirmed.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked as they walked back through Atlantis’s city corridors after the Tandem Challenges brief they’d just gotten in the amphitheatre from Head Trainer Wilson.

“We work together on everything then pair up with others where we suck?”

“And go for the top tandem pair,” Jason finished. “That will help protect our team score, but if we pair with non-team members…”

“They didn’t say we had to.”

“When it comes to swimming, I’m not sticking with you for my high score buddy.”

Paul frowned. “Yeah, you have a point. But we’ll still have to do the swimming challenges together for our pairing points.”

“And then do them with someone to boost our individual ones…and it’s our individual ones that get added to the team scores. So if we find someone outside the team that we work with well, it’ll help the team score more than trying to hold out on people.”

“Probably right about that, but we are doing most of these together, right?”

“We’re doing all of them together,” Jason said confidently. “Then we’ll review where we’re weak and pick other partners. We might learn something from them that we can use to bump up our sucky scores. We get to try run these challenges an unlimited amount of times.”

“They did say it was a 2 month estimate. I wonder why it’s not a firm deadline.”

“Probably because we’re getting close to the end of training. Which do you want to hit first?”

Paul chewed lightly on his lip for a moment as they turned a corner and headed back to the areas reserved for the trainees and kept off limits to the rest of the Atlantis population.

“Let’s save the naval ones for last and start with the running. I think they implied there was some coordination skills to be learned before we can get good at any of this. You and I probably have an advantage already, but let’s hammer one of them and see what improvements we can make there…”

“And apply it to the harder ones later. We don’t want to learn this while swimming.”

“No,” Paul agreed, being one of the weakest swimmers amongst the 100 trainees. “We need to be in sync before going there.”

“And you’re so far ahead in naval I couldn’t keep up,” Jason agreed. “Running it is then.”

“Let’s hurry. Looks like some of the others are already pairing up. I think we have a race for points going on already.”

“Let them try,” Jason whispered as two more A-7 trainees jogged past them in the corridor enroute to somewhere in a hurry. “We’re the dynamic duo and they know it.”

“You got that right,” Paul said, fist bumping his co-team leader and best friend. “Now let’s go prove it for points.”

1557 years later…

Paul came back to his quarters onboard his flagship Excalibur after a semi-hard 20 mile run on the ship’s halo track, allowing himself to run straight with no turns for maximum speed and consistency as he maintained a 4:30 mile pace. Before that he’d been doing a variety of training drills in the Archon sanctum as he impatiently waited out the many weeks of transit between the Rim Region and the ADZ.

He’d been in Vedran territory where Clan Saber was heavily focused on integrating that race into Star Force and securing the surrounding region, with great success thus far, when he’d got word that the V’kit’no’sat had been detected in Star Force territory and headed towards Sol. Immediately he and many other trailblazers across the Rim region gathered up a significant portion of their fleets and began heading back, but the journey was not fast. The galaxy was larger than large, and even Star Force’s little corner of it was huge. Messages traveled faster than ships via relays, meaning updates were only available when Paul’s fleet stopped in star systems for navigation redirects.

So during the interstellar jumps there was no new information, and while Paul had been doing his running workout the Excalibur had braked against a giant star, bringing it out of its faster than lightspeed jump and allowing the ship and following fleet to transition around stellar orbit until they got to the outgoing jumppoint for the next leg of their journey back home. It had to be on a perfectly straight line between stars, meaning there was only one line of trajectory a ship could jump from, pushing on the star’s gravity with anti-grav tech that greatly increased the effect, slingshoting the vessel out from it at many times the speed of light and letting it coast all the way to the next star where it would brake again and repeat the process until they got back to the heavily populated region of the Star Force empire known as the ADZ…in the center of which was Sol, the home system that contained Earth.

Paul knew that was the V’kit’no’sat’s target, for it had originally been their possession…a colony in their galaxy-spanning empire long forgotten with a few of their advanced slaves left behind during a major rebellion. The outer regions of the V’kit’no’sat empire had been abandoned, with Earth never seeing them again, but according to the records and information recovered in a buried pyramid in Antarctica, Paul and the others knew that if the V’kit’no’sat ever found out they existed they would be back to kill them all.

For Humans were the descendants of those left behind slaves…slaves given awesome powers under the condition that they never reproduce. Whatever had happened long ago had been lost to history, but those Zen’zat slaves had reproduced and had their powers go dormant in their offspring. Paul and the other elite Archons within the empire had found a way to unlock theirs, making them more powerful that most races in the galaxy…but not compared to the V’kit’no’sat. They were a massive empire comprised of 193 races and the Zen’zat that served all of them.

Many of those races were known to Earth as the Dinosaurs, with the true history of the planet and those skeletons found being far different from what anyone had ever imagined it to be.

Star Force wasn’t ready for them…not that they ever would be. Paul knew they couldn’t win, so the plan was to fight, stall, and withdrawal as they began evacuating Earth and every other planet and system in the war zone, eventually pulling all the way back to the Rim Region if needed while Star Force continued to work to advance their technology and skill level to the point where they could pull even with the V’kit’no’sat…but even then they’d be horribly outnumbered, so right now this war was simply one of survival and delaying the annihilation of the Human race and every other race that had allied with them to form the Star Force empire.

And Paul needed to be there. He, along with Liam and Roger, were the best naval commanders Star Force had…which was why he’d been out in the Rim Region where most of the hard fighting was as Star Force worked to wrangle an unruly region of the galaxy into some semblance of order in the wake of the withdrawal of The Nexus…a huge and power alliance of races further out into the Rim. Not as powerful as the V’kit’no’sat but still far larger and stronger than Star Force.

But they had their own problems and were hemorrhaging territory, having worked out a mutually beneficial agreement with Director Davis that had Star Force absorbing member races of The Nexus that were being abandoned as their territory shrank down to what they thought they could maintain hold of. That left Paul and the other trailblazers with new races to absorb into their own empire and a whole wealth of territory surrounding them that were being ravaged and exploited now that The Nexus had withdrawn and every pirate, privateer, and opportunistic race for thousands of lightyears knew it.

But now that didn’t matter. The V’kit’no’sat had come and the lesser fighting in the Rim Region would be left to subordinates. Paul had to get back to the heavy fighting that was breaking out in Sol and that he knew would expand elsewhere as the Dinosaurs came back to annihilate those they decreed did not have the right to exist. No race within the V’kit’no’sat could leave or have independent splinter colonies, but with Zen’zat it was worse because they were not a race, rather individuals enhanced from the Ter’nat slave race and sworn to oaths to serve the V’kit’no’sat…which included their abandonment of reproduction, punishable by death to both the Zen’zat who violated their oaths and any of their illegitimate offspring.

Paul was one of those illegitimate offspring, along with every other Human in the galaxy, and now their final doom had come and he and the other trailblazers…the original class in the A-7 program that had later become known as the Archons…were the only hope for survival that Humans and their empire had to survive. How long they stayed alive was going to be determined by how many ships the V’kit’no’sat sent and how well Paul and the others fought, but first he had to actually get there.

When Paul got back to his quarters after his run he sat his sweaty body down in the chair of his comm terminal and checked for new data, knowing they’d passed through another system but had not wanting to interrupt his workouts to check immediately. He couldn’t do anything other than send messages back, and right now that was worthless. He was a spectator until his fleet got back and could join the fight, but he still wanted to keep up with what was going on so when he did get back he could hit the ground running and do the maximum damage possible to the giant ships the V’kit’no’sat fought with.

The information packet that the Excalibur had picked up did have updated battle information, but it also had several messages for him, including two from other trailblazers. One from Andy-082 and one from Jason, with Paul pulling up Jason’s message first.

It appeared as a small hologram above the control board on the comm terminal, with Paul hitting a slide lever and increasing the size up to half a meter tall where his best friend and fellow 2 was standing in a typical pure white Archon uniform, but without his normal blonde hair.

“Andy had a good idea, citing that since our Clans were formed to fight the V’kit’no’sat he was going to alter his hair color to match until we defeat them. He’s gone with Teemo orange over green and a few of the others are following his lead. I’m going with chrome rather than white, and while it’s a little odd to look at in the mirror I suppose I’ll get used to it. Guess this is what I put you through with that bet, only this is serious. We’re going to have to be at our best every day from here on out and that may still not be enough…but if we’re not we’re sure to fail, so my chrome hair is going to be my reminder. Not that we really need one, but if we get so punch drunk later that we don’t know up from down it might come in handy. Anyway, what do you think? I can go white if I want, but thought chrome would be a little more distinctive.”

The message ended there, and knowing that there were still considerable time lags in communications across the empire he figured Andy’s message had reached Jason first and Paul was only now getting both at the same time, collected and held at the recent relay until ships passed through to pick up the backlog of messages and data.

“You’re right, that’s a good idea,” Paul said to his empty quarters as he stood up and headed out before checking on the rest of the updates. He headed straight to one of the Excalibur’s medbays and got the attention of a medtech there.

“Need an alteration,” Paul said, walking across the spacious room to the cage-like chamber situated alongside the far wall.

“Sure,” the medtech said, having altered the genetics of crewmembers on a regular basis for inkless tattoos or fingernail colors. Even deactivating hair follicles to shape beards or eliminate shaving altogether. “What do you want?”

“Change my hair to Saber blue,” the trailblazer said, walking inside the cage and pulling the armature closed before putting his hands on the cold sphere in front of him that would connect him to the machinery.

“Eyebrows?”

“Yes.”

“Just a second,” the tech said, finding the exact color match for Paul’s Clan Saber, which only had one identifying color. Jason’s Clan Sangheili designated colors were white and chrome, based off Halo lore from centuries long, long ago. Paul’s color of blue was actually a light blue, and based off the original lightsaber color from Star Wars…another bit of lore from long ago back before almost all of the current Human population had been born. Each trailblazer had been able to name and configure their own Clan as they wished, with most of them citing reference to cool things from the distant past.

Paul’s hands went slightly numb, glued to the sphere while the nanotechnology sent little snakes of material through his body that were likewise numbed, causing him no pain as they altered his genetic code ever so slightly regarding his hair color…then they made the physical changes to his existing hair rather than waiting for it go grow out naturally, with his short black cut shifting to almost neon blue over the course of a few seconds, after which his hands unnumbed and the process was over.

“All done,” the medtech said, stepping over and unnecessarily pulling up the armature for Paul. “Going back to the blue…I like it. Why’d you change back? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“War colors,” Paul said calmly yet firmly. “Trailblazers are going with Clan colors until the V’kit’no’sat are destroyed…or we are.”

1

August 8, 4812

Orlero System (Devastation Zone)

Stellar Orbit

Paul was standing in the command nexus on the bridge of the Excalibur, concealed behind a wall in the dedicated alcove that gave him visual separation from the crew while leaving the entrance behind him open. He could hear what was being said if he focused on it, but right now his mind was more in the computer than anything else as he guided the massive battle still ongoing in the Orlero System.

It had begun on the planet Tauntaun when the hidden Star Force base there had been discovered and attacked, with the survivors fleeing through escape tunnels bored into the thick ice on the small, frozen world. Even now other Archons were attempting to get as many of them out alive, but so long as the V’kit’no’sat held the captured base that was a tricky rescue to pull off.

But right now rescuing those people wasn’t Paul’s job. Fighting the largest V’kit’no’sat fleet to enter the Devastation Zone in years was, and this battle was already days long. He couldn’t stay in the command nexus continually and he knew it, having fought battles larger than this against the lizards, but they were not the V’kit’no’sat’s equal. That experience helped Paul pace himself, taking breaks and letting others lead the constant naval fighting as ships from both sides sought out one another in strategic maneuvers looking for an advantage…for neither side was stupid enough to just plow into one another as many rookies would have.

No, with this type of naval combat it was easy to turn and run, and it seemed that neither side wanted to do that here. Paul certainly didn’t, for he and the other trailblazers running the war against the V’kit’no’sat along the front and in the Devastation Zone were eager to get the enemy in a position to clobber them without having to backtrack to a planetary stronghold. Fighting ships was bad enough, but going up against planetary shields and anti-orbital weaponry was more than just unpleasant. It required a sacrifice of ships who had to sit and take fire while the shields were gradually weakened.

The V’kit’no’sat had to face the same scenario when they assaulted a fully developed Star Force planet, like those that currently made up the front on the rimward edge of the Devastation Zone. Had Tauntaun been heavily fortified they wouldn’t have been able to take it so easy, but it had only a small outpost on it hidden underneath the ice…and even that was enough of a threat to prompt the V’kit’no’sat to land a ground assault force outside the boundaries of its shield rather than slug it out with the anti-orbital weaponry and lose some of their ships in the process.

But now that had all changed with the arrival of more ships from both sides…numbering in the thousands. V’kit’no’sat ships were larger than Star Force ones, primarily because they carried living crews and most Star Force warships were drones flown remotely by pilots in nearby control ships. The drones were tiny in comparison to the V’kit’no’sat vessels, but they had the advantage of not requiring internal living quarters or life support. They were 100% weapons and Star Force fielded them in swarms to take on the massive V’kit’no’sat ships, some of which were 36 miles long. Those Kafcha were the largest the enemy empire fielded in regular combat, and there were hundreds of them here already mixed in with a massive V’kit’no’sat fleet made up of ships from about a third of their member races.

Those races were what Earth had once mistakenly referred to as the Dinosaurs, but some were not, for while Earth was a long abandoned colony of the V’kit’no’sat not all of their 193 member races had lived there…but the main land dwelling players had. The T-rex, the Brontosaurus, the Stegosaurus, and the Triceratops…whose actual names were the Era’tran, the Oso’lon, the Hjar’at, and the Brat’mar. There were other major land powers previously unknown to Earth, but the majority of the other powerhouse races were aquatic or aerial, with the swimming J’gar being just as strong as the Oso’lon and forming the two primary races within the V’kit’no’sat…not counting the third founder that was no longer around.

The Zak’de’ron had been more powerful than the Oso’lon and J’gar combined, but had fallen when the entire V’kit’no’sat empire turned on them long, long ago. Paul knew of them from the historical records found in the pyramid discovered in Antarctica, as well as from the restricted files that they had been given access to by a living Zak’de’ron. The only one to have survived the war that the V’kit’no’sat did not realize still existed. One of Paul’s peers named Kara had helped the Dragon when he came out of a long period in stasis. Weakened and vulnerable from the hibernation, she had earned a bit of favor from ‘Puff’ in the form of a trinket and had negotiated an exchange of information that had seen the Dragon quietly come to Earth and unlock the pyramid with his priority codes, then disappear into the galaxy never to be seen again.

But Star Force had heard of him and the eggs that he’d been protecting. The Zak’de’ron were working their own agenda, and through an ally of Star Force’s called the Voku, Paul had been able to assemble bits of information about their activities, for the Voku were one of their servant races from long ago that had recently received new guidance from them. The fact that Puff had let Star Force retain knowledge of his existence was a large measure of trust that Paul and the others had not betrayed, keeping the V’kit’no’sat in the dark about the Dragons’ existence even though they had not bothered to help Star Force when the war started and Paul’s empire started to get chopped up planet by planet against an unyielding tide of assaults into their heaviest populated region known as the ADZ.

The ADZ was gone now and had become a piece of the Devastation Zone, with Sol at its center. Only Earth the V’kit’no’sat had chosen to populate, reclaiming their lost colony and using it as the forward base of operations for the continuing annihilation crusade against Star Force. Every other world in the Devastation Zone had been conquered and cleansed, leaving nothing but ruined landscape and scar marks on worlds that had once housed billions, if not trillions of people on each.

And the V’kit’no’sat kept those worlds bare, patrolling the Devastation Zone looking for Star Force or any of their allies while periodically taking more worlds off the front from them and pushing the line back further and further as Paul and his people kept fighting a gradual retreat while evacuating the people under assault…but they didn’t save everyone, and the long list of casualties in this war could have been lessened greatly if only the Zak’de’ron had helped buy them some more time, but they hadn’t. They had never promised to be allies, and when it came to fighting the V’kit’no’sat they were clearly not going to get involved in a mismatch…for as much as the Dinosaur empire hated Star Force, if they got even a whiff of the Zak’de’ron still living they’d throw the full might of their empire against them, fearing the insane power they wielded might one day regrow their civilization to the level where it could threaten them again.

And that was the irony of it all. The V’kit’no’sat were methodically wiping out Star Force with only a tiny fraction of their empire’s fleet. Meaning that no matter how hard Paul and the others fought, they could always bring in more to counter any victory they obtained.

Except they couldn’t do it instantly. Travel times across the galaxy were not forgiving, and to get ships out to the Devastation Zone from the inner core of the galaxy where the V’kit’no’sat empire existed took at least a month, if not several, depending on where they would come from. Meaning those Paul was fighting right now were essentially on their own for the immediate future save for any other fleets already enroute or repositioning from nearby.

That’s why Paul wanted to engage them here, but he needed to do it in a way that wouldn’t scare them off and in a way to get his people trapped on Tauntaun out alive.

But for the V’kit’no’sat they didn’t seem too interested in the survivors save for those ships stationed at Tauntaun. The bulk of their fleet was elsewhere in the star system fighting Paul’s ships, as if they were as interested in getting this naval vs naval fight as he was…which told him that they had more reinforcements on the way, for right now he was kicking their ass in a limited sense. Trading losses at a rate of approximately 5 to 3, though Paul’s losses didn’t involve crew, only unmanned drones.

The V’kit’no’sat losses didn’t always mean a ship was destroyed, for Paul could knock chunks out of them equal in size to his drones and they’d keep fighting as if they hadn’t been touched. They were just that big and powerful, but attrition would wear them down eventually so long as Paul’s command ship and the other control ships in the system didn’t get caught…and the V’kit’no’sat were always trying to flank the drone fleets and hit them in the rear.

But space was big and Paul’s ships were just as fast as the V’kit’no’sat’s, and whenever the enemy got too close the control ships would run. That would interfere with the drone fleet’s operation, but other control ships nearby could take over for them or they could leave the fleet on auto-targeting protocols if need be. Those weren’t nearly as effective as having a person sighting each weapon and rotating shields for maximum coverage, but it gave the control ships the windows they needed to run and reposition elsewhere to stay out of the fight…though right now Paul was taking his command ship into the brawl, for he’d just gotten an opportunity he hadn’t been counting on.

Another Star Force fleet had just began to arrive in the system, coming out of their interstellar jumps two and three ships at a time in a long convoy that bore Morgan-063’s fleet tag. She had a fleet nearly the size of his, meaning the V’kit’no’sat were going to be outnumbered within a few hours.

Would they stick around to fight or flee in face of the mismatch? Paul didn’t know, but if they had more reinforcements of their own coming they might stick around. If not, he needed to hurt them as badly as possible here and now, which was why he was taking his command ship in off the periphery of the fighting and joining a tendril of drone ships, most of which were less than a fifth the width of the Excalibur’s giant donut-shaped hull, as the black rectangles clustered around the grey with blue striped flagship and waded into an outcropping of Era’tran ships.

The V’kit’no’sat responded immediately, seeing an opportunity to strike the command ship, but Paul didn’t pull back. Instead he forced his fleet group head on into the larger ships and used the impressive weaponry on the Excalibur to add to the little stings from the drones, drawing fire away from them and thus increasing their longevity as the mass of both fleets that were further off and spectating suddenly began to collapse towards each other.

Linked into the battlemap network, Paul could feel every ship in the fleet and, if needed, remote control every gun, shield generator, engine, and system on those ships, but he could not do it simultaneously. He could fly 10 ships by himself with ease, but there were so many here that he couldn’t do so effectively, meaning he had to pick and choose where he inserted his mind while trusting in the other Archons’ and naval officers’ skill and judgment to handle the tasks required while he directed the overall battle.

With a single thought he put target beacons on specific points where shields were weakening on the Era’tran ships, told which of his own vessels to attack and which to reposition, and tweaked the Excalibur’s shields to 57% power forward. Every moment that continued had his Sav-enhanced mind working at lightspeed to control as much of the battle as possible, but it was never enough. Fleet combat was truly a group fight, and the rest of the crew in the fleet had gotten used to supporting Paul, knowing that he’d find ways to fight the V’kit’no’sat that the enemy hadn’t even thought of, with his nickname of ‘The Admiral’ being given to him long ago due to his instinctive ability to feel his way through naval combat…not to mention the fact that he had been personally responsible for the development and design of most of Star Force’s weapons and ships, though in truth it had been more of a group effort than most accredited him for.

Paul and the other trailblazers hadn’t learned from the V’kit’no’sat records when Star Force began. That knowledge had been withheld from them, making them learn and develop Star Force’s own combat identity from scratch. Later on they’d been given access so they could advance and make ready for the inevitable war to come, but the way Star Force fought is the way the trailblazers had come up with on their own. They hadn’t learned from anyone else, rather figuring out things as they went and building the empire’s military piece by piece into what it was today.

Now recruits would learn from their example and the multitude of training scenarios and programs they’d created over the centuries…but they had never had that luxury. They’d always been the ones leading the way and having to discover things for themselves that others would then use to better the empire. That meant Paul and the other ‘trailblazers’ had to be better than the rest, with a knack to think outside the box that was proving to be continually annoying to the V’kit’no’sat, but they too adapted well and whatever Paul would come up with they would soon counter, but not soon enough today to stop the beatdown about to happen.

Paul knew he was baiting them, and he knew they knew it, which was why the beatdown wasn’t going to happen here. Even as the fighting around his ship intensified as the V’kit’no’sat did indeed try to focus on his ship…but not to an extent that would leave them overextended…Paul had the bulk of his fleet behind him move en mass. Blinking out on fast accelerating ‘jumps’ laterally that caused a mushrooming effect on the battlemap, then they raced even faster when they got on a straight line trajectory out from the star and pushed hallway around the V’kit’no’sat’s extended fleet blob that was unengaged in the current fighting.

Paul’s ships braked hard then dove down into their midst, hitting a buzz saw of incoming fire that knocked out many drones within a few seconds, but he pressed through the losses until the V’kit’no’sat fleet was essentially cut in half with both sides hammering the drones in the gap and Paul was losing them fast.

But these were huge ships, for even his smallest drones were nearly half a mile long, and destroying them all took time…and Paul had no problem with ordering them to ram the V’kit’no’sat ships, for there was no crew onboard them, which added even more damage and chaos to the fighting that seemed completely calm and controlled in Paul’s mind’s eye as he stood in the command nexus with a hand on the control sphere and numerous holograms surrounding him, but he mostly saw what was happening through the fleet’s sensors that were tied directly into his mind, making the mass of ships an extension of himself as he guided them through a level of teamwork fighting that few others could understand even with weeks of post battle analysis.

To Paul it was instinctual, and an instinct that had been honed to near perfection over centuries of warfare against lesser races prior to the V’kit’no’sat War, then enhanced even further by the impossible challenge of fighting the empire of Dinosaurs, for they were even more intelligent than Humans, for the most part, meaning he was having to contend against legendary minds in the opposing fleet that gave him little margin for success even in the most beneficial of engagements.

But with Morgan’s fleet coming in and his call for her ships to redirect to his position immediately after arrival, he knew how many vessels she had while the V’kit’no’sat did not, making this engagement a bit of a question mark for them as he pressed into more and more combat…far more than they were comfortable with as his command ship started taking hull damage.

Paul turned it around and started to flee back through his lines as the V’kit’no’sat would expect, with the Era’tran ships he’d attacked chasing him. They above all other races seemed to hate the Star Force control ships, as if they were a carrot on the end of the stick that they could just never quite reach. He pulled them after him as Paul signaled the surrounding drones to move in and block their path, with many of the ships simply ramming through them trying to get to Paul who couldn’t make an emergency jump out through so many of his own ships.

Except he could and the V’kit’no’sat knew that, meaning they were either being really stupid today or just proud enough that they wanted to drive him off. Either way he was drawing this bit of the V’kit’no’sat fleet out as the formation of ships in front of the Excalibur suddenly shifted in unison, making a path for him to jump out that he took, getting his command ship out of weapons range.

But two Era’tran ships followed him through that gap, meaning his ship had to run and keep running as they pursued, but he wasn’t worried. Unless they were a lot faster he could run indefinitely so long as he didn’t lose engine power, but the V’kit’no’sat knew that if his ship was running then the control signals going out from it would be distorted and he would lose his magical effect on the fleet, so each second they had him on the move was a victory for them as the Star Force fleet became a little less organized…though not much, for the other Archons and naval commanders were both skilled and experienced, but against opponents that could very well be over a million years old, the difference in command influence was immediately evident.

But not for long. A few seconds after Paul jumped out the orders he’d been crafting beforehand went into effect with a massive fleet repositioning that split off the Era’tran segment and isolated them, meaning they couldn’t escape and the rest of the huge V’kit’no’sat fleet couldn’t get to them. Paul was losing drones so fast elsewhere it didn’t seem worth the sacrifice, but when his fleet turned and pounded the Era’tran ships they were forced to fight and die over the next few hours with Morgan’s ships arriving to replace some of what Paul was losing.

In the end he wiped out all of the 74 Era’tran ships in that little cut off group, including two Kafcha, so that when you compared the losses ton for ton, Star Force had won out by a factor of 4 to 1, and before the V’kit’no’sat could really make Paul pay for the maneuver enough of Morgan’s ships got to his position to force the V’kit’no’sat to pull out of the very costly fight as Paul tried to isolate more subgroups with the incoming flow of drone warships.

That was a feint, because Paul really didn’t want to continue the fight, but he could have if needed and the V’kit’no’sat saw the threat, with them transition into a fighting retreat that pulled them back across a few hundred thousand miles of space to a slightly higher stellar orbit where their new fleet configuration could have turned the tables on Paul if he’d pursued…but he hadn’t. Not more than a few skirmishing tendrils to hit wounded ships lagging behind the others and to give the V’kit’no’sat a good kick in the butt as the two fleet groups got some breathing room between them again.

But that recent throwdown had gone in Star Force’s favor, with Paul sending our recovery teams for the debris on the battlefield that they now owned…as well as hunter teams for V’kit’no’sat survivors. Paul wasn’t going to try to risk boarding any of their ships and taking captives, not that they would have accepted surrender anyway, so he located every bit of intact ship left drifting and had them targeted by the surrounding fleet, pulverizing the debris to the point where no more mental signatures detected.

Paul wasn’t going to risk his people saving the enemy, especially when he really didn’t have anywhere to put captives, but he wasn’t going to let the V’kit’no’sat recover them to fight another day and he wasn’t going to let them freeze or suffocate. He’d give them the small respect of a quick death from weaponsfire rather than a lingering end, but no more. Paul had to catch a quick respite before major combat broke out again, even as his subordinates were organizing strafing attacks on the edge of the V’kit’no’sat fleet’s skirmisher line.

For in system battles of this size, you’d be sure to lose no matter how many ships you had if your crew became fatigued to the point of sloppiness…and Paul was the main weapon Star Force had in this fight, even with Morgan’s inclusion. Her naval skills weren’t his equal, but they were solid and experienced enough for him to turn temporary command over to her and leave the bridge for a crash nap of a couple of hours…maybe less if the V’kit’no’sat made a major move before then, but he figured they wouldn’t.

In fact, he expected them to have a reinforcement fleet on the way themselves and to hold tight until it arrived.

And when it did, he needed to be clearheaded enough to face whatever they had coming in.

2

October 4, 4812

Orlero System (Devastation Zone)

Stellar Orbit

After two months of fighting the V’kit’no’sat finally broke, with Paul maintaining his disciplined endurance as fleet leader in what looked like an infinite timespan, but no one aside from him knew how tired he truly was. Morgan was just as fatigued, as were most of the senior Archons and fleet officers, but the V’kit’no’sat were finally pulling back towards the star in order to jump out of the system along with the first segments of their fleet that had already left.

Others would have let them go, but not Paul. He knew that in times of fatigue and transition lay the largest opportunities, so he assumed the command nexus again, breaking a short nap he’d been on when the en mass retreat began, knowing that he had to be in the lead or risk disaster. Right now the V’kit’no’sat still outnumbered the Star Force fleet, ton for ton, but the combat trend was with the Human-led empire. Paul had proven himself superior to the V’kit’no’sat fleet commander, whoever it was, but he also knew that this retreat could quickly be turned into an offensive, so he linked into the battlemap systems again and melded his mind with the fleet, getting them moving in a myriad of split transitions across the star system.

The V’kit’no’sat couldn’t jump out quickly and they knew it, hence they were leaving via 3 different jumplines that would result in 3 different destinations. That also meant they could get their ships out of the system 3 times as fast while still being close enough to one another for mutual defense in low stellar orbit…and they were very low, baking in the stellar radiation of the star so much that it was licking away their shields.

If Paul sent his ships down that low the same would be true, giving the V’kit’no’sat a small advantage due to their larger size and stronger shields. Each of his drones were tiny in comparison and had less internal volume for shield area. That wasn’t a major shift in the playing field, but it was a factor that Paul wasn’t going to overlook and he guessed it might be the V’kit’no’sat trying to discourage pursuit. Based on the enemy fleet movements it felt like they’d had enough, but Paul never assumed such things and constantly asked himself what he could do in their situation…and if they held the jumppoint in low to the star and Paul came in after them in shifts they could do a lot of damage before he could get all his ships in position.

So he wasn’t rushing, but rather sending the now significantly smaller Star Force fleet in groups on varied trajectories…some out of the way…that would bring them all together at the closest of the three jumppoints while his ships already in stellar orbit he had pull back and hit the opposite one with light, harassing attacks to make sure the V’kit’no’sat ships stayed split and made them defend both sides.

At the same time he dispatched his Mak’ri into a separate fleet of their own, then had them engage their stealth fields and head off on a long, roundabout trek that would bring them in over the middle jumpline to cause more havoc, but the biggest hammer Paul was going to drop was on the closest jumppoint in the hopes of doing damage as they retreated, with them being the most vulnerable near the end when they had fewer ships remaining insystem.

Paul brought his command ship up into the swarm of drones, as did Morgan and the others in the fleet while the Warship-class jumpships kept their distance while controlling most of the drones and giving detail to Paul’s general orders. If the V’kit’no’sat wanted to counterattack to go after the command ships he’d let them…then slaughter those that remained as he backdoored their jumppoints and cut off their easiest route of escape.

He didn’t think that would happen, so he was bringing the command ships with their heavy weaponry into the fight to do more damage as well as soak up hits with their shields that would otherwise kill the drones, preserving more of his fleet while continuing to knock down chunks of the enemy.

Still, their decision to retreat was odd. After Morgan had arrived the V’kit’no’sat had gotten three more large reinforcement fleets and 17 smaller groups to add to their numbers. Either there were no more coming or they didn’t want to lose the amount of ships necessary to finish off the Star Force fleet…or maybe they were worried about Paul getting more reinforcements. The base on Tauntaun had already been recaptured by other Archons after the V’kit’no’sat trashed most of it on exit, and about half of the survivors in the ice fields had made it out, meaning technically there was nothing here to keep the V’kit’no’sat engaged.

But engage they had for weeks after the base had returned to Star Force hands…though now it was worthless. It had been a hidden outpost, and now that it was exposed there was no refurbishing it and Star Force couldn’t keep this many ships here permanently, else the V’kit’no’sat would strike at the front worlds in their absence.

Paul wondered if that was happening now, with this being a massive diversion, but no word had come through the hidden relay network yet, though interstellar communications still had a considerable lag effect that stretched out into weeks when going from one end of Star Force comm territory to the other…assuming the relays weren’t hit and eliminated, breaking the comm lines and blacking out entire regions.

And the V’kit’no’sat were good at finding them, with Paul doing a lot of replacement relay drops in previous years to keep the grid operational, else the only way they’d be able to get reports between star systems would be to send courier ships back and forth. Paul was still getting periodic updates through the hidden relay in this system, so the connection back to the front hadn’t been cut as of yet, but there was some reason the V’kit’no’sat had played here as long as they had above and beyond the base assault on Tauntaun.

Paul had to consider all options and keep a look out for things he couldn’t predict, but nothing radical happened over the following two days as heavy combat ensued to protect the jumplines, at the end of which the remaining V’kit’no’sat ships had to go evasive and scatter across the system. Paul sent the Ma’kri after them, for the knife-like ships were specifically designed for intercept and disable missions, but he doubted many of the fleeing vessels would be caught as they ran for other jumplines at various altitudes. Right now even a slow jump out of the system was preferable to staying here and getting run down.

Once the three major jumplines were secured Paul relinquished command to others to handle the chasing as most of his fleet stood down from combat and began recovery operations on their own debris while finishing off what remains of the enemy were still around. It was work that Paul wasn’t needed for, so he disconnected from the command nexus and turned around, stumbling half a step as his legs were stiffer than he’d realized.

A half empty container of water that sat on the floor nearby flew up into Paul’s hand and he sucked down the rest before telekinetically flying it back down, then he walked out the short alcove and onto the bridge with small steps. He hadn’t slept the past two days, with crew bringing him food and water where he was, and right now his mind was so fried that he had to focus just to walk. As powerful as he was, being a Goku-level Archon and arguably one of the strongest and fastest Humans in the galaxy, he was so out of it right now a strong elbow to his gut would take him down and he knew it.

Fortunately there were no enemies here. His crew were beyond trustworthy and looking a bit ragged themselves. He would have checked on them with his telepathy but right now his head was urging him insistently to shut down and go into recovery mode and he wasn’t going to argue with it at this point.

“The ship is yours,” he told Admiral Baeren. “Well done, everyone. I have to crash now.”

“Paul,” Baeren said, standing up from his command chair and facing him. “That was the most impressive display of naval skill I’ve ever seen. Given their strength and numbers we should not have won that fight. It’s truly an honor serving onboard your flagship,” the Protovic said, throwing a seldom used salute.

Paul nodded his thanks, then other bridge crew members also stood with the rest soon following. They all saluted…something that in Star Force was not standard protocol…and Paul pushed past the ache in his head to telepathically scan some of them. Most of them were Human, with the built in Ikrid blocks that prevented him from reading their minds, but he could still sense a bit of surface emotion that suggested they were genuinely in awe of what just happened…in addition to being fatigued.

The few that weren’t Human he could read, with him realizing that they saw this as an impressive moment in Star Force history…but to him it was just a major battle that he’d lost himself in, working every second as hard as he could to gain as much advantage as possible and to diminish their losses, which had been huge in terms of machinery. However, no control ship had been lost, meaning the only ships that had been destroyed were unmanned.

That was a feat worth remembering, but there had been casualties when control ships had been damaged. Twenty six people had died of wounds too great to be healed, and those 26 stood out in Paul’s mind as a failure and always would, but he wasn’t going to linger on it. His job was to take action and do what he could, not feel guilty about the losses and waste time with pointless recriminations. He’d never be ok with the losses, but he’d learned long ago to just label them as failures and move on…else the carnage of this war would overwhelm him, and if that happened far more would die without his skill and knowledge being applied in the most effective way and at the most effective times.

Which meant he needed to rest now before they were potentially thrown into combat again, with that being the foremost priority on his mind, but he took note of the crew’s awe and dismay in what had occurred and allowed himself a moment to reflect. He’d been involved in so many large scale battles against the V’kit’no’sat that he treated this no differently, but in retrospect it had been different in that there wasn’t a planet that they had to defend. It was just one fleet versus the other in a throwdown…and one that Star Force had been outnumbered in.

And they’d won…or had they? He got the feeling the V’kit’no’sat may have gotten what they needed out of it, if not what they wanted.

“A group effort, to be sure,” Paul announced honestly. “I can only control so many systems simultaneously. We kicked ass today. Never forget that…and don’t forget we still have V’kit’no’sat in the system. Kill what you can, cleanse the debris, and recover as much of ours as possible. We need to be out of here in a few days tops.”

“We’ll take care of it, Archon,” Baenen confirmed. “Get some sleep.”

Paul saluted back with a sloppy smile. “As ordered.”

The crew relaxed and went back to work and Paul slowly walked off the bridge, heading through the ship that had taken a fair amount of hull damage, but the 7 mile wide Melee-class command ship had a lot of internal mass between the fighting and the crew, leaving the center plug of habitation in the giant jelly donut-shaped ship pristine as he walked to a nearby lift and headed back to his quarters.

When he got there he was about to walk into a quick shower when a comm prompt lit up on his terminal that sat just past the foot of his bed nestled up against the wall.

Paul frowned and telekinetically pressed the accept button from across the room, wondering what was so important to interrupt him, but as the hologram appeared he saw it wasn’t from the bridge, but rather another ship in the fleet.

“Hey, Paul,” Morgan greeted tiredly. “You look like crap.”

“Better than I’m feeling then. I haven’t slept since the pullout began.”

“Worried they had something up their sleeve?”

“Yeah. I’m glad we had a chance to chew them up, but this battle made no sense.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about before you crashed. I’m not seeing any signs of a diversion, but I think they got beat here worse than they expected.”

“I got that impression too.”

“I think they were here after you,” she said bluntly.

Paul frowned. “Me?”

“Look back through the replays later, but they showed a little more tenacity trying to get at the Excalibur than they did the Star Saber. More than usual, anyway.”

“They’re always trying to get us,” he argued. “And I was baiting them a bit.”

“I noticed. Still, they were going harder at you.”

“I’ll check later. I’m fried right now.”

“Not just yet,” she warned. “Sit down.”

Paul did as suggested, feeling a wave of relief as soon as he did with his eyes rolling once as he refocused on the full body hologram of his long time peer/rival for top Archon rank, though both of them had fallen behind Rio-058 just prior to the start of the war and that hadn’t changed with him devoting more time to training and digging out the tier 4 psionics buried in the dream tests that he’d first discovered. To date they’d uncovered 6, with Rio reporting that he was sniffing at a 7th, but no one knew for sure how many of them the Zak’de’ron had hidden within the Zen’zat genetic code that they’d inherited from the V’kit’no’sat, for the Dragons hadn’t even told their own empire how many were in there. Rather they waited until individuals of merit unlocked them on their own…and there had been a lot that Star Force had found that the V’kit’no’sat had never stumbled across.

Part of that was due to the fact that the Archons had found a way to share psionics after one of them had unlocked one and triggered the flash growth of new psionic tissue in their bodies, but another part was the way Star Force handled their ranking system. Training was key to everything, even more than within the V’kit’no’sat, and the trailblazers had worked long and hard to meet and surpass the standards of Zen’zat equal to them in age. Somewhere in all of that they’d found a knack for unlocking the hidden genetic gems, and Rio had dived into that challenge more than anyone else once his proclivity for the elusive dream tests was discovered.

Ever since then Paul and Morgan had to take a back seat in the rankings, and while they wanted Rio to get as powerful as possible, they both resented his success a bit. Had it not been for the war taking so much of their time and effort, they’d have buried themselves in training as well…but that wasn’t an option now, and so long as they both kept improving the strength and skills that was sufficient. Losing levels was not, and juggling their schedules between fighting and training was not always easy, such as today. Paul hadn’t gotten a really good workout in for weeks and his body was going to pay a price for that, but he’d make up for it later during travel or other downtime, for they weren’t fighting this scale of battles everyday out here. Quite the reverse, actually, with both empires usually chasing each other around in a game of cat and mouse rather than going in for outright slug fests aside from when the V’kit’no’sat assaulted another Star Force planet.

Which was why this battle was appearing so odd to both trailblazers.

“What did I miss?”

“I took a nap the past 2 days, you didn’t, so I’m not laying blame,” she said honestly. “Just look at this.”

A map appeared beneath her holographic feet and she pointed with her toes to several locations. “See it?”

“When did those come in?”

“About 8 minutes ago.”

Paul sighed. “So they are coming in heavy.”

“And I think they wanted to draw you out and hammer your fleet, at the minimum. I think we surprised them with how many reinforcements we were able to draw in…not to mention our effective kill rate. Even I was beating them this time.”

“You’ve been taking lessons from me,” Paul joked, rubbing his eyes as he looked back at the map with fleet movements picked up by quiet scouts they had spread across the Devastation Zone. There were major enemy fleets arriving from the core of the galaxy in odd locations, as if they wanted to sneak them in rather than sending them directly to Sol, with Paul assuming there were more in play than what had been discovered to date.

“The Preserve?”

“I know they want it bad, but strategically it gains them nothing.”

“Unless they’re still worried about us using the Uriti offensively.”

“No,” Paul said, shaking his head and immediately regretting it as his vision swooned. He really needed to sleep. “This is a numbers game. They’re not going to bleed ships there while we have inhabited systems to hit. They’ll save the Preserve for last until we start to use it.”

“That was my gut feeling too. So where are they going?”

“Lots of possibilities. They haven’t taken a system in decades, and based off of this,” he said, pointing beneath her glowing feet, “I think they’re going for more than a few.”

“Any idea how they found Tauntaun?”

“No, and that still bugs me. Our other bases could be at risk, which is why we have to spread our fleets again. It doesn’t take this strength level to wipe them off the map.”

“If it was me I’d have hit them all at once if I knew where they were,” Morgan pointed out.

“Same here…and see how much of a response it drew. Could be a security slip on only Tauntaun, but I still need to know what it is.”

“Nothing from the survivors?”

“No…and they’ve been debriefed thoroughly.”

“What about the evac ships?”

“We got three out. They might know something more, but I’m not hopeful. Anything obvious they would have reported before the base fell.”

“Any suggestions beyond warning them?” she asked, referring to the other hidden bases spread throughout the Devastation Zone that serviced the scouts and other sneaking units moving about like mice that the V’kit’no’sat were continually trying to track down and squash, protecting their conquered territory that they intended to keep barren and nearly lifeless save for their growing colony on Earth, which Paul rarely got updates on, given how well defended it was. Getting even a probe into the system and out again was problematic, but it was clear they’d set up more than a forward base there. They’d reintegrated it back into their empire just as before, adding insult to injury as if taking it and the entire ADZ wasn’t bad enough.

“Nothing comes to mind. Maybe after I sleep. How long you staying up?”

“A few more hours then I’m crashing too. You did well, Paul. Glad you’re on our side.”

“Ditto, Morgan. You took a load off when you arrived.”

“I’m surprised no one else got here.”

“Probably didn’t expect it to last long enough to be worth the trip…that or they had trouble to deal with elsewhere.”

“We need a rotation. Both our fleets are wrecked now.”

“I know. We’ll deal with that after we clean up here. Let’s hope those other V’kit’no’sat groups take their time.”

“I’m sure Kara is poking at them. Might be why they’re so hesitant.”

“Hesitant?”

“Just a gut feeling. They should have stayed around and fought here longer. Felt to me like they were playing a safety margin.”

“You might be right, but I’m so dopey I can’t confirm 2+2=4 at the moment. Can I sleep now?”

“Sure. I’m used to outworking you,” she said with a smirk. “And since Riona isn’t here…” Morgan added, blowing him a sarcastic kiss. “Night, night.”

Her hologram cut off before he could respond beyond the frown on his face. Archons didn’t date, but Riona had been labeled as his girlfriend long ago and a lot of the trailblazers continually teased him about it. She was second gen and almost as strong as them, and one of the few non trailblazers that he was as close with, due in part to the time they’d spent together figuring out the bioshield psionic, given the fact that they’d developed it before everyone else did. The two of them had trained, experimented, floundered around until they’d basically written the book on the psionic for others to learn from, but she still wasn’t a trailblazer.

And that, more than anything, is why they felt like teasing him...but also because there was a shred of truth in it. Archons didn’t date because there was a disadvantage in it, combat wise, and they were too good to tolerate anything slowing them down, but Riona and him had a little bit of a connection beyond the others.

Though to be honest, Paul and all of the 12 trailblazer girls also had a ‘little connection’ that was just a part of their inter-badass relationships. They considered each other to be brothers and sisters, but they were also all godly fit and attractive, and the trailblazers were too smart to delude themselves by pretending otherwise.

But Riona wasn’t a trailblazer, so she got the ‘girlfriend’ label and it’d stuck seeing how Paul cringed a little every time he heard it…and he doubted that was going to change, because every time someone said ‘girlfriend’ it was also a slight insult, for those who delved into romance were inferior…

And the trailblazers lived, breathed, and bled superiority. They had to, otherwise they’d never be good enough to toe the line against the V’kit’no’sat, and it’d taken every ounce of naval skill Paul had to pull off this mutually damaging victory.

Though as he’d stated before, it was a team effort. And if he didn’t have an insanely skilled peer and highly trained empire backing him, this fight would have ended in a slaughter rather than a slim victory.

Paul didn’t stay angry at Morgan. He didn’t have the energy too. On impulse he decided to skip the shower and go straight into a regenerative crash…which amounted to him standing up out of his chair, walking a couple steps, then falling face down on the bed where he got to work repairing his frazzled mind. Workouts would follow later, but for now he needed sleep…and lots of it.

3

October 16, 4812

Orlero System (Devastation Zone)

Debris Field

Paul dove off the platform, falling extra fast through the air until he hit the water hands first and shot underneath, pinching his nose closed telekinetically so the water wouldn’t shoot up it. He twisted underneath and angled towards the glowing underwater marker beacons as he kicked to increase his angular speed. He was swimming for time in the ‘heavy water’ course that was entirely submerged with only a few emergency air pockets in case he needed them, but popping his face up into one would disqualify the Archon.

Not many could use this course in its entirety without a breath mask, but as Archons ranked up through their ability levels they got additional psionics. The lowest rank was Adept, which had no powers as those just out of basic training learned to use ambrosia and train to fight in the Trials, gaining experience and power in their physical abilities to ground them before they ever got their first psionic.

Acolyte level was attained after passing through the 99 ability levels of adept, each of which was attained through skills tests, and the transition came with the unlocking of the 7 basic psionics that all Zen’zat defaultly possessed and were lying dormant within Humans. In those 7 came telekinesis and telepathy, known as Lachka and Ikrid, which gave acolytes a huge advantage over adepts and the rest of the Star Force empire…as well as most of the galaxy…despite the fact that they could barely lift a marble in the beginning. Their strength level would increase with training, but size of tissue in their brain was a limiting factor…and the V’kit’no’sat races were much larger, meaning that a novice telekinetic there could lift far more, so the Archons had to be far better than their arch nemesis just to pull even.

And that was why most ground combat against the larger V’kit’no’sat races was fought in mechs and not hand to hand.

Zen’zat, however, Archons did fight…but Zen’zat had growth enhancements that put them in the 7-8 foot range. Star Force had a counterpart to them, known as Knights, which were just as large, but they did not have psionics. Why Star Force didn’t just copy the Zen’zat was a lingering question for outsiders, but within the Archon ranks it was well known.

Speed was more important than strength in most combat scenarios, and with the Zen’zat’s larger bulk came a slight speed penalty that many overcame with additional training, making them faster than Archon adepts and acolytes…which was why those two lowest ranking Archons were not put into the field.

The next level up were Archon Rangers, but they didn’t receive any additional psionics unless they unlocked them on their own through a process known as ‘ascensions’ where they met the genetic prerequisites the V’kit’no’sat had created to judge one’s worth. If such a benchmark occurred a wave of physical and mental stress would wash over an individual that they then had to control. If they couldn’t it would go away and the moment would be lost…or if it came in combat the individual could pass on it because they were in an bad situation…but if they successfully held onto it a flash growth of new psionic tissue would occur within seconds, painfully so, but they would have their upgrade without any medical treatment required.

That was how the trailblazers had unlocked their psionics beyond the basic 7, and after stumbling onto a workaround via the Twins, they learned a mental process were one individual could mimic the state of another and cause their own ascension to trigger. Archon protocol held that a higher ranking individual could share a psionic with a lower ranking one if they deemed them worthy, but that sharing ability required an Ikrid level equal to about a mid level ranger to accomplish.

Such early ‘gifting’ was rare, but it did happen. After another 99 ranger levels were met, one would gain the rank of Striker and continue to improve on their skills, both physical and psionic, until they passed through another 99 levels and transitioned to Padawan rank. When that happened they were paired with a higher level Archon for an apprenticeship of sorts, much like the Jedi Master/Apprentice relationship that the rank was named after, during which they would go through training and field missions as the ‘master’ would gradually share all their tier 2 psionics with the padawan.

That took time, for there were a total of 27 of them, and it was up to the ‘master’ to determine what order they gave them and when, but during the process they also unlocked…either through sharing or medical intervention…the Battlemeld ability.

It worked as a sharing between 2 or more individuals of their senses and thoughts, essentially linking their minds together so they could work together more efficiently, fighting in close quarters without bumping into one another because they felt where each other’s bodies were and how they were going to move before they did.

It was a powerful psionic hidden in the depths of the Zen’zat code that even the V’kit’no’sat Zen’zat had not discovered. The Zak’de’ron had put it there without telling the other races, along with many other psionics that their own personal branch of Zen’zat did unlock and use during the civil war that destroyed the founding race…but irony had it that they believed that the Zak’de’ron had given their personal Zen’zat extra psionics, not realizing that they were buried in the genetic code of all Zen’zat and those that served the rest of the dinosaur empire simply hadn’t worked hard or long enough to awaken them.

Star Force, knowing the threat they faced before the V’kit’no’sat had returned to Earth, had ample motivation to work their asses off along with a little information the Zak’de’ron had implanted in Kara to guide them in finding these hidden psionics, with the battlemeld being the most impressive. Padawans were paired with another so they both could practice the battlemeld psionics, of which there were 19, all of which Star Force had discovered and unlocked.

That meant the padawan rank was full of discovery and becoming acquainted with new abilities, which was why they got through their 99 skill levels they became a Mage, signifying that they had this plethora of almost magical abilities and knew how to use them. Usually it would be a mage paired with a padawan so they could continue to learn the battlemeld and increase the skill level of their psionics while adding only one new one…that being Sav.

It was a tier 3 ability and one that was rare within the V’kit’no’sat Zen’zat, but not unheard of. It upped the processing ability of one’s mind, allowing you to think faster and multitask at much higher volume. This essentially upgraded a lot of the other psionics the Archon already possessed, so this rank was spent incorporating Sav into what was previously learned and gaining a bit of mastery in the long catalog of abilities one had recently gained as a padawan.

At this point, if the Archon was moving along quickly, they’d be improving one level per year, meaning each Archon rank signified about 100 years. That put mages at 500 years old, more or less, and each individual’s progression varied. Archon ranks were determined by their weakest of 5 military division skills, those being Commando, Mech, Aerial, Naval, and Aquatics. Paul’s least favorite was aquatics, because swimming had always given him trouble, but with some help from an Elarioni friend named Ariel he’d managed to become a fairly good swimmer, though his best skillset of the 5 was clearly naval…and by naval, that meant space navy, not water navy, which was designated as ‘aquatics,’ though there was some skill overlap there.

Paul had progressed through all those Archon ranks at or better than the average 1 year/1 level speed, but he had a disadvantage because he and the other trailblazers were having to write the training manuals for them as they went, while those coming up in later generations of Archons had their example and workout notes to learn from…but they still never caught up to the trailblazers, and the trailblazers were keen to make sure they never did, adding yet another small reason for them to continue hammering themselves in the infinite training that had become Archon culture.

The rest of Star Force was also obsessed with training, because it was the only way one would advance and obtain the point of ‘self-sufficiency’ where the body healed at least as much as it was damaged, meaning a person didn’t grow old. If they did and then obtained self-sufficiency at a decent level they’d actually de-age, as had occurred with the Star Force Director Davis, though a lot of credit for that went to Head Trainer Wilson, who valued the creator of Star Force enough to continually pester and drag him through workouts until he got to the self-sufficiency point, for the businessman had originally not been keen on doing workouts.

Now, after a couple millennia, Davis and learned and grown so much that he’d actually gone through Archon basic training and joined their ranks. That was something that had genuinely surprised Paul, for Davis hadn’t told them about it until he’d succeeded, but it made for a good example for others to follow. No matter how damaged your body was, there was a way to recover and regenerate what was lost so long as you were willing to put in the work necessary and had the guidance needed.

Star Force made a point of providing that guidance so even the most naïve of individuals had a starting point to work from if they chose. All children, which Star Force had come to call ‘younglings,’ were trained from birth in how to obtain self-sufficiency and most did, but one had to keep training to maintain it or it would gradually be lost…and therein some people lost their way, but Star Force gave them every opportunity make a comeback and a large chunk of the empire’s population wasn’t growing old as a result.

But that challenge, while impressive in its own right, was just entry level for the Archons. Self-sufficiency was so basic for them they didn’t even think about it, and their healing rates were so high by the time they reached mage that they could stop training altogether and not lose their self-sufficiency for years…but that would never happen, for training was ingrained into them by this point. The only question was how much, how hard, and how fast…with the trailblazers typically outworking everyone else by at least a small margin.

Once an Archon got through the 499 mage levels required to master all the psionics, they became a Titan, gaining the oh so powerful Jumat psionic, then another 499 levels later they became a ViLord and received the other 6 tier 3 psionics…which were the big ones as far as the V’kit’no’sat knew. Also they gained a little outward marker whenever they obtained a tier 3, including Sav, where their irises changed color to a grey with sparkling specs. It had been programed to be able to identify the more advanced Zen’zat at a glance, but within Star Force it denoted the difference between an Archon and Zen’zat, for everyone mage level and above had those eyes…including the psionics that went with them, and all of them by ViLord level, which no Zen’zat in V’kit’no’sat history had ever obtained, other than the Zak’de’ron Zen’zat, whom records of were sparse and incomplete.

But the Zak’de’ron had put even more powerful psionics deep into the Zen’zat code, these buried behind a much different test to unlock, one that occurred within the dream state. Star Force had accessed these, but did not know for certain how many of them there were. To date they’d uncovered 6, one of which was biological gravity drives similar to what allowed starships to fly between stars. That meant Paul could actually fly, but this current training challenge required him to swim using his muscles and he wasn’t about to cheat, for it was designed to make him stronger and he’d only be punishing himself if he did.

When an Archon got past ViLord’s 499 levels they became a Frieza, which was when all the tier 4 psionics that had been discovered were given to them. Most Zen’zat had between 7 and 12 psionics, depending on what they had unlocked through ascensions beyond the basic 7, but currently a newly minted Frieza had 67 and the psionic tissue that came with them all. Paul’s body was packed with it, almost to the point of not being able to handle anymore, but the Zak’de’ron had done their programming well and besides a rare few unintended consequences regarding the order in which the psionics were attained, everything fit perfectly within his body, though he was a bit heavier because of it.

That didn’t visibly slow him down as he swam at decent speed for a Goku, which was lightning fast compared to the lesser Archons. After one passed through the 499 Frieza levels one became a Trunks, then a Piccolo, and not too long ago the trailblazers had created the Goku rank as they began to work their way out of the Piccolo levels, creating harder and harder training requirements to stay ahead of their current skills. About a third of the trailblazers had reached Goku 1, with Paul currently at Goku 18 while Rio was all the way up to Goku 117. Morgan was at Goku 29 and it annoyed Paul that she’d pulled 11 levels ahead of him, but it was what it was. This war wasn’t kind to their training schedule, and fighting the damn Dinos always came first.

But when they weren’t, and as of right now the fleet was finishing recovering their debris and what bits of V’kit’no’sat ships they wanted, Paul and the others were training hard to make up the time lost and push themselves to new heights, both to compete against the others and to increase their power level so they could become more lethal on the battlefield…for while Paul had far more psionics than any Zen’zat in recorded history, he wasn’t stronger than them all. Some had lived hundreds of thousands of years and were faster, stronger, and more experienced than him. With his psionics he could fight them and maybe win, but the longevity that self-sufficiency allowed was a major advantage for very old civilizations…and unfortunately Star Force was relatively new at not even 3 millennia old yet.

The V’kit’no’sat empire was millions of years old, and when Paul ever came across one of the really powerful Zen’zat he needed to be ready…as well as if he had to tackle one of their dinosaur races, many of which he couldn’t even scratch despite his superhuman state.

And at the end of the day, it didn’t matter how physically powerful you were if there was a warship overhead bombarding a planet, which was why naval skill was more important than everything else in this war…but Paul needed to be as powerful as he could in all 5 divisions, because when the aquatic combat came he couldn’t afford to get caught off guard. And Humans were already at a huge disadvantage to the races that actually lived in the water. Fortunately Star Force had a few of those, but aquatic combat against the V’kit’no’sat was where the enemy held the greatest advantage.

It didn’t happen often, but Star Force had a lot of catching up to do and Paul was surrounded by reminders of how inferior he was. The galaxy was so vast and diverse there was no way to dominate it all, so Paul simply focused on improving his skills and facing the challenges that presented themselves…as well as reminding himself that there was no such thing as ‘too much power.’

So Paul continued to swim and swim underwater, drawing on his tier 3 psionic called Lovo’nek that allowed him to breathe oxygen through his skin. There wasn’t that much in the water, so he had to hold back his effort enough to match, but at least he didn’t have to worry about drowning anymore. He could even let his lungs be flooded with water and he wouldn’t die…but that was not pleasant and not what they were designed for, but it was nice to have a backup just in case he got knocked unconscious.

Paul swam through glowing rings, around and through currents, and through moving obstacles all the while fighting against 3x standard gravity that kept trying to pull him to the bottom of the pool given his muscular build that was less than buoyant. He could have cheated and used his Yen’mer to counter it, but that would be pointless so he strained to swim upwards slightly at all times and pull through the thicker water that the gravity compression created.

After 36 minutes he pulled himself out after making several laps, sucking in a breath of air and replenishing the slight lack he’d been tolerating over the last stretch as he ‘sprinted.’ His arms were burning a bit, as they normally did after hard swimming, which was a good sign. Too much burn and he’d damage himself, leaving Paul stiff and sore later, but a little meant he was pushing his skills and his body would adapt and grow stronger for it.

And on top of that, he’d made the course in his 4th best time, meaning the stagnation from his recent lull in training had been burned off and he was back in the groove…swimming wise, anyway.

Paul crawled up out of the pool and stood up, using his telekinesis to wring the water out of his hair and push it off his naked body. Most Archons wore minimal suits when swimming, but Paul had picked up the habit of going in nude because it left him at a slight disadvantage and he wanted his swimming skill to be firmly entrenched…not dependent on clothing and slightly diminished if he ever was forced into the water without them.

The swimming races typically didn’t wear clothing either, so he’d picked up the habit too. When he walked past a few other Archons in the swimming section of the Archon sanctum onboard the Excalibur they didn’t stare. The girl Archons held their gaze a couple seconds longer than the guys, for they didn’t often see him naked, but nudity amongst the Archons was a non-issue. Within Star Force as a whole it wasn’t taboo either, though the more out of shape one got the more they clung to their clothes.

Archons were fitter than fit and not obsessed with sex, so walking around naked was normal when there was a reason to do so.

Paul headed to a nearby equipment room and got dressed in a pair of shorts and a tight T-shirt along with running shoes and headed for a two hour long run before calling his training for the morning over and heading up to the bridge after a shower. Later he’d get something to eat and a quick nap before starting his afternoon workout session in the mech simulator, but for now he wanted to check on the status of the fleet.

“How we doing?” he asked when he got to the bridge.

“We’re about 20 minutes out unless you want to try harvesting a few more.”

Paul frowned. “I’d like to and we haven’t seen even a peek into this system, but I have bad feeling that something is up. Once the sensors are in place go ahead and get the fleet moving.”

“Where to?”

“Toad then Veercom,” he said, referencing nearby system names. “After that the others can break off and return to previous assignments, but I want to keep us all together save for Morgan until then.”

“Backside watch?”

Paul nodded, with the Admiral’s recommendation being spot on. There was no way to make sure that there weren’t V’kit’no’sat spies still in the system, whether they be a stealth ship or probe hanging far off. If the entire fleet left through a jump they’d have to follow before seeing where they went and give the Star Force fleet a chance to find them coming out of a jump. But also allowing the breakoff parts of the combined fleet to go first would mean their ultimate destination would be hidden from spies, whereas if they left from here they’d know which jumplines they left on and could coordinate with other V’kit’no’sat ships to track them down or maybe lay a trap.

Paul wasn’t so sloppy to allow that, so they were all going out the same way and he was going to slam the door shut before they split up. Morgan, however, had the remains of her fleet going elsewhere and from a look at the bridge hologram he could see that she was already repositioning some of them towards a different exiting jumpline.

“Carry on and jump at will,” Paul said, leaving the fleet in Baenen’s capable hands as he often did outside of combat, for an Archon’s time was best spent on training in all 5 disciplines while naval officers only focused on one division, making them specialists, and even handling mundane ship duties fell into that category.

So Paul left him to it as he headed over to the command nexus and shot Morgan a quick holocom before she left, then he headed to one of the ship’s cafeterias and ate an Archon-level amount of food, for no matter how strong or fast he got, he never required less of it and greater expenditures of energy required more fuel. He just had to make sure he didn’t eat too much at once and have that affect his next workout, which was why he was going to hit the mech simulator after a nap, for that didn’t require physical movement when he was plugged into the neural interface.

That allowed Paul to load up now, taking two trays full of carb and sugar-heavy foods along with several bottles of supplement-laced drinks, then he sat down at a table along with other members of the crew with much smaller food loads on their trays…but that again was normal, for they were used to the peculiarities of the elite Archons, including their habit of responding to questions telepathically so they didn’t take time away from shoving food in their mouths and delay themselves from getting back to their insane training schedules.

4

October 24, 4812

Veercom System (Devastation Zone)

Itat

Half of Paul’s fleet had already entered the system before he sent off the message ping, having it emitted in a spherical burst from the Excalibur so not to give away the location of the Star Force outpost in the system. Almost 2 hours later he got a return message that was little more than a blip of data that translated into an ‘all clear’ go ahead for rendezvous.

Paul immediately transferred off his flagship and onto a Ma’kri, with it engaging its stealth field and taking him out to one of six gas giants in the system. There were a handful of uninhabited moons there, two of which used to hold Star Force colonies back when this was part of the Alliance Defense Zone, though the specificity of that name was quickly lost after the lizards had been pushed back and the refuge that Star Force had created for allies fleeing that enemy empire transformed into a center of activity and commerce, becoming a term for the approximate region that held the most heavily industrialized and inhabited systems within Star Force.

Now it was scorched, barren territory thanks to the V’kit’no’sat, and those non-Star Force races that had inhabited a scattering of systems inside the ADZ hadn’t been spared. Anyone with even a hint of connection to Star Force had been targeted, with Paul and others buying them critical time to evacuate to the Rim Region and beyond along with Star Force…but not all of them had made it out, with the V’kit’no’sat leaving a long trail of corpses across the ADZ that had long since turned to dust.

But not all the denizens were gone. One longtime ally of Star Force that had never petitioned to join the empire had been targeted as well, but they had a way to hide from the V’kit’no’sat that Star Force did not. They hadn’t originally been in this system, but had quietly moved in after the two moon colonies were destroyed as part of Project Evanescence.

It was a dangerous Star Force program that Steve-004 had put together when the Hycre had come and begged to help fight the V’kit’no’sat. They didn’t want to join Star Force and relocated most of their population out of the ADZ along with everyone else, but they did want to contribute a large number of volunteers to join Star Force for this specific purpose. They did not want to abandon their homeland, which was now the Devastation Zone, and wanted to stay here in at least some form and help with reconnaissance and anything else they could that did not involve direct combat.

So while Star Force had established outposts throughout the Devastation Zone, most of which had been built before the V’kit’no’sat even invaded, the Evanescence Hycre were given Star Force technology and training and operated under a strict agreement that they wouldn’t share the empire’s secrets with their own civilization, for while the Hycre were one of the closest allies that Star Force had and they’d shared a lot of technology with them previously, it was nothing compared to the inheritance Star Force had taken from the V’kit’no’sat and they weren’t going to share that treasure trove with anyone. If a race wanted to be advanced to their level then they had the option of joining Star Force under Star Force’s terms, but since the Hycre weren’t comfortable with that there had to be some firm barriers between the two that both civilizations maintained with mutual respect.

But to operate in the Devastation Zone was something so dangerous that you couldn’t go in with an inferior tech level, so Project Evanescence had been born and quietly dropped behind enemy lines into this system and many others…but not on the moons. The Hycre were literally floating gas bags that couldn’t inhabit the same room as Humans, for they required sulfur dioxide gas to breath and temperatures and pressures that no Human, nor most of the races in Star Force, could survive.

Temperatures and pressures that were common within gas giants, where the Hycre had always made their home and intermixed with Star Force territory, for the two did not need to compete over the same worlds. Even Epsilon Eridani, the second largest and heavily industrialized system in Star Force prior to the fall, had been shared with the Hycre who inhabited a gas giant there. It was a sign of great trust and respect, and the friendship that had began when Star Force was infantile and in jeopardy of dying to a paltry invasion by the lizards had not been forgotten over the centuries that followed. The Hycre had saved Star Force then, and when the V’kit’no’sat invaded the trailblazers made certain to get the Hycre out. A debt repaid, now that Star Force had outgrown the Hycre by leaps and bounds.

The Hycre didn’t like that, for they wanted to help contribute in at least some small way, and Project Evanescence had them establishing an outpost in two of the gas giants here that weren’t very hospitable to them…similar to snowbound terrain for Humans that required them to live indoors where normally the Hycre could free float through the gas giants’ multiple levels of dense atmosphere like aerial fish. But while it wasn’t ideal, it was habitable in both planets and they established very deep and shielded outposts down near the liquid cores of the otherwise gas planets.

The V’kit’no’sat had destroyed such colonies elsewhere in the ADZ, meaning the Hycre weren’t safe here, but those purging measures had been difficult for the V’kit’no’sat to undertake. Persistent as they were, they’d gone and deleted them all, but finding new inhabitants was not something that was going to happen by accident. Only intentional deep scans of the planets would pick up the new residents, so as long as the Hycre played turtle they wouldn’t get noticed, and Paul was happy to see they were still safe here after the security breach at Tauntaun.

The Ma’kri came into a low polar orbit around the planet but didn’t stay there. It made a lazy slingshot trajectory around it and headed out to do a patrol sweep of all the gas giants, scanning heavily for any signs of V’kit’no’sat presence as a distraction as Paul walked across an open hangar bay facing down to the planet, exposing the interior to view as the rest of the ship appeared like a solid black dot against the starry backdrop of space.

Halfway across the bay, when he got past all the parked dropships and other assorted craft, the fully armored Archon took off running for a few steps then leaned forward, dropping to his belly a meter off the deck and staying there as he used his Yen’mer to levitate in the artificial gravity and increase speed, shooting him out of the hangar and into space with the Ma’kri fully disappearing behind him and the black blob moving off further around orbit as Paul fell…increasing his speed again as he pulled on the gravity of the planet and enhanced it, sucking himself down lower and lower as he also counteracted the orbital momentum, slowing his sideways speed so that when he did finally hit the wisps of the upper atmosphere of the green gas giant his shields didn’t ignite with a wash of friction flame.

Instead the sensor resistant blue/orange armor sank like a missile down through progressively thicker and thicker layers until Paul was forced to slow down. When he reached a certain altitude he began transmitting a homing beacon in a cone, forcing the signal down and not up. A little less than an hour later he sensed the minds in the Hycre ship before his armor’s sensors picked them up, for the soupy atmosphere was so thick it was reducing his limited sensor range down to only a few hundred meters.

But this wasn’t the first time he’d visited a gas giant in his armor, and while he had no navigational references down here he could sense which way the gravity was coming from, hence finding his way back to space again was always easy. To find the Hycre base, however, he had to rely on them to come to him.

When they got close Paul stopped transmitting his beacon and reached into their minds directly, a form of communication that even a Zen’zat couldn’t pick up if they’d been a kilometer off. He could have used his armor’s comm system, but when one was in ultra deep cover it was best to err on the side of caution, so he arranged for an open airlock that he flew himself inside, then it sealed and he waited as the interior changed its gaseous composition as well as heated up, with Paul safe inside his armor with adequate oxygen thanks to the recycling technology in the pack he wore that stripped the carbon off the carbon dioxide he was exhaling and gave him an unlimited amount of oxygen for missions like this that had him overextended into hostile environments.

Once the interior airlock opened Paul flew through the thick interior gases past some of the crew that free floated with a series of tentacles that they used for arms, but they primarily moved around via internal gas bladders and orifices that operated like small jet engines. They had no eyes, mouth, ears, or any other external features save for a single, long, plume-like fin on the top of their spherical bodies that had prompted Star Force to nickname them the ‘Mohawks,’ and that designator had persisted to this day, though they rarely called them that in person.

Paul communicated with them telepathically, and if he had wanted he could have even taken over control of their bodies and made them do whatever he wanted. That was the power that Ikrid gave the V’kit’no’sat over the other races in the galaxy, and aside from Humans, who were descendants of Zen’zat that shared their immunity to Ikrid influence, all the races of Star Force had to wear psionic resistant armor when fighting the enemy, else they’d automatically lose, being forced to turn their own weapons against each other.

Paul had that power too, but there was no need to use it on the Hycre and they’d come to trust the Archons despite being totally helpless against them. They were longtime allies and those Hycre here had specifically asked to join Star Force for this reason, so there was no distrust or fear when Paul arrived…rather the opposite. The presence of an Archon, let alone a trailblazer, was a blessing, for they could fight the V’kit’no’sat head-on where everyone else could not…and in the case of Zen’zat, the Archons were actually superior for their long list of psionics that the enemy infantry had not individually earned.

That was another reason why they hated Star Force so much, because they were ‘cheating’ with regards to the psionics, but there was no way to stop them aside from killing them, and so far they hadn’t managed to get them all and hadn’t yet been able to touch a trailblazer. All 100, or 101 if you counted Kara, were still alive and a continual menace to them, but down here in the gas giant Zen’zat were not an issue. They were useless in the thick gaseous atmosphere with no surface to move around on. Just a lake of liquefied gas at the lower altitudes and a bit of solidified core due to the extreme pressures here.

Paul and even the Hycre didn’t go that deep except in ships, which was where their hardest to get to base was…but if a Tar’vem’jic was fired from orbit it could still hit them that deep, or at least stir up the material so much to do subsequent damage, thus this Evanescence outpost had to remain secret, for ‘hard to get to’ didn’t matter to the V’kit’no’sat. Any Star Force presence in the Devastation Zone they took as a personal affront and would not let it pass even if it took them years to eradicate.

As Paul moved through the ship he had brief conversations with many of the crew, most of whom thanked him for coming, until he came to a special section that had a Human atmosphere inside. He passed through the energy field separating the two then closed the heavy doors over it before risking retracting his helmet and breathing the first non-recycled air in 4 hours.

He blew out a heavy breath, keeping the rest of his armor on a moment longer as he made sure everything was secure in the cubical chamber that had a second rectangular chamber on the end that held Human restroom/shower/sleeping facilities, for all the Evanescence ships were designed with at least one small pocket so they could receive visitors or pick up survivors immediately. If they needed more room they could reconfigure other sections, but that would take time and some scenarios had little to spare.

You didn’t want someone dying inside an Star Force ship because it had the wrong atmosphere and you didn’t have enough time to switch it out, so prudence had this little bit of refuge built for the Archons and others, with one of the side walls being totally transparent and allowing him to look out into the hot sulfur dioxide where many Hycre floated, waiting to talk to him.

WELCOME ARCHON, the translation programing in the room said, for the language the Hycre used was wholly incompatible with Human vocal chords, and vice versa. Paul had gotten good enough with mental translations over the centuries that he didn’t need the computer intervention, but it was more accurate and had been designed with terminology that he didn’t know the Hycre equivalents of. Usually he’d just find the meaning in their minds, viewing snippets of memory if necessary, but that got tedious and using the computer to translate was just more efficient.

“Hello, Tar’vo. We have a problem.”

WHAT IS IT?

“Our base on Tauntaun was discovered. We do not know how yet, and we’ve reviewed everything on our end. We can’t find a slipup.”

AND YOU FEAR WE MAY BE IN JEOPARDY?

“It’s impossible to say without knowing how the breach occurred. How are you set for supplies?”

WE ARE NEARLY SELF-SUFFICIENT NOW. ALL WE LACK ARE ENHANCEMENTS. OUR EXISTENCE IS NOT THREATED BY LOGISTICS.

“And what of your personal self-sufficiency?”

IT IS DIFFICULT TO MAINTAIN IN THESE CONDITIONS. WE CANNOT TRAIN OUTSIDE FOR SUFFICIENT PERIODS OF TIME AND INTERIOR WORKOUTS ARE PROBLEMATIC. WE ARE BUILDING ADDITIONAL FACILITIES. CURRENTLY WE ARE MANAGING ADEQUATE MAINTENANCE. THAT WILL ONLY INCREASE WHEN MORE INFRASTRUCTURE COMES ONLINE.

“Good,” Paul said with a nod, glancing at the slightly different body sizes and colorations of the Hycre. They used to all look alike to him, but now he could tell a few differences even without his telepathy giving him additional insights, but judging their fitness level at a glance was a skill he still hadn’t mastered. Humans were easy to ballpark, but other races had their own physical cues, some of which were damn hard to read, Hycre included. “Report.”

THREE PATROLS NOTED. IDENTICAL SEARCH PATTERN OF THE MOONS. WE BELIEVE THEY ARE DOING PERIODIC SWEEPS EXPECTING STAR FORCE TO RETURN. WE FIND THAT ODD CONSIDERING THEY ARE STILL ATTACKING AND EXPANDING THE BORDER. IT SUGGESTS A LEVEL OF FEAR THAT DOES NOT BEFIT THEM.

“I agree. If we established a full blown colony it’d be easy to spot and eliminate before it got too large to handle. They are being overly persistent. What were the period lengths?”

3 MONTHS 6 DAYS AND 8 MONTHS 2 DAYS.

“Not a fixed circuit then. How long ago was the last?

1 MONTH 18 DAYS.

“What type of ship?”

SINGLE KAEPER CLASS VESSEL ON EACH OCCASION.

“Any stellar activity?”

OUR SENSING CAPABILITIES ARE LIMITED. WE HAVE NOT RECORDED ANY OBVIOUS MOVEMENT UNTIL YOUR FLEET’S ARRIVAL. WE DID NOT DETECT THE KAEPER UNTIL THEY REACHED PLANETARY ORBIT AND BEGAN SCANNING. THEY OPERATED WITH STEALTH.

“Full cloak?”

YES AND NO. TWO OCCASIONS SAW SHIPS WITH SENSOR DAMPENING TECHNOLOGY. THE MIDDLE OF THE THREE OCCASIONS SAW A SHIP WITH A CLOAKING FIELD. IT HAD TO LOWER TO THOROUGLY SCAN.

“They probably don’t want us to know they’re looking unless they find something.”

COULD SUCH A VESSEL HAVE EXPOSED TAUNTAUN?

“No. Our own stealth tech would require an active pulse from them to locate and no one got sloppy on approaches. I don’t have an answer yet.”

THANK YOU FOR THE WARNING.

“My fleet is passing through, so our backside jumppoint is blocked from pursuit. I have to be back onboard the Ma’kri before the last ship comes through just in case they are being bold enough to follow,” Paul said, using the mental interface in his helmetless armor to query the Hycre’s computer and execute a data dump. “Uploading updates.”

RECEIVED, the Hycre confirmed, with Paul noticing twitches in those that saw the recent battle data pop up as they talked amongst themselves for a moment. DO YOU WISH TO REPLENISH DRONES?

“Yes. How many do you have available?”

36 CRUISERS 18 CORVETTES.

“I’ll take them all.”

HOW DO YOU WISH TO EXECUTE THE TRANSFER?

Paul thought about that for a moment. There was no safe way to do it if someone was watching and he was hesitant about using their traditional methods after Tauntaun, but there was no point around the fact that his fleet would be increasing its ship count unless he brought a jumpship down into the gas giant and loaded up there, but that maneuver would be easy to see and give away the location of the base…unless it was cloaked, but even then one of the jumpships in stellar orbit would go missing for hours.

Paul wanted to be safe, but he wasn’t going to get paranoid. That would be a victory for the V’kit’no’sat without them even having to fire a single shot, and Paul wanted as many replacements for his lost drones as he could get, even if this group would only scratch at the total he’d lost, which was upwards of half a million of the smaller ships. But out in the Devastation Zone getting replacements was not easy and he needed his fleet as strong as possible for whatever the V’kit’no’sat’s next move was…which he felt would be sooner rather than later.

“Same procedure. I’ll transfer the coordinates personally.”

DO YOU WISH A FULL STATUS REPORT NOW OR A DATAFILE TO TAKE WITH YOU?

“Now. I won’t be able to ask questions later and I’ve got a few hours. Take me through what you’ve accomplished and I’ll see if I can tweak it a little.”

5

When Paul flew back up to orbit he waited, visible as a tiny blip on sensors for anyone looking close enough, as a blob of signal nothingness moved to intercept him. Most ships’ sensors couldn’t see it, and only the more advanced ones with special programming could use the backlight from the green gas giant to spot the pseudo-black shape that seemed to pull the surrounding light in around it. If not for the minds onboard Paul would only have noticed the stars going out as it approached, then a rectangle of light lit up as one of the hangar doors opened as it quickly approached.

Paul flew backwards, picking up speed to match as he angled in enough to hit a capture field just outside. Like a giant mitt it caught the trailblazer and accelerated him up to speed gently as the Ma’kri continued in its orbit, knowing that if any V’kit’no’sat ships or probes were here they wouldn’t see it deviate from its previous course. Paul’s tiny armored silhouette would have been easier to spot, but he had minimal sensor dampening capabilities that would hide him from anything but a full intensity scan. Hopefully that meant his little trip down hadn’t been noticed, but he wasn’t exactly invisible.

When the capture field matched his speed to the ship it pulled him inside and the hangar disappeared again as the Ma’kri continued its orbit that it wouldn’t break for another 18 minutes, then it would head back to one of the moons, give it another full scan, then travel to stellar orbit where the bulk of the fleet was. Parts of it were already reconfiguring into smaller fleet groups that were heading off in multiple directions, but most of those hadn’t fully assembled yet at their outgoing jumppoints.

The bulk of the fleet was still Paul’s and would be maintaining its grouping as they left, but the smaller reinforcements were going back where they came and the sooner the better. Having everyone grouped together was advantageous in some circumstances, but it left other areas open to attacks in the absence of backup and the Devastation Zone was tricky enough to get around as it was. Star Force couldn’t keep a full comm relay network up and running, so they had to pick and choose systems and try to hide the relays from the V’kit’no’sat. This system had none, as did many others, so if there was a call for help elsewhere coming in right now Paul wouldn’t know about it, so he needed to get the smaller fleet groups back out there immediately to cover for that possibility.

When the Ma’kri dropped its sensor field it was back in stellar orbit and Paul took a dropship across the gap to his command ship, sending the order before he got there for all 18 of his specialized Warship-class jumpships to engage their stealth fields, with them dropping off the battlemap as if they didn’t exist.

Normally the jumpships did not carry the stealth fields, and these had to cannibalize parts of their interior structure to accommodate it, meaning they could carry less drones than the other vessels, but these were necessary to visit the Hycre worlds in private, so as Paul got back onboard the Excalibur and oversaw the continuing fleet reconfiguration the specially modified jumpships, each more than 20 miles long and looking like slightly modified cylinders, traveled out to the gas giant and slowly settled down into the upper atmosphere until their sensor defying blobs disappeared beneath it.

They dropped low enough for the gasses to provide them cover then lowered the underside of the field, allowing the waiting Hycre below to see them, who then sent the smaller rectangular drones up from the depths and into the open docking slots after they released the packets of salvage they’d collected. Those sunk down through the planet’s layers until Hycre ships intercepted and caught them, preventing them from going so low they’d lose them in the liquid layer where they were currently mining a partially submerged moon that had been sucked down into the planet long ago.

It was actually sticking out above the liquid layer on one side of the planet, making the center of gravity slightly askew, but from the exterior the planet looked like a perfect sphere as the gasses surrounded everything at the center. That broken and swallowed up moon as the reason Star Force had put the Hycre here. If it wasn’t then the planet wouldn’t be able to produce new drones, for getting the necessary raw materials would require combing the liquid and solid layers of the planet and mining smaller bits of debris. The Hycre had done so long ago in their history, finding the bits and pieces necessary to build their first habitats and then starships that had allowed them to visit the inhospitable rocky worlds where they found the treasure troves of raw materials that their gas giants lacked.

The swallowed up moon gave them a fair amount to work with, but the salvage was far richer and there was no need to haul it halfway across the Devastation Zone in the bellies of the mostly empty warships to find a place to make use of it. The jumpships themselves were capable of making repairs and deconstructing a little of it, but not the mass amounts that Paul had ordered picked up. He gave the Hycre a lot of the salvage, at least as far as their current infrastructure was concerned, with only one of the Warship-class jumpships keeping its bays open for the 54 new drones to fly up into and dock.

All the jumpships reactivated their full stealth fields and eased up back into orbit, knowing that someone taking a close look would see the little null spots while they were above the green orb, but once they got away from it and back into deep space there was nothing but a few pinpricks of starlight to give them away as they returned to the fleet then popped back up on the battlemap before the last of the fleet arrived insystem.

If any V’kit’no’sat ship was following them it’d come later, with Paul’s interaction with the Hycre now over. Hopefully that would keep them secret and safe, but there was no way of knowing for sure if there was a hidden probe somewhere here. They’d purposefully neglected putting a hidden comm relay in the system to avoid scrutiny and so far the Hycre had gone unnoticed despite these occasional visits, but the discovery Tauntaun still bugged Paul to no end.

It took two more jumps before Paul’s now smaller fleet came across a system with a comm relay, which was the first chance for him to get a glimpse of what was going on elsewhere in the Devastation Zone. The lag of relays sending pulses between systems and then passing them on was always frustrating, but it provided so much information that it was an invaluable tool…which was why the V’kit’no’sat made a point of hunting down and destroying the relays whenever and wherever they could.

And another one had gone offline on the other side of Earth, far away from Paul’s current location but the approaching ship had been detected and the information on it had been transmitted before the relay went down, then trickled across the grid to every other relay that then stored the information into a growing packet that ships would eventually pick up. Each packet had a timestamp on the data so ships could get records going as far back as necessary without having to query the relays to dump everything they contained each and every time.

The Excalibur and every other ship in the fleet got updates, which the trailblazer immediately reviewed at lightning speed as his mind was plugged into the command nexus and browsing through all the minutia looking for…

Paul stopped his browsing when he came across the report from some of the damaged jumpships he’d detached to get repairs. They’d picked up survivors from one of the evacuation ships that Paul thought he’d gotten away safely, but apparently the V’kit’no’sat had a ship outside the system that was faster and had run them to ground. He read the report from Tyrenk-1482995, the only surviving Archon from the ship, concerning the deaths of all but two others when a Kat’vo vessel had been taken out within the atmosphere of a jungle world via a very clever ramming maneuver.

The surviving crew members of both ships had fought it out on the surface with the Archon narrowly prevailing while losing almost all of those crew that he was trying to protect. Paul’s gut clenched a bit, knowing what that sort of situation would feel like, and noted the occurrence of a spontaneous psionic development in another surviving Human…but that wasn’t what had got his primary attention.

In the Archon’s report the last of the Kat’vo had died trying to destroy components onboard their crashed ship. That should not have happened, because the V’kit’no’sat knew that Star Force already had copies of their standard technology. Whatever was onboard that Kaeper-class vessel had to be something new, but the remains of that vessel were in such a state of disarray the recovery team that had picked up the Archon and survivors didn’t know what it was, though they’d had taken onboard all the relevant pieces.

There was no further word about it, but Paul knew where they were going and he needed to know what that ship contained, for it had been a scout vessel trailing Morgan’s fleet that she hadn’t noticed and could be involved in how Tauntaun was discovered. Paul had no hard proof of that, but his gut told him this was important so he diverted his fleet to the temporary location of the Ghostblade mobile shipyard at maximum jump speed.

Hopefully the V’kit’no’sat hadn’t picked up on this loss yet, but if and when they came across the ship wreckage and investigated they’d know…but until they did Paul had a window of opportunity he intended to stretch out as far as possible.

To that end he split off a chunk of his fleet to go to the Chawik System and hold stellar orbit, discouraging the V’kit’no’sat from taking a look at the wreckage…or perhaps even finding it…for as long as possible. If Tyrenk hadn’t made that desperate and brilliant ramming maneuver to disable the Kaeper Star Force would not have had this opportunity, as the V’kit’no’sat knew they’d outmatched the evacuation ship and it should have made for an easy kill. Their hatred of Star Force probably had caused them to chase when they should have kept to the shadows, and if this slip-up of theirs did give Star Force an insight into some new technology of theirs Paul needed to take advantage of it quickly.

When he finally arrived in the Harver System he was glad to see that the Ghostblade fleet hadn’t left yet, still hidden amongst a far-out asteroid belt as they worked to repair some of the ships he’d sent. The others had already left, but after a quick comm to Ghostblade he found out that the salvage was still here and their techs were already working on it…and were thoroughly stumped.

Paul hopped on a dropship and flew over to the massive, spindly construct that was 349 miles wide. Most of the interior space was empty, looking like a spider with legs everywhere that cradled ships they were working on, but it still dwarfed everything in Paul’s fleet and would outmass them by far when it curled up into travel mode when the Ghostblade fleet left the system. For now they were still harvesting resources from the asteroid belt as the nomad-like Clan moved around the Devastation Zone and areas beyond it and Star Force territory, hiding out and performing odd missions that allowed them to stay off the V’kit’no’sat’s radar for the most part, though they did have a long list of enemy ship kills to their credit, though all of them were from pirate-like ambush attacks rather than straight up fleet versus fleet combat.

Paul’s tiny dropship was lost in the size of the shipyard as it landed in one of the ‘thin’ spider legs that was itself miles wide, dropping the trailblazer off with several Ghostblade Archons waiting to meet him.

ViLord Todi-1001934 was the ranking Archon here and he had a couple of Titans with him, all three of which were in uniform with only the colored stripe down the outside of their arms and legs denoting their rank on the otherwise pure white Archon garb. Paul was dressed the same, not wearing any armor, except his rank was high enough that it required two stripes, one orange and one blue, denoting his Goku-level that far surpassed the three Archons before him.

“Some type of sensor,” Todi said before Paul had a chance to speak, “but we don’t have a clue how it works yet. The Viks did a good job smashing it, but we’re also guessing it works on some level of physics we’re not familiar with.”

Paul raised a blue eyebrow. “Sensor? You’re sure?”

“Fairly,” Todi said as the four Archons began walking together across the hangar. “We’ve identified an emitter and receiver, but how they function is speculative. They have some type of material that is not atomic and above our tech level. We’re doing what we can, but I think you’re going to have to take this to the top tier techs. There’s nothing like this even mentioned in the pyramid database. We’ve even checked the non-V’kit’no’sat entries.”

“Damn it,” Paul whisper swore. “They found Tauntaun, and maybe with this. We need to know what its range is or every facility we have could be at risk.”

“Can’t hide from what we can’t see, I know. Wish we had better results for you, but we haven’t had a lot of time to work on the…unfamiliar aspects.”

“What can you rule out?”

“Everything we already know. It doesn’t match up against any simulations, but without functioning components we’re extremely limited as far as testing goes. The Kat’vo did a good job in pulverizing it, but they did leave a few intact chunks that our techs are scratching their heads over.”

“Including your master tech?”

“She’s been on it day and night, but recommends we get this to Vreemont or even Tennisonne ASAP.”

“Tennisonne is too far away. We’ve got major V’kit’no’sat fleet movement and I need an answer yesterday,” he said as the four of them walked into a lift. Todi input the destination coordinates and they started traveling at great speed throughout the tunnels in the shipyard to get where they needed to go.

“Talk to Raena then. All I know is the key components are crystal based and it’s not atomic crystal.”

“Sub-atomic lattice?”

“There’s something in it that we can’t identify, but there are a large amount of grid-locked lotos. Beyond that don’t ask me.”

“Lotos,” Paul said, letting his mind drift in thought as the box-like lift car traveled through the ‘spider leg’ and towards the main body of the shipyard.

Lotos were a tier 2 particle slightly larger than an electron that bonded with select solari. In their individual state they would lightly pool around each other, making them basically useless particles. Their only known use was in combination with solari to form basic building block compounds. He didn’t even know how to grid lock lotos, but while he had acquired a fairly good understanding of physics he’d never tested out as a tech, only worked with Star Force’s best to develop several key pieces of equipment.

He wished Tennisonne was close, for he was the best there was at figuring out new things, but Vreemont was far closer…except he didn’t know exactly where. Ghostblade fleets were split up and roaming constantly, with very few knowing where they actually were.

“What’s the fastest way to get this to Vreemont?”

“Better question is how to get Vreemont here. There’s a lot of debris that we have the tools to analyze that a courier ship wouldn’t…if you’re interested in maximizing time.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No. We’ll have to call him in.”

“Do you know where he was last?”

“We can probably narrow it down. Thinking of a rendezvous?”

“Yes. Start prepping to move.”

“The shipyard? We’ve got too many berths filled to move.”

“Leave behind what you can’t carry. This takes precedence.”

“You think it’s that important?”

“I do.”

Todi exchanged glances and a telepathic conversion with one of the Titans, then the lift stopped early and the junior Archon got off, leaving the three remaining to continue on towards where the debris was being analyzed.

“It’ll be a few hours at minimum unless you want us to get sloppy?”

“Don’t waste anything, but we need to find out what they can do before we lose another base.”

“Tauntaun?”

“Hopefully…or they’ve got two new pieces of tech in the field.”

Todi grimaced. “I see your point.”

“We can confirm one point,” the other Titan with them added.

“And that is?” Paul asked her.

“How the functioning…call it a sensor package…works regarding range. We have the data from the intercept.”

“Conclusions?”

“A beam we can’t see, with maybe a slightly greater range than our own. I don’t think it’s too much farther, or the scout ship would have kept a greater distance while tracking Morgan’s fleet.”

“A beam we can’t see?”

“That’s me guessing, but if the physics are something new I think that would be the worst case scenario.”

“Full sensor beams and we couldn’t track them. Yeah, that’d be bad, but the Kaeper was using conventional sensors too.”

“Overlap to conceal during engagement?”

“Possible,” Todi agreed, “but speculation until we can get some solid data.”

“Or a beam that can pass through stealth fields so they can stay hidden while tracking,” Paul added. “There are many unpleasant possibilities if they’re working with a new level of physics.”

“So much for their lazy tech progression.”

“They respond to threats,” Paul reminded the ViLord. “The harder they’re pushed the more they adapt and grow. This may be a sign that we’re fighting them a little too evenly for their egos to take.”

“So the more we win the more dangerous they get?”

“Pretty much,” Paul agreed. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

“Very. We could be at risk from this too?”

“If they can follow unseen…” Paul said, confirming the obvious problem with Ghostblade keeping hidden.

“Any chance this new tech is an enhanced stealth system?” the Titan asked.

“You said no a moment ago,” Paul reminded him.

“Then we have a way to find them.”

“Mine the jumppoints with active sensor buoys?”

“Even if they have cloaking devices they can’t handle the stellar radiation at braking speeds. Add our own sensor bursts and we can find these ships…assuming this one wasn’t a prototype.”

“I doubt we’re that lucky,” Todi added.

“It’s a thought,” Paul agreed, “but if they also have probes in place it won’t catch those. We need to know they can do. Until then we’re going to be vulnerable.”

“They could run us out of the Devastation Zone entirely?”

“You might be right, but they’ll have to know where to look and they felt like hitting Tauntaun first. Something else is going on beyond just a new toy.”

“Or they would have waited for a longer list of targets to hit simultaneously,” Todi added. “They’re testing us.”

“Or distracting. Either way they’ve got a lot of hammers heading this way.”

“What do you need from us?” the Titan asked. “Meaning Ghostblade.”

“Lay low until we figure this out. No more raids and keep movement to a minimum. If there’s already been damage done, we need to minimize it.”

“Wonderful,” Todi groaned. “Are we looking at another wave of border losses?”

Paul looked directly at him, grey sparkling eyes to grey sparkling eyes. “Depends how many ships they end up sending, but this new toy doesn’t help them assault worlds unless we’re way off on the speculation. They’ll have to hit us hard and I think they’re going to try soon, but we’re not on our heels anymore. They’ll have to up their efforts a lot to put us back there. Let’s hope we’re not that popular yet.”

“The ass kicking you just laid on them might change their perspective,” Todi cautioned.

“We’ll see,” Paul said as the lift doors finally opened. “Either way, we fight whatever comes and evacuate if needed. Same old same old.”

“Except they might be shutting down our ability to hit them in their territory,” the Titan said as the three walked out at a decent clip.

“Not if we can figure out what we’ve got…and we’re a lot better at playing catchup than they are.”

“Meaning that if they find out we’ve got it they’ll come for us? Is that why we’re moving?” Todi asked.

“No…just a side benefit,” Paul said, already having considered that possibility.

6

Paul and his fleet stuck around until the Ghostblade shipyard and assembled fleet was ready to leave, just in case they had been followed here. He didn’t want a follow up assault hitting them before they had a chance to figure out what this new tech the V’kit’no’sat had created was. The possibility of that was low, but easily avoided by delaying their departure.

When the Ghostblade fleet finally did jump out, Paul sent a third of his Warship-class jumpships with them after reshuffling the drone count a bit to give them a few extra. That left the remaining 2/3rds with Paul, most of which were well below 50% with the extra carry capacity partially filled with salvaged debris.

Still, Paul had a fleet that no roaming V’kit’no’sat battlegroup…let alone a scout…would tangle with, but he needed to get his ships refurbished and back into patrol rotation before the next big hit came. If it occurred now he wouldn’t have the firepower needed to repulse it, and having to wait on others to get to wherever the hit came down would take time. If it happened near his fleet he needed to be ready, so he had Admiral Baeren set course rimward from their position in the galaxy while angling spinward.

Paul still thought of it as ‘northwest’ in mind’s eye, but his fleet couldn’t head straight in any direction he liked. They had to bounce from star to star, so the course they laid in had them traveling between dozens of systems in a zigzaggy line using the larger stars that allowed greater transit speeds. Black holes offered the quickest routes, but there were none available from his current position. On the galaxy map they’d acquired from the V’kit’no’sat there were many such routes, but each required a black hole on the either end, for when you accelerated super fast you also had to have a large gravity well to brake against…else you’d plow right into the star and die instantly.

So fast travel throughout the galaxy had trade routes moving through standard jumplanes to connect from one black hole link to another. There were some in the Devastation Zone, but they were always patrolled and essentially shut down by the V’kit’no’sat. Star Force could run through them, given their engine speed and size of the black hole systems, but the once massive amount of traffic that flowed through was now gone, leaving them empty and barren…just like the rest of the Devastation Zone…and it seemed the V’kit’no’sat wanted to keep it that way until they finally finished off annihilating Star Force.

They’d done so much damage to the Human-led empire it seemed incalculable…but Paul knew exactly what had been done, where, and how. He also knew that Star Force was a lot bigger rimward now than it had been before, and they were a long way from being defeated. Each day Paul and the others held the line, the planets on Star Force’s side digging in deeper, building more anti-orbital batteries, stronger shield generators, additional Sentinel-class defense platforms and other impediments to the beatdown the V’kit’no’sat were trying to continue exacting on Star Force.

They were winning. There was no denying that. But Star Force was bleeding the V’kit’no’sat heavily for each victory they racked up and he and others had guessed that they had chosen to stop the constant assaults until they could assemble a larger attack force, hence the lull in major activity in recent years. If that was true then the hammer blow was coming now and Paul didn’t like leading a damaged and heavily weakened fleet. He wasn’t the only trailblazer out here and didn’t have even a tenth of the ships roaming about and contesting with the V’kit’no’sat assigned to him, but the Devastation Zone was so large now that they were by necessity spread out, and if the enemy could spot the holes in their positioning they could hit and take a system before Paul could get his fleet back up to full strength.

Which was why Paul was starting to think the assault on Tauntaun had been fought the way it was just for that reason. Paul wanted a chance to grind down the V’kit’no’sat and they had wanted to grind him down…meaning they wanted combat to diminish Star Force’s number of chess pieces on the board so when they made their move Paul and others would have less in position to reinforce wherever they hit.

That was why Paul wasn’t personally escorting the Ghostblade fleet and getting answers as soon as possible. If and when they discovered anything he’d get the information belatedly through the relay grid…assuming it was still active. If the V’kit’no’sat could find the base on Tauntaun then they might also be able to find the relays and start plucking them en mass…which would black out Star Force’s ability to communicate with each other across the Devastation Zone and leave the front blind to any incoming assault force.

There were many small outposts within the DZ that he could get replacement ships from, but few with sufficient numbers to replace what he’d lost. Actually there was only one place he could go without returning to the front and stealing ships away from some system’s defense fleet. A place the V’kit’no’sat could not go…or rather wouldn’t after having suffered defeat after defeat in such horrific numbers that Star Force owned a piece of territory that the V’kit’no’sat had given up on taking.

Or at least they’d given up on taking it prior to erasing the rest of Star Force, for hitting the front was far easier in comparison than hitting the Uriti Preserve. Though in truth it wasn’t Star Force territory, but rather a group of star systems where Star Force kept some very powerful allies and looked after them…and those allies were the reason why the V’kit’no’sat would not go anywhere near those systems now.

It took nearly 5 weeks to get to the Preserve, with them entering via the Willy System, one of 34 system in the Uriti Preserve. As soon as they came out of their jump they were met by a fleet of Star Force ships with many others present…but no Uriti. There were some sedas nearby as well, but further off in the system there were 3 inhabited planets. That hadn’t originally been the plan for the Preserve, for the Uriti could destroy them if they so much as sneezed, but over the centuries the relationship between the Uriti and their handlers had become so reliable that Star Force was now comfortable building permanent structures in the Preserve…and daring the V’kit’no’sat to come get them.

A quick look at the battlemap data for this system told Paul that the Uriti were not here at present, and he knew they rotated through the 34 systems randomly. In the past they had traveled in one group, but even after the V’kit’no’sat hit Earth and this long and costly war dragged on more Uriti were being collected from their hidden slumber and brought here by powerful allies whose only interaction with Star Force was due to the Uriti.

They all had a vested interest in seeing them contained, for they were so powerful that a war long ago, even before the V’kit’no’sat existed, saw them roaming the galaxy destroying systems singlehandedly. They were an altered form of Hadarak that plagued the central core of the galaxy and which the V’kit’no’sat had been formed to fight and contain…but the Uriti were different. Bioengineered to be weapons of even greater power, the race whose twisted genius spawned them used the Uriti to extort the outer rim into submission.

A massive alliance from across the galaxy rose to oppose them, but the Uriti were too powerful to be destroyed and a means to sedate them was the key to the downfall of their creators. The sedated Uriti were then taken into protective custody and hidden away in vaults across the galaxy where robotic custodians maintained their sedation, for even without their masters giving them orders they would roam and destroy randomly, thus the containment had to be maintained at all costs.

One of those Uriti had accidentally been released in The Nexus’s territory, and they were completely unable to destroy or contain it, having to fight and lose numerous battles just to keep it from spreading its minions across the galaxy once again. Star Force came to their rescue, bringing the impossible knowledge of how to command the Uriti as their original masters did…and ended that Uriti’s rampage with a simple order.

Star Force had then learned from the The Nexus that they were guarding other sedated and hidden Uriti, which had prompted Star Force to create the Uriti Preserve and to bring them all out of stasis…but The Nexus only knew the location of a few. When word of the Uriti being released spread across the galaxy, or rather to those looking for that information, new and powerful races arrived at the Preserve to investigate the situation. They were near to destroying Star Force to deny them control of the Uriti, but doing so would send the Uriti on an uncontrolled rampage again and they knew it.

That scenario had them try to steal the information of how to communicate with the Uriti, but other races helped them maintain security and eventually Star Force became trusted enough for the other races, some from the other side of the galaxy, to uncover and transport the sleeping Uriti to the Preserve…thus removing the threat of them waking up and going on a rampage in their territory. That meant Star Force was continually gaining more, and to date had acquired 73 of the 118 originally created.

Two of those had been confirmed destroyed during the ancient war when the Uriti creators hadn’t yet perfected their massive bioweapons. That left 116 apparently hidden within the galaxy just waiting to be woke up, so it was to everyone’s benefit that they be found and transported to the Preserve where they would be awakened with the other Uriti nearby to explain things to them in addition to having a Uriti wrangler there to communicate directly with them.

Those Wranglers, all powerful Archons, wore a special gauntlet that allowed them to interface their own telepathy to communicate with the massive creatures without frying their own brains from the enormous telepathic presence of the Uriti, as well as doing so in the proper way that they would respond to orders. That ‘way’ was a closely guarded secret, and the Wranglers were among the most non-visible Archons in the galaxy as they were always in danger of outside influences trying to get access to them and steal their secrets…for a single Uriti under your command was worth more than all the warfleets of most of the races in the galaxy…not including the V’kit’no’sat. They could kill Hadarak and had come close to killing the Uriti in past battles, but with Star Force’s help and the addition of many highly advanced fleets from across the galaxy, there was no way the V’kit’no’sat were going to come in here and destroy the Uriti.

More than that, these races did not want Star Force being destroyed and the Uriti running free again…or worse, the V’kit’no’sat or someone else taking the reins of control from them. Star Force had gradually proven their trustworthiness…to some. Many of the races with a presence in the Preserve were here to observe because they did not trust Star Force, but many did and were committed to keeping the V’kit’no’sat out and the Uriti here, and regardless of the V’kit’no’sat’s stubbornness they had finally figured out that they should stop trying and dying…for now.

Paul knew they’d be back later, for there was no way they were going to allow the Uriti to exist, let alone in anyone else’s control, but they didn’t have the ships necessary to dent the Preserve deployed out here yet. And if they did, it would be much easier to hammer the rest of Star Force first. Why the V’kit’no’sat hadn’t sent their full might out here was a lingering question, though Paul knew they had to keep a lot of forces along the Hadarak border to fight and contain them, else the Hadarak would push out from the core and unleash their own version of galactic domination.

So when Paul’s fleet came out at the jumppoint and did not find any Uriti, they did find many of those allied races here along with a guardian Star Force fleet even larger than Paul’s, with the waiting fleets ready to hit any enemies coming in immediately and then buying enough time for one of the Uriti herds to arrive. They moved very slowly between star systems, but Star Force had built carriers for them to be used in emergency situations, so even if the V’kit’no’sat hit a system in the Preserve where the Uriti currently were not, they could get here eventually and lay down the hammer…assuming the defending races didn’t already cut them to shreds.

There were some here, including the Knights of Quenar, whose technology was beyond Star Force’s understanding. Were they superior to Star Force was a lingering question, with no one knowing for sure, but they had damaged the V’kit’no’sat enough in previous battles to be a match for them, making their dominance a distinct possibility.

But Paul didn’t see any of their ships here…nor would he. They operated with what appeared to be perfect cloaking devices, so they were probably patrolling the system somewhere nearby, for they put up with NO interference in the Preserve. Star Force actually had to intervene in some cases where a random ship would accidentally enter and they went after it, but the relationship between Star Force and the KOQ had been ironed out in the past and they now worked well together…while keeping a respectful distance. They were allies with regards to the Uriti and nothing more, and both sides knew it.

Paul’s fleet moved past the defenders as they made way for his ships as they arrived in convoy and headed around stellar orbit to another jumpline. While there were a lot of ships here, including some massive shipyards continually being expanded in the colonies, this was not where he was going to get reinforcements from. That would be two systems over, so Paul’s fleet passed through the Willy System and jumped again to the Degar System. From there they moved deeper into the Preserve and arrived at a partially nebula-encased star that limited the jumplines in and out.

It was the Jurassic System and the favorite playground of the Uriti due to its five stars that had carved out vast tracks in the nebula and were continuing to suck up bits of it with each rotation around the gigantic pair in the center. In addition there were a handful of unremarkable planets that now contained highly developed Star Force cities, but it was the level of infrastructure in orbit around them that was amazing.

With this essentially being a safe haven against the V’kit’no’sat there was a little bit of everything here, including discarded wrecks of ships from non-Star Force races that had fled the now destroyed ADZ through this location. Gone were the refugees, long since moved out to the rim, but their damaged hulks still floated in graveyard orbits where salvage teams were occasionally picking over them for useful components while the bulk of the industry here was stellar mining and the total consumption of one of the planets.

Right now it looked like a giant piece of cheese that rats had gotten into, with huge craters where material had been excavated. Paul knew it wasn’t Uriti damage, so to speak, but large sections of it contained the Uriti’s minions who were handling part of the deconstruction, for the gigantic space-living creatures had the ability to spawn robot-like biological creations of tiny size to do their bidding, and those, when en mass, were just as dangerous to the galaxy as the Uriti themselves were.

Star Force’s allies hadn’t been thrilled when the Wranglers started to experiment with using them, but now they were heavily involved in the defense of the Preserve and on the world designated ‘Lego’ as they helped to pull it apart piece by piece, some of which went to the Uriti as food.

When Paul arrived in the system he saw that they were here too, or at least 13 of them were…all but two of which were currently bathing inside the stars. The two that were sitting in orbit around one of the outer stars were Zelda and Bahamut, with Bahamut being one of the earliest ones to join the Preserve and had taken on a dominant role within their curious social behavior. It was currently the defacto leader of this herd, though they rotated them around so they all had access to each other eventually.

Bahamut, like all of the Uriti, had its own unique shape with thick, giant wings, a long neck/snout, and stubby tail tip. It had no eyes, ears, or other surface features, looking more like the hull of a warship than any living being in the galaxy. It saw through sensors of its own, with the wings not actually used for flight. It moved on its own biological gravity drives similar to what Paul’s body had, allowing it to grip and push off of gravity wells…and the bigger the better, which was why the Uriti and Hadarak really liked black holes, though there were none in the Preserve, but the stars at the center of this system were nearly large enough to become one, altering their light output to eerie levels.

It would have been a ‘dim’ system without the other three stars in higher orbits, as the emissions from the center two stars were slowed greatly by the gravity before they could escape it, but for the Uriti and Paul’s ships the gravity wasn’t an issue, for the stronger it became the more power his engines had. So long as he didn’t come in contact with any of the stellar matter, high mass stars and black holes weren’t something to fear other than the sensor distortions that occurred around them.

The tracking markers for the Uriti within the stars were theoretical, for they couldn’t actually track them that deep with the signal distortion, and had they been normal sized stars it would have been difficult too despite their size. Bahamut had been 24 miles long and 38 wide, wing tip to wing tip, when they’d acquired him in the Preserve, but now he was over 50 miles wide and continuing to grow so long as he kept receiving ample amounts of nutrients and the training that Star Force was so well known for.

The other Uriti were a mix of those smaller and larger, with the biggest being the aptly named ‘Godzilla’ that was shaped like a tri-blade with a radius of 72 miles and a thickness of each ‘blade’ at 23 miles near the midsection that blossomed out into an approximate sphere a few miles wider. Godzilla wasn’t in this system at the moment, but with the largest V’kit’no’sat line warship being 36 miles in diameter, the Uriti having armor superior to even Yeg’gor, coupled with a regeneration rate that was crazy fast, the V’kit’no’sat were outmatched and outmassed even without the offensive weaponry that the Uriti creators had added to their already formidable Hadarak origins.

“Hello fellas,” Paul said from the command nexus as he got updates on their status through the battlemap, in addition to everything else in the system, including the pool of waiting drone warships stacked lazily in a holding orbit around the smallest of the planets…over a million of them currently unassigned to any ship or system defense force. That number may have seemed like a lot, and on its face it was, but if on average each Warship-class jumpship carried 100 drones, then then a million would fit into 10,000 jumpships…and Paul’s fleet that was still jumping in contained 7,382 of those ships, though of various models and makes.

Rarely were jumpships lost, but the drones were fired off like ammunition against the V’kit’no’sat and required replacement. This system was the endpoint of a major resupply route across the Devastation Zone from the rim, coming from systems far beyond the front that were doing nothing but producing more drones for the war effort, many of which were coming from the Paladin, with some of their carrier ships still in the system ostensibly having brought more of the drones in recently.

Rushing them across the DZ was something that the V’kit’no’sat were always trying to stop, so the route in constantly changed, but when they got to the Preserve they were safe and allowed to pool here for fleets like Paul’s to pick up replacements from, and the trailblazer was happy to see that there was enough to top off all of his ships here, though he’d be taking a lot of them for himself and a third of his original fleet was still out with Ghostblade and underequipped.

But they’d have to make do for now and already had enough to protect a moving target. It was the planets that couldn’t move that would need huge fleets for reinforcement, and the sooner Paul got all his warships reloaded with new drones and he got back into the patrol rotation the better, for his spidey sense was tingling and he knew in his gut the V’kit’no’sat would be hitting somewhere else soon…if not already.

7

February 23, 4813

Orica System (Devastation Zone)

Orica A

Jason-025’s fleet began coming out of their deceleration jump against the larger of the two stars at the center of the trinary system, with his command ship Sanguine Blade near the head of the line. He expected combat immediately, but was relieved when the battlemap showed small groupings of Paul’s fleet guarding the door, so to speak, and keeping the V’kit’no’sat away from his chosen jumppoint.

There were many into the Orica System, including some at the far out Orica B star that orbited the pair in the center, but the red giant Orica A held the most gravity and Jason’s fleet had made top speed to get here when an alert came through the relay network. His fleet had been stationed in wait some 182 lightyears away…a distance that used to be unbelievably vast for Star Force. It still was, for space hadn’t shrunk, but the ever increasing engine speeds as the Human-led empire gradually caught up to the pinnacle of V’kit’no’sat tech had that ‘vast’ distance reduced down to only 11 days travel time thanks to a few larger stars nearby that Jason had diverted through.

That actually upped the distance traveled to 218 lightyears, but since his fleet was able to push off faster thanks to the higher gravity making their engines more powerful, the travel time had been less than a straighter route. A perfectly straight route was impossible, for a 182 lightyear jump was something that the navigational computers couldn’t aim well enough to hit, and even with a little tugging on distant gravity wells during transit your ‘hit or miss’ opportunity was still 99.99% determined by your initial slingshot out of the departure system.

Star Force navigational computers might have been able to pull it off without any planets in the system and an open corridor through space, but that was still iffy at this point and not worth the risk. Plus a direct route to Orica would have ran Jason’s fleet through a nebula, which would have killed them shortly after impact as the friction at greater than lightspeed would have ate away at the shields then tore through the armored hulls before finally sandblasting the entire ship into nothing but fast-moving debris that would come out the far side and maybe get to Orica eventually, though most would fly askew and be lost in deep space from all the tiny collisions with the nebula material.

So Jason had to take a roundabout approach anyway, and in this case an even longer one came out the faster, getting him to Orica not too late as both Paul and Flynn-046 were here with their fleets defending another outpost that the V’kit’no’sat had discovered and attacked…but one that was still in Star Force hands despite a huge ground battle taking place on one of the 93 formerly inhabited planetoids named Varooshser. Formerly inhabited by the Nestafar when this was their capitol system, then left untouched when the Voku claimed the system and rebuild many of the other planets before the V’kit’no’sat attacked and kicked them out of the Devastation Zone long into the war.

Originally the Voku had stayed out of the war on the order of their Elders, which Star Force knew as the Zak’de’ron. Paul was close friends with Cal’com, the leader of the Voku, and he’d told Jason that once the first V’kit’no’sat attack had occurred he desperately wanted to help Star Force fight. That said, he had received new orders to fight the V’kit’no’sat here while an organized retreat from what became the Devastation Zone was enacted for all Voku territory along with the other races they were tasked to protect…and once the Voku had been driven out the V’kit’no’sat hadn’t pursued them any further.

Cal’com wanted to still help Star Force but couldn’t without disobeying orders…something he’d never do, Paul had said, and if it kept the V’kit’no’sat away from the mass of Voku territory then so be it. Cal’com had also confided in Paul that if their home territories along the edge of the Devastation Zone were hit then he would be free to fight…and probably die…along with Star Force, but the Zak’de’ron had been wise in advising him so, for the V’kit’no’sat had left them alone after getting them out of the way.

The Orica System was one of the riches prizes in the Devastation Zone and a spot that one would think Star Force would have to be stupid to try and put a base in…but that was part of the genius of it, hidden beneath the debris from the Nestafar war and essentially in plain sight, geographically speaking. To date the V’kit’no’sat had never noticed their stealthed comings and goings, but now they were here and hammering the base that was quite a bit larger than what was on Tauntaun, and it seemed like they wanted it pretty bad.

As Jason got caught up via the battlemap data, his Sav-enhanced mind ran through everything that had happened previously as his fleet came out of its jumppoint and pooled there, waiting for orders. He only had 3,488 jumpships with him…small compared to Paul’s fleet and many of the other trailblazers, but still a massive fighting force when all the drones deployed. He was currently at 89% capacity and was going to unload here until he saw the naval situation.

The V’kit’no’sat had them outnumbered, but not by too much and Jason’s addition was going to tip the scales in Star Force’s favor…but this stank with the scent of trickery. They were being presented with a battle to fight, that they had to fight, with a strong but not too strong opponent that would force them to cut and run without a costly fight.

Cost. That’s what the V’kit’no’sat wanted. They were bleeding Star Force intentionally, and while these kind of battles were what Jason and the others had been wanting to get into, the fact that the V’kit’no’sat were fielding enough ships here and at least two other places since Tauntaun told Jason that these were just setup actions for something else later…either that or their intelligence was really bad concerning how many fleets Star Force had in the Devastation Zone.

Or maybe that was the point of these attacks, to draw them out so they could count. If that was the case he hoped they were impressed, because the fleet of 13,822 V’kit’no’sat ships were either going to have to slug this out or run…and with 3 stars in the system there was little chance of either side getting pinned here with so many available jumppoints to run through. A part of Jason hoped they’d stay, but it’d also worry him if they did, for the V’kit’no’sat never did anything without purpose and the base on Varooshser certainly wasn’t worth this effort.

Eventually Jason got a message from Paul, who was far beyond realtime comm range, saying that he wanted Jason’s entire fleet to move to Nestarraffa and set up in a defensive blockade against orbital bombardment.

Jason raised an eyebrow as he stood in the command nexus onboard his flagship. Nestarraffa was the old capitol of the Nestafar as well as the Voku capitol in this region. It’d been completely cleansed of Nestafar infrastructure and now had a savaged landscape of broken Voku buildings and large sandy plains built from rubble dust. Star Force had nothing on the planet as far as Jason knew, and the battlemap wasn’t indicating anything new.

But Jason knew Paul’s tendencies and had a feeling what this might be about, but regardless he was going to trust him, especially since he’d been in this system fighting for the past 8 days and Jason had just got here. Flynn had gotten here 6 days ago and aside from a little smiley faced text message saying ‘Hello, Ez’ he didn’t offer any tactical solutions or requests, merely taking a split second to make fun of Jason while he was busy harassing the backside of the V’kit’no’sat fleet that was entirely focused on Varooshser.

They had a huge swath of middle orbit claimed over the base location, but Paul’s fleet was hanging in low orbit and along with the minimal planetary defenses was keeping the V’kit’no’sat back, but they’d landed troops on the other side of the planet and had worked their way around overland with large mobile shield domes to temporarily protect them against any potential bombardment from Paul while their fleet swept in and forced a naval fight.

Right now that wasn’t happening, with both sides staring them down and the planetary defense shield over the base sitting just below Paul’s drone fleet with the jumpships almost touching it as they levitated in the upper atmosphere behind the drones, ready to dip down underneath the energy shields if they were targeted…but where they could assist with long range weaponsfire when needed.

That told Jason that Paul was doing everything he could just to hold that position and cover the base, and with a quick review of the battle timeline he saw that the V’kit’no’sat were again coming into the system in waves, just like Star Force was, and the base had been able to hold out long enough for Paul to get here, with a fiery exchange earlier that told Jason why the V’kit’no’sat were not trying to brute force their way to the base.

They were going to try to take it out via the ground rather than face those Ardent beams coming from the surface. There were only 18 of them, but each was bigger than anything the V’kit’no’sat had in their fleet. If they could be taken down from the ground it would save many warships…but there was one flaw to this strategy and that was Paul’s fleet. If the V’kit’no’sat army got to the base they’d be right under them, and all it would take would be a quick dropping of the base defense shields and the armies would go ‘poof’ under that combined firepower no matter what mobile shield units they had with them.

The V’kit’no’sat were going to have to remove Paul’s fleet and Jason figured Paul knew it, which was why he was stubbornly holding that spot. Now he was sending Jason’s fleet off to another planet entirely with no one to fight there that he could see.

Jason waited for the rest of his ships to arrive, then had them all jump out in quick succession taking different routes to Nestarraffa so they didn’t have to wait as long in line. Some of his ships went halfway across the system in the wrong direction before bouncing back off another planet or star so they’d arrive all over planetary orbit rather than in one spot, getting his fleet into position much faster despite the extra distance.

Something Jason had learned a long time ago was that when you were a navigational officer in the fleet, the most direct route was usually not the fastest, and if you couldn’t think outside the box then you’d be replaced pretty fast by someone who could, and with over 150 different gravity wells in the system a ship had thousands of jumplines to pick from, including slingshot maneuvers that arced your coast trajectory.

Jason was very glad Star Force had the superior gravity drives in their ships, else the V’kit’no’sat could have danced around them indefinitely, but now it was finally a fair fight.

When the last of his jumpships arrived in Nestarraffa orbit and got into position, Jason ordered them to release their drones and form the clouds of tiny defensive points around the jumpships and command ships as they protected a third of the planet beneath them and began making dropship runs en mass down to the surface…with empty cargo holds both ways.

Paul saw Jason’s fleet arrive and reposition to Nestarraffa as he’d requested while his front-most drones were firing long range shots against the V’kit’no’sat ships poking his own lines in arrogant fashion, for they were entering the firing range of the planetary defenses but doing so with Paul’s ships blocking for them. Paul kept realigning his forces to open up a gap but 4 out of 5 times the V’kit’no’sat ship would successfully reposition and block the firing line, with the few times they didn’t make it not being enough to do anything more than suck away a lot of shield energy as they moved off laterally or pulled back up to middle orbit with the rest of their fleet to recharge.

They wanted to get at him and his command ship sitting at the bottom of the well of ships that looked like a mushroom cloud coming up from the surface base and sitting on a wide dish that was the planetary defense shield spreading out for several hundred miles in radius. His fleet took up a lot of space even when packed in closely together, but whenever Paul slid his ships out further towards the edge of the shield the V’kit’no’sat would attack and drive them back…with Paul not having enough ships to force his way up into their midst. He needed them low and in range of the planetary defenses, but they weren’t coming down here anymore after the butt kicking they’d received earlier.

That said, chunks of dead ships were littering the already trashed planet around the base where Paul’s fleet had pushed them to keep them off the shields as they fell down from orbit. Now they made for a ring of mountains that the approaching enemy army was going to have to navigate around or through, slowing them down a bit more before they got close to the base, but Paul had a feeling the V’kit’no’sat were going to make a move before that happened. There was no way they were going to let them fight right under Paul’s parked fleet no matter how fast they thought their own fleet could move to assist.

That meant Paul had a roundabout idea of how much time he had, for the V’kit’no’sat ground forces were heavily outnumbering those from the base and what Paul and Flynn had added, and he was hoping to disrupt whatever plan there was or at least make the V’kit’no’sat a little off guard with Jason’s fleet…and right on cue he saw a few dozen ships leave the enemy formation and head for Nestarraffa. Not enough to fight with, but enough to pull some heavy scans of the planet and fight off skirmishers as they made a pass or two.

They were probably wondering how they’d missed another base there, for right now Jason was doing a good impression of evacuating the surface…or delivering reinforcements, but that wouldn’t make sense given that Star Force knew they couldn’t hold bases in the Devastation Zone that were known to the V’kit’no’sat.

Or at least not yet, save for the Uriti Preserve and Grid Point Stargate. Those were the two big holdouts, while bases such as this one were clandestine only and now that it had been exposed it would have to be evacuated win or lose this fight.

Unless Star Force was going to make a stand. Paul knew that was stupid in the long run, for the V’kit’no’sat would just rally their forces and come here with more than Star Force could handle. Granted, this was already a huge attack force, but Paul knew it was to fight their opposing naval fleet and the base on the surface was just the bait to get them to do it. There were plenty of heavily defended planets with defense shields that circled the entire globe on the front for the V’kit’no’sat to assault, and they would sooner or later, and probably win, so trying to hold such a small base on the coreward side of the DZ was just stupid if you didn’t have people to get out.

But right now they did, and from the V’kit’no’sat’s perspective it looked like they had two bases to withdraw troops from. The question was, were they going to let Jason evacuate Nestarraffa unchallenged? It was a feint, for there was nothing there, but they didn’t know that yet and the scanning ships they’d sent out got intercepted by Jason’s own skirmishers far from the planet, keeping them out of prime sensor range while they still got enough of a scan to determine the location on the surface the dropships were coming and going from…along with the cavernous entrances they were disappearing into.

A closer look would have seen them landing, waiting, and taking back off again with no movement of people or cargo on or off save for a few defensive mechs guarding the landing sites, but the V’kit’no’sat didn’t get close enough to see that and after more than two days of waiting they finally detached some 1,302 ships and sent them off towards Nestaraffa.

That was going to be a tough fight, for Jason would still have the advantage, but not too long after Paul got the sensor updates from system’s center, seeing another V’kit’no’sat fleet entering near one of his ship clusters.

The trailblazer frowned, for there was no way the V’kit’no’sat could have known about them arriving before he did. That told Paul this departure was either coincidence or proof that the arrival of the reinforcement fleets was not random, but rather predetermined by a scripted schedule and the fleet overtop Paul knew when they’d be arriving before they got here.

That meant Jason’s group was probably going to be caught fighting as a diversion while the reinforcements raced to augment their numbers and delay the evacuation of Nestarraffa.

“Flynn, I think this is the best chance we’re going to get,” Paul said via the audio-only comm.

“They still have an advantage,” his peer pointed out. “We’re going to cancel at best.”

“I think we can do a little better than that…but not much. If you have any suggestions, now is the time.”

“Unfortunately I think you’re right. This is the best hand we’ve got. Let’s play it…” he said as the V’kit’no’sat fleet above them began moved en mass away from Paul’s position and spreading out like an expanding ring.

“They’re heading to ground,” Paul said a few seconds before their altitude started to dip and bring them towards the planet’s surface outside the range of the base’s defensive batteries.

“And going to escort their troops up to the front door,” Flynn all but growled as he saw Paul’s fleet break apart too…with several ships racing just above the atmosphere at maximum speed. “What are you doing?”

“Get our troops back under the shield. I’m going to be too busy to keep watch,” he said, already sending out hundreds of orders with mere thoughts as his jumpships likewise moved from their holding position and raced up into higher orbit through the donut hole in the enemy formation as it continued to spread out.

Paul responded with a lot of battlemap data, but Flynn’s mind handled it with ease as he saw what Paul planned to do as the V’kit’no’sat wanted to force them to fight at both planets rather than pool their resources at one. He also saw the fastest of Paul’s ships get out to the enemy ground troops just before their own ships did and lay into them with the naval weapons, the first of which were blocked by the dome-like defense shields the ground units carried with them, but after a few dozen seconds the overlapping naval fire added up and broke through even as the drones got hit from above by the descending fleet.

Flynn saw Paul dive several kamikaze through the V’kit’no’sat ranks, literally plowing the ground with them on it until their huge ships got overtop them and dropped dampening shields in front, stopping the last of the ramming attacks and protecting what was left of their ground troops with their own shields like an invisible curtain dropping all the way down to the ground save for the last few meters.

“Nice get.”

“Take ‘em when I can,” Paul said as the V’kit’no’sat fleet continued to drop almost all the way to the ground and cluster their hulls together so much they almost touched in various groups around the circular perimeter as Paul’s ships went to higher altitude but still within range of the surface. The V’kit’no’sat now had the low position and Paul the high…but if they could get up to the shield and run their troops beneath it, they could push their ships over top them as a buffer and assault the base directly, punishing Star Force heavily if they even dropped the shields for a moment to bombard the troops.

The Ardent batteries could depress pretty far, and there was no way for the miles wide V’kit’no’sat ships to get under their firing line, but this way they couldn’t get hit by all of them at once, but rather one or two from each angle, and that would mean the survivability of their ships would extend considerably.

The one major disadvantage they had was if one of their blocker ships went down it would fall on whatever was beneath it, which was why you saw their largest Kafcha-class vessels taking position over the densest clusters of troops.

“This is going to be fun,” Flynn said sarcastically as he readied his mix of mainline, Clan, and H’kar fleet to drop down over top the shield at almost kissing range and keep the enemy warships from moving in directly over the base while Paul went higher and hit the enemy from above where he could without getting wasted from their overlapping firepower.

“We can always surrender,” Paul offered dryly.

“Nah, Morgan would beat the crap out of us if we did. Let’s get to it.”

“Already am,” Paul said as both trailblazers dropped silent to focus their full mental power on the fleet movements that were getting more difficult by the moment as the exchange of fire amped up exponentially.

8

February 28, 4813

Orica System (Devastation Zone)

Varooshser

Paul sat in the passenger hold of a dropship as it transitioned down through the atmosphere over the battlefield below. Ship hulks were everywhere, having impacted the surfaced and caused so many earthquakes and craters that the mantle of the planet had been breached with the fracture cracks and multiple locations had magma plumes oozing up to the surface. Two of them were actually geysers throwing molten material up into the night and giving some illumination to the otherwise deep dark with all 3 stars and the gas giant on the far side of the planet.

The V’kit’no’sat fleets had withdrawn over a day ago, with both sides suffering heavy losses. They had succeeded in getting some of the ground troops up to and inside the base, but not enough to take it. Though it was a statistical anomaly, for the base was going to have to be evacuated now that its location was known, this was the first time in history that Star Force had beaten back a planetary assault and come out victorious.

Paul had gotten a good sleep in after 4 days straight of activity. He’d been able to do it thanks to his tier 2 psionic Inas that allowed him to get by on less sleep and recover faster when he did get the chance, but the only thing that had truly gotten him through the previous 4 days was the fact that it was a fully mental endeavor and that there had been breaks in the fighting sufficient enough for him to let his people handle most of the maneuvers. He hadn’t left, but the strain on his mind was not as great and he’d stuck it out all the way up until they’d left before grabbing some badly needed sleep.

But now he was needed on the surface, for the fighting down there wasn’t complete yet. The base was in Star Force hands and the enemy ground troops that had survived had been evacuated in the final pullout, but with all the crashed ships there were surviving V’kit’no’sat that had to be found and dealt with.

Had this been the reverse situation Paul never would have left them behind. The fleet compositions has been essentially even when the V’kit’no’sat pulled out, perhaps fearing the growing attrition curve, so it wasn’t like they had to leave at that moment. In fact, if both fleets had stayed then they would have probably canceled each other out with Star Force prevailing but only maintaining about 5% of the ships they had come into the fight with.

That was a guess, but one that Paul had worked through as the V’kit’no’sat fled. Typically they stuck at a target until they had it or until it was obvious that there was no way to win. Them running from an even fight was not normal, and Paul’s gut told him this was yet another attempt to draw Star Force into battle and reduce their numbers. If the V’kit’no’sat were finally ready to devote more of their massive empire to this fight then attrition would be on their side…despite the massive blow to their ego it must have been. But at the end of the day the V’kit’no’sat cared about one thing above all else, and that was winning…even if they had to bleed themselves dry to accomplish it.

Normally they didn’t. Aside from the Hadarak and a few enemies of the distant past, the V’kit’no’sat usually annihilated their opposition without losing a single person. Their ships were so big it was almost impossible for a lesser opponent to take one down, and even severely damaged they could still keep fighting or flee and use regenerators on any injured crew. The fact that they were trading massive ship losses…that did contain crew…to take down Star Force’s drone fleet and get at their surface bases was alarming. Not unusual, because they’d fought like this in previous centuries, but never on this level without a planet for them to claim.

Varooshser was a junk world and worthless, because the V’kit’no’sat didn’t care about colonizing any of the territory they took from Star Force aside from Earth. They just wanted it annihilated, so a pristine Star Force planet with full planetary shields and billions of people was a prize for them to take and smash, but a junk world with a single base wasn’t worth it.

No, the objective here had to be the fleets and reducing them for another strike, or series of strikes, to come later when Paul and the other DZ fleet commanders would have less to respond with. Take their large fleets out of the equation and the V’kit’no’sat could better estimate how much in the way of forces they would need to take a given planet and do so without it being an even fight. It was when they didn’t know how many forces were in pay that Star Force stood a chance and could come in with superior numbers, but not if those reinforcements weren’t around to pull on.

Replacements would be coming in from beyond the front, but not fast enough to replenish what was lost here. Paul really wished he knew how many ships the V’kit’no’sat had in the Devastation Zone, but that was knowledge that he was going to have to work without, for even while most of the V’kit’no’sat ships operated without stealth mechanisms and boldly went wherever they wanted, there were so many star systems that it was impossible to watch all of them without a surveillance and relay network…which was why V’kit’no’sat kept blowing up whatever comm infrastructure they could find, keeping Star Force and anyone else dark as to the full extent of their movements.

The Devastation Zone didn’t have firm boundaries except along the Star Force border, but if you measured by where the V’kit’no’sat had hit and the stars in between, the DZ contained a whopping 3.02 million star systems. Not all of them had planets, but that was still a very big playground to operate on and the V’kit’no’sat were adamant to keep Star Force and its allies out of it while not bothering to care about anyone else. Some races, like the Gnar, had been attacked because of their association with Star Force but only as far as orbital bombardment. The V’kit’no’sat had laid waste to their planets without bothering to land a single drop pod, then ignored the survivors even as they rebuilt so long as they didn’t get in their way.

And that was the same for everyone in the DZ. Everyone had gotten hit who had even the slightest connection to Star Force or was strong enough to potentially assist them. They didn’t want anyone of consequence on their turf…and yet they’d just turned and ran, leaving this base intact.

Something was definitely going on and Paul had a number of ideas what it could be, but no way to narrow them down as he headed towards the surface along with a number of other Archons from his command ship as they went to help the ground teams hunt down and eliminate the remaining V’kit’no’sat, many of whom had grouped together and were fighting an effective counterattack against the base, knowing that if they stayed anywhere else they’d get picked off from the warships overhead.

But Paul wasn’t doing that. Yes, they were enemies that were trying to kill them and wouldn’t think twice about doing it again if he let them go, but since Star Force was going to evacuate the base anyway he didn’t bother trying to hunt down the survivors and just let them hide out amongst the ship debris so long as they weren’t near any of his people or operating intact weapons batteries on the ship remnants. Those had already been taken out over the past day, but you never knew if you missed one or not until it opened fire.

But as Paul dropped down to the base no enemy fire tracked his dropship. The area surrounding it was clean save for the troops working their way underground through the catacombs in the junk fields the base had been built within. There were many access points, most of which were too small for the larger V’kit’no’sat races to move through, but not all. Star Force had mechs out in them fighting the survivors as they tried to make one last effort to damage something of Star Force before they were killed.

When his dropship landed in an innocuous spot within the surface debris he felt a familiar presence nearby. Soon after he got off the dropship along with the other Archons they took a hidden lift down into the upper levels of the base where Jason was waiting for him along with some more Archons and a lot of Knights.

“You all with them,” Jason told those that had come down with Paul as he motioned with his finger and sent a telepathic ping for the other trailblazer to come with him. The pair ran off through a separate corridor and left the others behind with Jason in the lead and Paul a step behind him, both wearing their blue/orange Archon armor complete with a full exoskeleton of weaponry in lieu of the traditional packs and weapon racks, for where they were going they were going to need the bigger guns that could lay down burst damage rather than worrying about a longer grinding campaign over the course of days.

The two ran in silence, for there was nothing to talk about and they knew each other well enough that Paul didn’t even need telepathy to read Jason’s movements all the way up to another base exit that was underground, evident when the smooth, sculpted corridors were replaced with random junk and a plethora of defense turrets and shield generators marking the entrance along with 20 or so defenders.

The two trailblazers blew right by them and made their way out into the subsurface forest of junk using their Pefbar to see in what quickly became almost near dark save for periodic yellow/orange orbs of light that Star Force had placed here previously to give some navigational aid. Paul and Jason didn’t need them to see nearby, nor did the V’kit’no’sat who also had Pefbar, but it was nice to be able to use your eyes a little bit and not have them completely unprepared for the flashes of weaponsfire that would follow.

It was still jarring as they came across a group of four Zen’zat that mindlessly engaged the two Archons…though traditionally that would have been to their advantage. Each of the four was over 7 foot tall and had the muscle mass to match, all encased within black/green armor that looked like moving stone and had weapon ports on the wrists so they could shoot with their hands empty, though one of the four also had an additional hand cannon that would do considerably more damage.

So at first glance it looked like the two Archons were going to get mowed down, and on purpose Jason shot out the nearest lights, dropping them into pure dark with only their Pefbar to see by…thus hiding the Star Force armor color before the Zen’zat could see it and realize they were about to be horribly outmatched.

When they came into firing range the Zen’zat opened up with their Dre’mo’don forearm cannons, spraying green orbs against the Archons’ shields with a few misses. Paul and Jason ignored them, knowing they could take a few before they got into trouble, and split directions. Paul went right and Jason went left as they reached out and activated their Pa’no’semak…otherwise known as ‘Battlemeld,’ linking their minds together and giving them access to 19 additional psionics that only worked in conjunction with one or more others.

When they were linked they activated their Lew, creating an invisible conduit of energy that stretched between the two of them with their intent being to drag it through the Zen’zat who, as far as Star Force was aware, still had not discovered the Battlemeld psionics within their own genome…meaning they had no idea what was coming.

When the energy hit the first one it passed through his shields and armor, doing no damage but when it came into contact with his mind the direct contact bypassed the Ikrid blocks both the Zen’zat and Humans had, giving Paul and Jason a momentary access to their minds. It wasn’t something interactive, meaning they couldn’t look into his memories or talk to him through it. Rather the trailblazers had programmed a specific Ikrid ‘message’ that anyone who hit the energy ribbon would get…in this case the command to fall asleep.

When it hit it didn’t fully succeed, for the Zen’zat minds were too strong, but it did partially register in the first all the way to the fourth, causing two of them to drop to a knee before they started to realized something was wrong, but that was more than enough time for Paul and Jason to circle around behind them and punch two in the back, firing their tiny Bra’hem cannons that drew power from their exoskeleton and released from the palm of their hands. The green beams nearly got through the shields on the Zen’zat before they realized what was going on, then the other two both threw telekinetic slaps at the Archons that would have been sufficient to knock them off their feet, but thanks to them expecting the counterattack and their Pefbar, they could see the wave of energy a split second before it landed.

They both pulsed their Rentar, melting the Lachka attack as it touched them, then they responded with individual Jumat blasts that knocked those two Zen’zat on their asses, giving the Archons a moment to deal with the other two shield-weakened ones. Jason went hand to hand with his while Paul threw another Jumat blast into the other and knocked him into a wall of debris, then kicked up into him as he fell…punting him high and to the side with a burst of his Yetu psionic that made his leg move a lot faster than normal.

The Zen’zat flew through the air and almost hit another, but he deftly dodged and fired on Paul…who yanked him forward with his own telekinetic attack enough to off balance the Zen’zat so he couldn’t evade when the trailblazer fired another lethal green beam into his chest plate. That set the recharge timer on that hand, meaning that both of Paul’s weapons were not able to fire save for weakened charges, for they were designed for large bursts and not rapid fire.

But the Zen’zat’s shields were now down and Paul punched into him, getting a very good parry from the Zen’zat that caused him to exchange several blows, delaying his next attack long enough that the other Zen’zat got up and fired on him, draining his shields even more until Paul dragged the big body in front of him and punched repeatedly into his midsection, hearing the armor crack a little before blowing him away with linked Jumat blast thanks to Jason’s help. Their Jumatran ability allowed them to combine their Jumat and enhance it enough that the 320 pound Zen’zat was tossed through the air like a toy back into his brethren.

Paul then had his right gauntlet recharged and fired at one of Jason’s targets, with the pair changing off and on over the following minute as they wore down the Zen’zat defenses and eventually made the kills without having to do anything too fancy. After that they moved on, linking into the battlemap and getting direction from the base commander on where the greatest level of threat activity was.

They diverted there, fighting a few more skirmishes along the way against Zen’zat and some larger Kar’ka, but eventually they ended up coming alongside one of their own mechs, Thor-class, that was holding position just beyond a narrow passage in the debris.

“They’re on the other side,” the mechwarrior said to Jason and Paul via comm as they approached. “They can’t get through without giving me a clean shot, but I can’t get to them either…and there are two of them.”

“Keep this side clear and watch our back. We’ll handle them.”

“Both?”

“Both,” Jason confirmed as the trailblazers pulsed their Yetu again and sprinted through the gap faster than either of them could naturally run…directly into a large cave-like chamber with a pair of Brat’mar standing inside flank to flank but facing different directions. There was another entrance on the other side that also had Star Force troops and a couple of mechs there that couldn’t get in either. The Triceratopses were pinned and going to fight to the bitter end, whether that be waiting for a precision shot from a warship coring down through the surface to get to them or killing as many ground troops as they could here before they eventually succumbed.

Paul and Jason weren’t going to risk anyone else pushing through those kill zones and just missed a large blue cannon beam that shot through the gap coming from the clear horns on the otherwise fully armored Brat’mar. Had that hit them it would have eaten away all their shields and most of their armor, which made it an effective anti-mech weapon and a huge danger to any Star Force unit to come in here…and it wasn’t even technological, but a biological weapon built into the Brat’mar biology same as the Zen’zat psionics.

The technological weapons on the flanks of the silver-armored Brat’mar were far more accurate and started bathing the two Archons in a myriad of hits that sucked huge chunks of their shield energy away with each hit, making their attack seem almost stupid…but to an Archon this was a worthy challenge, and one that the pair of trailblazers was going to have to fight hard to overcome.

So they didn’t hold back, using their mental array of psionics to go after the nearest Brat’mar’s mind while keeping its body between them and the other. With no Ikrid block, the Brat’mar only had the sheer strength of its huge mind to ward off their attacks, and when the amount of psionic tissue a person had came into play, having a much larger brain was a big advantage…and with each Brat’mar’s head weighing more than Paul, there was no way they would have been able to resist the telekinetic hold it tried to put on them…which would then lead to a cannon shot directly into their faces and that would be game over.

But the Rentar psionic was a lifesaver and allowed them to move freely no matter how many attempts both Brat’mar made to grab them, and while the pair dodged around a bit they messed with the Brat’mar’s mind so much it could barely fire a shot from its armor’s many anti-personnel cannons. That gave the trailblazers the longevity they needed, else they would have been eaten up far too fast as they fired their Bra’hem beams into the easy to hit right flank of the Brat’mar as the other tried to circle around its tail and get into firing position.

A few shots from it did hit them, but the trailblazers dove underneath the head of the other, ironically using it as cover as they continued the assault on its mind, firing off numerous Saven and Jini mental flash bombs, the latter of which actually chained and hit the other Brat’mar too, but required a lengthy charging period. And while even the combined mental power of the two trailblazers was inferior to this Brat’mar, meaning they could never win a fight of wills, they used their Orren to delicately sidestep its mental strongholds and land some crippling blows coming in through the ‘backdoor’ so to speak.

That continued for over ten minutes, with the dance ensuing while one Brat’mar tried to get at them and the other was barely able to do more than stumble around shooting almost blindly at numerous phantom Archons implanted into its mind every time a Lew conduit passed through its head as Jason would jump over its neck and drag the invisible energy conduit down through it, but he would usually take a hit or two from the anti-personnel Dre’mo’dons on the armor that shot little green orbs at them. Bigger than what the Zen’zat fired, but of the same design.

The battle dragged on and on, with the Star Force troops on both entrances told to stay out of it and just keep the Brat’mar from escaping or getting reinforcements as the fight continued to play out in the makeshift rubble arena with the shields on the first Brat’mar finally going down…but it still had its thick armor in play, though Jason and Paul weren’t going to bother with it. Rather they switched their Bra’hem energy into a secondary weapon on their exoskeleton that fired concentrated pink orbs at a rate of about 1 every second and a half into the exposed horns that still hadn’t armored over due to the mental disruptions the Archons kept the Brat’mar under, for it couldn’t fire its main cannon with them covered and had to retract and extend the armor when needed.

The pink stun energy soaked into the horns and down into the Brat’mar’s head, but not enough to knock it out immediately so the Archon’s kept dancing around, avoiding the other and pumping more shots into the horns until they finally did armor over, but that didn’t stop the stun effect. V’kit’no’sat armor didn’t dampened stun energy by design, so a lot of it soaked through whereas Star Force armor made one immune to all but an overload of it. The V’kit’no’sat did that so they could fight each other when necessary and take an individual down without killing them, and they had never changed their armor design since the war against Star Force started. It was ego on their part, not wanting to alter it, and in situations like this it made the long fight a little less tedious as the Archons pounded away at the Brat’mar while they were still working it over with repetitive psionic attacks.

Those had more effect as the Brat’mar got loopy from the stuns, eventually causing it to fall to the ground. That made it a lot less tall and the other one started shooting over it, meaning the Archons had to do more dodging and get in a lot closer to the fallen enemy as they continued to pound it with stun energy until they were sure it was out of the fight.

That left the other one, and as soon as they turned their psionics against it they hardly had to dodge at all, for it could barely land a shot even with auto-targeting, for the trailblazers would just dip behind the other Brat’mar and take cover while sending their psionics directly through its body. That dampened some of them, but it was enough to give them opportunities to snipe with their Bra’hem until its shields fell, then they took it down with stun energy too, leaving the pair of Brat’mar with almost pristine armor, save for the damage done in previous battles on this planet that had brought them up to this location.

“Kill shots?” one of the mechwarriors asked, offering to save the Archons a lot of time gradually burning through the armor.

“No,” Jason said firmly. “We’re taking these two prisoner.”

“For what purpose?” the mechwarrior asked, not arguing but knowing that in almost all circumstances Star Force did not take the V’kit’no’sat prisoner because they were too dangerous even when confined. Any other race and Star Force would take prisoners whenever possible, but these bastards never gave them the luxury without the risk of losing more people in the process.

“We’re not taking them with us and we’re evacuating the base anyway,” Paul answered, still battlemeld linked with Jason and the two of them thinking for one another…though they often did that even when not using the psionic.

“If that’s the way you want it, but why not take them out while we got the chance before they fight us again later?” the pilot of the Ravager-class mech walking in from the other entrance asked.

“Because we’re not them, and I don’t like having to fight their way all the time. We have the advantage here, so we’re sparing them…besides, it’s not like they don’t have a bazillion more Brat’mar to send our way.”

“How long do you want us to look after them?”

“Keep one mech here, the rest of you leave.”

“Corvi?”

“Got it,” the Thor pilot said, coming in and pointing the two arms of his mech down at the Brat’mar just in case. “You want more stun blasts if they wake up?”

“Yes,” Jason confirmed. “Keep them down until we come back, then we’ll worry about their armor.”

“Fine with me. You two are better than a mech in close confines like this anyway. Happy hunting,” she offered, moving the metallic feet around to get in a better position to cover both sleeping quadrupeds.

“We’ll be back,” Paul promised as the trailblazers ran in tandem following the Ravager out the far side. “Keep them alive.”

“As you wish.”

“Love you too,” Jason added, then ran out of the chamber before the perplexed mechwarrior could figure out where that came from.

Corvi frowned, then while monitoring the biostats on the Brat’mar, brought up a database that the Regulars…meaning non-Archon…mechwarriors had created long ago to keep track of the not so rare usage of old and obsolete pop culture references that the trailblazers and senior Archons used. She input the last thing she’d said, then was almost surprised to see a correlation pop up.

Princess Bride, (movie) 1987

‘As you wish’ phrase synonymous with ‘I love you.’

“Cheeky,” she said, realizing that per that obscure movie she’d just told him she loved him. Corvi wondered what it would be like to be able to have such a knowledge of past centuries to be able to make jokes that no one else would get.

Well, the Regulars had taken up the challenge and this was yet one more that the trailblazers had failed to get by them…but there was no way of knowing how many the elder Archons successfully pulled without them realizing it.

9

March 1, 4813

Orica System (Devastation Zone)

Varooshser

As the evacuation of the base continued with Flynn staying in orbit to oversee naval operations, Jason and Paul moved around the perimeter helping fight off the surviving V’kit’no’sat that were bent on committing suicide while hopefully taking some Star Force troops with them. The two trailblazers made sure that didn’t happen, deploying themselves to the most challenging fights while ordering everyone else to be cautious, hold position, and stall until they could get there.

While both Archons were fully capable of wielding mechs and using their psionics from the cockpits, the debris field was so irregular that there were a lot of places the giant walking machines could not go so the pair decided to stay on foot even when fighting alongside other mechs. Some might call that reckless, dangerous, and stupid…but the skill level of the trailblazers was so high they could do such things and make it work, not to mention that when battlemeld linked Paul and Jason operated as if one person in two bodies, allowing them to move and fight without getting in each other’s way and throwing down some impressive physical combos that seemed to defy reality.

Most of their fights were against V’kit’no’sat charging ahead, which they were happy to either kill or drive off, leaving the two stunned Brat’mar as the largest of the few that got themselves cornered and unable to retreat, then stunned into unconsciousness on the trailblazers’ orders. Paul and Jason were both tired of the constant killing, and letting these few live and those that ran away go was a breath of fresh air to battle weary minds.

As for those that were stunned, they were removed of their armor…which was not an easy process…and then had their minds evaluated for any valuable intelligence. They left the two Brat’mar for last, then recruited the highest ranking Archons on the planet to join them in a circle of 18 standing around the sleeping giants with a pair of mechs standing by just in case they needed to be stunned again.

Thankfully Star Force mechs were equipped with the secondary stun weapons as standard equipment, otherwise they would have had to use infantry weapons and keep shooting them regularly to deliver the necessary doses to keep these two powerful minds subdued…and when the Archons linked together in one massive battlemeld and entered the mind of the first Brat’mar it reflexively stirred, prompting a pink orb that hit and slightly deformed before soaking into the Triceratops’ right flank. The mech that fired it didn’t send another, but stood ready just in case.

The stun effect made the Archons’ mental connection to the Brat’mar harder, as if they were having to push their way through a fog, but with their combined power and skills they didn’t have too much trouble accessing their target’s memories while suffering through a mild headache that would only increase as they continued to hold the 18 person mindmeld. The more individuals included in it the more stress there was, but the Archons had learned how to minimize the senses shared between them, essentially putting blinders on some aspects that made them vulnerable…which was why there was another ring of Commandos and Knights standing alongside them to make sure they didn’t get attacked and blindsided while in this meditative mode.

Paul could feel and ‘see’ the other Archons as if they were a part of his own body, and all of them were linked into the mind of the Brat’mar, segmenting it like grid markings on a map as they charted out unknown territory looking for anything new and, in particular, the reason for the V’kit’no’sat attack on this base.

After more than half an hour of searching they didn’t find much. This one only knew that a base had been discovered and must be removed from the ‘cleansed area’ that the V’kit’no’sat called the Devastation Zone. They apparently deemed it ‘clean’ so long as there were no advanced civilizations there, not caring about the lowly scum that had moved in or the remains of Star Force’s associates after they’d blasted them into rubble. In fact, this one knew of many indigenous populations that were of no consequence…but they were being monitored to look for Star Force activity, as well as being used as bait to ferret out Archon scouts who might try to hide in them or make contact once again.

Paul had suspected as much but had never had confirmation, for this was the first time he or any of the others had gotten access to a Brat’mar’s mind. They didn’t typically go anywhere they didn’t win, while Zen’zat were out and about everywhere. Star Force had caught and interrogated many of them, but they were usually just low level servants who knew nothing. Brat’mar were different, but even this one didn’t have any high level knowledge about this current invasion.

The Archons released the battlemeld and their link to the Brat’mar, taking a break and recharging their strength for a few minutes before trying the other. Its mind was just as strong, if not a touch stronger, but they used their combined power and skills to work their way into its memories, finding that it did not want to be here.

That was rare, for the V’kit’no’sat had a hatred for Star Force that almost compelled them to destroy everything of the ‘heretic’ civilization on sight, but this Brat’mar resented being assigned to the ground attack knowing that it was for nothing. Apparently the V’kit’no’sat did not expect to take the base, and if they had they were told to not overrun it, but to take their advance slow and leave the Star Force troops with possession of a piece of it as long as could be maintained.

This Brat’mar didn’t like that one bit, wanting to hit Star Force as strong as possible and annihilate the base that they’d arrogantly placed on their turf, but he had followed orders up until the pullout effort left him behind. After that he’d chosen to die fighting full on, prompting a run in towards the base where he knew there would be enemies to fight rather than to wait and hope an overhead warship didn’t kill him with orbital bombardment.

But it was the reason for the ineffective assault order that got Paul’s attention, for it was designed to keep besieged Star Force personnel on the planet long enough to draw in the Star Force fleets where the V’kit’no’sat could fight and destroy as many of their ships as possible in what this one considered ‘sloppy’ combat. They were deliberately not fighting battles where they had the advantage, knowing that Star Force would just run, so they had to give them something more appetizing to hit.

The bottom line was they needed to diminish the Star Force fleet strength for an upcoming operation…meaning this attack and the others were just a setup. The hammer blow hadn’t fallen yet, and unfortunately this Brat’mar didn’t know where or what it would be.

When the Archons finished Paul and Jason dismissed the others and had a Neo-class mech collapse one entrance in the chamber to force the Brat’mar to go back the other way when they eventually woke with an implanted memory from Jason telling them to leave and they’d be allowed to live until the V’kit’no’sat eventually came to pick them up. He also told them that once Star Force left the base would be theirs and foodstuffs would be left behind for their use…as well a bit of gloating concerning the fact that Star Force was leaving them alive despite them not deserving it.

Once the chamber was sealed on the near side, Jason and Paul leapt up onto the nearby mechs and rode on their shoulders as they pumped a lot more stun shots into the Brat’mar to keep them unconscious for hours, then they took the long route back to base riding like ticks stuck to the metal-ish walkers via grip points in their armor and safely underneath the thick mech shields.

“Best guess?” Jason asked on a private comm to Paul.

“Three options. The Preserve…”

“Which is suicide for them.”

“…the grid point, or punching a breach into the front and sweeping up another chunk of territory.”

“If they’re trying to reduce fleet strength, I’d bet it’s not for a single assault. They don’t want us to be able to reinforce as much, which means splitting our focus.”

“Agreed.”

“Should we temporarily evacuate some of our bases so we don’t have to fight them?”

“We have no way of knowing which ones have been compromised…and the V’kit’no’sat are losing a lot of ships too.”

“That seems to be in line with their plan.”

“That worries me,” Paul admitted. “They don’t throw away their lives for distractions and losing fleets of this size should be a huge blow to their ego.”

“Unless it’s part of a plan to really kick our teeth in. That would salve their ego.”

“I think they’re tired of being stalled out and are devoting a lot more of their coreward strength to us. The question is how much.”

“Wish we knew who was commanding them,” Jason said, referencing the change in command the Brat’mar interrogation had yielded without a name. “If he’s old enough we might have a file on him.”

“The fact that these troops didn’t know his name suggests a shadowy change we’re not meant to know about.”

“Think Doro’mas got punished?”

“Hard to say. He took over a hundred systems from us. I think they’re rotating commanders in to see how effective they are.”

“We’re training fodder?”

“Since they can’t kill us quickly, I’d say that’s possible. Maybe they don’t realize how much we’ve got left.”

“I don’t buy it. The harder we fight the more attention we get. They don’t like rivals.”

“They haven’t taken us serious enough to really hit us hard. Maybe the attrition has finally added up.”

“That doesn’t explain the change of command unless they’re blaming Doro’mas for not doing more with what he had.”

“Still no Rit’ko’sor. Why are they holding them back?” Paul asked, knowing from interrogations in previous centuries that the rebellious race had survived the war that saw Earth abandoned and had rejoined the V’kit’no’sat. The Brat’mar knew of them too, but not one of the tiny bipeds had shown up to fight Star Force as of yet, and their ship hulls were easily identifiable, as were those of every other V’kit’no’sat race, all of which had their own unique designs.

“Maybe they don’t trust them not to switch sides again.”

“Their population should have recovered enough by now. I’m beginning to wonder if there isn’t another big war happening elsewhere in the galaxy.”

“If the Hadarak had broken out again these guys probably would have heard about it. Same goes for anything else big going on…unless they’re being kept in the dark on purpose suspecting that we might interrogate them?”

“Could be either, but it’s clear they don’t want the name of the commander known.”

“So how do you want to play this?”

“We need to get eyes on as many of their fleets as possible, even if they know we’re watching. We need a heads up before a system gets hit.”

“By ‘heads up’ you mean multiple jumps away?”

“Yeah,” Paul confirmed, knowing that meant thousands of scout ships to cover the plethora of star systems within even two jump range of an inhabited system. “And I’d bet they’ve got skirmishers out hunting scout ships to keep us from doing just that.”

“Tyrenk’s evac ship?”

“Not unless they were following standard orders to hit everything they came across. That Kaeper was following Morgan.”

“We really need more Sonics,” Jason said, referring to the ultra fast scout ships Star Force had constructed that were little more than engines, sensors, and living quarters in order to give them a speed advantage over the V’kit’no’sat. They were so limited in size that Humans weren’t able to crew them, with Star Force having to rely on the Irondel and other ‘tiny’ races within Star Force to man them with sufficient training facilities to keep them from deteriorating…and when one was chipmunk sized that didn’t take much hull space.

“There are ways to get around them,” Paul reminded him, “but yeah, I wish we had more now too. I don’t think the V’kit’no’sat are going to wait for us to build a decent detection grid.”

“So we try to think like them and go find their mega fleets personally?”

Paul smiled. “Maybe not personally, but I think we do need to start guessing and hope we get lucky,” he said as the mech he was on knocked him upright as it suddenly stepped on something explosive.

The next thing Paul knew dozens of Zen’zat were popping up in mind’s eye, apparently having been concealed within a psionic dampening ‘tent’ of some sort, and now rushing the pair of mechs in ambush.

“Are they serious?” Jason said as he detached from the shoulder and jumped down to the ground.

“I don’t feel like asking,” Paul said, extending a battlemeld link to Jason as they and the mechs began firing on the Zen’zat who were scattering like ants and shooting the larger machines with hundreds of tiny blasts that would add up in time, but there was nowhere they could go and hide that the two smaller trailblazers couldn’t follow.

Paul circled around his mech, which was now limping on a partially broken foot, and dove into a group of Zen’zat, taking several hits on his shields as he dropped an Ubven field on 7 of them, then almost comically walked out the far side as they were frozen in place and the mech fired down on them once he’d cleared.

All too easy, Paul thought, sensing Jason’s displeasure.

You’re quoting Vader now? How Sith of you.

Shut up, the trailblazer thought as the duo went after and quickly disabled the ambushing Zen’zat to give the mechs more easy kills.

10

April 15, 4813

Poro System (Devastation Zone)

Ghostblade Fleet

Vreemont sat in a control nexus, mentally interfaced with the research ship’s computer and the active scanners that were set up around every bit of recovered debris from the new V’kit’no’sat technology. He’d been working on this for weeks without much success, admiring the recent addition the enemy had made to their tech arsenal. It wasn’t the first since this war began, but almost everything the V’kit’no’sat had created Star Force had the blueprints for thanks to the pyramid database recovered on Earth prior to its being lost. Multiple copies had been made and transported rimward long before that, so the precious data that had been allowing Star Force to advance so rapidly had not been lost along with the planet.

Vreemont had been studying it virtually all his life, and now trying to figure out something else the V’kit’no’sat had made without the blueprints was quite the challenge. They’d been right to bring it to him, for he was a level 12 tech, an ‘Ultra’ Mastertech as most people referred to them, though that modifier wasn’t official. There were only 183 level 12 techs in Star Force, spread over a variety of fields, and he was the only one that dared to go into the Devastation Zone.

But he was quite at home in the Ghostblade fleet he had helped to build, and with them constantly moving about he was, in some ways, safer than sitting on a border planet. He was also traveling in one of their largest task forces…some 1,329 ships in total. That was large compared to the numbers they normally moved about in, for they needed to stay scattered and not draw attention to themselves, but Kara didn’t want to take any chances with him or the research ship, let alone the few other vital craft traveling along with him, one of which was a Star Forge-class stellar mining station that was getting them the necessary solari without having to rely on the rest of Star Force to supply it to them.

Planting that station in extreme low orbit of a star was not an easy or fast process, and it left the station vulnerable to attack, so there were plenty of warships accompanying this fleet to be able to fight off the scouts and hunter groups the V’kit’no’sat had roaming the Devastation Zone. Right now the Star Forge was packed up and waiting alongside the factory ships as the mining ones he’d helped design were chewing through an asteroid field and picking up some more critical resources to help sustain and grow Kara’s Clan fleet.

But right now this research project was occupying Vreemont’s every waking thought. Something critical was eluding him, and even with his Sav-enhanced mind he hadn’t figured it out. All the ‘Ultra’ Mastertechs had been given the psionic otherwise reserved for advanced Archons because it gave them additional brain power, both for multitasking and analysis, but what couldn’t be genetically crafted was curiosity or improvisation. Those were traits of a person’s core, which was why Vreemont had made level 12 and so many others hadn’t. He had a knack for seeing patterns and figuring out how things worked, but at the moment he was stumped.

It was a sensor, he knew that now, but how it functioned made no sense. Something was being emitted that he couldn’t trace. Power was being consumed and atomic alterations made, but the power wasn’t being accounted for. It couldn’t just disappear into nothingness. It had to be absorbed or emitted, either as light, heat, or various other forms of energy…but he could find nothing. His sensors couldn’t pick up a damn thing and he knew the interaction had to be occurring on such a microscopic level that his sensing technology was missing it.

One could only magnify so small, then the photons or other particles being used to bounce off the target suddenly became the size of the target and you lost all ability to see it. Work at such a level then had to be deduction based, which was frustrating. You had data on side effects but not the actual happenings, basically meaning you had to figure out what was going on inside a black hole as far as scientific research was concerned…and that’s where it required a keen intellect to creatively imagine what could be happening, and then to make the connections.

Vreemont had kept running through mental simulations nonstop, even when he wasn’t connected with the scientific equipment, for all it would take was a single success and the number of failed tries didn’t matter. This was a matter of persistence combined with equal portions of insight and luck.

And today his luck came through.

He’d always known the key was what was locking the lotos together, and every scan he’d performed, direct and indirect, had come up with the same conclusion…there was a force there, but no visible particle emitting it.

But now it had just hit him. There might not be a source, but rather a reflector. For there was an external element in play beyond the components in most situations, that being gravity.

Would the V’kit’no’sat have built a sensor that only worked in the presence of a gravity field? And if they did, what range would it have? Gravity technically had no range, for like light it spread out the farther and farther it traveled. Did that mean a sensor would get weaker and weaker or would there be a prerequisite amount?

The lotos. They were being peeled away from the main crystal when power was applied, but another part of the device appeared to be reintegrating them back into the crystalline lattice…or rather a second one. There were multiples within the device, and he wasn’t talking about just the fragments recovered. What if one function required the unlocking, and in that process something was produced or absorbed he was unaware of? Then there was a reverse process to recharge whatever was being set loose.

That would account for the power mystery, if gravity indeed was being used as an additional source of charge. A magnetic field could be another possibility, but he’d ruled that out as being too limited. Most planets had a magnetic field, but it was usually so low as to not matter and a sensor that only worked around planets and in near stars wouldn’t be terribly useful for tracking ships in motion.

“Captain Doornan,” Vreemont asked via the comm. “I need a favor.”

“Name it,” the Kiritas said, appearing in holo in front of the Mastertech.

“I need this ship in close to the star and the artificial gravity turned off.”

The kangaroo-like alien blinked twice. “For the entire ship?”

“No, just in a select area. I need the retrieved components exposed to the natural gravity of the star.”

“It’ll take a few hours.”

“I know, but I think I’m onto something and I need to test my theory.”

“Gladly then. We’ll head there now.”

“Thank you,” Vreemont said as he ended the comm and the research ship began moving, though he couldn’t feel it. An inertial dampening field protected him from that and the gravity fields, though technically they still pulled on the field and everything in it, making it feel like there was no gravity effect the same way a ship in orbit felt like it was floating. All parts of it were being pulled on equally, thus there was no feeling of compression like you’d have on the surface when the gravity was squeezing you against it. On the ship an artificial gravity field was generated within the IDF to the level they liked, and Vreemont suspected that was nowhere near powerful enough for what he needed.

As promised it took a few hours to get from the asteroid field back in close to the star, then when the ship hit the proper position it allowed itself to begin falling towards the star so the components that were soon to be unprotected wouldn’t crash and crush on the floor against the engine strain.

That meant Vreemont had a limited amount of time before the ship had to alter course or ram into the star, but the captured and reassembled V’kit’no’sat components began working in a limited fashion, with the loose lotos suddenly beginning to lock together when power was applied to the device…but they hadn’t previously when he tried, meaning that the gravity field of the star was necessary.

But that shouldn’t have mattered, for the strength of the artificial gravity was plenty high. There had to be a collection mechanism to draw more of it to the ship within the device.

“Captain, are we experiencing any navigational anomalies?”

“We were just looking at that. The angular direction of the star has changed according to the gravity drives. Not much, but it’s off .4%.”

Vreemont smiled. “That’s my fault, Captain. This device is probably sucking the gravimetric particles towards it like a fat kid in a candy shop.”

“What?”

“My apologies. It’s an old expression. Somehow this device is pulling the gravimetric particles into it, thus altering the trajectory of those nearby that still miss.”

“I didn’t think we had any technology that could do that,” the Kiritas noted curiously. “That could mess with ship jumps, could it not?”

“In theory yes, but I suspect you’d need a much larger device and it’d only nudge one slightly off course. Approaches would be an inconvenience only. Outgoing jumps could be skewed but automatic correction devices would null it out. No, this is something else entirely.”

“Do you know what we’ve got?”

“I’m starting to get an idea. I think this sensor has to have a gravitational recharge.”

“Any idea what kind of beam it uses?”

“Not yet, but I’m getting close. I can feel it.”

“You’ve got another 36 minutes before we have to climb again. Will us reestablishing the artificial gravity cause anything more than an inconvenience?”

“I don’t know. Give me a heads up before you do so I can shut down the device just in case. We don’t want it broken any more than it is now.”

“Understood.”

Vreemont ended the conversation so he could apply his full attention to the problem. He was close, damn close, but he was missing just one piece of information.

What exactly were the locked lotos emitting?

11

May 16, 4813

Termunisef System (H’kar Region, Star Force territory)

Tavai

Paul stood suspended in an energy field as he was mentally linked into a mech training simulator, but rather than piloting the single craft he was handling 11 simultaneously. All but his were drone models, and he was running his 2 accompanying stars of mechs in a very active challenge that kept him pressed to his limits. He’d controlled far more units navally in real combat before, but this was different in that he wasn’t just directing the mechs, he was using his own mental balance programs instead of those in the machines themselves…meaning he had to feel each and every step they took, every arm lift, every torso twist.

And Paul had to do that to navigate the uneven terrain fast enough to stay ahead of the horde of minibots pursuing him while fighting enemies in front, to the sides, above, and below in the form of aerial craft, infantry, heavy infantry, opposing mechs, burrower bots, and goo spitters. This was a challenge that he’d tried some 387 times to pass and failed, and while Paul was best at the Naval and Commando divisions, his Archon rank was measured by his weakest category…which currently was Mechs thanks to this persistent nuisance of a challenge.

His aquatics weren’t much better, but that was only from his point of view. Compared to the rest of Star Force his aquatic and mech skills were superior to almost everyone else’s, and the challenges to advance further were tailored to capitalize on that point, making this and those beyond virtually impossible to beat. Paul knew the key was to keep fighting while advancing, but the computerized opponents were designed to prevent that at all times.

But it was just a program, not live opponents. In real life the computer enemies were probably harder, save for when you met the unexpected or the extremely skilled. The challenge programming had accounted for the former with a high degree of randomization, so even while Paul knew exactly what the computer would do, he had a list of options rather than certainties, making each attempt a different kind of failure…and today was no different. Eventually his two stars plus one, while all surviving, got slowed down enough that the minibot swarms caught up to them and then it was all over.

It took several minutes of fighting and dying before it became official, but there was no way his mechs could survive hundreds of thousands of the dog-like machines nibbling away at them and slowing them even further with varied means of technological ‘glue’ such as gravity mines and trip lines. When the challenge was finally lost Paul took a few long breaths then triggered the energy field release, dropping him back to his own feet as his senses fully returned to his body from the disconcerting 11-way split his head had been locked into.

Paul left the mech training chamber and headed for the nearby track in the planetary sanctum, needing an easy run as a transition before another hard challenge…this one aerial…to give his mind a break. When he got there he pretty much had the halo track to himself, jogging up the ramp-like entrance and turning left as he ran on the ‘wall’ that had its own artificial gravity. He disappeared into the tunnel that looped around for a stretch of 5 miles with multiple entrances, but there just weren’t that many Archons around here, which was understandable.

Tavai was a H’kar planet well in from the front that was both a mining and logistics stronghold, with almost as many Kiritak as H’kar…but very few Archons. The sanctum was built to match others across Star Force territory and was the exclusive training grounds of the Archons while the mass of other personnel had their own facilities. Paul could use theirs whenever he liked, but only the sanctums had the necessary high level equipment to accommodate a trailblazer. His command ship had a smaller version than what planets had, and as long as the Excalibur was parked in orbit he was going to take advantage of the extras available here.

A lot of those extras were group training courses for which a lone individual had no use, but there were unique, non-testing courses that his ship didn’t have and sometimes one needed to train just to improve rather than focusing on a challenge requirement, but at the moment Paul was still clawing his way up the ranks in all 5 divisions, but would be stuck at Goku 18 until he got past that mech challenge. In the past he would have kept hammering it over and over until he got it, but he’d learned to bounce around from discipline to discipline rather than get stuck in a rut. He’d be back to it tomorrow, but for today he was going to work other areas while his new fleet began to assemble.

What was left of his original fleet had been cannibalized and sent off to reinforce others as they stayed in the Devastation Zone fighting off V’kit’no’sat attacks on a total of 13 different hidden bases. Comm lag had eventually reported them all in, though there still could be some happening now that Paul wouldn’t know about for a week or two now that he was out of the Devastation Zone but still close enough to stay in the loop. Only the Excalibur remained under his command, with his mass of Warship-class jumpships having been reassigned or, for the empty ones, sent further back into Star Force territory for repair work and to pick up new drone complements rather than wasting shipping resources to move them all out here.

As it was, Paul was going to be out of the fight for a while even though he could have pulled rank and took possession of his own repurposed fleet by combining others, but in truth this was a better location to respond to any front incursion that occurred rather than being stuck on the other side of the DZ if and when it happened…and Paul was convinced it was going to happen soon, for the V’kit’no’sat were chewing up their fleets and expending huge numbers of their own ships to do it. That signaled to him that they were creating a moment of opportunity to strike from, for he didn’t think they’d sent enough ships to continue this pace of attrition. If they had, he knew they wouldn’t be patient and just run them up to the front and hammer away. They were being strategic here to set up a hammer blow they weren’t convinced would work without the roaming fleets having been neutralized…as Paul’s now was.

Sara’s too, along with Greg’s. Three of the 19 trailblazers out wandering the Devastation Zone were now sidelined due to lack of drones, though most of their jumpships still remained. Not quite as useless as old fashioned aircraft carriers back in the pre-Star Force days, the Warship-class jumpships could definitely fight on their own, but without a drone fleet to carry and disperse, they would have to slug it out with V’kit’no’sat ships sometimes larger than them…and that would endanger the crew inside. Star Force didn’t fight that way except as a last ditch action, so no one was going to send a fleet of empty jumpships into combat and waste them in a fight the V’kit’no’sat would very much like to see.

So he and the others would have to wait until more drones came in from the ever growing production facilities here and rimward. There were over 7,000 star systems in ‘safe’ territory that were producing drones for the DZ fleets, whether in small numbers or great, in addition to other systems providing the drones for the lesser wars being fought elsewhere, for as many highly developed systems the V’kit’no’sat took from Star Force, the Human-led empire was expanding out to 10 others rimward.

They weren’t conquering them, rather moving into uninhabited areas or annexing other races that petitioned for membership. Conditions were bad out there, bad enough that there was a long list of races and civilizations that wanted help, allegiance, or membership…too many for them to get to in the wake of The Nexus’s collapse. That mammoth civilization was still around, but its primary weakness had been claiming territory it couldn’t control, for they’d sprinkled a few of their own worlds amongst the other masses while claiming dominion over them…so when those few sprinkles fell to enemies, vast tracks of territory were now open to the predation of others.

Before the V’kit’no’sat war had begun the situation with The Nexus had been deteriorating but not nearly this bad, and even then there had been a steady stream of refugees leaving it to come into Star Force. Now that number had increased exponentially, despite the fact that they were told of the V’kit’no’sat threat gobbling up the coreward side of the empire…but that was a long way away and the need of these people was in the here and now, so Director Davis and the other trailblazers were out there adding to and stabilizing those newly acquired regions while making plans to push even further out and collect more of the scraps the dying Nexus left behind.

Current that massive civilization still held their major systems, but they were now reduced to a skeleton of what they once were. The threat of their intervention was now almost nonexistent, and that bluff in the past had been what held their limited control over the vast regions they controlled in the Perseus and Cygnus galactic arms. Now it was gone and the territories they’d held sway over but did not directly own were in revolt and there was little The Nexus races could do about it other than to bunker down and try to protect what they still had.

Star Force had, to date, annexed 38 former Nexus races on the coreward edge of that civilization’s territory, with another 13 having requested membership but were too far away to include yet. There were some Star Force fleets out there trying to help them survive, but the fact was that Star Force wasn’t going to make the same mistake The Nexus did and leapfrog over entire regions and hope that they didn’t become a cancer from within.

And what Davis was accomplishing out there was nothing short of truly amazing…but he could never do enough, for the continuing collapse of The Nexus was killing so many people, even entire races in some places, as formerly suppressed threats reared their ugly heads and went on a rampage. Others faced logistical nightmares as the former economy of The Nexus that had sustained them pulled back out of their territories, leaving them stranded and trying to find enough foodstuffs just to keep their people alive.

It was a nightmare that Star Force was chipping away at…and those races like the Tolsoi and H’kar that had been the first members to switch over were now solidly defended and exporting Star Force drone warships to other factions, adding to the industrial muscle of the empire as it fought to replace the losses from the old ADZ that the V’kit’no’sat had eliminated long, long ago.

Paul had helped a member race called the Vedran switch over and stabilize, but once the V’kit’no’sat had returned he’d come straight back and let others guide the Vedran. This was the fight he was meant for and where he was needed the most, but Star Force’s ultimate survival was going to depend on the expansion efforts and how many replacement drones they could produce…for this was primarily a naval war, and if Paul could hold the black sky he could defend worlds like this one without the V’kit’no’sat ever landing a single Zen’zat on the surface.

But the reverse was also true, and too much naval power by the enemy meant they could obliterate a world like this without even landing a single Zen’zat on it. The V’kit’no’sat were still better than them, but commanders like Paul, Roger, and Liam made up the difference and then some, but they couldn’t wish away bad numbers, and right now the fleet strength in the DZ was getting lower and lower. Soon it would be so low that when the V’kit’no’sat chose a target to smash on the front they’d get it…assuming they had enough ships left to mount the assault…because Star Force wouldn’t have much in the way of huge reinforcement fleets to send, though the surrounding systems would chip in.

And that would further weaken those systems to assault. The DZ roaming fleets were the backup to hold the front, and so long as they were out and moving and the V’kit’no’sat didn’t know exactly where they were Star Force had an advantage, for if the V’kit’no’sat launched an attack they wouldn’t know how many ships they actually needed, and could in fact be outnumbered if one or more of the mega fleets arrived to join the fight.

But eliminate those fleets and the combat math became a lot more simple for the attackers.

There were Defender fleets roaming Star Force territory to make sure the V’kit’no’sat didn’t dash past the border and hit worlds further in or skirt around the edges and get into the far rim areas where Star Force was weaker. But if those fleets had to come out to the front then a lot more people would be left vulnerable further back. It was up to the roaming fleets and the trailblazers commanding them to protect the front, and right now they didn’t have enough naval toys left to do it.

And Paul knew the V’kit’no’sat weren’t going to give them a breather so they could make more…which was why he knew the hammer blow was coming soon. He just hoped he could be back in the fight when it began with more than the Excalibur and the few dozen fully loaded jumpships assembled in a parking orbit further out that he would be commandeering once those numbers began to pool from resources that otherwise would have been flowing to the Uriti Preserve.

There was no point in sending them all the way out there when the need was here, and both Sara and Greg had pointedly told Paul that he got first dibs on the new ships and had appropriately assigned themselves to system defense in two of the strongest positions on the front where the V’kit’no’sat ego might demand they hit first…unless they were being less bold and hitting at the weakest areas. If they were that would mean either a change in strategy or the loss of more ships in combat with the roaming fleets than they had anticipated. Either way, Paul was all but sure they were going to take at least one more system, but his gut said dozens or this whole poaching expedition within the DZ wouldn’t be worth it to them.

But he was wrong. Dead wrong. And word came through the haphazard relay grid across the DZ that the V’kit’no’sat had gone for one of the two biggest prizes and hit Grid Point Stargate’s guardian system, Tarric 3. Shortly thereafter, while Paul was mentally kicking himself for being stuck on the sidelines, he got word that they’d lost the system and had to retreat back to the Grid Point that was located nearby and essentially formed its own star system…but one that had to move through Tarric 3 to access other star systems, for the gravity field generated by the huge construct wasn’t enough to allow travel anywhere else using gravity drives save for the guardian system.

Over the following weeks the V’kit’no’sat did not press in to the Grid Point itself, and Paul knew they wouldn’t. They knew what kind of defenses it had, and no matter how inviting a target all that infrastructure around the construct was…let alone the magnetic jump platform itself…he didn’t think them so foolish to try and get it at, for it would cost them as many ships as taking down a Hadarak and they’d have to come in a few at a time on a very slow approach.

No, that Grid Point was secure and was going to stay secure save for some off the wall strategy that Paul couldn’t predict, but it was almost pointless. The V’kit’no’sat hadn’t just driven Star Force from Tarric 3. They’d claimed possession of the empty system and were now blockading the Grid Point, meaning that any ships that came through the mag jump had nowhere to go except back the way they came.

And now Star Force couldn’t hop halfway across the Devastation Zone then move out from Tarric 3. They’d have to take the long, slow route that would give the V’kit’no’sat a lot more control over the region and make roaming fleets operating anti-spinward of the old ADZ very far from help if they got into trouble.

Losing Tarric 3 was a major gut punch, but less than a month later light probing actions started to pop up along the front systems. Small groupings of V’kit’no’sat ships would enter on obscure jumplines and try to hit some vulnerable Star Force ships before fleeing. They would pop in and pop out, not just in the front systems but those in the DZ that connected to them, as if in some giant shell game concealing what their true target was.

Paul knew it was more than that. They were trying to provoke a response as much as to dictate Star Force’s fleet and civilian movements…with a massive exodus of non-essential personnel beginning to be transported off those worlds in anticipation of a strike.

The Termunisef System was 3 jumps away from the front. Two if you wanted to stretch a bit with an extra powerful gravity drive on a scout ship. So if an attack was going to come nearby Paul could get there, but the front itself stretched some 2,000+ lightyears in width and was 1,000+ lightyears in height. That was a huge wall to monitor, let alone defend, and the V’kit’no’sat knew it. Now, with ships moving everywhere, it was going to make it much harder for Star Force to try and guess where the next hit was going to be.

Paul was starting to feel a major shift coming in favor of the V’kit’no’sat when he got some badly needed good news from the DZ. It came in the form of a message from Vreemont telling him that they’d discovered the function and application of the recovered technology from the Kaeper crash on Darlek.

Paul read it quickly but carefully, scrolling through the detailed text explanation even as the Mastertech’s hologram explained the basic points verbally.

“The system we have patched together is only partially functional, but it has been enough to determine that it is a sensor package extremely limited in scope that functions off a form of energy that we do not even have a name for, let alone the ability to detect. It is produced in the decay of bonded lonos and travels at a rate of 17.3 lightspeed…however, reception is negated by IDF and blurred by artificial gravity fields.”

“Also, the sensor must be recharged in a heavy gravity field. It draws gravimetric particles to it, warping the gravity field flow slightly as it gathers them, enabling the relocking of the lonos. In this way they save an expendable charge. The unlocking causes more than a reverse procedure, and the energy produced…which I’m tentatively calling ‘Ghostbane’… is sent omni-directional. For this reason the sensor is located as close to the hull as possible to give maximum exposure assuming the IDF and artificial gravity are not shut down shipwide for use.”

“You can figure out the tactical value of that for yourself, but the key is that the Ghostbane ignores matter entirely. It only seems to interact with substances that alter gravity. Particularly the cores of gravity drives and the emitters in AG devices.”

Paul stopped listening right there as the implications became clear. This new tech didn’t function like a normal sensor. It hunted for one thing and one thing only, and was a pain in the ass to use from the sound of it. But every ship in the fleet used gravity drives, so even if this Ghostbane energy couldn’t see the hulls or crew onboard it could ping for the location of the drives…and where surface bases were concerned that did not have gravity drives, they did have artificial gravity normalizing the planet’s gravity to Star Force standards within the bases.

Paul needed to send out a message for the fleets and bases in the DZ, but first he listened to and read through the rest of the data. The Devastation Zone was huge and the V’kit’no’sat finding every single base in it was doubtful unless they had a lot of time to search. He got the feeling that they either followed ships to the bases that had been attacked or they’d been systematically scanning systems with stealth vessels until they had comprised the list they’d hit to draw Star Force out. If the other bases had yet to be discovered they could be salvaged by turning off the artificial gravity, for the notes that Vreemont sent said that even a minimally charged gravity drive on standby was sufficient to produce a reflective ping, and the same was true for an AG field generator.

They’d have to be powered off entirely and have even standby power physically disabled. That wasn’t an option for ships that had to move, but the bases could be kept hidden if they didn’t use any AG devices, either in the infrastructure or in the form of vehicles.

That wouldn’t work for all bases, because low gravity really sucked the strength out of people, but bases with higher than normal gravity could remain and the others temporarily abandoned until some way to camouflage them was created. So far Vreemont couldn’t even guess at that, but Paul had the answer he needed…as well as understanding why the V’kit’no’sat had tried to smash the technology rather than let it fall into enemy hands.

Vreemont’s notes said there was enough that Star Force should be able to start experimenting with creating their own version of the sensor in coming years, and if that was put into play then they’d be able to find V’kit’no’sat stealth ships…and maybe even the KOQ ones.

Damn…he really wanted to try that option out even though they were tentative allies, but the implications and saving grace of this discovery were rolling through his mind, with the saving grace being that the hidden comm relays didn’t have gravity drives, for they were positioned so far out in star systems that they didn’t have to worry about moving.

That meant they were invisible to this kind of sensor, meaning the V’kit’no’sat weren’t going to wipe the DZ clean of them. That was a huge relief, but every stealth ship Paul had was going to be picked up by hidden V’kit’no’sat observation posts, and if they had their own relay network in place the fleet commanders were going to have to work a lot harder to move around without being spotted…especially when they didn’t know if they were being spotted or not, but getting an alert detector built was high on Vreemont’s wish list, so at least a ship could tell when they were being scanned and from what direction the scan was coming from.

It would take months at the minimum to get even a fraction of their ships equipped with that if they had the technology right now, but at least the countdown clock had started ticking, for this message hadn’t just gone to Paul. It was traveling throughout Star Force territory and techs across the empire would begin working on all possible applications.

Paul sent a quick thank you to Tyrenk, the Archon who had been quick witted enough to save what pieces the V’kit’no’sat had been trying to further smash, then the trailblazer began communicating new orders and suggestions to the defense fleets, system defenders, and roaming DZ fleets. Now that they knew what they were up against they could fight it, but for now the V’kit’no’sat still held a serious advantage over them.

Time. Star Force needed time to catch up on this, but Paul doubted they were going to get too much of it. Hopefully the V’kit’no’sat still didn’t know they’d gotten their hands on a Ghostbane sensor…

Paul sent one more message back to Vreemont, officially sanctioning that name, then recorded a hologram for Davis going over the strategic and tactical implications of this new world of warfare the V’kit’no’sat had been the first to break into.

12

July 12, 4813

Jennizeren System (Star Force Front)

Ennvor

The Jennizeren System had once been on the back edge of the Occupation Zone, taken from the lizards during the conquest of their rimward territories between the ADZ and H’kar territory, then built up into a decent sized colony on three of the 6 planets. But when the V’kit’no’sat war began and people started flooding out of the ADZ many ended up here, far from the fighting, and the Monarch in charge, Baron Tovren, had put anyone of sufficient skill to use here, incentivizing many to stay and avoid moving on to the Rim Region.

He knew the V’kit’no’sat would eventually fight their way out here, and while he had no illusions about being able to fight them off when Sol and Epsilon Eridani couldn’t, he had always intended to make them bleed for it. Because of his efforts begun over a thousand years ago, Jennizeren was a point further into the Devastation Zone along the front, with weaker systems having been hit while the Baron’s system was avoided.

That wasn’t going to last, and he’d known in recent decades that his system’s time was soon to be up. He’d prepared well, and had used the valuable resources within his system to build a larger than average system defense fleet, but today was the first day it had ever been used en mass, with his fleets congregating around low stellar orbit as the enemy fleet began pouring in along one of the many incoming jumplines.

Tovren didn’t control the fighting. Rather he sat back and watched as the Archons handled that. His job now was to assist them as he could and organize the evacuation efforts. Already people had been moved out all along the front, and he’d been reducing the number of outright civilians for years, making this planet and the other 5 essentially prepped battlefields to fight on, but now, seeing this day finally come, he was worried. People were going to die here in the coming days, no matter how well the evacuation went, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop it.

Tovren was now a Count, having been promoted two centuries back, but that didn’t give him any special powers that Baron did not. He’d been quietly given a number of psionics when he became a Monarch, including Sav, but his job was to handle logistics and planning…things done prior to a battle, or things done to support those in battle on far off systems. Now the war had arrived at his little island in the ocean of space and he was at least happy to see several V’kit’no’sat ships blow up soon after entry as the assembled system defense drones combined their firepower and literally annihilated the Kafcha-class vessels.

But their mass was so high and it took so much firepower that the death of those ships allowed many more to arrive behind them, soon billowing to such numbers that a retreat was ordered. Stellar orbit was forfeited to the V’kit’no’sat while the fleet was going to pull back and force a fight in range of the planetary defenses where they’d be the most effective in killing enemy ships. If they stayed in deep space and fought it’d be to the V’kit’no’sat’s advantage, but now the evacuation ships were going to have to wait for an opening and escort, for the enemy ships were sending out small groups to all the major jumplines and effectively blockading the system.

But there they stayed, for days leading into weeks. Their fleet size was large, but even the Count could tell that it was light for what it would take to conquer this system. They could do it with what they had, but Star Force would make them bleed heavily for it and any reinforcement coming in from other systems would tip the scales in their favor.

Tovren knew help would come, and the V’kit’no’sat must have known that too, so what were they waiting for? Every day that passed meant reinforcements would be closer and with the relay network intact the Archons would know which jumplines to use coming in and which ones were blocked. The V’kit’no’sat couldn’t poach all of them with enough ships to make a dent, and there were some very long range jumps on unlikely jumplines that could be used to get the first group of ships in cleanly.

It made no sense to Tovren, but there they stayed, almost waiting for the system defense drones and the limited number of warships that controlled them from afar to get frustrated and bring the fight to them…but that wasn’t going to happen, so there was a stalemate and staring match going on, making Count Tovren wonder what in the hell were the V’kit’no’sat playing at.

Paul watched on Tavai via the relay network as the V’kit’no’sat invaded 6 different front systems with a large number of ships, but didn’t go any further than combat in stellar orbit. They assaulted no planet, but blockaded the systems as best they could, though they couldn’t keep all ships in or out. Several smaller fleet groups had gotten in and increased the defensive ship count, as well as some escorted evacuation ships taking more people out, but the normal traffic flow had been shut down in these 6 systems that were spread out across the central third of the front.

They weren’t close to each other, meaning any of the roaming fleets would have to choose where to go. If/when they got there they’d thump the V’kit’no’sat fleets, for they weren’t large enough to tackle them and the system defenders, but Paul knew there had to be more enemy fleets lurking nearby…the question was where?

He had access to limited sensors in many of the systems beyond the border, and if a large fleet passed through them he’d see it. So he could eliminate those systems, lag assumed, but that still left a lot of other pathways they could be using to get to the front. He also didn’t know where the roaming fleets were, exactly, just their last known check-in points. He also had information from Tarric 3, confirming that the huge blockading fleet was still there, meaning these ships had come from somewhere else.

Already there were over 230,000 V’kit’no’sat ships identified in the Devastation Zone at different locations. Many of the high profile wars the V’kit’no’sat had fought in the past had used less than that, and prior to this new invasion the highest number known was 78,000. When grouped together they were literally unstoppable, but Star Force had been getting better and better at trimming their numbers, and with thousands of star systems left for the V’kit’no’sat to conquer the attrition had gradually added up and the rim regions had begun to produce more and more drones, making this almost a fair fight.

Apparently the V’kit’no’sat did not like that, so they’d devoted a slight larger fraction of their empire’s forces to this purge of the rogue Zen’zat, as they’d labeled it. And to be fair, they’d purged a lot of them and their worlds to date, but the time it had taken them to do the damage they had was their Achilles heel. Had they devoted 230,000 initially Star Force would probably have been annihilated by now, but Paul and others had been continually upgrading the drones and the Star Force navy in general, which the V’kit’no’sat had recently been schooled about.

That said, it looked like the V’kit’no’sat were getting exactly what they wanted. Grid Point Stargate was now neutralized and Paul’s own fleet was destroyed/disbanded. In a way that was actually advantageous, because he could remain in constant contact with the relay grid here and see what was going on better than bouncing around unlinked systems in the DZ, but not having him in these fights was going to be a disadvantage. As soon as he figured out where he needed to go he was going to board the Excalibur and head there…but where that would be still eluded him.

It might not actually be any of the 6 systems currently besieged, with these being a big distraction that could then be turned into an assault if Star Force sent ships elsewhere. At least the V’kit’no’sat were not so overconfident to just charge into whatever system they wanted assuming they could take it. Losses inflicted on them must have finally taught them a lesson…or maybe this was the work of their new commander.

Whoever was calling the shots, they had Paul guessing up until the first hammer blow came. A few months later a full fledged assault came on the far ‘left’ side of the front, then another on the opposite side with the 6 besieged systems remaining as they were with those fleets ready to act whenever they decided to push the attack into the planets.

Paul didn’t leave. He could tell they were stretching Star Force out, and his gut suspected that a major assault was going to push into more than just one system and he needed to be there soon after it happened, not stuck a couple months away out on the wings.

But where was it coming…

Then it hit Paul. This wasn’t a push for a single system, nor even a group of them. The V’kit’no’sat were attacking in a way to erode Star Force’s defenses along the entire front. Drawing them into battle and bleeding them of ships the same way they had done in the Devastation Zone.

Paul knew they had far more than 230,000 in play, now confirmed to be up to 311,000 based on ship identifiers that the V’kit’no’sat had never bothered to fake. When not hiding they broadcast who they were, with ship and racial IDs, and sometimes even who the commander was and what ship they were on, daring Star Force to come after them personally. The V’kit’no’sat were ego incarnate…but they were not stupid, and whoever was running this part of their purging efforts wasn’t going for a chunk of the front.

They were trying to cripple the entire front, followed by a massive wave of attacks…if Paul was right…that would sweep up hundreds, if not a thousand systems before Star Force could bleed the V’kit’no’sat into another stalemate. The key was always the fleets. Take them away and the systems were a known quantity that scouts could size up. Bring in an overwhelming force and you could take them with a minimum of losses, one by one.

And Paul knew that was exactly what the V’kit’no’sat were going to try. Whatever had changed in their empire had finally got them taking Star Force seriously and they were going to drive them completely out of the Orion Arm.

After that they wouldn’t let them go. They’d pursue them until every Star Force world was obliterated, and with all those systems gone Paul and the others wouldn’t be getting so many replacement drones and the attrition curve would snowball in the V’kit’no’sat’s advantage. Star Force had a few centuries left, maybe a millennia a most, then they’d be reduced to a handful of secret systems that couldn’t hold all the evacuees…not that there would be many left with multiple assaults happening everywhere and too few ships to move everyone.

The V’kit’no’sat had sized them up well this time, and they were accepting an unseemly number of losses to accomplish it. It appeared they had finally had enough of this war and were sending what they deemed necessary to quash it, and in doing so acknowledging how dangerous Star Force really was.

They weren’t fighting against an inferior anymore. They were fighting them as if they were a worthy opponent…and an opponent that they could now track with impunity thanks to the Ghostbane sensor.

That gave them more data on how many ships Star Force had in the DZ, making Paul wonder just how many scout ships they had out there equipped with that sensor. The fog of war had lifted a bit for them and now they sensed an opportunity. Had Paul and the other trailblazers not been the strategic masterminds they were Star Force would have been destroyed long ago, but now it seemed they were finally about to get overwhelmed and the rolling tide of losses not seen since the beginning of the war was going to resume in a gradual wave of destruction that would consume all who didn’t turn and run for the deep rim as fast as they could, then lose themselves in the wilds where the V’kit’no’sat would never find them.

Paul knew it with certainty now. There were a lot more V’kit’no’sat ships on the way, and rather than waste them to eliminate the Grid Point or attack the Preserve, they were going for the mass of weaker targets that were the industrial strength of the empire…but they weren’t going to get them. Paul still had two tricks up his sleeve, and he appropriately sent two message out now, for it would take time to assemble them all.

He didn’t know if it would be enough, but at the very least the V’kit’no’sat were going to get a worthy fight…and if they did end up winning it, they were going to have to earn it the hard way.

12 days later…

One of Paul’s messages made its way across the Devastation Zone to a Ghostblade fleet, one of many that were in the DZ and ranging far beyond into systems that had no Star Force or V’kit’no’sat presence doing their nomad thing and staying away from everyone as they sought out unclaimed resources. Harvesting them and moving on, they grew their fleets and assaulted a few V’kit’no’sat ships when they had the chance.

Kara’s fleet was in the Devastation Zone, for she didn’t want to get too far away from the action, but she only had a few hundred ships with her. Not a battlegroup but another of the civilian/warship combos that most Ghostblade fleet groups were comprised of. She was onboard her flagship, the Yi, which was a modified Melee-class command ship rebuilt in Ghostblade fashion. It’s design was unique, for nowhere else in her widespread fleets was there another, and Kara spent 99% of her time onboard the vessel bouncing from system to system organizing her Clan from afar and camping out in the onboard sanctum working her way towards Goku rank, for which she was only 3 levels away.

When the message came in from Paul it was relayed from a Ghostblade scout ship sitting next to a stationary relay and sipping off the data it collected, then the specially designed scout ship transmitted the data in a burst to the systems where it knew others would be, essentially creating a link to wherever Kara’s command ship was. The scout ships didn’t have a lot of range, definitely not what the relays had that could send signals in excess of 43 lightyears, but put enough of them in a string knowing where Kara was and was going to go, and she had her data link into the grid while maintaining her clandestine roaming status.

That meant Paul’s message got to her right away, but it wasn’t a hologram. Rather it was a simple text message containing only 4 words.

The beacons are lit.

A chill ran through her the moment she saw them, having waited for this day since her Clan was founded in secret so the V’kit’no’sat would not know of its existence even if they penetrated Star Force computer systems on captured worlds, for there was no record of Ghostblade anywhere. It was the Clan that did not exist…until now.

Kara bolted from the terminal in her quarters where she read the message and ran through the ship straight to the bridge.

“Everyone listen up!” she yelled unnecessarily, for the crew of some 128 individuals there were almost whisper quiet already, but the adoptive trailblazer was so pumped with adrenaline they all noticed immediately by the tone of her voice. “We’re being recalled. All of us. I don’t know what’s happened, but Paul just signaled for us to come out of the shadows. Issue immediate recall orders and get couriers moving ASAP. Bring them to the rally points and tell them to move at maximum speed. The front is already under assault, and if I’m right it’s about to get a lot hotter and we’re going to be needed.”

“Geez,” her ship Captain said under his breath, with the Bsidd standing well taller than her on its spindly, insect-like frame. “If he’s calling us in it must really be bad. He let the ADZ fall and still didn’t activate us.”

“And it was the right call to make,” Kara said firmly. “Otherwise we would never have grown as large as we have. Everyone get moving. Now!”

8 days later…

Paul’s second message wasn’t meant for the Devastation Zone, but rather headed rimward past the original Rim Region and into some of the more lawless areas that Star Force had been working to build up the infrastructure in and wrangle into new annexes of their empire. It wasn’t the rimward front, but somewhere in between where the message landed on a planet named by Paul himself.

It was on Csilla that the message found its recipient, a planet of enormous size and a gravity of 3.2g mitigated down to the Star Force norm of 1.0g in the cities that covered nearly all of its hot surface. Originally it had been uninhabited and barren, but now it was a Paladin world and home to the original mastermind that Paul had turned to the Star Force side long ago.

Aptly named Thrawn by the trailblazer, the 7 foot tall lizard was unique in that his body was a mix of the original green scales and the Paladin blue, for he hadn’t been born Paladin as almost all others had. There were still a few originals left, but they’d made the full conversion to the Paladin genome, having pure blue skin in addition to other minor internal alterations.

The trailblazer Paul had given Thrawn a unique honor of the binary coloration in addition to a peculiarity in his eyes. They now glowed red, like a Protovic’s, but when asked why Paul has simply said nostalgia. In later years Thrawn and his superior intellect succeeded in digging through Human records and identifying his fictitious namesake who also had red glowing eyes and whose homeworld was Csilla.

One might have saw those references as an insult, but Thrawn knew it was just the opposite. To be named for one of the legends that the trailblazers idolized was an enormous honor, especially amongst the Li’vorkrachnika, for Thrawn hadn’t even been given a name in that civilization. None of the ‘lizards,’ as Star Force had called them, had anything more than an identification number, for they weren’t expected to survive long enough to need one. Even masterminds like Thrawn had been bred to fulfill a specific purpose and were deemed disposable so long as their deaths benefited their civilization.

Thrawn had learned everything he needed through genetic memory, literally being born ready to lead trillions of Li’vorkrachnika into battle much like the legendary Thrawn had. Thrawn was smart, cunning, curious, but also cruel. The Li’vorkrachnika were worse, and he kept that part of the legend as a reminder as well, for it had taken centuries for Paul to instill in him the necessity of compassion and the reasoning why even the simplest of personnel were not expendable.

Years of combat experience told him otherwise, for the Li’vorkrachnika had grown a massive empire based on expendable personnel applications and had never faced a true challenge until they attacked Star Force. They had almost beaten them, but Star Force’s growth rate was so astounding that they actually surpassed the Li’vorkrachnika even as they were losing, then turned the invasion backwards against them and succeeded in conquering all of their original territory.

The Li’vorkrachnika had emigrated coreward during those losses where Star Force would not go, but Thrawn had been captured and interrogated by Paul as he fought to hurt Star Force as much as possible before he died, covering for the Templars as they ran and let trillions to perish.

But that’s how the Li’vorkrachnika lived and died, serving their civilization and the Templars who led it. Now Thrawn knew otherwise, for Paul had taught him much, even overcoming his genetic memories and tendencies. Now he was Paladin, through and through, and those that were left to die while the Templars ran were mostly destroyed, but not all. Star Force, with his help, had converted many over to their side and they eventually were transformed into Paladin…but no matter how much Thrawn wanted to treat the Paladin as expendable Paul and the others wouldn’t have it, with many arguments over even the simplest application as the trailblazers gradually opened his eyes to the truth.

Now Thrawn fought as they did, preserving his troops as long as possible, but when battles turned bad and Star Force was defending locations they couldn’t abandon without leaving people to die…that was combat that Thrawn knew more about than anyone in Star Force, including the trailblazers. No one wanted to fight like that, but as the mastermind of war that he’d been bred to be he knew that one did not always have a choice in the fights they faced. And the Li’vorkrachnika, for all their flaws, knew how to turn losing situations into victories using ugly tactics.

For the longest time Paul had told Thrawn he wasn’t ready to face the V’kit’no’sat, and that his skills were better put to use out here against enemies inferior to Star Force but needing to be fought just the same. For centuries Thrawn had been fighting and helping Star Force grow its empire while the trailblazers and others fought the largest, toughest enemy ever seen. It felt wrong not to be in that fight, but over time as Thrawn had analyzed the battle records he realized Paul had been right. The Li’vorkrachnika methods were insufficient against an enemy such as the V’kit’no’sat, and only Star Force, born of V’kit’no’sat legacy, could stand toe to toe with them and survive.

So Thrawn continued his assigned missions leading segments of the Paladin while other Viceroys, which were the upgraded version of the original ‘masterminds,’ worked with Archons to grow massive numbers of combat troops on location where needed, taking a single Paladin ship to a remote world and using it a like a seed to produce armies of workers and troops with full genetic knowledge, forgoing the typical Star Force maturia phase of growth and putting Thrawn’s kin directly into field work.

That was the purpose of the Paladin, and because of it they were very useful against equal or lesser opponents. Even superior ones so long as they didn’t greatly outscale them. But the weakness in the Paladin was their lack of expertise, with individuals living for thousands of years having skills far superior to the genetic memory of Paladin just coming into existence.

That meant the Paladin were ill suited to fighting the V’kit’no’sat, which was why Thrawn was genuinely surprised at Paul’s holographic message.

“We are at a turning point,” the blue haired Human that Thrawn had the utmost respect for said calmly. “The V’kit’no’sat are finally taking us seriously and mounting a widescale assault that I believe is designed to trim away our fleets so they can assault systems without reinforcement, overwhelming them and minimizing their own losses as they sweep up hundreds of systems before attrition ends them. If they receive additional reinforcements they could push the assault to our total eradication.”

“If we are going to fight this, we must counter their numbers initially to bleed them further and reduce our own losses. I can only be in one system at a time, and this fight looks like it’s going to be very widespread. The V’kit’no’sat have a new commander, identity unknown, and he’s playing this very different than in the past. Less ego, more intelligence, and far more dangerous.”

“We have to hold the front more or less where it is, or our industrial strength will be weakened to the point of diminishing returns. I don’t like giving this order, because I know what it will mean, but we have to go all in without abandoning the far rim. You wanted a chance to fight the V’kit’no’sat, and now you have it. We have to fight sloppy, but without going to the darkside. I trust you know the difference, and now and I need your intellect and your race. All of them. Now. We have to push back against this as hard as possible and make them fear us to the point of uncertainty.”

“But be warned. They have a new weapon. A sensor that is undetectable and can locate gravity drives and artificial gravity generators. It’s how they’re finding our bases in the Devastation Zone, and with this new technology they are emboldened. They believe they know approximately how many ships we have and how many it will take to break us. I don’t believe they know about you, and it’s time to make your presence known…en mass.”

“A lot of us are going to die in the coming days, and I do not like bringing the Paladin in to join us, but we either fight this together or we risk being conquered entirely in the coming centuries. And you know well that the V’kit’no’sat do not take prisoners. I also know that you want to be here, so come and give the V’kit’no’sat reason to fear the Paladin. Use these waypoints,” Paul said, with holographic map locations popping up beneath his full body image. “The rest you can work out for yourself, old friend.”

“Old friend,” Thrawn repeated in English, a language that he had refused to learn for a long time. “You do me more honor with those two words than I deserve, but perhaps after the coming fight I will be worthy of them.”

“We will come,” he told the now static hologram. “You will not have to face their might alone. And if we should fall, you will not have to die alone. The Paladin are with you and forthcoming,” Thrawn said unnecessarily as he stood up from his meditative pose, tail spinning around behind him as he walked quickly towards the door of his private chambers and into the control center a hallway down.

“It is time,” he told the other blue scaled lizards. “The trailblazers have called for our aid, and we shall respond in full force. We go to war against the V’kit’no’sat,” he said, seeing the gleam of anticipation and danger that was still encoded into their genome. Li’vorkrachnika never wanted to run and hide, and neither did Paladin. They were ready to go even before he said the words, so he added the only bit of importance necessary before they snapped into tasks genetically mapped into their minds before birth.

“It’s time to earn our position in the empire with their blood.”

13

October 1, 4813

Karthus System (Star Force territory)

Requiem

In some 113 lightyears from the front, Requiem was a world that was not expecting to be engaged in battle, but one that had been designed specifically to fight the war when it got here. There was almost no industry on the planet save for foodstuffs and small scale replacement parts, ammunition, and other maintenance necessities.

There were no shipyards, no heavy mining, and no wall to wall cities covering the planet. Rather there were clusters of inhabitation spread out in strategic locations with long stretches of grassy plains, high mountains, and a variety of other terrain absent oceans. A few lakes were the only visible bodies of water from orbit where 2,943 Sentinel-class defense stations guarded the world that was slightly larger than Earth and the only inhabited planet in the system.

The others were small, rocky, and barren with a scattering of mining facilities and outposts used to service Requiem, but they were expendable and built as such, with the primary planet being the stick in the mud for when the V’kit’no’sat ever got this far out.

Information on Requiem was available to the public, so it was quite to the surprise of Duke Barrington when he received word that a massive V’kit’no’sat fleet had pushed past the front, bypassing the numerous systems in easy striking range, and were apparently headed for this region of space.

Barrington watched over the following days as the intelligence reports on the enemy movements brought them closer and closer to Requiem, then he got the final report from an uninhabited system with an observation post that the V’kit’no’sat had exited on a jumpline directly for the Karthus System, with the signal traveling faster than the ships and giving him approximately a 14 hour head start.

The Duke wasn’t sure if they were going to attack or try to just transition through to another location farther in, but he definitely wasn’t going to let them pass through cleanly. 14 hours wasn’t much given the size of the system, but it would be enough time to get the Wall of Pain erected.

“Darren, looks like they’re coming here,” Krevin-11895 said via holo from across the planet where he had been training.

“You sure? They could be headed through.”

The Trunks-level Archon shook his head. “I don’t think so. They’re bypassing a lot of targets and are going to have the defender fleets on their ass before long. They’re blowing their element of surprise to push this far in, and I don’t think they’re coming here for any reason other than to hit us where we’re strong.”

“I know that’s a shitload of ships, but are they stupid? They have to know we built this system specifically to fight and be a spur in their side if they tried to push past us.”

“You’re missing the point,” the Archon said seriously. “That’s why I think they’re coming. They don’t want the weaker systems first. They already took Tarric-3 and have distraction blockades running up and down the front. They could take any of those systems but haven’t. They’re coming here for a bigger challenge, then they’ll sweep up the other systems in the aftermath.”

“Why fight us where we’re strongest? That makes no sense.”

“V’kit’no’sat ego…and if they pull it off, they’re essentially in the driver’s seat.”

“How do we stand?”

“I already ordered the Wall of Pain erected. They’re going to regret not scouting first.”

“They’ve probably accessed our information grid to some extent and know there’s nothing here to worry about on entry,” the Duke said with a smirk. “Good thing we kept it off the official records.”

“It won’t be enough. We need the Defender fleets. With at least two of them here I think we’ve got an even fight, and if we can delay them long on the ground to get more here we can maintain the system.”

“So why are they coming?”

“I don’t know. This is definitely a hammer fleet, but bringing it here is risky for them. Expect some surprises. They’re not that reckless.”

“If you need anything, just ask. Otherwise I’m a spectator here,” the Duke said regretfully.

“Knowing you, you’ll find something to do.”

“Not going to insist I leave before they get here?”

“Why? You’d just refuse citing you want to see the fireworks go off.”

Barrington smiled. “You know me well. I’m going to have to work on a better personality mask. Dukes are supposed to be unreadable.”

“Ikrid,” Krevin reminded him jokingly. “You don’t really think I bump into you because I’m clumsy, do you?”

“Are we ready for this?” Barrington asked seriously.

“Better us than some other system, but I don’t know. I can guarantee we’re going to do damage.”

“Damage it is then. Get to work and stop wasting time informing me. I know how to monitor the feeds.”

Krevin gave him a mock, two fingered salute, then cut the comm feed leaving the Duke to sigh in private. This was it then. He didn’t doubt the Archon’s read on the enemy. If he said they wanted to pick a fight with Requiem, then that’s what they were going to get.

As for what Barrington would be doing, he wasn’t going to be completely useless. There were emergency logistics to oversee that needed to be handled so the Archons didn’t have to. The Duke had subordinates to handle that, but he was going to personally make sure everything was going smoothly before the hammer fell and this fight turned into organized chaos when they finally made the surface and turned this into the ground war that Requiem was designed to be.

In middle orbit around the giant white star, far enough away from the major traffic lines to avoid close scrutiny, thousands of stealthed warehouses suddenly popped up on the battlemap and began to spew out drone spacecraft…but these weren’t warships. They were minelayers dragging huge cargo canisters behind them like ants carrying bits of wood and leaves far too big for their tiny frames to handle.

But carry them they did, coming from all around the circular orbit and heading for the jumpline the V’kit’no’sat were reported to be entering upon. Already a signal had been sent back to the Vesper System to halt any incoming traffic, and the last reported incoming ship on that jumpline was due to arrive in 2 hours. That gave most of the minelayers time to get in position and ready for when the civilian transport came through, braking against the star amongst the swarm of ships sitting just off the jumpline that began to move instantly as the newcomer was given a specific course to follow in order to get out of their way as they began to disperse tiny orbs with even tinier gravity drives meant to keep them in place rather than floating sideways in stellar orbit or falling inward due to the star’s gravity well.

Each mine was one of several varieties, with the most exotic of them being IDF field generators that would cause havoc with the braking abilities of the incoming ships. There weren’t enough of them to set up a proper slip’n’slide, but they would insure higher impact velocities against the mines than otherwise.

And for the mines, some were comprised of tiny granules charged with various types of shield draining energy that would be enhanced by the collision speeds. Others were solid matter as dense as possible that the ships would run into, further draining shields to the point of breaking as they hit wave after wave of the mines that were lined up off the jumpline as well. When the first of the V’kit’no’sat ships came in and began to plow the road for the others the mines would start to move like conveyor belts into the traffic path, replacing the field as it was destroyed and keeping the forthcoming debris from further taking out more mines.

The Duke and Archon had planned this out carefully long ago, and they wanted to maximize as much damage as they could out of the limited number of mines they had in the outer region of the jumpline. Down low near the star where the enemy ships would come out of their braking maneuvers late thanks to the IDF, there was another cluster of mines spread out further to catch ships that might get wise to the trap and move slightly off the jumpline to avoid them.

Sitting nearby those were also a pair of Sentinels  with more repositioning from other jumplines to reinforce them, so there would be some considerable firepower waiting for the damaged ships to drop into their firing lines…assuming they didn’t overshoot and ram into the star itself.

How many Sentinels they could get there within 14 hours was in question. The easy math said 38, with another 6 on the verge of making it in time to do at least some damage. But whether to send them or have them reposition along with the others into a deeper defensive grid around Requiem was in question, and Barrington saw that Krevin sent 4 to the jumpline and the other two back towards the planet on the slow microjumps the massive weapons platforms were capable of.

Each of the Sentinels was between 70 and 90 miles tall, making them huge targets while the fleet of system defense drones measured at the largest only 6 miles long. But in the face of what was coming only the Sentinels looked big enough to prove any deterrent, with even the ‘large’ system defense drones being far smaller than the V’kit’no’sat ships that had been designed to fight Hadarak…against which they were the small ones.

In addition to the larger system defense drones came the regular ones that could be carried by the jumpships to other locations, and there were almost a million of them here. Tiny in comparison, their use would come as bees with almost microscopic stings, but when used in swarm mode those stings would add up to major damage while the V’kit’no’sat focused on the Sentinels…and if they didn’t and instead tried to swat the bees, the Sentinels would rip them a new one.

Which was why coming to Requiem was a bad idea for the V’kit’no’sat. If they wanted the biggest challenge they could get within 600 lightyears, then this was definitely the place they wanted to go…and they’d suffer massive losses because of it, making the Duke continue to wonder why they would want to strike here first as one of the roaming Defender fleets began entry 9 hours prior to the expected V’kit’no’sat arrival.

It was led by a high ranking second gen Archon, Nathan-937, and brought with it some 6,397 jumpships. As they began their long sequenced entry Barrington felt a little better, for there was another half million drones coming into play with more on the way. Seena-1933’s Defender fleet was reported to already have jumped for Karthus and should be here within 4 hours, bringing with it 5,229 jumpships and two more Defender fleets heading this way but still several days off.

If the V’kit’no’sat were going to hit the planet hard, they were going to have to do it quickly…but the Duke didn’t want to lose the Defender fleets in the process. That would open up other areas to easier attack, which was why he hoped the Wall of Pain lived up to its name. After that they’d fight in planetary orbit then scatter the fleet when the planetary shields went down. He knew he was going to lose all the Sentinels, but that was what they were for and only good for defending this system. They couldn’t move to others, so they were going to sit within range of the planetary defense guns and make the V’kit’no’sat come to them and pay a very heavy price to poke a hole down to the surface.

Then if/when they broke through all that and got the main planetary shields down over the target region, each city would still be covered by its own secondary shield, meaning the V’kit’no’sat were going to have to continue to brave the anti-orbital fire or land troops in the open areas between cities and try to take them out over lane. If it came to that point the system defense fleet and the Defender fleets, or what would be left of them, would withdraw and switch to harassing attacks, letting the surface war play out as intended rather than standing their ground and canceling out against the V’kit’no’sat.

That was the plan, at least. Barrington was fairly confident in it until the V’kit’no’sat fleet began to arrive and hit the minefield. Some of the larger ships blasted all the way through in a vivid pyrotechnics display to hit the star without shields. The smaller ships managed to decelerate in time as they sent warning signals back to the others in line…but jamming mines were scattering those signals so they couldn’t warn them, keeping the first waves of incoming V’kit’no’sat ships blind to what was happening.

They died quickly, either to the mines, the star, or the few sentinels sitting in pristine placement to finish them off. Even the few Kafchas that came through early didn’t last long, but then something happened. Barrington didn’t know what, but mines started going off on their own in a large swath that ended with a destroyed stealth field and a deceleration into the upper reaches of the star. It didn’t dive in so far as to lose visibility, and the shields were still up so no hull damage occurred, not that it truly would have mattered against the Yeg’gor armor it carried.

The pit of Barrington’s stomached dropped out as he realized the horror of what he was seeing. Somehow the V’kit’no’sat had smuggled a stealthed Mach’nel along with their fleet past the front, and only now the collisions with the mines were revealing it.

A Mach’nel. A fucking Mach’nel. Kafcha were 36 mile wide monsters, but Mach’nel made them look like pushovers at 120 miles wide and covered with thick shields and even thicker specialized armor that literally drank in energy weapons. They were superweapons, carrying Tar’vem’jic, and they hadn’t been seen in Star Force territory since the assault on Earth.

Now the V’kit’no’sat coming here made sense. They weren’t outgunned, not in the least, and they were going to use this Mach’nel coupled with the massive support fleet to punch out the toughest spot of resistance in this region.

The Karthus System was about to fall. The only question was how many of these bastards could Star Force take with them.

While Barrington was considering that a pair of Knights came up from behind in the control center he operated, looking down at him from their 7 foot height.

“Apologies, Duke, but we have orders to personally escort you out of the system. Krevin says you’re too valuable to lose, and you’re coming with us willingly or over our shoulder. No argument.”

The Duke gritted his teeth, not wanting to budge from this spot, but the Archon apparently knew that too, for this was no light threat. The Knights would carry him out if they had to.

Barrington looked around at his senior staff, seeing many of them nodding their agreement. They wanted him to go, even though they’d stay until the last minute evacs, putting up as much of a fight as the Requiem could. The Duke kept looking at their faces until a hard, armored hand laid on his shoulder gently, silently reinforcing the Knights’ demand.

“Since I have no choice, I won’t waste time,” he said, looking up at the Knights as he began walking for the door, both hating and loving Krevin for doing this…but mostly hate right now, for this was the Duke’s fight as much as his.

14

October 15, 4813

Termunisef System (H’kar Region, Star Force territory)

Tavai

Paul was still on Tavai waiting for more of his jumpships to return, kicking himself for not being in the fight yet as the presence of a Mach’nel was revealed and the six systems with V’kit’no’sat blockades got reinforcements and turned into full blown invasions…along with 4 other systems that simultaneously were invaded within the space of 2 days. The V’kit’no’sat had planned this to keep the Star Force fleets spread out and having to pick where to go to help, virtually insuring that some of the systems would fall.

The amount of ships the V’kit’no’sat were deploying was insane, but it was the presence of the Mach’nel that confirmed for Paul that they were finally being taken seriously. From bits of intel captured over the years, it seemed the V’kit’no’sat were so incensed, as well as scared, they’d sent not one, but three Mach’nel to Earth in the initial invasion over two waves. The first Star Force paid a heavy price to wound and then capture, then two more were sent…something virtually unheard of in V’kit’no’sat history…and they succeeded in kicking the crap out of Star Force and taking the Sol System before they were withdrawn and the invasion continued with conventional fleets.

Paul thought that was a scoff at the threat level of Star Force, which it was, but it also had to do with a growing civil war within the V’kit’no’sat that had long since been settled. Then they had to fight off a Hadarak invasion, with both occurrences requiring all of the 384 Mach’nel the V’kit’no’sat had built…minus the one Star Force had taken. None had been seen since the initial attack on Sol, but Paul knew that eventually they’d send one back against them if Star Force could hold out long enough.

And blast it all, he had to be sitting and waiting for more ships while it was all going down!

The V’kit’no’sat had played this well, and even if he did have a fleet available Paul wouldn’t be going to the Karthus System. It was too far away and there were two other trailblazers closer, Kerrie-057 and Liam-090, with Liam having come back from the far rim warzones when the activity in the DZ started to pick up. Luck had it he was close to Karthus and heading there, so Paul didn’t need to go. Rather he needed to get into the fight at one of the other invasion points.

First off he checked to see if Spaceball One had been activated, and once the response came back through the relay grid it confirmed it already was, with Olivia-051 having beat him to it. She was bringing it out to meet her fleet on the way to Karthus, but it was going to be a couple weeks before she could get there.

Paul was going to keep tabs, but that fight wasn’t going to be his to make. He wasn’t going to wait much longer, taking what fraction of a fleet he had, currently at 938 jumpships, to reinforce someone, but the question was where to go to maximize the defensive effort.

Two days later he made a decision based off the laggy battle reports and headed up to the Excalibur, leaving with his much smaller fleet headed for the Jennizeren System.

17 days later…

When the Excalibur entered the system and linked up with the local comm grid the battlemap immediately confirmed what he had feared. Scores of V’kit’no’sat ships dominated stellar orbit with more camping out over Ennvor, Tardon, and Zulu…3 of the 6 planets in the system, and each of the three had a section of their planetary shields breached and enemy troops on the ground.

What was left of the Star Force fleet was elsewhere, staying alive and in position to return and assist if the V’kit’no’sat tried to take down another section of shield from space, adding their firepower to the anti-orbital batteries. The V’kit’no’sat knew that and weren’t going to risk losing even more warships when their ground troops could push overland and take down both the shield generators and planetary weaponry at far less cost.

But they also had to stay in orbit to cover the ground troops, otherwise the Star Force fleet could zip in and bombard them into oblivion with ease. That meant Paul had those three fleet segments grounded there, at least in part, with another huge mass of ships right in front of him that were swooping to clog up the jumppoint with resistance.

That wasn’t going to work, for Paul had the element of surprise and enough jumpships here already to spew a cloud of drones that would protect the other jumpships coming in. Paul kept the Excalibur with them and engaged in direct combat to pump up their firepower until more of his fleet was able to arrive and unpack as he took command of all military assets within the system with a single thought.

The surviving system defense fleet was his, the Defender fleet that had arrived prior to Paul was now his, as was all the units on the ground and the planetary defenses on all 6 worlds. He sent orders out to all of them in the matter of a few seconds with the signals then traveling across the void of space with a lag of 12 to 98 minutes, for all the planets were not sitting side by side in a line.

Paul was still heavily outnumbered, but cracking planets open was not an easy thing. The V’kit’no’sat were going to be here for months at the minimum, and Paul was going to be a constant annoyance that entire time.

But now was not the right time to fight, so he held the jumppoint and slugged it out as much as necessary to get all his ships into the system, then he retreated away from the star and left the larger V’kit’no’sat fleet there unhappy that he didn’t stay and trade against bad odds. Rather his fleet splintered like flower petals and split up, with Paul taking one of those petals over to Ennvor and hailing the Kafcha arrogantly marked as their flagship.

“Attention idiots,” Paul said, imitating Rocket Raccoon as best he could in V’kit’no’sat. “I see you’ve sent yet another Era’tran commander against me. I thought you would have learned your lesson by now, but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you didn’t expect me to be here, in which case I’m giving you this one time, exclusive only, chance of packing up your bags and leaving before I tear you a new one. Generous, I know, but what can I say? I’m feeling overly sentimental this morning.”

The response came immediately, as Paul had hoped, with the image of a maroon-skinned Era’tran with silver tattoos down the left side of his entire body staring back at him.

“Paul-024. Based on your reputation I would have assumed you would bring with you a larger fleet?” the huge T-rex said, heavy with scorn.

“It got broken, so I’m running a little light.”

“I am sorry I cannot offer you the same bargain. These worlds will be ours, and hopefully your corpse as well. You have fought well for a heretic, but if you press us here it will be your end.”

“Is that concern I’m sensing…” Paul continued as he ran through the V’kit’no’sat database from before the fall of Earth to see if he could identify this bastard, “…or caution?”

“You are heavily outnumbered, yet you do have a penchant for strategic ingenuity. It’s a pity my own Zen’zat are not so creative, but there are limits to what a commander can do without the necessary ships…and unless you have more on the way, you are impudent here.”

“Pfff…” Paul said, making a noise of disbelief. “You’re in our territory. Of course there are more ships comings. Did your egg get cracked before you hatched?”

“It’s just a matter of time before your worlds fall. For your sake, your ships had better arrive soon…if you have enough to spare.”

“Simultaneous assaults have their advantages…Rovo’kor,” Paul said, finally finding a name. “And their weaknesses.”

“So you have heard of me?”

“Just now,” Paul said honestly. “Your record is…sketchy. I can probably lure you into a trap by swinging my control ships close. Dumb Era’tran are always trying for them, and I don’t see anything to suggest you’re otherwise.”

“You know very little of the V’kit’no’sat if you think us dumb. We possess something called Sav that few others can even comprehend.”

“As do I,” Paul reminded him, pointing at his sparkling grey Mvor eye alteration.

“This I know, which is why it is a fair fight…compensating for your lack of ships. I shall score our efforts afterwards to determine who has accomplished more, though the overall outcome is fixed. If you believe otherwise, feel free to prove your dominance with deeds rather than words.”

The Era’tran cut the comm one smartass comment sooner than Paul was going to, but he’d accomplished his purpose. For whatever reason, the intelligent Era’tran had always been pushovers for Paul. Not so much for the other trailblazers, and no one knew for sure why Paul was different against them other than his methods seemed to piss them off to no end. That little conversation set the stage for what the Era’tran expected to happen, so now all Paul had to do was exceed it and he’d succeed in getting under his thick red skin.

If naval combat occurred freestyle, with ships determining their own targets and movements, they could do a lot of damage but would get picked apart by a coordinated fleet even half their size. Warships had to move like a school of fish, and how that school moved and cycled within itself was determined by the race and commander within the V’kit’no’sat. Era’tran were smart and aggressive, and arguably one of the harder opponents to face within the enemy empire, but this fleet was made up of more than just Era’tran. There were 34 different races here, including a few Oso’lon ships. They were the toughest, in that they were a mix of aggressive and patient, and they too had the Sav psionic that increased their intelligence.

The fact that an Era’tran was commanding this fleet instead of an Oso’lon said that Rovo’kor was very experienced. What record of him Paul had access to was over 100,000 years old, but even then his name was notable enough to be included in the V’kit’no’sat battle acumen, with a full skills profile detailing a blunt, but not sloppy tactician that was well suited to coming in with a numerical advantage and making the most of it. He wasn’t inclined to waste ships or time, finding that perfect balance between the two that left the mission accomplished and the assault force intact, though diminished. Rovo’kor wasn’t one to shirk from losses when necessary, and the fact that he was assaulting 3 planets simultaneously attested to his professional impatience.

He knew the longer he was here the more Star Force ships would dribble in from other systems, so he was pressing as hard as he thought he could without overreaching. There were 6 planets in this system and he wasn’t going after all of them. According to battlemap records he hadn’t even sent a ship into orbit over the other three yet, and from the number of troops on the ground it appeared he had plenty to assault 3 planets at once.

He wasn’t overly cautious and he wasn’t overly aggressive, but he definitely tilted towards aggression and if he was a telltale Era’tran he would go more that way when his dominance was brought into question.

But this wasn’t a good situation for Paul. He was outmassed 7 to 1 in terms of ships, and the anti-orbital weaponry only came into play if Rovo’kor was stupid enough to fight him over it. He’d have to in order to break through the other 3 planetary shields and establish footholds there, but for these planets Paul doubted he would be able to entice him inward unless he could endanger the ground troops…some of which were already under intact segments of the planetary shield and working their way through urban combat.

Paul could run his ships down just above shield level and try to target those exposed, but from the positioning of Rovo’kor’s fleet he could tell the Era’tran was anticipating that tactic and had interceptor groups just nudging out from the center of his formation that could drop directly into the conduit down to the surface, taking some hits before they got low enough to skim the surface and cover the ground troops long enough for a costly fight to break out between both sides that would result in an expansion of the foothold zone to the point where ships could come and go without getting hit from adjacent regions.

Rovo’kor hadn’t pushed it that far because he was hoping to accomplish the same expansion with his ground troops. Paul could force that fight, but it wouldn’t be enough. He needed to get the V’kit’no’sat over an intact section of the planet with full offensive firepower…and he really didn’t expect that to happen.

That meant he had to nibble away on the fringes, which wouldn’t accomplish much very fast, but if the V’kit’no’sat chased he could always run down to just above the planetary shields were they would not go, meaning he had safe haven to work out of for the simple reason they didn’t want to force that costly fight unless needed to establish a foothold.

This was a double-edged sword that Paul was smart enough to use to his advantage, and the multiple ‘flower petals’ were already heading out to start nipping away at the planetary defense fleets and the stellar orbit partial blockade they had set up. Those would take longer to run to safety, so Paul expected more activity there, but the fleet over Ennvor held the flagship and a slightly higher number of ships, meaning it was going to be the toughest nut to crack and Paul knew they’d be interested in taking him out now that they knew which ship he was on, for Paul wasn’t hiding the Excalibur’s identifiers either.

That was by design, not recklessness, for the more they focused on him the longer his drones would last, and his command ship was a lot more durable…but not expendable. That was the trick and the narrow line he had made an art out of walking, and it largely depended on what the enemy could do and what Paul expected them to do.

So while the ship count mattered, Paul was working this fight into a commander vs commander one, requiring Paul to win a 7 to 1 ratio just to pull even, but with a lot of tiny fights whose winability was even. A full frontal assault and slug fest would ultimately be determined by the ship count unless this Era’tran was overly stupid.

Paul wasn’t going to assume that, so he got to work with a few prickling runs against the outermost ships in Rovo’kor’s fleet, seeing how he would respond…which was to stand their ground and essential become turrets. That was something Paul could exploit, and with a few thoughts he sent out modifications to his fleet groups’ movements, beginning the naval chess match that had to be won before any help could be given to the surface…for Paul had no troop ships with him to land on the other side of the planet. Just a naval force that needed orbital bombardment capability.

And right now Rovo’kor’s fleet was blocking him from that.

Paul’s face altered slightly as he shifted into full immersion mode, his mind more in the computer than his own senses, and he began the long and tedious process of probing, learning, and countering this Era’tran and his multi-racial fleet, each segment of which micromanaged differently, but ultimately worked flawlessly under their commander’s strategy.

A pity that. Had they been less unified Paul could have exploited the cracks, but the V’kit’no’sat empire was too good. If they hadn’t been, the Devastation Zone never would have been expanded as far as it had and their empire wouldn’t span half the galaxy.

But they did have their psychological blind spots, as did Paul, but Star Force had learned more from the massive losses than the V’kit’no’sat had the victories, and whenever Paul encountered a weakness in himself or his fleet he wanted to find it, chart it, and eliminate it. The V’kit’no’sat preferred to deny blind spots until they were thrown in their face, and hopefully this Era’tran still had a few. If not, this counterattack was going to take a lot of time to make any progress at, and the three planets under assault were on the clock.

It didn’t look good, but it was workable and Paul set himself to a more aggressive attack schedule, for he could sleep whenever he wanted by pulling his ships back between probing strikes. The combat would occur when he said, not when the V’kit’no’sat dictated.

So not fearing having to spend days straight in the command nexus he let himself fight freely, finding the lack of ships to also be an advantage as far as his mental strength as concerned. Less for him to fight with made it easier to concentrate, making for yet another double-edged sword that was going to cut the V’kit’no’sat so long as Paul didn’t make a mistake.

15

November 3, 4813

Karthus System (Star Force territory)

Requiem

Olivia rode in the command nexus just off the bridge as her command ship Yippie Ki Yay came out of its jump into the besieged Karthus System, glad to pick up some battlemap signals, telling her there was at least something left to defend…but the major damage had already been done, and even as there were V’kit’no’sat warships waiting at the jumppoint and her ship began to light up with weapon impacts her Sav-enhanced mind saw the condition on Requiem.

The fight in planetary orbit was over, with large bands of debris fields marking where the fight had gone down. Both V’kit’no’sat and Star Force ship rubble drifted there, some on escaping orbital tracks, with a huge breach in the planetary defense shields exposing a chunk of the planet’s surface. Several cities were now dark, with battlemap information detailing their fall, but some 83% of the planet was still in Star Force hands while a massive V’kit’no’sat army prowled the surface.

But not so large as it had once been. Requiem’s unique defense item had already been triggered days ago, with the empty plains that stretched between cities now nothing but destroyed ground…but it hadn’t been the V’kit’no’sat’s doing, rather a network of hidden explosives deep enough underground to be missed by all but a tight scan, yet shallow enough to catch the ground troops on the surface in a nova-like explosion.

It was a one time trick, for Oliva could see other pieces of the planet where the troops had not been blasted with precision strikes to take out the buried weapons, but at least that had delayed the troops’ progression, and the initial explosion where they were had killed or weakened over 120,000 of them as the ground under their feet literally threw them up into the overhead defense shield they were fighting underneath.

Those that survived had Star Force aerial craft on them in moments with a counterattack on the ground shortly thereafter, but the ‘R’ attack wasn’t going to be of use elsewhere aside from buying time.

Right now the Mach’nel was sitting back in high orbit and out of firing range of its Tar’vem’jic. It was good to see it wasn’t sitting a bit lower and firing into the still existing planetary shields, but from battlemap data she could see why. The shield strength was superior to the weaponsfire, meaning it couldn’t get through without help from the fleet, and their weapons’ range wasn’t greater than that of the planetary defenses. If Requiem’s shields had been less robust and their recharge rate was less than the Tar’vem’jic, then the Mach’nel could have sat above them and chipped away at it for weeks until they finally got a breach…but not here. The primary shields were too strong, so despite the fact that the entire defense fleet save the jumpships were destroyed, the planet itself was too big a threat for the V’kit’no’sat to close in on, hence the ground assault.

The surviving jumpships…which were most of them with a few key absences…were holding position on the far side of the planet in a high orbit under Liam’s command. She knew that he had them in that position to allow them to run quickly if needed, and Olivia could see that some of them were taking in dropships from the surface, evacing key personnel as the number of cities was being reduced and those remaining filled up with survivors from the others. Liam would be packing in as many people as he could, and at the moment the V’kit’no’sat were letting him do it.

Olivia knew they’d be hard pressed to actually catch the jumpships, but why let them evacuate?

Then she got it. They wanted witnesses to survive and report back what happened here. How the V’kit’no’sat had come in with their massive fleet centered on a Mach’nel and blown away one of the most heavily defended planets in Star Force territory. That was typical V’kit’no’sat methodology. Prove dominance and not care about the scraps that got away, though by the number of dead ship hulls in orbit they’d paid a very heavy price to get through the planetary shields.

The fleet they still had was nothing to take lightly, even without the Mach’nel, and right now it was split between protecting their key chess piece and blockading the jumplines. Thankfully Oliva had come in first in line, with her heavy command ship taking the hits as several jumpships came out behind here and began deploying drones. There were so many jumplines into Karthus that the V’kit’no’sat had decided to place ships over most of the main ones, splitting up their numbers enough that they didn’t have the teeth needed to really hurt her, though the Yippie Ki Yay’s shields were getting dangerously low by the time one of the jumpships moved out in front to help absorb the incoming fire while responding in kind.

More V’kit’no’sat ships repositioned towards the jumppoint, but they were far too late. With nothing more than weakened shields to show for it, Olivia won her fleet a foothold in stellar orbit and the few dozen V’kit’no’sat ships there had to back off or be quickly outnumbered. The first real fight broke out a couple hours later as they rallied their forces and tried to hammer away at her lines, but her foothold was too strong and she had Liam’s help, meaning they couldn’t get through to the ships coming in and ambush them.

The group with the Mach’nel didn’t respond, holding position over the planet, which told Olivia that the stellar defense portion of the enemy fleet was going to retreat after they’d done what they thought was decent damage, and she did what she could to make that sooner rather than later as more and more drones were released to her mental command. Olivia shifted as many simple duties, like aiming a particular weapon or maneuvering to a waypoint, to the crews on the controlling jumpships and those on her command ship as she split the overall controlling duties with her fellow trailblazer. She wasn’t as good as Liam, but Naval was her second best division out of the 5 that made up an Archon’s rank, and her Clan McClane ships were used to her fighting style, with them pushing back hard against the V’kit’no’sat immediately while Liam pulled off a lesser amount of drones for his existing jumpships to command as he came out to meet them while the rest of his jumpships continued to evac the far side of the planet.

Olivia always had her Clan ships up front while moving in convoy, so if there was resistance at a jumppoint they’d be with her for that fight, but most of her current Defender fleet was not made up of Clan troops. McClane formed a solid, but small core around which was a conglomeration of fleets from multiple factions. Calavari made up the largest section, with Axius and Bsidd following that, and smaller amounts of Mainline, Scionate, Tolsoi, and Australian ships. All were Star Force and worked together seamlessly in the battlemap system under her direction, but Clan troops were the best and most of them were in the Devastation Zone.

But she was a trailblazer, and when her mind melded with the fleet it took on new meaning and everyone knew it, having no fear coming into this system with her, despite going up against a Mach’nel. Fortunately it wasn’t waiting for them at the jumppoint, but Olivia had something at the back of her entry convoy that was going to get its attention immediately.

So with increasing numbers of ships at her disposal and Liam beginning to poke in odd places, Oliva fought out from their foothold around the jumppoint and eventually triggered the retreat that had the bulk of the stellar orbit blockade fleet surviving and regrouping with the main force around the Mach’nel as the rest of Olivia’s fleet came in. Apparently they were going to wait for Star Force to come to them while the ground war continued under their careful naval watch…as well as to throw some orbital bombardment down when the next section of planetary shield was disabled on the surface, which was something a low powered Tar’vem’jic blast was perfect for because of its range.

And while Olivia’s fleet continued to spew out of the jumppoint that indeed happened, with the shield generators being taken by the ground troops and deactivated, then the Tar’vem’jic casually shot the anti-orbital batteries that were now exposed along with a few select locations that didn’t endanger their own troops on the ground as they moved on towards the next location with the Star Force army fighting like hell to keep them back.

But the V’kit’no’sat had brought a huge army with them, far more than their ships normally carried, and as Oliva took stock of their fleet she saw several specialized troops ships. They certainly weren’t skimping on the numbers, and as a result Requiem was falling in rather quick fashion, attesting to the level of firepower the V’kit’no’sat were dropping to the surface in the form of armored dinosaurs, several of which were their Ultra varieties, standing taller than some buildings and lethal enough to scare King Kong if the mythical monkey were here.

Requiem was taking a beating, and this was clearly a fight the V’kit’no’sat had to win and win convincingly. Others would see an unstoppable force, but she saw a bit of panic. The V’kit’no’sat had to regain dominance, and this assault, more than the others across the front, was intended to illicit that. This was the lynchpin on the entire invasion, and Olivia really wished she could see their faces when a huge contact came out of the jumppoint.

It was 122 miles in diameter and egg-shaped, colored a pure gleaming white, with Olivia ordering it to reposition in such a way that it betrayed its engine strength…making it clear to those watching that it was not a seda, but a starship. And based on the excessive amount of weaponry covering it, it wasn’t a transport or support ship, but a full blown warship.

And a warship that was slightly bigger than the J’gar Mach’nel that Star Force had captured, but the exact same shape. That had been on purpose, to make it look like it was the same ship rebuilt slightly larger to cover the Yeg’gor armor with an additional layer of Star Force design.

But that was just a ruse, for that captured Mach’nel wasn’t here. Kamenor was safely tucked away far from here, spirited away from Earth after the first attack in what looked like a spider web of Cradle-class transport ships to give it the engine power that Star Force had torn out of it during its capture. They’d got it moved before the V’kit’no’sat returned and kept it hidden from them the entire time…and hopefully now they thought that Star Force had rebuilt it and was going to use it to counter the Brat’mar Mach’nel.

The captured J’gar one was egg-shaped, but Brat’mar ships were discs and this one was no exception, though thicker than normal. It looked like a stack of coins but massed almost exactly the same as every other Mach’nel. The V’kit’no’sat liked parity, allowing each race to design their own vessels but keeping them to the same basic parameters regarding speed, armor, and weaponry.

And if Star Force had a Mach’nel to use, this fight was going to take on a whole new dynamic.

The V’kit’no’sat knew that too, with them immediately breaking from orbit. They couldn’t fight this new Mach’nel over the planet, so they had to meet it in deep space and Olivia got her fleet moving slowly so they wouldn’t fight at the jumppoint, with the last of her ships still coming through.

She was outgunned, and even with Liam’s help she knew they couldn’t win this fight, at least not in terms of ships. She was here to get the Mach’nel, and Spaceball One was another trick Star Force had kept up its sleeve. It’d been developed as a counter to Mach’nel, but the surprise of it was going to be half the trick, and once the V’kit’no’sat learned what it truly was they wouldn’t be caught off guard again.

But taking out a Mach’nel was worth it. Olivia just hoped they’d fall for it.

Spaceball One wasn’t a fake. Its weapons were real, its shields were real, its engines were real, and it was by far the most kill power Oliva had in her fleet…which was why the V’kit’no’sat were going to go straight for it. On top of its obvious power, the V’kit’no’sat ego was not going to react well to the ‘heretics’ having a Mach’nel, even if it was rebuilt. Many races in the V’kit’no’sat were not permitted more than 1, and even the Oso’lon only had a handful. They were insanely hard to build, which was why Star Force had never tried to construct one of their own. There were two major problems, the first being the Yeg’gor armor.

Star Force had the blueprints for it, but had never bothered to produce any. The elaborate process needed to create it just wasn’t worth it when you knew you were going to lose. The Yeg’gor was meant to be a fortification enhancement you put on ships or worlds you did not intend to lose, and even if Star Force had a pyramid defense station of their own on a planet, it would fall just like the one they’d inherited on Earth, so the most economical means Star Force had of defense was to create strong armor that could be mass produced, whereas the Yeg’gor could not.

The second problem was the Tar’vem’jic. The weapon on the captured Mach’nel had been junked during combat, but they’d tried to put it back together over the years and barely succeeded. The components in it were so rare that they were harder to produce than the Yeg’gor, and had Star Force not had the pieces to start with they never would have bothered. Tar’vem’jic were a luxury of an empire with ample time and resources to construct, but useless in a war of attrition. That was why V’kit’no’sat ships didn’t have them, save for the Mach’nel, and not even the most fortified Star Force planets had one.

Star Force was pursuing other technology beyond what the V’kit’no’sat had to achieve that range, so they weren’t forgoing the inherent advantage, but rather needing something more industry-friendly.

But as far as the V’kit’no’sat knew, Spaceball One had one, for a decoy had been produced with an appropriate aperture on the hull, though it could not fire anything more than a huge plasma beam…which in itself was dangerous, but would hopefully encourage the V’kit’no’sat to pursue when they saw that Star Force hadn’t had the technology to replace the one they’d broken.

When the two fleets met up the drone swarm ignored the opposing Mach’nel, not that they could get to it in any large numbers. As expected the V’kit’no’sat were being very careful with this one, despite it being the largest and hardest ship to kill. The fact that they’d lost one to Star Force was a sting to their ego that had probably never worn off, and if it had it just got reanimated as Olivia formed a wedge of drones around Spaceball One to help protect it from the concentrated firepower of the V’kit’no’sat fleet as the two massive ships got closer and closer together.

A break in the V’kit’no’sat formation allowed a Tar’vem’jic shot to get through, vaporizing the drones in between and then slamming into Spaceball One’s shields…which held. Star Force had built this ship with the strongest shields possible, layer after layer of them and in multiple varieties. It was going to survive to get to the Mach’nel and then some. Hopefully without the V’kit’no’sat chickening out.

When the Star Force response came, it saw the massive plasma stream passing through a gap formed in the drone wall and hit a Kafcha, taking down its shields and cooking the upper side of its hull that the drone swarm then jumped on…but that seemed to only embolden the V’kit’no’sat as they focused more attention on getting to Spaceball One as Olivia’s drones had a temporary advantage, shooting at targets that weren’t firing back in some cases, as they targeted Spaceball One almost exclusively.

The two giant Mach’nel closed on one another, with the Tar’vem’jic finally getting through after half a dozen shots, but per the design only a tiny section of the shield fell and allowed the beam to core into the armor…that it melted like tissue paper. That should have been a warning to the V’kit’no’sat, unless they thought they hit a hole in the Yeg’gor beneath it, but they kept attacking with a vengeance until the two ships were within a few hundred miles of one another and their backing fleets were mixed together in a giant hurricane of combat.

But what the V’kit’no’sat did not know was that Spaceball One was not a Mach’nel, as well as the fact that it had been built as one massive drone. No one was onboard it and Oliva was personally flying it from the safety of her command ship as the real Mach’nel got into range and she activated the huge IDF generators that created an engine crippling field in front of Spaceball One.

That field caught many V’kit’no’sat ships, keeping them on the trajectories they’d been on without being able to divert. Oliva had drones make the most of that as the Mach’nel was fully enclosed and drifting forward on its momentum as it continued to fire it’s weaponry, including the Tar’vem’jic, that poked yet another hole in the massive craft.

“Alright bastards, let’s see you deal with this,” she said, causing Spaceball One to transform. It looked like a Voku conglomerate changing shape, but the technology was actually V’kit’no’sat based and very similar to the way their personal armor flowed over their bodies and reformed at will, except that the tiny pieces were dozens of meters wide and redundant, meaning that what the V’kit’no’sat were blowing up were not critical as the entire egg-like mass melted and reached out with tendrils of pure white material that appeared to tie the disc-shaped Mach’nel in place, though in reality it was the IDF field that covered everything except the back portion of Spaceball One, so the Star Force trapship could still maneuver while its tendrils were inside the field.

The transformation continued with the V’kit’no’sat ships abandoning the fight with the drones almost entirely as they fired on the white mass that was quickly covering the Mach’nel even as it shot holes through it with the Tar’vem’jic. Oliva poured half her drones into protecting it and the other half she released to Liam to use, taking easy shots at the V’kit’no’sat ships as the Mach’nel was completely covered. When that happened the remaining material that held the ‘engines’ of Spaceball One melted as well, pulling into the rest of the covered ‘coin’ and spreading out, shrinking its IDF down to the exact shape of the Mach’nel now captured inside it while leaving the entirety of Spaceball One with access to the system’s gravity field.

Oliva poured the drones into a wedge ahead of it, fighting a hole that the massive ship now moved through with its pinned captive shooting its brilliant orange Tar’vem’jic helplessly. It could kill the piece of ship above it, but with the rest so close it couldn’t aim and soon that hole got as big as it could while others smaller ones began to open up over top of other weaponry, but the ship had no center, no bridge, no engine core, and even if it lost half its mass it could still accomplish its purpose.

It took a lot of effort to fight their way clear of the V’kit’no’sat fleet, and Oliva was losing a lot of drones in the process, but with some ramming and a high degree of skill, Spaceball One broke free and made a microjump towards the star as Oliva broke off combat. Her drones ran away like scared bees in every direction as her command ship and jumpships kept their distance while staying close enough to decrease signal lag. She gave Liam control over everything else and focused exclusively on flying the trapship with its Mach’nel prey inside.

The rest of the V’kit’no’sat fleet didn’t chase them, instead pursuing the captured Mach’nel towards the star…but Spaceball One didn’t stop there and, while slowing, continued down into the star’s upper layers as it used its extensive shielding to produce a different type useless in combat but similar to those used by the Star Forge to protect against the intense stellar radiation that could actually use it to fuel the shields, strengthening them against the constant stings from the ship captured inside as it changed in shape again, thickening in strands that stretched between the largest weaponry and leaving massive holes over them that the star began to eat into, slowing diminishing the Mach’nel’s shield strength as Spaceball One’s protection got stronger and stronger as it fed off the star.

“Attention V’kit’no’sat fleet,” Oliva said, sending an open comm to all of their ships, not sure how well the reception would be in the Mach’nel, so she had Spaceball One operate as a relay to boost her transmission signal as it sunk a little deeper into the star while the other ships shot down into it and made a few weak hits against it, disrupting its absorption shields momentarily.

“Our ship is equipped to survive the star, your Mach’nel is not. You have fallen into our trap and now I am waiting to negotiate terms for your surrender. While the Mach’nel will survive for quite a while thanks to its defenses, it will not survive indefinitely. If you do not come to terms we will let it sit and cook in the star until everyone onboard is dead, but that is not our goal. You are not getting the Mach’nel back, but we are willing to negotiate for the lives of the crew. I await your response.”

Olivia mentally summoned a chair to form underneath her feat in the command nexus, with her leaning back to sit in it as it rose, then she put her feet up on the control board and crossed her hands behind her head around her red/green/white ponytail and waited with a smirk on her face, although she was well aware of the ground combat continuing on Requiem and the fact that Star Force was losing, but she’d just compromised the most important asset in their arsenal.

And to be honest, she wasn’t sure how they were going to respond, but at the minimum they were going to lose the Mach’nel, and probably their commander with it unless they were willing to negotiate. And while their fleet was here they weren’t adding to the ground fight with orbital bombardment, so all things being said she was in a good position, but unless they relented she and Liam were still going to lose Requiem.

Olivia updated her status and sent it out via relay so other fleets moving about would know their status, then did something trailblazers did not like doing…waiting. She got a quick ‘good job’ message from Liam then he was off to planetary orbit to help organize the ground defenses and evacuation efforts while she continued to hold personal control over Spaceball One.

“Admiral, you mind getting me something to drink. I’m a little thirsty.”

“Gladly, Olivia,” the Protovic said on the other side of the wall, his eyes gleaming from more than his bioluminosity. “What would you like?”

16

November 4, 4813

Jennizeren System (Star Force Front)

Ennvor

It was the second day since Paul had gotten here and he was already getting the Era’tran to dance to his tune…the problem was they had a significant ship advantage and that ruled out most of his combat options. He had to preserve his own ships enough to protect the 3 planets that hadn’t been breached yet, so any large cancelation battles had to be avoided.

But Paul was still working the problem, bit by bit whittling away at the edges of the V’kit’no’sat fleets surrounding the three contested planets. News from the ground was bad, with the V’kit’no’sat steamrolling across the planet due to the high concentration of troops they’d devoted to the assaults. More than in the past, and all the tricks Star Force had learned to slow and kill them were not being given time to play out. It was like the V’kit’no’sat had finally upped their game and viewed Star Force as a worthy opponent, and the displays of dominance associated with using a small number of troops to destroy a larger, inferior group were now shelved.

They were interested in winning, plain and simple, and had brought enough troops to do it on the ground so long as their fleets got them a foothold. That meant these three planets were lost, or would be unless something changed, but there were three more planets that could be saved and a lot of people on the others to evacuate.

Paul wasn’t able to do the latter for more than a few daring runs, due to the V’kit’no’sat being very prudent with hunting down ascending ships. Paul couldn’t get more than a fraction of the evac ships from the surface out, but the V’kit’no’sat had to spread in order to prevent it and that gave Paul some greater openings. He was picking off some of their smaller ships and wounding the larger ones, but he needed a lot more time than the planets had. The V’kit’no’sat weren’t interested in taking and holding any region of the planets, and Ennvor was the worst. They were slashing and burning specific locations and bypassing even a lot of the anti-ground weaponry as if they were in a hurry.

Normally the V’kit’no’sat took great care to kill every ‘heretic’ in their path, but not this time. They were probably going to take the planet as fast as possible then bombard the hell out of it afterwards. The thing of it was, using this technique on the ground was meaning they had to run or fly past fixed emplacements that were causing their ground troops a lot of damage.

It felt like they were on the clock, but there was no way they could know about the reinforcements Paul had called. No, his gut told him this was something else…and he had a distinct sense that the assaults that had occurred so far were just the opening act. The one possibility that he did not want to entertain was that there was a second wave of ships coming across the Devastation Zone, but the more he watched how this Rovo’kor handled his fleet and the troops on the ground…assuming he was overseeing them as well, as most naval commanders did…it suggested a need for speed overriding the preservation of his units.

If this was going to be a long campaign moving from system to system they needed to go slower and lose less personnel and equipment. If they feared Paul’s reinforcements coming and they were trying to work fast, that would imply fear rather than prudence and the V’kit’no’sat did not fight that way under circumstances of their own choosing. They had picked these assaults carefully, so if it wasn’t fear it either meant stupidity…which he ruled out immediately…or the availability of replacements.

The V’kit’no’sat were in a rush and Paul was having to fight in a way to lengthen the timetable…not a good situation for him, but it was what it was and every ship he destroyed was one less they could use later even if these worlds fell. Actually Paul and the others had gotten used to this type of warfare and had an unbelievable amount of experience in it as the ADZ and surrounding regions were methodically trashed, but now their weaponry, shields, and most important their industry was about on par with the V’kit’no’sat had previously sent their way.

The time they’d bought had paid off, but now it seemed like the V’kit’no’sat were not going to let them reap the rewards of it and actually hold off a planetary assault.

Others would have been disheartened, or disillusioned, and wanted to run away and hide but Paul and the other trailblazers were not. This was where they belonged, and so long as Paul had a ship to use and an opportunity to do damage he was going to throw himself into play and see how this worked out. Star Force might not have any planetary victories against the V’kit’no’sat, but they did have naval ones, and that was enough to keep Paul from getting mentally depressed. What he was doing was having an effect, and that’s all he needed.

People and planets dying weren’t going to throw off his focus as they once had. He’d learned how to numb it out temporarily as he became the task at hand, saving the impact for later when he had a break to process it all…but he was better at that too now, so even as the situation continued to get worse he was effectively immune to morale issues and his fleet keyed off of him, which was a small part of why they were racking up ship tonnage kills faster than the enemy fleet...and the enemy commander knew it.

There had been no further conversations between Paul and Rovo’kor, but he could tell from the fleet movements that he was getting frustrated. Gone were the confident formations that Paul had been picking apart, with the V’kit’no’sat moving into mobile but defensive clusters designed to prevent evac ships from getting away but with sufficient strength to survive an ambush from Paul’s larger fleet groups. The trailblazer wasn’t allowing a head to head, but if Rovo’kor had wanted that he’d have to leave the backside of the planet open to evacuation.

That meant Paul was getting numerical advantage, tonnage wise, in some of these engagements and was trading a few drones kamikaze style to secure ship kills…all the while taking the periodic advantage to run an evac ship up from the surface.

But the people on the surface fleeing regions where the shield generators had gone down were bunching up and going to make easy targets later if he couldn’t get more out. So far the V’kit’no’sat fleet was still staying away from orbital bombardment range to avoid the anti-orbital guns that the ground troops were curiously bypassing. They had their own shields and would hold up to a small amount of counter fire, but against a fleet even a fraction of this size they’d fall one by one in short order.

Paul would have taken them out by now, but he had a glimmer as to why Rovo’kor was not. Why take damage to your ships now when all you had to do was blockade the planet? Then when all the shields had been removed and the inhabitants had nowhere to flee he could switch from blockade to bombardment and take them all out within an hour or so.

But the kicker was, why do it now when you could do it faster with more ships later?

Paul was getting the distinct impression that this assault force was to strip the planets of defenses, not to eradicate the population, as if that would fall to someone else later. And that was why he was keeping a close eye on the movements in the Devastation Zone that were trackable by Star Force and had requested scout ships be sent to specific systems not on the relay grid, guessing as to where additional mega fleets would be passing through so they could get more of a warning as to what was coming.

A day and a half had passed since Spaceball One had sunk into the outer levels of the star in the Karthus System, but no other major naval combat had taken place. Liam had, for the most part, kept her ships away intentionally while waiting this out, all the while the ground invasion was pressing onward. Olivia’s fleet couldn’t do anything to help them right now, and the Mach’nel was going to fall long before Requiem did. Already its shields were down and the star was eating through the Yeg’gor armor with a few breaches that were voraciously digging into the interior.

Oliva could watch in detail thanks to the sensors onboard Spaceball One as the crew evacuated the outer levels and probably were sealing off sections of the ship to delay the burn effect as it crept inward like slow moving goo on the Archon’s displays as walls, beams, and circuity literally melted under the intense heat and radiation, but the ship was so huge it took time to work its way in through the tiny holes. As soon as the rest of the Yeg’gor failed that process would increase in speed, which apparently the commander finally decided to acknowledge as the trailblazer got a comm from the Mach’nel.

When she accepted it the view of half a dozen Brat’mar appeared with one in the middle walking forward to dominate the screen. Its two massive clear horns sprouting out from the head were not aglow as they usually were in battle. Rather, this Triceratops looked very subdued, as did the others around him.

“It appears your snare is not going to exhaust its strength as we had hoped,” the Brat’mar said slowly. “We are dead and we know it. What terms do you think we would accept? Your illegitimate empire has been put under a death mark and we will not stop until you are destroyed. This Mach’nel’s loss will not change that, nor can it be used to barter your survival.”

“I’m not talking about our survival, I’m talking about yours,” Olivia said amicably. “I am willing to let you live.”

“In exchange for what? We will not let you possess this ship.”

“I don’t want it. I want a temporary ceasefire on the planet while you evacuate. Our ‘snare,’ as you put it, can create a shield column up to the surface of the star through which small craft can move safely. I doubt you have enough onboard to evacuate everyone, so drop pods from your fleet will have to descend to pick up the rest of you. In exchange for sparing your crew and giving you safe passage to evacuate, you will reciprocate by temporarily stopping all assaults on the planet.”

“You seek to delay your demise by days?”

“It’s worth it to me in exchange for letting you go.”

“And give you an empty ship to claim?”

“Come now, Brat’mar. Do not think I’m stupid. You can easily sabotage it before you leave.”

“And you can move it, sabotaged or not.”

“My ships will be nowhere near it during the evacuation, and once my snare comes out of the star it will be vulnerable to your fleet. There is no way I’m maintaining possession of the Mach’nel.”

“Unless you extend your shields to cover it and wait us out inside the star.”

“To what end when you claim the star system? You do plan on doing that, don’t you?”

“We will not devote a fleet to wait here indefinitely.”

“And you won’t have to. In exchange for my not holding onto the Mach’nel and playing the waiting game, you will give the planet an additional week once its destruction is confirmed.”

“Confirmed how?”

“You will sabotage all gravity drives and we will hold it inside the star until sufficiently damaged, at which point we will release it to fall further in and my snare will leave visibly empty. You will have confirmation that we do not possess it and I will have my week.”

“And you think our lives are worth a Mach’nel?”

“You are losing the Mach’nel regardless. And are your lives worth less than 8 or 9 days delay in this invasion? I want the time and those are my terms. You can accept them or stay there and die. I give you the choice you would not give us, but do not think I am naïve. This is a courtesy I am extending and I want those days in exchange. You may take as much time as you think you have to consider your answer before your hangar bays are consumed and your evacuation becomes much more complicated.”

The Brat’mar stared her down for several long seconds, but the mental calculations were quite simple. They were dead unless they did this deal, and simply delaying the invasion was a small price to pay to save the large and highly experienced crew, not to mention the fleet commander who stepped forward to speak. He was also a Brat’mar, but one the analysis computer instantly identified by the tattoos on his face.

“Your proposal is accepted. Combat on the surface will temporarily halt when confirmation of a secure conduit to the Mach’nel is made.”

“Dorchav,” Olivia said, raising an eyebrow.

“Are you reconsidering your terms?” the ancient V’kit’no’sat asked quizzically.

“Perhaps I should, but the offer stands.”

“You will get your days, but once they end I will exterminate the planetary population and any ships you send against us.”

“I figured that much.”

“Strategically my death would be more valuable than a temporary delay.”

“Are you really arguing for me to kill you? Dumb Brat’mar, dumb.”

“Your terms are accepted, but I would ask to know why?”

“Because true warriors do not destroy the helpless…and we are better than you.”

“Had you not captured this vessel I would have argued otherwise. Better or not, you don’t have the ships to stop us.”

“Death before dishonor. We’ll go down fighting and we won’t become the bastards you are,” Olivia said, sending the appropriate commands to Spaceball One with a thought. “Your conduit is forming. Combat on the planet must be confirmed to have stopped in all cases, or I’ll collapse the shield with your transports in it.”

“Agreed,” the very revered enemy commander said, looking to his left as he sent out his own set of orders. “We need a direct comm line. My ships won’t trust a relay through you.”

“It will be there in moments,” she said as the areas eating into the Mach’nel suddenly went silent. They were still aglow, but from residual heat and plasma as the shields expanded to cover the whole ship and the bits of star still inside quickly snuffed themselves out. Oliva checked to see if the Mach’nel was firing on the now covering shields, but they were not. It would be stupid if they were and most of the ships weaponry was already destroyed, but she wondered nonetheless.

After the ship was secure and still burning a bit internally, a section of shield continued to extend out like a straw away from Spaceball One and reached all the way up to the surface of the star and then some, splaying out like a flower and blocking/absorbing the radiation and heat giving the V’kit’no’sat fleet a target to shoot for…metaphorically speaking.

“Your comms should connect now.”

“Our drop pods will assemble nearby until we get confirmation,” Dorchav said as already there were small craft popping out from the overhead fleet that was high enough to avoid getting cooked from prolonged exposure, but the drop pods were going to have to go lower to get to the flower petal entrance. “There will be some amount of lag beyond the comm limitations.”

“No passage will be allowed either way until we get it.”

“Agreed.”

“I’ll contact you when my people confirm it,” Olivia said, cutting the comm and leaving the command nexus during the wait, walking out on the bridge and heading for the far door as she picked up an earpiece. “I’ll be back. Keep me appraised of any change and be ready to collapse the conduit at a moment’s notice…but wait for my command.”

“Going for a workout?” Admiral Dentiv asked.

“No, to pee,” she said with a smirk as she left the bridge, wanting to be back in the command nexus for the entirety of the evacuation just in case the V’kit’no’sat tried to pull something.

17

Olivia watched as a steady flow of drop pods from the Mach’nel passed through the safe zone Spaceball One was maintaining while more held position above it waiting for entry. The V’kit’no’sat weren’t playing games with this and had so many of the small transport craft in play that Olivia got the impression that they either wanted to get the Mach’nel evacuated as fast as possible to reduce the possibility of betrayal, or that they wanted the stand down on the planet to last as few minutes as possible.

So far they were holding up their end of the agreement, with their ground troops holding their positions but no longer attacking Star Force positions. Liam had given orders to take massive reorganization efforts on Requiem that the V’kit’no’sat had to be hating as they watched, for they were going to make their resumed attacks more difficult. It was also allowing time for evac ships to leave the surface, and Liam made sure to get them all out prior to the evacuation of the Mach’nel while Oliva had leverage to use.

There weren’t enough ships to get the entire population of the planet out, and such efforts would require those ships and more coming back to pick up subsequent loads, but that little wrinkle to the ceasefire deal helped take a big load off the population crunch in the still intact cities.

That said, the planet was still going to lose the gradual fight if she couldn’t get reinforcements down to them…and with the massive size of this V’kit’no’sat fleet, even minus the Mach’nel, that wasn’t going to happen in any significant numbers. She didn’t have any troops ships with her or she’d have sent them down during the ceasefire, but her Defense fleet wasn’t going to waste ground troops sitting in ships when they could be doing proper training on planets. If she could break the V’kit’no’sat fleet she could call troops in from the surrounding systems in short order, but that wasn’t going to happen even with Liam’s help.

The Mach’nel had already done its damage in the initial assault and the remaining V’kit’no’sat fleet was much larger than it otherwise would have been after bombarding the planetary defenses. Too large for her fleet to do more than scratch at, but the major victory had been achieved and the Mach’nel was soon to be destroyed…with her wondering what kind of sabotage they’d actually made to it prior to them leaving and signaling that it was now empty.

Status reports from the planet indicated no new attacks, so at the moment at least the V’kit’no’sat were holding to their word. Would she get her week? Olivia didn’t know, but she was going to make good on her deal to destroy rather than try to keep the Mach’nel. Taking it out of play was too important, and trying to hold onto it would only give them a chance of recapture.

To put an end to that she ordered Spaceball One to reopen the holes in the shield while protecting itself, allowing the star’s destructive power to further eat into the massive ship as Spaceball One began to sink deeper into the star in order to accelerate the process while still maintaining the IDF field that was draining more and more energy as it now had to accommodate the stellar material within it.

The pressure didn’t relent, for it translated through the field. The gravitational crunching did not, so there was a pushback that kept less pressure internally but still enough to continue the burning through deck after deck as Olivia watched each and every gravity drive within the Mach’nel eventually get consumed, including those at the center.

It took over a day to get to that point, and there was no Yeg’gor armor remaining on the shell. The Mach’nel looked like a rapidly shrinking snowball as it melted away into floating slag inside the IDF field cradled within a holey Spaceball One.

When she was convinced, Olivia ordered it released and the mass began to sink lower in the star…but slowly. A lot of the materials weren’t that heavy, with the weight of each atom determining what level in the star it ended up despite the gooey nature of the highly pressurized gas and plasma. The chunks would eventually reach the liquid and solid core of the star, but there was no need to wait around for that. On her command Spaceball One pulled down into an orb, pushing out the stellar material with its shields and then reforming into a long needle as it pushed further into the star and disappeared from V’kit’no’sat sensors.

Olivia sent a message along with the final sensor telemetry to Dorchav, waiting to see if he’d honor the agreement now that Olivia no longer had any leverage. As for Spaceball One, she had it moving under stealth protocols to another section of the star where it was going to come out at high speed and run for its life so the V’kit’no’sat fleet couldn’t exact revenge upon it. Much of it had already been destroyed, but Olivia wasn’t going to waste it even if Star Force had a few others waiting in storage.

To her mild surprise there was a reply comm coming with a request for a private line to Olivia. She took it under such protocol and saw a holo of Dorchav alone appear.

“You honored your part of the deal, and you will have your week. After that, if you remain here, you will die.”

“You almost sound disappointed by that?”

“While I do not possess Sav, I am superior to you. But in my expansive experience I have never encountered an opponent to try this tactic against a Mach’nel. Now that I have suffered from it, I realize it might be put to better use elsewhere.”

“The Hadarak?” Olivia guessed.

“Indeed. They are far more dangerous than a Mach’nel and actually prefer a star’s interior to open space, but the ability to move them where we wish is something I must admit to never having considered. Nor has anyone else in the V’kit’no’sat, to my knowledge. It’s a pity you and your herd were born into a line of treasonous Zen’zat and not a Ter’nat colony.”

“Perhaps there is your answer. You don’t let Zen’zat reproduce at all.”

“My information says Archons do not either?”

Olivia bobbed her head, conceding the point. “True, but that’s a matter of effectiveness and containing our psionics. We don’t kill violators.”

“And what do you do with your illegitimate Archon offspring?”

“There’s never been any from the Archons. But individuals who acquire psionics without permission are either conscripted into service or have the psionics deactivated.”

“Some cannot be deactivated.”

“We haven’t had to deal with those. However, we don’t have telekinesis in our population. You do, as far as my information goes. Why do you tolerate everyone having it and yet are so scared of the Zen’zat reproducing?”

“They are servants given powers the rest of us do not have, or at least the potential to acquire them. Each individual must earn them. That is the only way such a conglomeration of power is allowed in a single race.”

“Oh? I thought it was because the Zen’zat were tiny?”

“Less psionic tissue is a limiting factor, but there are Zen’zat that can kill Brat’mar in single combat. They are lethal in ways that we cannot permit to accidentally exist.”

“Believe me, I know,” Olivia said, smiling. “I’m pretty sure I could handle a Brat’mar, though I haven’t had the chance to try.”

“You are an abomination that was never meant to exist.”

“Or are we what the Zen’zat had the potential to become but never developed into?”

“I am curious about that. You have ample motivation in survival, but there must be more than that. How have you progressed so far in so few years?”

“We don’t kill people who step out of line. Rather we reward those who are effective and leave the others to civilian life.”

“As do we, for the most part.”

“Zen’zat serve you. You never let them have anything for themselves. Maybe your example has held them back?”

“They are bipeds, we are quadrupeds. If they are keying off of us then they are stupid.”

“Did you train them to be otherwise?”

“Stupidity is something that is meant to remain in the Ter’nat. Zen’zat should be better than that.”

“Yet you are in control.”

“Why are you smaller? Your Knights are proper Zen’zat size, but you are not. That means you have even less psionic tissue.”

“We do well enough.”

“But why?”

“Why haven’t you all gone Ultra?”

“But you are so much smaller than us. What advantage is there in going even smaller? Our enemies do not outsize us.”

“You have Ari’tat. Why not enlarge them to your size?”

“They are not built for it. We enhanced the Zen’zat without compromising their physiology. You can attain their size without negative side effects. You must know this from our records you obtained from Terraxis. So why?”

“Most of our enemies are not your size, and agility and speed are more important.”

“More important than psionic tissue?”

“We compensate for lack of tissue with skill. We may have less, but per mass it’s stronger.”

“You put yourself in a compromised position versus Zen’zat.”

“And you put Zen’zat in a compromised position by withholding psionics from them. Why not let them have all of them in order to fight us?”

“We do not alter our empire to fight our enemies. We adapt, but we do not alter. It would unbalance other areas and we would end up a nightmare of contradictions. Our psionic allotment is carefully constructed for longevity and stability. True dominance is not fleeting.”

“Battles are.”

“Which is why our psionics are closely guarded and rogue Zen’zat must be destroyed. We cannot let our enemies possess such strength.”

“Oops,” Oliva said, using the V’kit’no’sat equivalent. “Maybe you should have negotiated rather than attacked Terraxis straight off.”

“Perhaps so, but none of you are permitted to live. What negotiation could there have been other than the circumstances of your demise?”

“Good men don’t need rules. Your adherence to code is a weakness.”

“We have destroyed most of your empire,” the Brat’mar said, citing density of civilization rather than points on the map, for Star Force now had more of the latter than the day the war began. “It has cost us more than we imagined, but the end result will be the same and the losses are a stark reminder of why we cannot let rogue populations exist with our genomes. Where do you see our weakness?”

“You made us an automatic enemy. And after all you have done, we are not going to be forgiving.”

“You will be dead, so it does not matter.”

“You’d better hope so. Still haven’t taken the Uriti Preserve yet. What’s the holdup?”

Dorchav visibly altered while not quite growling, but it was obvious even to Olivia’s eyes that the mere mention of that failure annoyed him.

“Hide there if you wish, but we will return and finish off that bastion of strength after we eliminate the rest of your civilization. The bastardized Hadarak will be hard to kill, but we will eventually succeed.”

“You just lost the second Mach’nel in your history to us…or was there another to someone else I’m not aware of?”

“Mach’nel have been destroyed, but never captured. You are unique in that.”

“And you are overconfident.”

“The vast swath of planets in what you call the Devastation Zone is evidence to the contrary.”

“So is the burning hulk of your Mach’nel sinking in the star.”

“You are a worthy opponent, but we will still prevail. Our empire is too large and too strong to fall, and we will not coexist.”

“And we will not lay down and die.”

“I give you a measure of respect for that, but it will not stay my wrath. When the ceasefire ends, this system falls.”

“Ingrate,” Olivia quipped.

“Sparing me was a strategic mistake, but I do thank you for it.”

“Do you know how we got the Uriti to ally with us?”

“No, and I am deeply curious as to how you control them.”

“We don’t control them. We talked to them when everyone else decreed they had to be destroyed. Your empire is darkside, and that gives you some advantages. But Star Force is lightside, and that gives us some different advantages. Making allies is one of them. Instead of befriending us you’re trying to kill us and losing so many ships in the process that could have been preserved simply by talking.”

“Your existence is forbidden.”

“And that darkside decree keeps a firm hold on your populations and discourages competition…but when something slips through the cracks it becomes a weakness.”

“Your translation must be off. Your terms of ‘darkside’ and ‘lightside’ are not used properly.”

“You simply are unfamiliar with them. There is more to the universe than dominance. Some things are wrong, many things are neutral, and other things are good. I don’t think you understand good, which we refer to as ‘lightside’. The V’kit’no’sat are a mix of neutral and darkside, meaning you do bad things. You gain some advantages from those bad things, but the darkside is inherently self-destructive…and death marks are a tell-tale sign of it.”

“And you claim to have strengths unknown to us?”

“Yes. The Uriti are a prime example of it. If you ever figure out why, then you and I may no longer be enemies.”

“I thought we were beyond forgiving?”

“Your empire is.”

“But I am not? Do you favor me for some reason?”

“There is a truth to the universe, and those that can see it are inherently allies. You are ignorant, but have enough skills to suggest that you are not delusional. If you ever come to know and understand the lightside you will either be a virulent enemy or an ally. There can be no neutrality once your eyes are opened…and the delusional make sure they never see what they feel on the periphery.”

“I will consider your words, if for no other reason than the victory you have achieved here.”

“And I will apologize if I end up killing you later. You seem less fanatical than the other V’kit’no’sat. You’ll at least talk to a ‘heretic.’”

“You are no heretic. You were simply born into an illegitimate line. And I do pity that, but the death mark remains and I do not have the authority to suspend it. Only Itaru does.”

“Might want to have a talk with them about that before they send another Mach’nel our way.”

“I doubt they will after this debacle.”

“Why the change after so many years?”

“A shift in strategy.”

“By your new campaign commander?”

“Yes. And that identity will remain a secret.”

“Is he going to get into trouble for losing the Mach’nel?”

“Far less than I will.”

“Are they going to kill you?”

“No, they will not. I am too valuable and your new technology was unpredictable.”

“Just us thinking logically rather than relying on legacy.”

“A rebuke?”

“I’m a trailblazer. I have no one’s example to follow. I have to chart our path forward where you look to others that came before you. Expect the unexpected with us. We’re not using the V’kit’no’sat playbook.”

“So noted,” Dorchav said as his fleet’s sensors picked up the Star Force snareship racing out from the star in a different position too fast for his fleet to intercept. “Keep your ship as a trophy. You most likely will not see another victory of this magnitude going forward amongst your string of defeats.”

“Trophy? I’m going to use it to shoot you guys,” Olivia said with a sarcastic wave as she cut the comm while keeping a close mental eye on Spaceball One’s progress. That conversation had been more revealing than she’d expected, but she wasn’t stupid enough to believe that Brat’mar was going to cut them any slack. If he didn’t violate the agreement and attack early, then that would be the only payback in exchange for saving his life and Olivia wasn’t assuming even that much as she resumed part of the control duties for her fleet and got them moving around the system but keeping their distance from the V’kit’no’sat.

When the fighting started again she was going to peel off what enemy ships she could, but Dorchav was right about one thing. Requiem was going to fall and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to stop it.

18

January 13, 4814

Jennizeren System (Star Force Front)

Zulu

Two months had passed and Paul was still nowhere close to winning the fight for the Jennizeren System. Three of the 6 planets remained intact, but the three under assault were in bad condition. None of them had fallen completely, but the orbital bombardment of sections where the planetary shield had fallen continued and Paul was helpless to stop it.

But he was making gains, in the form of ship losses. He’d destroyed in small attacks 13% of the enemy fleet, or rather what remained after they had assaulted Ennvor, Tardon, and Zulu. They’d lost 16% of their fleet and saw damage equal to another 11% spread over ships still in the fight during those shield breaching attacks. That didn’t sound like egregious losses, but they were considering the original 7,449 ships the V’kit’no’sat had brought into the system.

Over 7,000 ships ranging in size from 2.5 miles up through 36 miles wide. Other locations were getting hit with more, especially Karthus, and reinforcements had to go there. Paul had picked up a few dozen more jumpships that had come in from odd places, but he knew this fight was going to mostly occur with what he had here already, and right now he had to get the enemy ship count low enough that when they hit the other three planets the anti-orbital batteries would massacre them.

Assuming there weren’t more coming for the V’kit’no’sat, which Paul wasn’t. If there were then he’d fight this battle as best he could, but right now he had to face the situation before him and the fact that the V’kit’no’sat were already beginning eradication bombardment on Zulu before the entire planet had even been conquered was making him angry.

Angrier than normal, anyway, for watching people die was never something Paul could tolerate. Most Star Force personnel were moving ahead of the fight, but not all were making it out and those fighting the V’kit’no’sat directly on the ground were getting hit hard and not every fallen mech or aerial craft had their pilots survive. On top of that Zen’zat were moving out ahead of the larger V’kit’no’sat and probing everywhere with assassination and sabotage missions.

And Paul couldn’t get to them. He needed his warships in the atmosphere pounding the enemy ground troops, but even the smaller fleet over Zulu had him blocked and he’d been chipping away at it for the past 6 days. Already some additional ships had been sent over from the other two planets to reinforce this enemy fleet, keeping Paul stuck with skirmish work only while the planet continued to get hammered.

What was worse was the fact that Paul could take them. The fleet over Zulu anyway. He could full on attack that fleet and basically cancel them out, losing all his ships while taking out theirs. But then the other two fleets would own the system and the three intact planets would have only their shields and anti-orbital weapons to defend themselves with, which were substantial, but having a mobile fleet that could backdoor any bombarding fleet made the required number of ships to penetrate the shields much, much higher.

So Paul had to play the long game, preserving most of his ships while making kills and some trades against the V’kit’no’sat that were advantageous, as word came through the relay grid from one of the scouts on the far side of the Devastation Zone. Another large V’kit’no’sat fleet had been seen passing through a system and heading this way. That meant another month, maybe two before they got to the front, and Paul doubted it was the only one coming.

But he had his own reinforcements coming, some of which should be here within the month, which meant the gains or losses made within the next few weeks would set the stage for the main event forthcoming, and Paul needed to make sure the three intact planets stayed intact until then…but at the rate the V’kit’no’sat were conquering Zulu and the others they might finish early. The ground troops had to hold the shield generators long enough, so Paul made a bad choice.

His fleet was spread out around the planet, forcing the V’kit’no’sat fleet to equally spread so Paul couldn’t run help down or evac ships out, and was constantly in motion probing with light attacks and withdrawing until he had a mismatch that he pounced on. But now was different, and as he mentally sent out orders the ship movements visibly changed and the V’kit’no’sat were fast to react as he launched a massive assault in 11 different locations.

He didn’t use his entire fleet, and as those 11 battles started to show significant damage to the V’kit’no’sat ships the others in blockade formation rushed out of position to aid them…which was the point. As the carnage increased Paul sent 9 smaller groups in on flanking attacks, all of which was to obscure the single small group that accelerated hard towards the planet and entered the atmosphere so fast they lit on fire, draining their shields heavily, but they needed the speed as some of the V’kit’no’sat ships attacked from range and moved to intercept them.

But they didn’t make it. Some of the drones had their shields breached, then the friction with the atmosphere burnt away at their hull armor, but it was the additional weaponsfire that downed more than half of them before they hit the intact shields below that Paul had briefly lowered just long enough for the intact drones to pass through. It was then reformed just before the falling pieces of the destroyed ones hit, crushing against the energy shield and splattering like metallic water balloons as visible ripples formed in the otherwise clear shield.

The energy necessary to repel the ramming debris wasn’t near enough to overstress them, and the subsequent weaponsfire from the ships above were absorbed as the V’kit’no’sat ships turned and ran back up to higher orbit as 8 of them were hit by anti-orbital fire from the ground batteries, for Paul had made the run down over an intact section of the planet. A section that typically had V’kit’no’sat ships very high up to intercept his skirmishers before they could get low enough to get an assist from the planet’s weaponry.

The massive battles that were now underway had pulled enough ships out of position for Paul to get 12 intact drones and 5 damaged ones through and under the planetary shields, with him immediately recalling the rest of his fleet up to higher orbit. They had to disengage before he lost too many of them, but already he had the ships underneath the shield skimming the surface as they headed towards the shield generators closest to the fighting.

He needed more than that down there, and higher up, because he couldn’t get good firing lines past buildings when the drones were so low and pinned there because of the planetary shields, which he had raised 3 more miles to assist, but still the firing had to be lateral unless you were right over the targets and the drones couldn’t go out beyond the shield coverage or they’d get pounded by the V’kit’no’sat fleet.

To make matters worse the edges of the planetary shields had to be tilted down enough to keep V’kit’no’sat warships from getting underneath them as well, so the places where the fighting was the heaviest had an even lower ceiling, but the troops on the ground would welcome the corvettes and destroyers he’d slipped down, for as big and dangerous as the V’kit’no’sat ground troops were, even an Era’tran was small and vulnerable compared to a warship.

But Paul knew massed fire could take them down, and all three planets had multiple Ultras with them that were currently withdrawing from the front lines, knowing they’d be the easiest targets for the warships. In fact the ground combat was shifting immediately and relieving the hardest hit areas, but Paul knew they were merely shifting their attack from a full force mode to a more subtle multipronged attack with smaller units that the warships could not target when they were inside or below buildings.

The larger V’kit’no’sat were pulling back within range of their own mobile batteries, for they no longer sent down troops without the ability to defend themselves against low riding warships…at least a few of them anyway, which meant Paul couldn’t race his drones out after them without risking damage or losing one or two of them.

What he’d just done was slow down the V’kit’no’sat and maybe stop them in a few locations, but the warships couldn’t stop an army of Zen’zat from moving through the cityscape. They had to have troops on the ground to do that, but Paul could do some things to make their movement harder.

Evacuation alarms sounded around several key locations on Paul’s order, with holographic markers leading the people in those areas out as Paul selected buildings around the shield generators and the undercity beneath them as targets. When they were clear he fired on them, destroying part of the Star Force city all the way down to the bedrock over the next few hours of continuous pointblank bombardment so his limited ground troops would have less approaches to defend, for beneath all the surface buildings and streets was another world entirely, and one that the warships couldn’t assist.

The ‘undercity’ existed in most Star force infrastructure purposely to give denizens cover against aerial attack, but being outnumbered like this it gave the enemy a movement advantage even when blast doors were sealed off, for the V’kit’no’sat could cut their way through with time. Now they’d have piles of rubble hundreds of meters wide to dig through…and if they were detected to be trying Paul could fire on those locations again, making them a death zone if the enemy crept into them.

No, now they would have to go through specific approaches, for Paul had left many so his own troops didn’t get cornered, and kept a drone over top of each shield generator to shoot down aerial attack, for there were plenty of I’rar’et and other V’kit’no’sat fliers in the skies. They were all wearing armor with weaponry included, making them a match for Star Force’s own aerial craft, but they had a movement advantage while Star Force had a firepower and shields advantage…for most of the mass of the V’kit’no’sat fliers was made up of their bodies, with the skeets and other Star Force fighters being made up mostly of equipment with smaller pilots.

And there were several Urik’kadel units still in play, with their pilots being smaller than Humans. Approximately rabbit-sized, the Urik’kadel were on average better pilots than most other races and were able to fly superior craft due to their smaller cockpit size that allowed for more equipment in identical aerial craft frames.

Typically Star Force would win aerial fights, for the V’kit’no’sat air divisions were not so dominant in equal numbers, but they had not come with equal numbers here, and even a small numerical advantage combined with their agility was a death knell for the V’kit’no’sat’s aerial opponents. Anti-air weaponry and especially a warship changed that, but they were a big asset to the enemy none the less, including the handful of Les’i’kron that were essentially aerial battleships when it came to fliers…but they would be easy pickings for a corvette even if it didn’t have fast tracking anti-air batteries.

As Paul’s ships in orbit ran, he stayed mentally linked with those on the surface as he coordinated with the ground troops while turning over part of the soon to resume harassing attacks in orbit to other Archons. He’d keep an eye on it and intervene when necessary, but they could handle a lot of the same tasks with equal skill, freeing him up while he now had an active part to play in the ground warfare.

But it had come at a cost. He’d lost 823 drones while the V’kit’no’sat had lost 13 full ships and saw significant damage to 182 more. Paul hadn’t stuck around long enough to take them out, because forcing that fight was going to cost him even more, but some of that damage they would be able to repair and the lost shields would now regenerate where his dead drones would not. In addition he had another 1048 drones with hull damage, 83 of which were so bad they had to be recalled to the controlling Warship-class jumpships for docking and repair, but Paul knew they would be permanently out of the fight without a visit to a shipyard.

And the only shipyards in the system were the orbital ones that had been destroyed or surface yards that were not accessible due to the V’kit’no’sat blockades…and even if they were, it would be weeks to repair these. More likely they’d have to be disassembled and the useful parts repurposed to repair others, and a little bit of that could be accomplished on the jumpships even when they were in motion thanks to the IDF fields cradling the partially exposed docking section on the rear/underside of the elongated jumpships that somewhat resembled old school submarines, but with angular, hard faces and little ornamentation. They also didn’t have a conning tower, for the bridge and most critical areas were at the center and as far from weapons damage as possible.

As Paul’s damaged drones limped back to their motherships, he kept reorganizing the ground defenses now that they had close-in warships support, but only a few hours in he got an alert ping from the ships he’d left roaming stellar orbit and playing with the few V’kit’no’sat ships that were also there. A seldom-used jumpline was showing activity, and one coming from the rim. No identification signals were showing and no updates had come through the relay grid, so this had to be bad news and the V’kit’no’sat must have circled around through systems that should have had detection systems set up. The fact that they could get here through Star Force territory meant they’d somehow gotten scouts in that had sabotaged…

That train of thought ended when the first detected mass decelerated, with Paul seeing it on a time delay due to the signal lag. He raised an eyebrow when he saw it was a Paladin jumpship, larger than the ones he commanded by more than double, and it wasn’t alone. Several more came behind it, ended up at 37 in total, all with identification beacons disabled until the last of them had arrived, then they lit up with identifiers and Paul could see exactly who it was.

A message from Viceroy Hannibal came through immediately thereafter, explaining that the rest of the Paladin were assembling at various waypoints so they could come in force, but Supreme Viceroy Thrawn had wanted him to come ahead with whatever he could to assist Paul immediately.

That wasn’t what Paul had told him to do, because only in large numbers would the Paladin stand a chance against the V’kit’no’sat, but he was glad Hannibal was here now. It wasn’t a large addition to his fleet, but it was significant and the Paladin jumpships carried far more drones. That had been Thrawn’s decision when they built this design, and they had more engine power insystem than standard Star Force jumpships did…but at a cost. They were slow when full, meaning they couldn’t outrun the V’kit’no’sat or move about through enemy territory prior to a battle without getting run down.

They had to stand and fight, with the drones anyway, which was a big reason why they’d never been used in the Devastation Zone, but Paul saw the jumpships immediately spilling out their drones in a mad rush, making them light enough to move around as necessary and not get caught.

Their positioning was ok, as was the lack of arrival warning. Hannibal indicated that they’d instructed the relay grid not to transmit their location, which was why Paul hadn’t known they were coming…and couldn’t instruct them to go elsewhere. But if the V’kit’no’sat did have a hack somewhere, unlikely as that was, this small Paladin fleet was unknown to them.

It wasn’t enough new ships for Paul to take on the enemy fleets here as he would have liked, but it did give him more to work with and he could put more pressure on Rovo’kor with the fleet of all heavy cruisers. The Paladin didn’t use multiple versions of drones, with their .78 mile long version being standard and shaped like a ‘+’ when viewed from the end. It was essentially two standard Star Force mainline drones, each of which was brick shaped, overlapped on one another. Not the most efficient shape, but they stacked against each other in the carrier bay and created niches on the surface to hide weapons batteries in.

That was an advantage and disadvantage, for while the enemy couldn’t pluck the weapons off the drones from as many directions, they couldn’t fire in as many directions from the same battery either. Many factions within Star Force had their own shape drones, but they all worked off the same rules. No crew, all remote controlled, and all carried within jumpships that housed the remote pilots.

The Paladin version, while not different sizes, did carry different weaponry. Some were shield ships, with almost no weaponry and extra generators to make themselves harder to kill and so they could create parasol-like barriers to protect others. Some were heavily armored, making them damage sponges, while others were heavily packed with lots of smaller weapons. Still some had a single main weapon that required a long recharge period…but could deliver a massive strike in one hit.

The Paladin had access to the same weapon tech as the rest of Star Force, but Thrawn, Hannibal, and the other old leaders that were born to the Li’vorkrachnika and not the Paladin had old habits from numerous battles against Star Force, and Paul had chosen to let them do their own thing, for sometimes it took an old enemy to see your true weaknesses and strengths. Plus their navy had to fit them, not Paul, and as long as it worked within Star Force parameters they could tailor it as they liked.

Paul and the other 2s, who were responsible for developing the Paladin, knew that Thrawn and the other original masterminds would not tolerate inefficiency. For them winning was everything, so they weren’t going to create bad designs, and while they had a lot to learn initially about Star Force methods when viewed from within, Paul had no doubts about their effectiveness now. They weren’t Clan level, but they were solid and now that they were plugged into the battlemap system with a trailblazer in control, they would be all the more effective.

“Welcome to the party, old friend,” Paul sent back as the Paladin fleet was still on its way to his position. “You were supposed to wait, but I’m glad you didn’t. We’ve got a mess here and probably more V’kit’no’sat reinforcements on the way. We have to hold the 3 intact planets while not abandoning the others, which means we can’t lose a lot of ships. I want a fresh assessment of the battlefield, so review the battlemap data and get back to me when you’ve finished.”

“Do not underestimate these bastards, Hannibal, but they are beatable. And expect them to test your jumpships. They haven’t chased them before and they may check for a weakness. Don’t get caught napping.”

19

February 4, 4814

Karthus System (Star Force territory)

Requiem

Nathan-937 sat perched on a wall, clinging to it with the grip points built into his Archon armor as he waited with his Kgat psionic shielding his mind from view. He was still visible to the naked eye and Pefbar, but where Ikrid was concerned he did not exist and it was how V’kit’no’sat looked for enemies from medium range.

Knowing this, the Piccolo-level Archon was waiting and watching with his eyes and passive sensors within an intact section of the cityscape around one of the shield generators. He’d originally come into the system at the head of a naval fleet, but during the fighting over the planet he’d lost most of his ships alongside the Sentinel defense platforms that had formerly ringed the planet. They’d all moved to blunt the V’kit’no’sat attack and keep the planetary shields up as long as possible, but the enemy had chosen to hit them straight on at high cost to both sides.

Afterwards Nathan knew the V’kit’no’sat would not try the same thing to get the other shield generators down, and had transferred himself to the surface before Liam had the remainder of the system defense fleet run and then begin hit and run attacks, else they be wiped out entirely…which they had been before Olivia arrived, but they’d exacted far more damage on the exterior of the enemy fleet than getting themselves pinned in low orbit and target practice for a Mach’nel.

Nathan had been right to get to the surface while he could, and now numerous V’kit’no’sat armies were hitting the various cities on the planet and hammering through their insane defenses, but it was the V’kit’no’sat infiltration teams that had been exploiting any crack in the defense lines and slipping through…where they then disappeared until the appropriate moment.

So Nathan was clinging to the wall spiderman-like and waiting where he had a decent vantage point. He couldn’t sense with his own Ikrid while Kgat was active, but he needed to spot them before they spotted him, otherwise they wouldn’t come close enough. The nearest fighting was 18 miles away, but the second gen Archon had a gut feeling that this was the time they would hit the shield generator while most of the troops were up ahead and trying to slow the V’kit’no’sat advance that was pounding this way.

If they couldn’t be stopped they’d run over the shield generator and take it down, exposing another chunk of the planet to orbital bombardment, hence the frantic defense, but that would be seen as an opportunity to sneak a sabotage team in and get the shield generator early despite the point defenses it had in place.

The V’kit’no’sat had done this twice already in other locations, one for an anti-orbital gun and the other for a smaller city-sized shield generator. Nathan could be wasting his time here, but he thought the V’kit’no’sat were getting impatient despite the fast speed of conquest.

Fast for Star Force, anyway, but for the dominant V’kit’no’sat they were probably getting sick of the constant effort and losses. Nathan couldn’t fight the larger V’kit’no’sat races head on or he’d get killed outside a mech, and they had plenty of good mechwarriors to man their limited number of war machines…meaning the place he could do the most good while Olivia and Liam were in system heading up the naval fight was right here, lurking in the shadows and hunting roaming Zen’zat teams.

Others would have felt bad sitting while others were fighting and dying, but Nathan knew better. This planet was falling, and the most good he could do was stall the eventual fall of the final shield generator, for once it was down they were all dead. The one he was guarding now wasn’t the last, but they were like a row of dominoes and continually going down to this invasion, so if he could protect this one even an additional hour it would delay the fall of the final one and be worth more than him duking it out with Brat’mar and Wass’mat in a mech.

Nathan had been waiting here for 3 hours already, moving around a little bit but staying in the northwest region where he guessed an assault force would come through. The main blockage was in the undercity, with a lot of makeshift defenses down there in addition to the original ones because you couldn’t fit a mech in most of those tunnels. It would be hand to hand and the best place for Zen’zat to try and push through.

But they knew that too, which was why Nathan felt they were going to try to go over the surface building to building during the night when they’d be harder to visually spot. Sensors wouldn’t care, but if they were wearing stealth suits…

Then he saw one. Or rather a shadow cross from a window high up on a skyscraper to the building on the far side of the wide street. It was a jump, for there was a slight curve to the trajectory, and to Nathan it looked like little more than the lights on the far side winking out, for he could see nothing but a disturbance in the nighttime cityscape that had remained unmoving for the past 43 minutes that he’d been in this perch.

Then there was another, and another, with Nathan checking the battlemap and seeing nothing on the city sensors, but when he brought up the view of cameras he saw the same dark blots jumping across, already up to more than a dozen, and he knew they were null fields that absorbed all sensor signals, light, and anything else sent their way. That meant there would be no return signals for sensors to see, but properly attuned sensors would notice the lack of normal returns off the far buildings.

The city sensors weren’t set up that way aboveground, for they were designed for aircraft that didn’t make a habit of hiding…and that’s probably why the V’kit’no’sat were crossing high, for the sensors on ground level were configured to check for anomalies when the streets were clear, as they were now.

Nathan jumped off the wall, deactivating the grip pads so he didn’t stick there awkwardly, but unlike the Zen’zat he didn’t fall. Instead he continued to ascend, flying using the Yen’mer psionic that no known Zen’zat had ever achieved, let alone knew was in their own genome. It’d been put there by the Zak’de’ron when they led the V’kit’no’sat, but when they betrayed the dragons and killed them all they lost that knowledge. With the help of a single Zak’de’ron survivor that Star Force discovered they’d indirectly gained such knowledge, giving Nathan a big advantage…with him being grateful that this team of Zen’zat couldn’t fly, otherwise they would have been much more difficult to track.

What they could do was float, for their armor had limited gravity drives enough to enhance their jumps and save them from falling from extreme heights. That was how they were jumping from building to building, and they had their own grip pads that allowed them to climb and cling as he had. But right now they were in a specific building and still coming across the gap, with it being a facility that housed ground troops. Normally it would have been a very bad place to go…but right now all the troops were out fighting and the building was nearly empty save for a few techs.

Nathan thought the Zen’zat would pass them by to avoid detection, in addition to the fact that it was the shield generator they needed down. Once it was and the lesser city shield was taken down later, those techs and everyone else could be taken out with naval guns, so what was the point of stopping and killing people that would be as good as dead anyway if they completed their mission?

Nathan didn’t have anyone nearby to call for help, and he certainly wasn’t going to pull troops off the defense of the shield generator and create a breach for another Zen’zat team to sneak through. No, he was on his own, and he hoped these Zen’zat weren’t too advanced. Even with his plethora of psionics he was not guaranteed victory, and many he had encountered already on this planet were physically stronger than him, meaning close in hand to hand fighting was out when they could potentially get him in a stranglehold. He was going to have to hit hard and run, but he could do this…assuming there weren’t too many and not too many badasses. If more than one of them had Jumat then he’d have trouble, but Jumat was rare and he didn’t know if these Zen’zat were sent because they were expendable or because they were that good.

He was going to find out soon, flying straight to the building and entering via the roof, then running down flights of stairs as he killed his Kgat and stretched out with his own Ikrid, immediately getting hits on the Zen’zat. He used a light probe, one that only experts would be able to pick up on, and right now hopefully the Zen’zat were too busy running and staying stealthy to notice, for he didn’t feel any Ikrid probes coming from them.

But there was a problem. Already there were 34 of them in this building with more jumping across. Nathan didn’t risk that powerful of an Ikrid probe to see into the far building, but this was too many for him to take on directly. Fortunately they were strung out, so he decided to hit them in the middle, forcing them to split or turn around to engage him.

He got their approximate positions in his memory then engaged his Kgat again along with his Da’nu that would negate their ability to see him in their Pefbar fields. They could see the null space within them, but they couldn’t see him specifically, so when he came into the hallway they were passing through he was able to get close before they realized what he was.

As soon as they saw his green/purple Archon armor they visibly twitched, recognizing the threat, and as they shot him with their forearm mounted Dre’mo’don orbs he sprinted and ran headfirst into the chest of one of the 8 foot tall monsters. He stood just a little over 6 feet tall, but when he hit the shadow that the null field made them look like, he accelerated and flew through it, using his head as a battering ram, and knocked the 380 pound Zen’zat back down the hallway onto his back.

Nathan flipped over midair, then pummeled the Zen’zat with a Jumat blast so hard he heard the floor crack underneath him. In that moment he pulled a death stick out of the rack on his back as the Zen’zat appeared in view with its shields replacing the null field, but not fast enough. Nathan kept a waterspout of Jumat energy flowing from his left hand that disrupted the shields from fully forming as he jabbed the short cylinder down into the chest armor of the Zen’zat with him beginning to take shots from two more Zen’zat further down the hall that abandoned their camouflage.

When the death stick released its ultra condensed Ta’lin’yi blast, it burnt through the Zen’zat’s armor almost completely, then Nathan let the single shot weapon go and pressed his own forearm weapon into the gap as it started to refill, drawing material from elsewhere on the Zen’zat’s body but Nathan was too fast, pumping several shots into the damaged area and down into the flesh even as a fist came around knocking him off.

Nathan stuck midair, flying back a meter and grabbing the wounded Zen’zat by the wrist, then twisting around and throwing him like a rag doll down the hallway towards the others coming his way. So far those ahead hadn’t turned around, so he only had to face opponents coming from the rear, and as he threw his barricade ahead of him, blocking a few Dre’mo’don shots in the process, he flew himself into the body and pushed it further, running over the two Zen’zat on the other side before letting them all drop as he flew on down to the fourth coming into the hallway.

He pulsed his Rentar as he felt telekinetic pulls on him, with the energy field melting them away and allowing him to fly freely as he released multiple mind-interfering psionics while dancing about, barely setting foot to ground as he delivered more death sticks into his opponents and followed up enough to wound six of them before more began to pile up and throw so much firepower his way he had to back off.

The death sticks were useful, but you couldn’t carry too many of them with you. They were good for doing quick damage, but now he was going to have to take these guys down the hard way, which meant grinding down their shields and armor, for his Jumat disrupted shields rather than stripping them away. Still, it was an advantage he had over them, for he had yet to receive a Jumat blast directed at him as he circled around through another hallway and came back at them from behind, though they saw him coming with their Pefbar that allowed them to see through walls.

See through, but not shoot through, so Nathan’s shields recovered a bit by the time he got back to them, flying so fast he hit the far wall when he pushed through two Zen’zat, bouncing to the left to get back to the injured ones…over top of which he released an Ubven field, sealing everything in a thick telekinetic field that did not allow movement. But that same Ubven allowed him a Rentar-like immunity that let him cut through and neutralize the field wherever it hit his body.

He got to the wounded ones, pinned in place helpless and unable to move more than an inch or two with great effort as Dre’mo’don blasts came towards him and hit the field. The particle part of their cocktail stuck there glowing as the energy part flashed on through without hindrance, hitting his shields with less effect as the mass of glowing green particles pounded in the edge of the field.

Then one of the Zen’zat got up, telling Nathan that one had Rentar, but the Archon was still able to get to and kill two of the wounded Zen’zat before the field fell. He sent a Jumat blast into the one with Rentar that was rushing him, knocking him back as Nathan flew off in the direction of the Zen’zat at the head of the line that still weren’t showing up. Right now he couldn’t worry about them, but sent out a signal via the battlemap marking his location and the presence of the Zen’zat, then he got back to running and fighting.

Unfortunately the two Zen’zat he killed and left lying on the hallway floor didn’t stay dead. The regenerators, known as Kich’a’kat, built into their armor repaired and revived their bodies, bringing them back to life as their armor thinned to supply material to cover the breaches. Weakened but still deadly, the Zen’zat got back to their feet and followed the others as they worked together to track and fight the elite Archon as he would not let them get to their objective.

They had to keep moving, for fighting him was pointless, so they kept working forward as best they could while suffering these attacks, hoping to rack up enough damage to his shields and armor to scare him off before he wore them down so much that the next mind blinding attack would leave more dead and less to fight with…all the while giving Star Force time to summon reinforcements to their location.

20

April 19, 4814

Jennizeren System (Star Force Front)

Zulu

Paul had been overusing his planetside drones, now having only 3 corvettes remaining with the others now crashed into the surface and scattered in bits after taking so much fire from the V’kit’no’sat ground troops, but he’d had no choice. He had to take the pressure off of the Star Force troops and hold the line as much as possible, even as that line was constantly moving in the wrong direction.

And to make matters worse, Tardon was down to only two planetary shield generators left. All the Star Force survivors from that world were there, clustered underneath that protection in an Alamo situation. If those shield generators fell, they’d be annihilated from orbit and at the moment Paul had no way to get them out with the blockade currently in place.

But Star Force had learned long ago how to prepare for situations like this, and even now evacuees that couldn’t go up to orbit were going down…deep down underground to magma ships and even mobile cities that could slowly move through the molten core. Such things did not exist on any planetary blueprint and across the Devastation Zone many such sanctuaries had ridden out planetary bombardment and resurfaced again at specially developed docking points on the underside of the crust where they then dug new passages up to the surface when rescue teams arrived and signaled them long after the planet had been left for dead.

But there were too many people left and they couldn’t all just disappear at once, meaning some had to hold the line to buy time for the others…and Paul couldn’t help them. He’d reduced the size of the V’kit’no’sat fleet up until a group of their reinforcements arrived. It wasn’t a massive number, but an additional 723 ships jumped into the system and added an extra layer to each of the three planetary assaults taking place. Zulu was in the best shape, but once Tardon was finished those ships would probably be rejoining the other two fleets.

When that happened Paul’s job would get even harder, but other systems had it far worse. The second wave of V’kit’no’sat reinforcements was beyond anything he had imagined with a total of half a million additional ships, mostly of smaller size, and they’d come in 78 fleets working their way across the Devastation Zone by different routes, most of which Star Force hadn’t seen coming.

And they were now assaulting 59 different systems, all of which were getting hammered. For that reason Paul had signaled for no additional reinforcements for Jennizeren, for he was fairly confident that even with the 700+ reinforcements the V’kit’no’sat had received that he could hold onto the 3 untouched planets. If he could do that it would be a major victory, and the more fleets he could send elsewhere to fight the better.

Right now the Paladin were massing at the varied waypoints with a few of their fleets already enroute to the battlefields that were spread all along the front, but it would be another month or two before they all got into play, meaning that the additional Defender fleets that had been rotated up from deeper in Star Force territory had to help the system defense ships hold planetary defenses as long as possible, but already updates were coming through the relay network indicating breaches and footholds established on worlds with overwhelming numbers of V’kit’no’sat ground troops pouring down to the surface.

That meant the clock was ticking on those worlds, and even with the Paladin coming Paul knew they were in for at best an even fight. He’d do his part here, and even with so many losses on three planets the other three needed to be held onto. If even one was maintained Star Force would keep the system, for the V’kit’no’sat were not inhabiting the worlds they were attacking. They were razing them and moving on, with no system to date not having fallen to their assaults save for Orica, but they’d had to abandon it afterwards anyway. If Paul could hold at least one world here it would be a historic stop…but for how long?

Even if he could pull this system fight into a minor victory there were plenty of other V’kit’no’sat fleets out there that could rotate over and pound it flat, and right now he was questioning the wisdom of his orders to Kara. He could really use her Clan right now on the front, but he’d sent them on a bolder mission that should have been going down about now. He was blind to it, for it was happening on the other side of the Devastation Zone and even if a full relay grid had been in place it would have been over a week’s worth of signal delay.

He didn’t know where Kara and her Clan were right now, but he knew they wouldn’t be coming here. This fight was his with the ships and ground troops insystem, and he was very glad to have the few Paladin with him that had come early.

Still, if he didn’t play this right he’d lose all 6 planets and the system, but right now Tardon and Zulu were his main concerns while Ennvor was falling just as fast, but it more cityscape and defenses to take down. Paul couldn’t help anyone else right now, but he did need to find a way to help the remaining defenders on Tardon, but there was no way to get an evacuation ship down to them…but he might be able to screen for some to get out from the planet’s surface.

Problem was it would be a percent victory, for if 5 took off he might be able to protect 3. He didn’t like those odds, but it was better than waiting and watching people die, so he began to coordinate another costly strike to try and get some people out, for if they were going to go down fighting, they were all going to go down fighting. Star Force didn’t leave people behind, and Paul would rather see their entire civilization fall than to betray even a single member of it.

As he was planning the raid he got pings for incoming ships on a jumpline from rimward, but again without any forewarning from the relay grid. That could mean more Paladin violating orders…which he kind of hoped they’d done…but he was glad enough when it turned out to not be any more V’kit’no’sat. Rather it was non-Star Force ships from three races…the Gfatt, the Meintre, and the Albos. All were major members of The Nexus and 3 of the 12 races that had planets in the secure region around Grid Point Stargate that were now cut off from the rest of their civilization.

Tardon didn’t have a lot of time remaining, but the ships emerging were powerful. Their technology was a bit different than Star Force’s, and in general inferior, but they had some strengths that Paul’s ships did not and were at least in the same league as Star Force…not to mention bigger. They were manned by crews, which Paul always cringed at, but they could survive a slugging match that the drones could not.

The Excalibur turned over command of the surface drones on Zulu to another jumpship then made a microjump away from the planet and back to the central star so Paul could converse with the new arrivals in real time, getting an incoming three-way holocom from the commanders of the incoming fleets.

“Our apologies for not announcing our arrival,” the Gfatt said, with its two huge arms hanging limp over the ground as it hovered in an antigrav harness with its one leg/tail draping on the ground below. “We were concerned about a potential hack of your relay telemetry and received permission to pass through your territory without record.”

“No harm done,” Paul assured him, his expression still grave. “Why are you here?”

“We are not traveling to Grid Point Stargate,” the Gfatt assured him. “We recognize that without Star Force’s assistance The Nexus’s collapse will continue even if the V’kit’no’sat choose to ignore us. Your situation is more dire than we realized when we departed, but that makes our arrival all the more important.”

WE ARE HERE TO FIGHT, the Albos said, clicking its insectoid mandibles together aggressively over its mouth as the computer translated its words into English, for it did not have the vocal capability to make the necessary sounds for the Star Force language.

“We know we will lose many…” the Meintre said, anticipating Paul’s objection. The bulky, six legged mass had a huge head with 4 tentacle-like trunks underneath, looking like an alien elephant, but its race been a firm supporter of Star Force ever since The Nexus had taken away their own Grid Point to give Star Force one. Others would have held resentment to the recipient, but Star Force had always dealt with them fairly where The Nexus had not. “…but we stand to lose more if we do not fight. We are offering 22,000 ships to your personal command, if you will accept us."

Paul blanched. That was an enormous amount of ships. “Where are you pulling them from?”

“System defenses across our territory have been reduced. Not enough to encourage invasion, but it does weaken us. Losing Star Force will weaken the rim and we will suffer from additional predation, thus we must stand with you now. We trust you to use our ships wisely, and ask that you do not hold us back if you do accept us. We are here to fight, not to survive. We mean to ensure your survival and know you will put us to the most effective use.”

Paul swallowed hard, but the Gfatt spoke before he could.

“We bring 34,000 ships and to your personal command.”

WE BRING 17,000 VESSELS, The Albos added. TO KILL V’KIT’NO’SAT.

Paul took a deep breath. He’d thought they meant 22,000 ships in total. This was 73,000 ships, all of which were in excess of 4 miles long, with some upwards of 30.

Paul looked at each hologram in turn, saying nothing, then he finally sighed as he lowered his head.

“I do not like fighting this way, and I wish you’d converted your fleets over to drones long ago, but if you are willing to aid us now I will not turn you away. We need all the help we can get.”

“We are volunteering to fight under your direct command, not with others,” the Gfatt reiterated. “We wish to be a unified fleet for you to counter the greatest threats from the enemy.”

“We do not distrust your other commanders,” the Meintre added, “but we know you are a naval magician that will lead us through even the worst fights with beneficial outcomes. We ask that we be allowed to help you rid this system of the invaders, then have you lead us wherever else is needed as a unified fleet.”

“Terms accepted,” Paul said firmly. “And we will not forget this.”

IT WILL TAKE SEVERAL DAYS FOR ALL SHIPS TO ARRIVE.

“One of the planets here doesn’t have days. Do you have our battlemap interlink protocols?”

“Yes, but they are code locked,” the Gfatt reminded him.

Paul’s eyeline froze as he reached into the comm system and connected to the alien ships, gaining access and finding the Star Force programming given to them when the V’kit’no’sat neared the Grid Point and the systems they had there. To date those systems were still standing, and aside from some small skirmishes the V’kit’no’sat had ignored them, but the need to fight combined battles had prompted the comm interlink programming to be developed, though to date it had never been used.

“It’s unlocked now. Grant me access and I’ll make use of the ships arriving immediately.”

WE ARE YOURS TO COMMAND. DEATH TO YOUR ENEMIES.

“That’s the general idea,” Paul confirmed as their ship IDs were added to the Star Force battlemap and he could feel every weapon and capability they had, with him being able to send them orders, right down to their individual gunners, with a mere thought just like he would his own ships. “Usually they’re too dangerous to take prisoner, and unless I give specific orders to do so, attempt no captures. Shoot to kill.”

“By your command, Archon,” the Gfatt said, pounding a giant hand against its ape-like chest before it disappeared along with the other two holograms, for these commanders were here to fight, not talk, and they could now see through the Star Force battlemap system the situation on all 6 planets and how dire the situation was on Tardon.

Paul could also see their identities, and was glad that all three commanders were war veterans. On top of that they were upper tier commanders, though not their ultimate best. There were wars being fought in The Nexus that required them, but they hadn’t sent newbs expecting them to die. They’d sent skilled individuals who had seen and survived many battles…and Paul intended to keep them alive, along with as many of their ships as possible by combining them with his drone fleets and using the larger ships to soak up damage while the drones protected them from killing hits long enough for them to retreat.

That was the idea, but this kind of combined combat had never been attempted against the V’kit’no’sat. Fortunately Paul was among the best at improvising, and he was going to have to write the book on The Nexus vs. V’kit’no’sat naval combat in the coming hours as he fought to live up to his reputation, for these fleets were coming here to be under his personal command, and that wasn’t lost on him.

Nor was the fact that if he could pull out the victory here, he’d been free to go drop the hammer elsewhere.

One thing at a time. Tardon first, and hopefully before the final shield generator fell…which meant they had to move fast, and The Nexus’s convoy spacing was large. That meant it was going to take even longer for them to arrive as a few ships dripped out of the jumpline every 20 seconds or so.

On the surface of Tardon a group of Bsidd soldiers were hunkered inside a well-fortified cupola with four big anti-mech guns on top. They were in the lower portion, ready to defend the cupola against Zen’zat attack or any other small-scale assault meant to take it out so the cupola couldn’t target the larger V’kit’no’sat races and punch down their shields with a few shots.

The Bsidd were insectoid, standing taller than Humans and massing very little in comparison. Their bodies looked like a twisted mess of tree branches with more open space between them than body parts. They had numerous mandible/arms and could move about walking on them in any orientation, even upside if they wanted, with their equally holey heads usually riding up top.

Their armor covered most of the holes in their bodies, with those empty spaces filled with equipment that gave them the strongest shield generators of any infantry within Star Force. If the Zen’zat came they wouldn’t be able to take down the Bsidd quickly, and they had multiple weapons held pinched between mandibles or attached onto the ends of them, including some plasma swords they could ignite if it came to hand to hand combat.

The Zen’zat were not here yet, but the enemy was getting close and the cupola had fired off a few long range shots, none that hit, at the very edge of visibility within the broken cityscape ahead. The Bsidd were watching the sensors and waiting for reports from scouts they had out there when all their comm systems opened up on a channel from the Star Force warships in the system.

A very rare sound came through it, but it was one every Bsidd warrior knew as a battle song. Archons often used them to let troops know help was coming, and as the Bsidd’s attention went to the battlemap and saw the scores of ships jumping into planetary orbit over Tardon as the ‘Imperial March’ blared through their helmets.

The Bsidd exchanged looks with one another, and would have smiled widely had their faces been capable of that. There were Nexus ships along with the Star Force ones, and Archon Paul was bringing them into assault positions overtop the V’kit’no’sat fleet…and he never played that battle song unless there was a beatdown coming for the bad guys.

There were no orders for these Bsidd to do anything yet, but as they waited with weapons gripped and a surge of hope flowing through them they began humming along with the battle song, ready to start giving some payback to these V’kit’no’sat bastards as soon as they were given the word to do so.

21

May 4, 4814

Solar System (V’kit’no’sat territory)

Stellar Orbit

Kara stood in the command nexus onboard the Yi, her mind casually linked into the battlemap system as she undid the ponytail on the back of her head. She didn’t use her hands, rather her telekinesis, as she pulled off the small tie and laid it on the edge of the bank of controls in front of her while her hands were resting gently on the control sphere to maximize the telepathic interlink efficiency. She could do it remotely, but when going into battle you wanted every advantage possible and a direct physical link to the system avoided a microscopic bit of lag that only someone with a Sav-enhanced mind would even notice.

Her purple/white hair draped down around her ears, not quite touching her shoulders as Kara felt it brush against the back of her neck. Most Archons had short hair, but a few like her had kept it moderately long. Inside armor it didn’t really matter, but without that protection the long hair made for a good handhold that you didn’t want to give your opponent. It also made sleeping on a pillow a bit odd, but she tolerated the minor inefficiencies there because it fit her style and now it helped to calm her mind a bit further as the multi-colored hair smoothed out and settled around her mind as her command ship got a return signal from the scout ship a few minutes ahead of the fleet.

It signaled the jumppoint was clear, so there was no need to alter their arrival mathematics and Kara came out at the head of nearly every warship Clan Ghostblade possessed. They were packed tight, meaning the staggering between them during the jump was dangerously close, but with no anomalies at the exit point the advanced gravity drives and control systems braked them precisely enough to accommodate for their different masses and put them within a few kilometers of where they were supposed to be, with the ships maintaining a little momentum after they ‘stopped’ so they could clear the jump point and not have a traffic pileup that could be disastrous.

But Kara’s Clan had the most experience jumping from system to system, for that was how they lived, and she was pleased to see no hiccups as the first hundred or so jumpships came through and stretched out into a ribbon behind her as she returned to Star Force’s home system for the first time since it had fallen. A few other missions had been sent here, mostly for scouting purposes, and the data she had on the V’kit’no’sat infrastructure here was getting updated from the passive signal bounces from insystem sensors and the star itself, showing her that the shipyard had grown greatly, along with several new constructs beyond Earth.

The V’kit’no’sat called it Terrax and the system Terraxis, but unless she was having a chat with one of the bastards she wasn’t going to use their terminology. To her and Star Force it was the Solar System, or ‘Sol’ for short, and Earth. The V’kit’no’sat hadn’t even bothered to name the other planets, for they’d never inhabited them, and now was no different with the only habitation showing being on the blue/green planet itself.

When the V’kit’no’sat had finally conquered the planet they had bombarded it relentlessly until it was a cratered, charred mess, and even the seafloor had suffered similar treatment…but no longer. The vast tracks of wilderness had returned and the remnants of the continent-wide Star Force cities were gone, wiped clean by the reconstruction efforts. Now there was nothing but alien forests and alien cities, less than what Star Force had built, but far more than the last scouting run a few hundred years ago.

Getting in and out of the system wasn’t easy for a scout ship, but this time it didn’t matter because Kara was bringing a warfleet with her and the stellar patrols that were moving to intercept the odd jumpline soon saw they were outnumbered and held off, not retreating but not closing to weapons range as the system defense fleet was rallied.

There were no defensive platforms in stellar orbit, and there were few elsewhere in the system, but Earth did have full planetary shields and a rebuilt planetary defense station that Kara knew as ‘the pyramid’ from since her inception into the Archon ranks of Star Force so long ago. She wasn’t taking her fleet anywhere near that monster, but it only covered a portion of the planet and many of the V’kit’no’sat facilities built here were in various orbits and not on the surface.

As her fleet began to send out its own active sensor pings, for they weren’t trying to hide and could make use of the more powerful sensors, she began to get a ship count for the defense fleet…and saw it was pathetically low. Only 739 vessels unless there were more on the other side of the star, and she sent several groups of ships out to find out, with them pushing both orbital directions until sensor scans could see all the way around.

“Well well,” she commented to herself as a stellar mining platform popped up on the battlemap in low orbit on the far side of the star. “You have been busy.”

It was still in operation, sucking several strands of glowing material out from the giant orb and into processing factories that sifted out the valuable material and sent the rest back down the gravity well, with the main purpose being to harvest solari. They were rare particles that primarily existed in stars and were denied to most of the races in the galaxy because they didn’t have the ability to harvest them.

Those solari were a big reason why the V’kit’no’sat and Star Force had such advanced technology, for they allowed them to make things others could not, and it was a mark of an advanced civilization to mine in such a way. The Nexus did as well, but the V’kit’no’sat had never had stellar mining facilities in this system even way back when they owned it the first time.

That told Kara they were trying to localize the supply chain a bit. There was no way Sol could produce the attacking fleets going after the Star Force front…not even the fleets that had been patrolling the DZ…but what they could do was service them, and the shipyards here needed solari to produce replacement equipment to handle battle damage. They’d been shipping it in from the rest of their empire before, but now it looked like they needed a lot more going forward.

That was a bad sign, because it meant they were planning for a long, grueling campaign. A quick win and withdrawal would see those ships returning to the empire, but if they were going to come here for repair work then that suggested they wanted to keep constant pressure on Star Force until they cracked.

And in addition to the stellar mining platform there were huge warehouse facilities in null orbit between Venus and Earth. There were two defense stations with them along with a handful of ships, transport models that were probably offloading rather than picking up.

It was a supply depot, and the previous shipyard in Earth orbit now had two twins in orbit around Mars and Ganymede. The second one was a moon in orbit of Jupiter that used to hold extensive Star Force colonies on the airless surface, but now it was showing a lot of V’kit’no’sat infrastructure there…but not habitats. It was thin, like a spider web of sites that Kara recognized as mining and fabrication infrastructure that were probably feeding key components to the shipyard in orbit.

The same went for Mars, with more limited stuff visible on the surface, but from this range Kara couldn’t get good information on what exactly it was. The huge habitats that the V’kit’no’sat used were definitely not there, at least not in normal format, but they were covering Earth in shotgun fashion. The workers must have been commuting, and with their insystem ship technology that meant an hour or two at most for the furthest planets, though right now it was unclear whether or not they had any assets all the way out there.

Kara had several more fleet groups zip out to do flybys of the various planets as her ship pool continued to grow near the jumppoint…enough that the V’kit’no’sat defense fleet didn’t engage them…and as the 101st trailblazer watched her battlemap update with new targets for her to hit she was getting a very good vibe. They had enough defenses to fend off any native races to the area and then some. They even had enough ships here to discourage an attack from Star Force, but without their fleets in the DZ being available to track and intercept hers, they’d essentially left their backdoor open while hitting the front.

Even the massive fleet guarding the Tarric 3 System couldn’t be recalled fast enough to get here within the week…and that was if they even knew. There was no known Urrtren relay grid set up by the V’kit’no’sat that connected the two, and it was out of range for a direct signal, so they’d have to operate off of couriers unless they had another trick up their sleeve.

But even assume they knew this moment that Star Force was here, or had gotten warning about their approach earlier despite Kara’s best efforts to move through irregular systems. She was going to have a head start and there was nothing here she couldn’t hit aside from Antarctica. Everything else was in play, and the V’kit’no’sat had built up a lot in relatively little time in addition to the shipyards.

There were literally thousands of stations sprinkled over the system and hundreds of large ships, not counting the tens of thousands of smaller transports, most of which were visible heading for Earth where they would be ducking down under the protection of the planetary shield.

“Run you bastards,” she said as her jumpship count continued to climb. “You’ve made an art out of razing our systems. Now let’s see how you fight when you’re outnumbered and can’t retreat.”

Kara moved the Yi further out from the jumppoint and summoned a large group of ships to her, then began a lazy move towards the stellar mining platform with the V’kit’no’sat fleet racing ahead of her to get there and into defensive positions.

“Alright. You want to evacuate it, go ahead, but in a little over two hours it’s going to be junk along with any of you that stick around to defend it,” she said with a humorless grin. Kara knew some of what was happening back on the Star Force front, minus the huge second wave, and knew that a lot of Star Force people were dying under their attack. She wasn’t going to go darkside here, but she wasn’t going to show any compassion either.

This was Star Force’s system, taken from them in a bloody mini-war of its own 15 centuries ago, and that meant that every V’kit’no’sat here was part of the invasion campaign. This wasn’t Star Force going into their territory and hitting their people who were minding their own business. Everyone here was a fair target, and anyone who didn’t run from Kara’s guns was going to be destroyed by them.

The V’kit’no’sat had messed up royally unless they had a huge fleet hidden out behind Saturn or elsewhere, but Kara soon confirmed that they did not as her scouts reported back. As far as they knew all of Star Force’s roaming fleets in the Devastation Zone were back at the front fighting to defend it, but they apparently had never realized there was another one out here.

They’d had plenty of hints, for Kara had been ambushing small groups of V’kit’no’sat ships for centuries, but the Ghostblade fleet had never before in its history been fully assembled. Even now the partial or non-warships were not here, safely still roaming the vast tracks of stars in the galaxy and harvesting resources to build more ships like these.

Ships that no Star Force shipyard had born, and thus no record of their existence had ever been recorded. They were literally a ghost fleet, and they were more than a match for the defenses the V’kit’no’sat had arrogantly left here while sending the majority of their ships on the attack.

“Alright people,” Kara said, activating the fleetwide comm, “let’s not get sloppy. We’re winning this and winning it big, but don’t underestimate them or we’ll come out of this with less ships than we should. I don’t know how close their nearest reinforcements are, so let’s take this methodically quick and wreck as much of this system as we can while staying the hell away from the pyramid’s firing range. Assume the Tar’vem’jic has been rebuilt and it’s off limits. If we wanted it we’d go overland, but we’re not sticking around that long. We kick them in the balls then get the hell out of here and back to the front. People are dying out there and we have to make this worth it.”

“If you haven’t noticed, they’ve been busy building a lot of new toys for us to smash, so we’ve got our work cut out for us. Stay sharp, stay focused, and we’ll own them. Get sloppy and I’ll send you on a one way ticket to Shangri-la. You unnecessarily break my ships and you’re sitting out the rest of the war…and you know how much I love to accessorize,” she said sarcastically, looking down at the huge diamond-like jewel imbedded into her left wrist. The Zak’de’ron had put it there against her will, but they’d actually done her a favor. It was still the most advanced piece of technology that Star Force possessed, but not so much as it used to be.

She wondered if they were watching now, or what they’d think when they saw the results of this raid. Hopefully they’d consider her a worthy investment.

“Let’s get this done,” she said, pulling up a an old battle song and sending it out across all the ships with every pilot and crewmember hearing the bit of lyrics that said ‘YOU’LL NEVER KILL THE LIGHT INSIDE ME’ knowing exactly what it meant for Star Force.

After all the V’kit’no’sat had done to them they were still here and had not lost their way…and now it was time for some badly needed payback.

22

August 29, 4814

Karthus System (Star Force territory)

Requiem

Nathan sprinted hard on the outskirts of the fallen city as the orbital bombardment started to come down. Most of the Star Force troops had already been evacuated out by a variety of means, most of which were underground, but he’d been covering their withdrawal along with others when the V’kit’no’sat started to pull out. He’d fallen back immediately, but the precision weaponry on the V’kit’no’sat ships…which weren’t even in atmosphere…began striking specific buildings now that the redundant shield generators had been taken down.

There was no reason for the ground troops to keep fighting, so the enemy was pulling back and firing in clear areas even before the city was empty of V’kit’no’sat troops. The entrance Nathan had been heading to got hit, leaving him nowhere safe to go except on the heels of the enemy where their ships would not shoot, so the Archon had ran as fast as he could leaving other Star Force troops to scatter wherever they thought they could go, but he knew there was no getting away from the firepower coming down.

He hated leaving them behind, for there were over 200 Bsidd with him, but there was nothing he could do other than tell them to scatter and hope someone survived. There were only a few entrances to the subsurface tunnels and no more on this side of the city, so he ran and ran, moving through intact buildings that were going to be annihilated within minutes, if not seconds.

But as long as they stood the sensors on them still worked, giving him access to the battlemap that marked the evac zones the V’kit’no’sat were heading to. He deliberately avoided them, heading for a section of the city edge that held a huge, thick barrier that the enemy had to fight through. Unfortunately there was no breach in this area, so as soon as he got up to it he jumped then flew along it, hoping to go unnoticed as he skimmed a few inches away all the way up to the top where there were still smoking defense turrets that had been taken out earlier.

The wall itself was over 50 meters thick and it took too long for Nathan to get across it…then he dropped along the wall on the other side instead of flying straight out. That wasted time as the rolling thunder behind him got closer, but if he was going to have a chance of surviving he had to stay down and hope no one saw him. If he just flew a straight line out through the sky the I’rar’et would get him for sure, so as soon as he hit the ground he took a few steps then ran/flew across the narrow intact section of grassy plains and into the tortured landscape left in the aftermath of the planet-wide ambush explosions that had killed so many V’kit’no’sat.

Now they were low hills of jagged debris, most of it being bedrock covered with dirt, grass, and ash. If he stayed low it would hide him from the V’kit’no’sat evac point to the south where drop pods were assembling and the troops were returning to, but one Ardent beam hit the wall behind him and traced along it, using a lower power mode that allowed it to be almost continuous. It blew out the wall in both directions as if taking an orbital eraser to it, creating a blast wave that traveled from north to south and hit Nathan after scrawling past his position.

Luckily his armor took the brunt of it, but he was accelerated so fast by the impact that he lost his reference points, even with Pefbar active, and went tumbling along with the debris until he landed somewhere unable to move and with damage indicators flashing in his helmet telling him his shields were gone and there were multiple breach points on the back of his legs, the pain from which he could already feel.

He didn’t struggle, holding still and playing dead as he used his Kgat to shield his mind. Hopefully any V’kit’no’sat that might have seen him would think he was gone and they’d have no reason to bombard outside the city. So he just needed to lay low and hope no one would notice him, wherever he was.

He used his Pefbar to look around and discovered that he was in a bank of mud along with several chunks of wall upside down…and completely buried. There was at least 2 meters of debris over top of his feet and he was going to have to do something about that before his oxygen ran out.

But at least he was still alive. And he doubted any of his Bsidd had made it to safety within the city unless they happened to be in a lucky position underneath some debris while the bombardment continued to fall. Even as his legs hurt he tried to check the battlemap, but it either wasn’t functioning or his armor’s receptors had been damaged. A quick check confirmed the latter, meaning he was cut off from the rest of Star Force.

But maybe that was a good thing right now. He made sure to shut down his locator, just in case it was somewhat functional, then turned his attention to his body. Using his Pefbar and Haemra, he discovered shards of debris in his legs. Some of it was broken armor, other pieces were probably from the wall but it was hard to determine. Unable to numb himself as he would have someone else he was working on, he used his Lachka to slowly pull the pieces of debris back through their entry points and nearly bit his tongue in the process.

He clamped down on his teeth to make sure that didn’t happen as he flinched several more times as he dragged the fragments out, flash healing key bits of flesh as he tried to minimize his blood loss. Thankfully the thicker armor on his back and head had held up and the debris didn’t penetrate, but it was stuck into his armor on some places making him look like a porcupine, though no one could see him buried under all the dirt…unless a V’kit’no’sat came by looking with Pefbar or sensors. He needed to hide himself from Pefbar as well, but he had to use it now to see inside his own legs as he was fully encased in the dirt.

If he didn’t have psionics he’d have been in a world of trouble, but might have been able to dig himself out by sheer muscle strength. Fortunately Nathan had other options, but right now his injuries took precedence and he was focusing on getting his legs clear of debris before he even bothered with the ringing in his head from the concussion he’d suffered.

The healing didn’t go as fast as he’d liked. His Haemra and his passive Uzti took what would have been weeks of healing and compressed it down into a few minutes, but he was already partially exhausted from the hours of fighting beforehand and every drop of blood he lost was going to make him weaker still.

He didn’t have any supplies with him, for they were fighting on home turf and his pack was empty save for a few ammo packets. Healing required material for new tissue to be formed that he was pulling out of his bloodstream and other parts of his body. Nathan could do that a lot, but not forever without killing himself in the process. Fortunately these injuries, while bad, didn’t take a lot of material to heal and neither did his head, but the weakness in his body would only increase until he got food and water in him to replace what he’d lost.

Right now he’d just have to make do, and as the skin on his legs healed over he abandoned the last bit of healing and focused on his telekinesis as he compressed the dirt above him in select places to create two small tubes all the way up to the surface. Thankfully the dirt wasn’t too hard and he got his breathing ties up and operating, with him using telekinetic plates to pull air down one tube and shoot it up the other as he pushed out a small chamber around his buried helmet’s filter plate as his armor’s oxygen backup began to replenish.

Or at least that was the plan, but after a few minutes Nathan saw it wasn’t happening. Damage, he assumed, that wasn’t showing up on diagnostics…for the diagnostic equipment was probably damaged as well. He must have taken a harder hit than he thought to get his armor messed up that badly, but as long as he had his air tubes he didn’t need to worry about suffocating.

Getting shot was the foremost worry on his mind, but he had no knowledge of what was happening outside other than the range of his Pefbar bubble that showed only the edge of a blast crater that he was buried in. He couldn’t see the wall or city, or rather what was left of it, but the constant rumbles he could feel through the ground every time weaponsfire hit and exploded something.

The sound was nearly constant, and he knew they were chewing up the city in a way that would destroy everything. Erasing it from existence like they had across the Devastation Zone. There were only two more cities left on the planet that were still standing, and they were several hundreds of miles away and not an option for him to get to very fast. He had to wait until the nearby V’kit’no’sat troops left and the bombardment stopped…the latter of which he could at least feel.

Until then he had to play dead. After that…if he made it through the following hours…he was just going to have to make it up as he went, for he had no idea how he was going to get out of this one.

23

August 30, 4814

Antelin System

Havi

Paul’s fleet had grown substantially after chasing the V’kit’no’sat out of the Jennizeren System, picking up another smaller Defender fleet that was coming in off the rim as they followed the enemy fleet through several jumps trying to pick off ships. Paul had hoped the V’kit’no’sat would try and stage an ambush, having his ships come in shallow to the jumppoint so they could hopefully catch them out, but for some reason they were not in a sparring mood and straight running away since they became heavily outgunned with the arrival of The Nexus fleet.

That was atypical, but not unexpected as Paul guessed there was a lot more going on with this invasion than had occurred previously. With the thousands of planets that had been destroyed to make up the Devastation Zone the V’kit’no’sat had used upfront tactics almost the entire time, counting on their tech and size advantage to methodically chip away at Star Force territory while still having inferior numbers.

Now that they were fielding so many more ships than in the past one would expect them to do the same thing only more forcefully so…but that wasn’t what was happening. Whoever this new commander was didn’t have an ego to prove and was fighting in a way that suggested guile and superior intelligence. He wasn’t underestimating Star Force, but he was expecting to win and have them dance to his tune. Paul could feel it, but didn’t quite have enough of a sense of what was going on to be able to anticipate the next move.

The fleet he was following kept running, with Paul having to veer off and head towards the nearest invaded system. He couldn’t waste time in transit while other planets were falling, so when he arrived in the Antelin System he came in hard, attacking with the first few ships out of the jumppoint along with what was left of the system defense fleet. That made the V’kit’no’sat feel they had an advantage and they accepted the combat, meeting just beyond the second of two inhabited planets while splitting their fleet and leaving some to cover the ground assault on Tabo.

The V’kit’no’sat fleet had moved over the second planet before even a third of Tabo had fallen, but they’d done it to keep the Star Force fleet there and not helping the other world…for if they did, the V’kit’no’sat would easily have enough firepower to poke a hole in Havi’s shields and start the second invasion early.

This was a system that had been hit fresh by the second wave, meaning there was no roaming fleet here to help and Antelin was at a serious disadvantage. Both planets had considerable planetary shields, but nowhere near as strong as Requiem had. Star Force defense policy had all systems gradually upgrading and adding additional shield generators, but a planet was so huge that getting a very thick defense covering all of it was not as easy as it sounded around every inhabited world.

That was why Paul was a bit surprised they went after the Karthus System, for it required a lot more ships than they’d sent to Antelin to pound through the shield to get a ground assault started. They’d sent far less ships here, but they were still more than needed. The V’kit’no’sat had done their recon work well, and Paul wondered exactly where they had gotten their information from. Was it from stealth ships navigating into Star Force territory using the Ghostbane sensor to avoid contact or had they actually hacked the relay network?

There were other options as well, possibly getting information out of others who had passed through Star Force territory, but figuring out shield strength was not as easy as counting shield generators, and a lot of them were not visible from the surface for that very purpose.

Whatever their methods, they’d brought the right sized fleets to every system that Paul had seen battle data on, but right now, after some heavy but necessary losses by Star Force to keep the V’kit’no’sat here, Paul kept bringing in more drone fleets and gradually surrounded the V’kit’no’sat who thought they were still going to win.

Then the higher massed Nexus ships started to come out of the jumppoint and head straight over to the planet, with the flow of combat shifting as Paul didn’t fight as ravenous an attack as first impressions might have looked. He had his drones cycling very fast, moving in and hitting the enemy but not sticking around very long to get hammered themselves before pulling back so they could recharge shields again and repeat.

Damage was being done to both sides, but it was a stalling game cleverly disguised as Paul got his support drones into position and began grabbing vessels with IDF traps and dampening shield walls to limit the V’kit’no’sat’s movements on the outer edge of the sphere-like formation they were fighting in that forced the Star Force fleet to stretch around it. That meant Paul’s firepower wasn’t concentrated at any significant point, and given the numbers it made the V’kit’no’sat very hard to kill…until The Nexus’s reinforcements began to scale out of control over the following hours. Then it became a death trap that Paul was not going to let them get out of.

It took a long time until the V’kit’no’sat finally realized they’d been duped, for the convoy coming in through the jumppoint still had not ended and the pace of battle was still chewing up ships but not as much as Star Force could have been doing if they’d pressed harder. The V’kit’no’sat commander realized what was coming and his fleet formation changed drastically as it tried to push through a specific spot, taking what losses they needed in order to bully their way through and get into positions where they could make emergency microjumps without ramming into Star Force ships.

Paul was in the command nexus on the Excalibur with his mind pressed to the limit trying to arrange his fleet to deny them jumplines out of the fight, but since they could move in any direction that was difficult, but the support variety of drones had been built to help with this by being able to cover areas far larger than their hulls. The dampener ships deployed shield walls that didn’t stop energy, but would slow physical objects passing through, including enemy ships. With additional firepower standing by, V’kit’no’sat ships got stuck there long enough to get hammered by coordinated fire, plugging up what looked like an escape route with broken ship debris that was only mounting…both from the enemy and Star Force vessels.

Other support ships created zones where gravity drives would not function, but they didn’t actually slow ships. They’d coast right through if they had started moving prior to hitting the field, but if a support ship could drop an IDF over an entire ship when it was sitting still, then it wasn’t going anywhere. If the field only covered part of the ship, the gravity drives within that piece wouldn’t work while the others would, allowing a ship to pull out at lesser speed until they cleared the field.

That was why Paul was having to overlap the IDF fields to fully ensnare some of the ships…and then protect those support ships as the V’kit’no’sat began targeting them first.

All the while more Nexus ships were coming in and adding to the fight, some of which were just as large as the V’kit’no’sat warships. Paul needed to keep them alive regardless of what the Gfatt, Albos, and Meintre had said, so he was using his drones in some kamikaze missions to relieve pressure on them when they began to soak up too much damage, for the V’kit’no’sat seemed to respond to their size and focus their attention on them when they couldn’t find escape routes from the battle.

Eventually some of the V’kit’no’sat vessels managed to escape, but after 22 hours of fighting 96% of their ships were destroyed. Had Paul not engaged them early and waited for his full fleet to gather they would have seen a fight they couldn’t have won and ran like the fleet in Jennizeren, off to fight another day or reinforce another invasion.

But not this fleet. Paul had lost a lot of ships, a good number of them from The Nexus, but over a third of his drones had been destroyed in order to bait and pin the V’kit’no’sat here, but it was worth it to keep that fleet from fleeing…and now the invasion on Tabo had no naval support, for those vessels had joined in the main battle, attacking from the exterior to try and free those pinned inside, and most of them were destroyed in the effort.

Paul had the escapees pursued until they fled the system, leaving the V’kit’no’sat ground troops abandoned yet still gaining ground on the surface. With Star Force in control of the intact shield generators and able to drop them at will, the enemy was going to be open to orbital bombardment and the mobile shields the V’kit’no’sat had couldn’t stand up to the firepower a fleet even a hundredth the size of this one could rain down upon them.

“Attention all V’kit’no’sat forces on Tabo,” Paul said, speaking V’kit’no’sat and transmitting on all their usual frequencies. “Your fleet is destroyed and the surviving ships are being run out of the system. You are getting no reinforcements and my naval guns are going to soon erase you from existence. I am giving you the option of surrender, but not additional time to consider it that you can use to continue to kill more of my people on the ground. If you want to live, disengage and signal your intentions. Silence will mean your imminent deaths.”

Even as he sent the message Paul had his drone fleet moving into position to bombard the sectors where there were enemy troops…but some of them he couldn’t hit because of the Star Force infrastructure they were currently inhabiting. He was going to have to take a lot of his drones down to surface level and shoot from within a few kilometers, and with such a delicate operation he wasn’t going to trust The Nexus ships with that, despite how well they’d fought. The efficiency level wasn’t there, but they were new to using the Star Force battlemap system and he had no complaints for their performance.

But shooting at his own planet was something he was not going to take risks with, so while The Nexus fleet was sent to chase down enemy ships, police debris, and hunt for survivors, he personally handled all the orbital targeting of key areas while letting other naval officers handle the more straightforward bombardment of V’kit’no’sat landing zones and other major groupings where there were no Star Force personnel or key infrastructure.

And as expected, there were no comms discussing terms for surrender. Not a one, in fact, as the ground combat increased. That told Paul they knew they were going to die and wanted to do as much damage as they could…as well as the fact that there were no known relief fleets coming, otherwise they would have tried to stall for time.

So be it then. If they didn’t want to surrender or disengage, then he was going to kill them. Had they been anyone other than the V’kit’no’sat he might have tried to take some prisoner, but with battles across the front and the dangers that they posed with their psionics even when captured, Paul wasn’t going to waste time on them if they weren’t going to willingly comply. He made that known to all his people as well, both in orbit and on the ground, then brought the Excalibur down into the atmosphere along with the drones and added its massive firepower to the extermination efforts along with its shields, which Paul reconfigured to drop down to the surface like giant walls to help protect and herd the V’kit’no’sat where needed.

It was gruesome work, but after the slaughter required during the lizard war Paul knew better than to delay even a minute, for it could mean some more Star Force personnel on the ground would die when they didn’t have to…and as for the mass slaughter he was beginning to unleash, the trailblazer knew he didn’t have any other good options. He’d given the V’kit’no’sat a chance to live and they’d revoked it, just as the lizards had, and he’d been through the mental analysis of such situations so many times before it didn’t take him more than a couple seconds to figure out what had to be done here.

To others that might look like he was bloodthirsty, but anyone who knew Paul’s history would have argued to the contrary. He would have fought all wars with stun weapons if possible, but when your enemy didn’t let you fight that way you either had to take extra burden on yourself to make it happen or fight in ways you’d prefer not to. The V’kit’no’sat were too dangerous to take the burden on his people, which would mean more would die trying to capture them, and if Paul had to choose between the lives of the enemy who would not surrender and the lives of his own people, that was an easy choice.

But it still bothered Paul and always would. Shooting people who couldn’t defend themselves, even if they were refusing to surrender, just didn’t feel right. Protecting his people on the surface did, and as long as the V’kit’no’sat were actively attacking them he had no regrets about smoking them as fast as possible.

It was the ones that weren’t currently fighting but not surrendering that he didn’t like killing, so he kept repeating the offer of surrender that went unanswered save for a few ‘fuck you’s from the ones that felt like insulting the ships they couldn’t shoot. But Paul didn’t have time to play games with more systems under attack and him not being able to leave here until the ground troop threat was neutralized.

And he wasn’t going to let these troops buy time for other fleets with their lives. They either surrendered or were killed as quickly as possible. That’s the way this war had to be fought when Star Force didn’t have an advantage. Mercy was a luxury of the dominant, and when the V’kit’no’sat were out to kill every last person in Star Force and actively attacking them…then their empire deserved what they got.

It was the individuals within the V’kit’no’sat that Paul worried about, which was why he continued offering surrender throughout the slaughter until the very end…with not one of the bastards taking the offer as they lashed out at anything they could find around them in one final act of defiance before they were all destroyed.

24

September 1, 4814

Karthus System (Star Force territory)

Requiem

It’d been three days since the bombardment had stopped. Three days since Nathan had dug himself out of his supposed grave to find a smoking, rubble-strewn landscape that had recently been the city he’d fought to defend. Three days since the V’kit’no’sat had gone and moved on to the other few remaining targets on the planet, and now Nathan was running towards one of them as he saw the distant flashes of light every time he came up over the edge of a crater in the wastelands that Star Force had created when they used the subsurface explosives.

Up and down and he ran, carrying with him in his broken pack a scattering of foodstuffs and two bottles of water that he had remaining from the bits of salvage he’d found in the city that had been spared underneath slabs of building that hadn’t vaporized. He’d spent most of the first day looking around, trying to find what he could whether it be supplies, survivors, or a way down to the tunnels beneath the city.

He hadn’t found any of the latter two, and while he was out of ambrosia he’d filled his stomach enough to otherwise replenish his body and fully heal his injuries…but there was nothing left for him to do other than search for more buried supplies, and those couldn’t last him indefinitely. If he was going to die here he’d prefer to go down fighting, so Nathan had chosen to spend the last two days running across the fucked up terrain towards the nearest intact city, which he was about 8 miles away from now.

The V’kit’no’sat were assaulting it from the north and west, with him coming in from the east and allowing him a straight shot run towards it. That at least meant he didn’t have to circle around and waste more time, for the longer he was out here the more time the enemy had to notice him and scratch him off the list of the living with a quick aerial strike. His armor was designed to be resistive to sensors, but it wasn’t invisible and now it was broken. Every step he ran caused a screech of rubbing parts across his back underneath the makeshift pack he’d cobbled back together, and there was no way the sensor stealthing there could be fully effective.

Little bits of body heat would be leeching out, and the pack itself was no longer whole. It wouldn’t pick up as much notice as him, but anything moving tended to get noticed quicker and he had no choice but to run as fast as he could in and out of the craters to cross the landscape in time to get to the fight before this city fell.

Nathan was exhausted after so much running, but he rarely stopped for more than a few minutes to eat and drink. He need to get to the city wall and signal them to let him in. If he couldn’t do that he’d just be stranded out here to die, for he didn’t expect the V’kit’no’sat to finish with this planet and leave before he starved to death. One thing about Archons that was a slight negative was their food requirements. Their metabolisms were so high it would take a while to adjust them downward into a survival mode, and Nathan could have done it with the half burnt supplies he’d found, but then it would be a waiting game with no sure hope of rescue.

And it wasn’t like he had a lot of body fat on him to sustain himself either, so it was either take a gamble and wait it out or take another gamble and try to get to the nearest city and back into the fight. That meant running for hours upon hours over unforgiving terrain, but that was something he could fight. Time he couldn’t, so for the Piccolo-level Archon there wasn’t really anything to think about.

His new tissue in his legs slowed him down considerably. While fully healed they just weren’t as strong before but the powered setting in his armor was at still functional and he was using that to help him climb up the crater walls whenever he encountered them, though most of the time the jagged pieces of bedrock were too steep, sticking up out of the ground like crude statues that he had to run around. He hated having to detour away from his direct line, but if he flew he’d be too easy to spot.

Nathan half wanted to anyway, but with I’rar’et and Keeva visible in the sky he knew they’d be on his ass in a moment if he went even a few meters off the ground and he had to pick routes that kept him as low as possible even when on foot. Several times he had to stop and take cover until they drifted on elsewhere, but at least they were easy to see in the sky as moving dots beneath the unmoving ones that were the miles-wide warships far overhead in orbit.

It was late morning now, with a hazy blue to the air that didn’t quite cover their presence. They were easy to miss if you didn’t pay attention, but Nathan could see them even without magnification and make out some of their racial alignments. The Brat’mar were the easiest, for their ships were giant discs, and the Era’tran had a unique tuning fork shape that he was also able to distinguish from a distance, but others were less noticeable at this range. Nathan knew there were Nax ships up there, but their bent H-shape could easily be mistaken for others and at this point it really didn’t matter. They all had the firepower to snuff him out of existence had he not been underneath the city shield by now.

It was invisible, for it wasn’t being attacked at the moment, but the V’kit’no’sat fliers were underneath it and he hoped the warship sensors wouldn’t pick him up because of it. That or maybe they just weren’t looking all the way out here, but all it would take would be one word and an I’rar’et would swoop down and strafe his position as many times as necessary to get him…and he had precious little to fight with.

Tired as he was, he was still making decent speed and knew the moment of truth was almost on him. Could he get to the city wall and beneath their halo of defenses on the intact side or would he get spotted first? He knew he could take off flying and try to race there, but he wasn’t sure how much strength he had in him. Running was still far easier than flying, and while his Yen’mer tissue hadn’t been taxed over the past 3 days he’d been shaky even levitating up a few meters while searching the rubble. That impact he’d suffered during the bombardment had hurt him in ways that weren’t easily flash healed and he needed sleep…but time he didn’t have, so he was running on a fried brain and a body that desperately needed rest.

If he needed to fly he would, but the closer he could get on foot increased his chances of making it to the wall that he knew would still be manned and had anti-air defenses. The fliers weren’t getting close to it and keeping to the attack zones on the other side for the most part while swinging around wide in patrol loops. It was those loops that had been troublesome, but now the bulk of the city was starting to…

Without his battlemap sensor telemetry Nathan almost didn’t notice, but the sky above him began to subtly change as the enemy ships that had been parked far above unmoving were beginning to reposition, making him wonder if he was too late and they were going to begin bombardment of the city. His fatigued mind took a moment to process that out, for they didn’t need to reposition to do that. They’d been in bombardment position the entire time, so Nathan stopped alongside a bit of cover and looked up, triggering the magnification on his helmet that thankfully still worked.

The dots in the sky got much larger, but only when he got to maximum zoom did he notice the flashes of light around the edges of the V’kit’no’sat fleet and the scattering of tiny dots so thick that they looked like clouds from which the lightning was coming from.

“Drones?” he said aloud, looking for sign of the control ships. Unless they’d gotten reinforcements poking a fight with that mega fleet was suicide, but over the following seconds as Nathan scanned the sky and made out what he could minus his missing battlemap data he finally spotted one of the jumpships. It was tiny, but he could tell by the shape that it wasn’t Mainline, and by the blue coloration that only one faction had painted on their hull he confirmed it.

Most jumpships were grey/black, regardless of faction, but if he was right then these were the largest regular jumpships that Star Force fielded and Nathan looked around trying to find another. It was hard with just the magnification of his helmet, but eventually he found several more that were just elongated dots until the swarm of drones got company as one of the jumpships moved directly into the combat zone and opened fire.

“What the hell?” he said, seeing clearly that it was a Paladin jumpship. They’d never fought the V’kit’no’sat before and this Captain must have lost his mind, for the enemy ships immediately redirected their attacks towards it. The 32 mile long mass absorbed the weaponsfire, but it was no match for the V’kit’no’sat warships. They didn’t have internal space devoted to carrying drones, meaning their massive bulk was all fighting ship with very little room for cargo, and while a Paladin jumpship could survive a while it was not suited for this type of fight.

But then Nathan saw more enter…a lot more. First three, then another two, then five more. They were all coming in with the drones in what had to be a desperation move. Nathan didn’t know how many Paladin had arrived, but if they were fighting like this then something was really wrong.

Nathan looked back towards the city, seeing the fighting there continuing as if nothing was happening in orbit. He bit his lip, thinking, as he gave his body some badly needed rest. He could make for the wall or wait here. If Star Force was attacking then there must be a plan…and if there was a plan he really didn’t want to get killed running the last few miles up to the wall. And to be honest, how much fighting could he do once he got inside in his present condition?

Some, he knew, for he could just sit still and use a few of his psionics to help out or get a new suit of armor and guide other troops from afar. He ached to get back into the fight in some way, shape, or form, but prudence told him to sit tight and see what happened in orbit…and he really wanted to know what the hell Liam and Olivia were up to, assuming the Paladin didn’t go rogue. That was more likely than them choosing to send jumpships into close combat, but to be honest nothing made sense right now and his head wasn’t in the best shape either.

Nathan slumped back against a mound of dirt, sinking in a few inches before it stabilized his weight as his fatigue suddenly hit him. He was worse off than he’d thought, and if he tried to get to the city now he knew he could make it unopposed, but even a tiny Ari’tat with good aim could kill him in his weakened state.

“Easy boy. You’ve survived this far. Don’t blow it now,” he said, reaching back and untying the makeshift strap on his pack and reaching in to get some water. He’d take half an hour at least then reevaluate. Until then he needed fuel and some rest as he watched the skies for V’kit’no’sat aerial assets and tried to gleam what sort of madness was going on in orbit.

25

Thrawn sat in a personal chamber, his tail draped over a floor ‘nub’ seat designed for Paladin physiology as the dark of the room was interrupted only by a series of small lights on a control board in front of him. It was tiny, for the chamber was mostly used for holograms, but at the moment Thrawn was seeing through the mental link he had with the ship. He didn’t have telepathy like the Archons or Protovic did, but Star Force technology had advanced so far that all mechwarriors now controlled their war machines using mental controls and even naval fleet remote pilots used them at least in part.

Here, he was linked into the Paladin fleet command, not guiding individual ships but sitting back and intervening when necessary. Mostly he was observing, trying to read the V’kit’no’sat and learn how they fought. He’d studied their attacks ever since the initial assault on Earth, but those were always past actions played out by other people. Now he had a chance to alter the way his fleet fought in order to provoke reactions, which was the best way to learn an opponent.

But he didn’t have one opponent here, he had 18 different V’kit’no’sat races out there and they all fought a little different. Their overall fleet coordination was very good, but there were differing tendencies in how they moved and focused on targets. It had taken three days to get all his ships insystem and Liam had finally given him leave to attack while he and Olivia held back and looked for an opportunity to get some drones down to the surface and help the last survivors there.

The V’kit’no’sat were not obliging, and as the Paladin fleet ran head on into their thickest formation the other ships blockading the planet held firm, not giving them an opening to exploit. That meant Thrawn needed to do something, but what? His drone swarms were doing a lot of damage as they engaged the outer levels of the V’kit’no’sat fleet, but the larger ships kept cycling back before they could be destroyed and Thrawn couldn’t send his drones deeper without them getting hammered from all sides.

His glowing red eyes got brighter as his eye ridges raised curiously. He knew that he couldn’t fight as well as the Archons using their methods, and that his greatest power lie in taking what they’d learned and combining it with his own experience…meaning he wasn’t always going to act like them.

And one thing they never did was let their jumpships take a beating outside of emergency circumstances.

Thrawn saw the continuing advance of the ground forces towards the final two cities, now inside both defense walls with ample reinforcements marching in to replace whatever troops were lost. They were going to fall if something didn’t happen soon, and when that happened the last planetary shield segments would come down and the surface would be fully exposed.

That could be described as an emergency situation, enough anyway for the V’kit’no’sat to hopefully buy the gambit he’d just concocted.

His orders were sent out quickly, with his fleet groups not yet close enough to engage reshaping as they gave cover with their mass so the V’kit’no’sat sensors couldn’t see what was happening deep within as dropships began to be exchanged between jumpships as they evacuated some of them. Thrawn couldn’t let the V’kit’no’sat know that, so he made sure to keep the drone swarms so thick that no sensor beam could get even a snippet of vision within, then he gradually reformed the fleet in a way to not advertise that something had occurred within.

That thickest grouping of his fleet slammed into the V’kit’no’sat lines with the abandoned jumpships now being flown by remote pilots on other jumpships. The heavy weaponry on them was being brought directly into play, and the massive vessels dug deep into the V’kit’no’sat lines soaking up so much firepower many of the drones were ignored entirely.

That allowed Thrawn’s Paladin pilots to pursue the weakened V’kit’no’sat ships that were cycling backward and make the kills, for as he expected, the enemy was focusing on the jumpships with a ferocity born of impatience. Over a thousand years of war and they’d rarely ever gotten a shot at a jumpship, with the number of actual losses countable on his fingers as far as fleet combat was concerned. Now he was giving them 22 of them here, with another 8 around the perimeter of the planet going in with more drone fleets.

It was those 8 that he was most interested in, expecting to lose all 30 eventually but it was a calculated loss. The amount of weaponsfire needed to kill them would spare so many drones that it would be worth it, but it was those 8 that he was gambling on the most…and the V’kit’no’sat didn’t disappoint. Their desire for the jumpships saw the blockading ships split, and while not leaving any section of orbit unguarded they did thin their numbers so they could concentrate on the smaller fleets that looked to be trying to punch a hole through their lines.

Thrawn knew he didn’t need to say anything to the trailblazers, and about 9 minutes later he saw their ships move in a microjump so fast it surprised him. They hard braked the last bits of their momentum in the atmosphere itself, popping into fireballs as they engaged the blockading ships from pointblank range while getting a few additional ships all the way through to the planet’s surface.

Their advantage didn’t last long, for huge sections of the main fleet broke off to go after them, but it didn’t matter. Several drones made it beneath the planetary shields and immediately went to assist the ground combat. Thrawn knew that would cause the shield generators to hold up longer, but if they didn’t remove this fleet it wouldn’t matter. The naval fight must be won, and he’d brought so many ships with him Thrawn knew the Paladin could do it, but there were no guarantees.

So many decisions had to be made that they could still lose, and lose badly, but there were two trailblazers in the system so Thrawn had no worries. If he failed they would take command of his ships, but for now they were letting him retain full command of his fleet.

He was grateful for that, needing this test of himself and the Paladin against the fiercest opponents the galaxy had ever known. Thrawn had been bred for exactly this type of combat, then trained by Star Force in their unique tactics, and it was time to put his hybrid battle philosophy to the ultimate test.

But things were happening so fast it was hard to keep up. The reactions to the jumpship battlepoints were fascinating and intense, with each race responding a bit differently. The Brat’mar held position in their lines while moving laterally to block their path rather than engage, but all the others went straight towards the Paladin vessels that were larger than most of their own. Never mind they weren’t that well armed, compared to the V’kit’no’sat at least. It was as if the size attracted them, and that was a datapoint that Thrawn jumped on immediately.

He had the drones move in patterns to not so much damage the V’kit’no’sat as to protect the jumpships, and he saw the enemy appropriately ignore them aside from when they needed to blast their way through. That’s what he wanted, for there were other drones that he sent out to hit the flanks of those obsessed ships, but not in fixed positions. He kept them moving like schools of fish and depositing fire on multiple vessels as they flew in and around the enemy’s larger warships.

The drones received some return fire, but most of the enemy’s weaponry was pointed towards the huge targets and the walls of drones surrounding them almost as an extra set of shields while making gaps for the jumpships’ own weaponry to shoot through.

“You were right,” Thrawn said to the air, though he was directing the comments towards Paul. “They are egotistical. Their own physical size has biased them…as have the Hadarak. They need to be the larger and see the drones as inconsequential. Give them only drones to fight and it is the swarm they oppose, but give them bigger targets and they are fixated upon them.”

Thrawn’s reptilian nose sniffed with displeasure. He’d expected more, but knew well that the V’kit’no’sat were notorious for adapting to defeats. After today they may learn from their mistake, so he needed to exploit it now while he had the chance and hope they didn’t learn within minutes as a true naval commander would.

Thrawn kept the unfocused attacks up until the shield strength of the V’kit’no’sat ships were so low that they had to withdraw and allow reserve ships up into the firing positions, but the roaming drones went with them and that’s when all hell broke loose. The coordinated wall of death the V’kit’no’sat fleet was formed into was broken, and the navigational agility of the smaller vessels allowed them to spin and swirl around like river flows through the enemy fleet that was now targeting them.

But Thrawn had them swirl back to the front lines where the ships were still fixated on his jumpships as they lost shields and began to take armor damage. He selected a slew of targets and had the river flows converge on them, seeing the damage output of all the drones suddenly combine and crack one Dak’bri in half. The 18 mile wide ‘battlecruiser’ had its remaining shields almost totally forward, unable to even them out without exposing itself to the fervent attack from the front…and it wasn’t the only one.

The enemy ships nearest the front line were also not in a position to fight hard, for a lot of them were the shieldless vessels that were in retreat and their replacements were being held up by other drone river tendrils as Thrawn ordered more up, flooding the forward section of the V’kit’no’sat fleet and sending it into disarray. There were so many drones moving in and about the V’kit’no’sat ships they could not move without running into them, severely limiting their ability to support one another.

Their mass was high though, and their armor thick, both of which helped them survive the hammering for longer than any other vessel would, but amongst the river flows were specialized drones with negation shields meant to nullify dampening shields. One would fly into an enemy ship, hit the deployed shields used to prevent ramming, and emit a pulse that would eat away part of it. Thrawn had them firing themselves into the side of selected vessels like arrows, then when there was a breach in the shield other drones would go kamikaze into their hulls.

They didn’t have a lot of room to get up to speed, but it was enough to do damage and when there were large breaches exposed Thrawn had other drones with explosives moved forward through the flows, looking to be exactly the same shape and make as the others, then when they rammed the ships they popped with such force that they literally deleted part of the V’kit’no’sat vessels.

It was a tactic that Star Force had not used before, but the trailblazers knew that Thrawn had been developing it. They’d let him work on it in private, saving it for the Paladin to use someday, and he was glad because otherwise the V’kit’no’sat would have found a defense against it. Thrawn already had, and he’d been working to get around those defenses, playing a strategic game against himself for centuries as he guessed what the ultimate enemy would do.

One of those guesses proved true, for the damaged ships moved and pushed their way through the drones, taking damage enroute to each other where they rotated around and pushed their most damaged areas together, then combined their shields and essentially became one massive ship, allowing them to fight longer and harder now that their wounds were concealed.

It was an improvisation that the V’kit’no’sat had made instantly, confirming to Thrawn their adaptational ability. That he actually approved of, preferring to face his bane at full strength rather than relying on guile and surprise. He’d use those, naturally, but this was the enemy he’d been expecting to fight and even as the wounded ships clumped together other intact ships pushed up from the rear, some sacrificing the outer edges of their hulls to plow a path through the drones for others to follow…then they did it again.

They went straight for the jumpships, pushing right up near them then turning back before they were destroyed as the following ships took their place and went into pointblank combat with the Paladin drones swarming around them to block shots and deliver their own. His remote pilots actually linked many of the drones on top of each other, forming an actual wall with even stronger combined shields that they floated down over a huge hole in one jumpship, then the V’kit’no’sat Na’shor closest to them rammed the wall, pushing it into the jumpship and smashing it between the two thicker hulls.

That drew another eye ridge raise from Thrawn. There had been no need for that. No time sensitive attack that required the wall removed that instant. No immediate threat that couldn’t be better disposed of with a small amount of patience. Rather, that Voro’nam ship looked to have gotten frustrated. Either at the wall itself or the fact that they were being held back from getting at the jumpship.

And it wasn’t the only one. Others were taking similar aggressive actions to get at the jumpships when the Paladin threw up blocks around them, and Thrawn could sense a bit of desperation. The V’kit’no’sat had been delivered their prime targets and weren’t able to finish them off like they’d expected…and they weren’t running. The jumpships were staying put and slugging it out, making them perfect targets to make actual kills against the living controllers rather than…

Of course. Living crews. The V’kit’no’sat wanted to take the fight to the people arrayed against them, not their machines. Thrawn could see the pattern now, stretching back through all the years of war, and realized he’d dismissed it because it was too much of a newb’s reaction. The threat of the weapons were what was important, and the fact that Star Force didn’t sacrifice crews meant the drones would fight harder than manned ships…placing on them a higher priority to take out before the Archons did something clever.

Thrawn had been assuming the V’kit’no’sat would be as intelligent as himself, if not more so, but they were not interested in defeating the Archons’ weapons. They wanted the living kills, and for the first time in his life he was disgusted with them. Not for all the atrocities they’d committed in the past, for they were hard pressed to do anything worse than what the Li’vorkrachnika had done. No, he was disgusted by their impudence. They were acting like inferiors.

It was at that point he realized he had more experience than them. It was an absurd thought, for their commanders had probably lived hundreds of thousands of years, if not more than a million in some cases, but in all that time how much experience did they have losing? Thrawn had plenty as the Li’vorkrachnika were beaten by the Archons over and over and over again, and then even more so in training simulations once he’d joined Star Force. Thrawn had learned from battle itself, both real and in training. What did the V’kit’no’sat learn from?

The lessons of the past and wars in which they were heavily favored…save for the Hadarak. There they had a completely different mindset fighting them, but it was like they forgot those losses and assumed all enemies would fall to them, especially with a fleet of the magnitude that the V’kit’no’sat had brought here.

And now that they were losing, if only a small amount this early into the fight, they were getting frustrated and overreaching to compensate. The overreach was effective, for the jumpships being rammed were taking damage and being exposed more, but the V’kit’no’sat were taking more damage than they would have if they’d taken a more patient approach.

And in a massive fleet battle like this, attrition rates were the key to victory or loss…and right now the V’kit’no’sat attrition rate was sky high.

Thrawn intended to keep it that way, probing and provoking them as the trailblazers’ fleet fought its way back up into middle orbit and retreated. They’d gotten the relief down to the surface at the cost of many of their own ships, but it had been worth it. The ground troops had to be assisted, for the longer they held out the more V’kit’no’sat opponents would be killed, so that was an investment in the future. What the V’kit’no’sat were doing now was just stupid…unless they had a plan in play that was beyond Thrawn.

He didn’t discount that. He’d always be on guard for duplicity and guile, for he’d learned the hard way from the Archons how even a little overconfidence could wreck you and they held the V’kit’no’sat navy in high esteem. They hated them, but they respected them for what they were capable of in battle and Thrawn would do no less. He’d keep part of his mind looking for that other angle that they were playing while he continued to exploit what looked like their frustration getting the better of them.

Meanwhile the trailblazers’ fleet, a fraction of the size that Thrawn’s was, watched on as bystanders…but necessary ones. If the blockading ships left their positions to reinforce the bulk of their fleet, then they could run right down to the surface with all their ships and blast away at the enemy ground troops. Without competition in the skies the planetary shields could be dropped and Star Force bombardment could begin, but while those enemy ships were there they didn’t dare try that, else a few well-placed shots could take out key facilities or even the defending troops.

But Thrawn also liked that they were letting him fight this on his own, and he intended to prove the extent of his skills with the trailblazers watching. It wasn’t Paul, but two of his kin who had very high naval rankings and could commend or criticize his actions where few others could. He’d been on the sidelines for this entire war and now was his chance. He was the Supreme Viceroy of the Paladin, and it was time they made their mark on this war and took some of the pressure off of those who had held the diminishing front for so long.

He and the Paladin were ready, with Liam and Olivia giving him a chance to prove it while providing a necessary deterrent to the blockaders. Trailblazers were notorious for multitasking…this was no surprise to Thrawn…but the fact that they hadn’t assumed overall fleet command did, and he knew it was personal.

This was his chance to prove himself…either for the better or the worse…while Paul and others fought their own battles in other systems. This was team warfare, no one could be everywhere at once, and he needed to be part of that team. Every fiber of his being cried out for it, and both Paul and these two trailblazers were giving him the greatest threat he’d ever known to fight against.

And he loved them for it.

26

Nathan watched the fighting, both in orbit and on the ground, for several hours before the strike began. When it did there was a gap in the shields above to let the drones through and a few shots came with them, one of which hit less than 50 meters from his position.

The superheated thunderclap of air came a split second before the tidal wave of vaporized debris hit him and sent him tumbling across the ground…but thankfully it wasn’t too large of an Ardent blast and aside from getting his bell rung he wasn’t injured. He’d had his face towards the impact, so the exposed sections on the back of his legs were spared from the shock wave and debris, though in the tumbling his newly regrown skin got scraped off and bloody again.

Nathan scrambled behind the nearest cover and made like a statue, looking for anyone that might have seen him while he amped the regeneration of his skin a second time. The planetary defense shield was back up with the last few shots at the descending drones hitting it and being absorbed, so he didn’t need to worry about another bombardment shot unless it came from his own ships.

He was too far away from the ground troops to worry about that, and as he watched the drones slide through the sky shooting at the I’rar’et and downing several with good shots of their larger weaponry while their anti-air batteries peppered certain zones with a sprinkle of small Dre’mo’don blasts or sent out ring-like Ichod pulses to catch the fliers while the main weapons began shooting the surface and driving back the V’kit’no’sat in several sectors.

But they weren’t unopposed, getting hit by a bath of return fire from the surface that began to reduce their shield strength as the enemy ground troops desperately needed to neutralize the drones, with their aerial assets swinging wide to circle around and get at the few drones that had come down damaged and were currently shieldless.

Nathan hugged the dirt wall with his back pressed up against it as several flocks of them flew near and over his position enroute to those attacks, then he had a window of opportunity. He stood up, finding his head still ringing from the tumble he took, but he wasn’t waiting. The Archon took off running towards the city wall while watching the sky, happy that the enemy was too busy with the new threat to notice him down here, but all it would take would be an overhead warship glimpsing him and sending word.

Hopefully the Paladin had them too busy for that, and with each mile he ran he felt his luck running out. So close now, but he was totally exposed as he hit the smooth area around the city where there had been no explosives and one of the I’rar’et finally took notice, swinging around from the south and heading his way.

“Shit,” Nathan said, knowing there was no turning back now. He turned on his beacon, not knowing if it was working or not, and headed for the wall that had no door in it as he leaned forward and flew over ground to gain more speed. The I’rar’et was far faster and swooped in towards him, firing from range and missing save for one hit that Nathan absorbed using his bioshields, otherwise it would have hit his left shoulder.

But the anti-air defenses on the wall opened up then and turned the I’rar’et back, with it not wanting to take that much damage to eliminate Nathan. Had he known who Nathan was the Pterodactyl might have thought otherwise, but after a few more seconds the Archon angled upward and flew over the wall safely, landing on the other side of one of the top turrets and kneeling there as his back was now covered and he could see what was taking place inside the…

“Wonderful,” Nathan said, seeing huge tracks of the cityscape now junked. Buildings were literally toppled and moved into advantageous positions for the V’kit’no’sat as the entire northeast quarter was filled with smoke and explosions. It looked like they were building an impromptu Alamo as the drones poured down further destruction, ironically, into their own buildings to get at them.

With his comm and battlemap down Nathan couldn’t get any updates on what was actually happening there, and he was just glad to be back in what was still Star Force territory with an intact planetary shield over his head, but he was too weak to do much to help and he knew it. The flight in had left him breathing heavily and his body aching where the tiny anti-grav nodules were spread out.

Fortunately someone was paying good attention and a dropship headed his way from the opposite side of the city, eventually flying up to the wall and spinning around as it lowered its rear ramp. Nathan jumped across the small gap and got inside where a pair of Commandos were waiting.

“Thank you,” Nathan said earnestly as he clapped one of them on the shoulder.

“You’re hurt,” the other said, seeing the backside of his armor.

“I’ll live, but I’m too exhausted to be much help right now. I need ambrosia, food, and a quick nap before I can get back in the fight.”

“Who are you?” the first Commando asked, seeing the Piccolo coloration of his armor but unable to get any ID tag from the battlemap.

“Nathan-937.”

“We thought you were dead.”

“Close. I lost my battlemap connection. What’s the situation?”

“We’ve got a huge relief fleet from the Paladin. They managed to cover for some drones to come down, and they’re helping, but we’re still losing ground.”

“How far from the shield generator?”

“Three, maybe four miles.”

“Get me there. If it falls we’re all screwed.”

“Pilot?”

“I heard,” a Kiritas voice said from the cockpit. “On the way now.”

2 weeks later…

The two Arc Knights jumped off the edge of the roof, falling down more than 50 meters and using their Lachka to create ‘crash bags’ that slowed them just enough they didn’t hurt themselves when they hit the city streets on Voran, then took off sprinting to the left after the Zen’zat with a target tag on them within the battlemap.

The pair couldn’t see them yet, but one more turn and the 13 Zen’zat came into view, one of which knocked a leg out from under one of the Arc Knights with a telekinetic slap, then a wall of Dre’mo’don shots came their way, pounding their shields as they scrambled backwards…but it had been just enough of a distraction that a Frieza-level Archon dropped down from the sky into their midst and blew them all off their feet with a Jumat blast so strong it even threw the Arc Knights back a bit as it ricocheted around the corner.

They immediately turned around, intent on helping their team leader with the kills and made two tackles when they got back into view, wrestling with the Zen’zat their own size and delaying them long enough as the Death Mistress herself broke V’kit’no’sat armor with single blows while disabling the Zen’zat with her mental psionics in a way that no other Frieza could hope to do.

The two Arc Knights fought hand to hand, buying time rather than trying to make kills and let her do most of the work as they took a few hits to their armor after their shields went down, but the Zen’zat didn’t survive long enough to rough them up too much. Soon there were 13 corpses on the ground with the trio putting additional shots into them to make sure the Kich’a’kat in their armor didn’t revive them.

“Back,” Ginsi-500289 ordered, giving them a waypoint a few blocks over in the Star Force city that had held up against V’kit’no’sat attack for 2 straight months. Others on the planet had fallen, but Ginsi had been moving back and forth with her advanced combat team holding key shield generators and blunting the V’kit’no’sat advance. At present they owned only a third of the planet and were making meager gains on the ground while the naval fight had already been lost.

The Lothcat System had been hit in the second wave of V’kit’no’sat attacks with no roaming fleets available for backup and had only a single planet with decent defenses, but not enough to stop the enemy from punching through then withdrawing as their armies attempted to do the rest of the damage. Ginsi had been coming back from the rim and enroute to another battlefield when Lothcat had been invaded and decided to reinforce them here with her two jumpships and one troopship that she and her unit operated out of.

They were amongst the most badass Commandos in Star Force. Some were Regular Commandos, Arc Commandos, Knights, Arc Knights, and more Archons…with all of her kin ranked higher than her, save for her specialty. Archon ranks were based on the lowest score of the 5 divisions of the military, but where most Archons trained evenly in all disciplines Ginsi did not. She didn’t completely ignore the other four, but most of her training was focused on the Commando skillset, and in that subcategory she was the highest ranking Archon in the empire.

Her physical skills were so advanced that her Frieza armor had to be custom made with kinetic armor. It wasn’t as strong against energy weapons, but was better suited against physical impacts. She had to have it now, for she’d been cracking her own armor on some body blows delivered to others and needed the extra rigidity because when an Archon went up against larger opponents, firepower was always an issue. Ginsi needed to use her own body as a weapon and be able to conserve her energy ammo…which she didn’t even bother to use on the Zen’zat they’d just killed until the final death shots.

Right now the Arc Knights were moving to a rally point while she summoned others to another location, rotating her supports in and out to keep them fresh and their shields full while she bounced from point to point within the city where needed to assist the army of Star Force ground troops holding up the insane numbers the V’kit’no’sat had deployed. They shouldn’t have held out this long, but Ginsi had personally taken down everything from Kar’ka to Era’tran with a little help…but she was going to need a lot for the Oso’lon ahead.

There were three of them, two of which mechs were sparring with while another was pressing further into the city towards a high-up tower turret that was pouring fire into fights more than a mile away. She could see that he was going to solo it from below, where it couldn’t defend itself well, and if he took it down it would take a lot of pressure off his buddies further back.

With the other two Oso’lon fighting and mostly winning against three stars of mechs there was nothing to stand in the way of this mass of brilliant green battle armor aside from static defenses and some infantry that she was already signaling to back off, for they’d be easily kills for the quadruped juggernaut. The old, old references to the Brontosaurs in Human lore didn’t do them justice. They were the most dangerous of all races on the land and had the most psionics, including Jumat, which could wreck small buildings in a single blast.

“Are you sure about this?” an Arc Commando that she’d summoned asked over the comm.

“Stick to the plan and you’ll be ok,” she assured him.

“I’m worried about you.”

“First time for everything,” she said, flying up to the top of a building and running across its roof. Even though she hadn’t qualified for all the psionics based on her Archon rank in previous centuries they’d been given to her anyway and now she was going to need those well-honed and developed skills to try and slow this monster down.

Ginsi hesitated at the edge of the roof, seeing the Oso’lon coming down the street and soon to be beneath her moving in a lumbering run that made for good speed. She assumed he saw her, but to make certain she used her Wequay psionic, sending out a telepathic signal that immediately pulled the attention of whoever it landed on. Lesser minds would be fixated upon it, ignoring all else, but to the powerful Oso’lon it only got its attention on her as she jumped off the roof and dove towards it as her shields were hit with a shot from its armor’s turret weaponry.

Ginsi took the shot, seeing her shields drop 22% from the heavy firepower that a V’kit’no’sat this size could carry in its gigantic armor. Someone smaller than a Zen’zat like her didn’t stand a chance against an Oso’lon and the V’kit’no’sat knew it, expecting to bat her away with a Jumat blast after shooting her a few times, but Ginsi released her own Jumat blast ahead in a focused cone to mostly nullify the bit of the huge Jumat wave that hit her, bouncing her up a little but not enough to keep her from getting on the Oso’lon’s back.

She released her own Saven before the Oso’lon could, momentarily jamming its mind with white noise as she skated on the energy shields covering the armor between turret positions to avoid getting shot…save for the one on the back of the neck. That sent beam after beam of Chi’parat energy into her, but she managed to dodge a few that hit and drained a bit of the Oso’lon’s own shields.

Ginsi was taking too many hits, but she needed to draw attention away from the street below as the Arc Commando and 18 others from her unit swarmed nearby and fired rocket launcher-like shoulder weapons at its legs, then ran like hell before they could get swatted away as the detonations produced physical clouds that hardened into concrete-like masses that clung to the four limbs of the Oso’lon but weighed almost nothing.

Ginsi could see it hesitate, wondering what the hell those things were even while shooting at her, then on a command sent from her helmet the four shackles pulled together, essentially bonding to one another on touch and becoming 4-way handcuffs that tripped the Oso’lon up enough that it leaned forward and face planted as Ginsi ran up and jumped off its neck, dropping an Ubven on its head along with another Saven flash as she ran off and behind a building.

The Oso’lon negated the Ubven after a second, pulling through it using its own immunity because it had the same psionic as it got on its front knees and reached its head around so it could look directly at the front cuffs, then using the high powered weaponry on its cranium plates blasted away, freeing itself completely after 20 seconds, then it stood back up and continued to head towards the turret tower as the lower defense weapons at the base began firing on it.

The Oso’lon’s shields held up easily, and it fired back…a Uit streamer that deposited a cloying energy matrix over the base of the turret that, after a moment of contact, exploded so hard Ginsi bounced into the sidewall as the earthquake knocked her feet out from under her. That single attack took out the anti-mech defenses on this side of the turret base, then the big guns up top stopped shooting far and ratcheted down as much as they could, pumping one good shot into the gap between buildings where the Oso’lon passed before it was too far under to shoot again.

That shot hurt, for it was a bloon launcher and Ginsi knew it was loaded with shield-piercing energy…which was when she took her next chance. The Goku-level 398 Commando signaled her supports to attack again, this time with damaging weapons, and as they fired at the legs she scrambled up a wall and jumped off it, landing on the shields covering the Oso’lon’s tail while taking another armor turret shot to the face as she released as much Jumat energy as she could.

With the draining done to the shields by the turret tower they were weakened, and the little shots by her unit added a bit more damage with the energy reserves over the tail flowing forward to fill in other areas. That didn’t leave the tail exposed, but it did make the energy barrier weaker and Jumat was also a shield piercer. Ginsi didn’t have much of a window to work with, so she pressed into it as hard as she could and was relieved to feel her hands pass through and touch the armor below.

“I’m on!” she yelled over the comm, seeing the shield reform around her wrists and essentially lock her in place. She also felt an Ubven fall over her…then the tail whipped to the left and smashed into a building.

Ginsi negated the field enough for her to move and used her Jumat to weaken the shield so she could climb around the tail just enough to avoid the hit as she fired both wrist-mounted Bra’hems that drew power out of the pack on her back. Tiny spots in the armor melted, but not enough to get through before the Oso’lon rolled over on its side and Ginsi had to jump off or get smashed into the ground…but not before leaving a little device behind that emitted its own Lachka jammer so the Oso’lon couldn’t pry it off.

The power cell in the ‘tag’ wouldn’t last long, and on its own it couldn’t do much, for it was a special variety built specifically for her to use on Oso’lon. She’d never had the chance, but it had worked on an Era’tran that also had Jumat. Most of them didn’t have it, so he had to have been one of their elite troops. All Oso’lon had Jumat, and without it being able to telekinetically rip the foreign device off there were only two options. Roll over and try to rub it off, or the quick option was to summon a Jumat blast in the tiny gap between device and armor and blow it off.

Oso’lon used Jumat their entire lives, so she wasn’t surprised when it took that delicate approach, for the emission line had to be very fine…and like a typical Oso’lon they didn’t use small amounts of Jumat. This one summoned a wall about five meters wide beneath the 3 inch device, intent on ripping it off with such ferocity the annoying Human wouldn’t dare try and put another on it.

The force was so great the tag disintegrated…but the Jumat energy reacted with the otherwise benign components and turned it into a bomb. And a bomb that detonated with no shields, for the Jumat couldn’t be released with them up. The Oso’lon had to momentarily drop them over that spot, which was another reason to use excess Jumat to knock any physical objects away that might try to slip in at that moment.

So the explosion, fueled by the intensity of the Oso’lon’s own Jumat, punched a hole a meter wide in the armor with a few inch-wide spots in the crater that had gone all the way through and hit flesh.

That was when Ginsi flew back and dove towards the weakness as the Oso’lons shields flashed back up, blocking her as she took a few more shots, the last of which fully dropped her own shields that she was going to have to lower anyway as she covered herself in Jumat energy and tried to push through as the Oso’lon flicked its hind quarters side to side to try and shake her.

At that moment her team attacked again, firing at the legs along with a pair of Arc Commandos coming out behind and firing at Ginsi. They hit her with a deployable shield, with the sticky goo landing on her back and emitting a shot lived defense as her hands were already in the crater. Her gloves withdrew as she also covered herself with Rentar, making her immune to a telekinetic attack as she touched her bare fingertips into the bleeding wounds.

Ginsi knew she didn’t have long, so she threw a Saven then activated her own Kgat, isolating her mind from any exterior counterattack as she physically connected her mind to the Oso’lon’s nervous system…allowing her mind to fight against the much larger one directly.

From her team’s point of view the Oso’lon suddenly became punch drunk, still shooting at them but with less accuracy and stumbling steps as Ginsi grappled with it internally. They didn’t wait for a signal from her and came out of their cover, using their own limited psionics and the heavy weaponry they carried to do what damage they could while the Oso’lon was in a weakened state…

27

September 27, 4814

Lothcat System (Star Force territory)

Voran

Paul’s fleet had arrived 4 days ago, having picked up a massive group of Paladin ships along the way from Antelin. Part of the Defender fleet he’d claimed he’d left in that system to make sure no V’kit’no’sat ships doubled back and gave them trouble, for while the system invasions had been going on there had been relays in uninhabited systems going dark, creating zones through which the V’kit’no’sat could move undetected. Star Force had deployed scouts to those areas, but even if they found something they’d have to run to the nearest system with a comm relay to transmit, increasing the lag times involved.

Unfortunately the relays in Star Force territory were constantly transmitting and easy to find…though not easy to get to so far out on the peripheries of those systems. The V’kit’no’sat were making the effort, and more often than not would show up without warning near the relays before destroying them. That told Paul that there was a high number of stealth vessels in play inside their own territory, and he really wished they’d gotten more Guardian-class relays built along the front.

Those were much larger and had the amount of weaponry equal to a Sentinel defense station. The guns were automated and would shoot at anything that approached without clearance codes, meaning a single V’kit’no’sat ship wouldn’t have been enough to destroy one. A few Guardians were sprinkled along the front, but Star Force didn’t have the luxury of ‘wasting’ so many resources when drone production was the highest priority.

Right now that meant so long as the V’kit’no’sat could get out to the relays they could kill them with even the smallest of warships…and with no roaming fleets available to intercept them they could move about plucking them from the starmap without resistance. Normally the location would have been a problem, for any ship making the long trek out to a relay would effectively be pinned there with only one way back into the system. It was a long road out and a long road back without a gravity well at the destination point, meaning that the relay could detect the approaching ship and send for help.

But with all available ships fighting at the invasion points and most V’kit’no’sat ships too much for a Ma’kri to handle, they were getting away with it for the most part. A few ships had been turned away by the Ma’kri that roamed the front under their own stealth systems, but with each week that passed Paul could see more and more empty systems on the map that he was getting no data from.

And there was no way he was going to leave Antelin with only a handful of ships, for a savvy commander would sweep in after he’d left and hit the system again. The Paladin support more than made up for the piece of the Defender fleet he left behind, so despite the losses his fleet had suffered he actually came into Lothcat with more strength than he’d left with.

The naval battle had been a rout, and the V’kit’no’sat had engaged his fleet as it came into the system, probably knowing what was coming and trying to delay it as much as possible as some of the ground troops were evacuated, but they couldn’t get them all out. Paul thought about letting them go, but he didn’t want those troops dropping on another planet and outnumbering the defenders there so he sent subgroups of his fleet out to intercept or drive them off, stranding over a million V’kit’no’sat on Voran where they continued to fight even as the remains of their fleet fled the planet on any jumpline they could access.

Many of their ships did not make it out, for Paul wasn’t feeling generous and knowing he had to make every kill here he could when he had the advantage. Surrender options went out even as his ships were chasing, but the V’kit’no’sat didn’t even respond to insult them. They just ran, having done considerable damage to the planet but not nearly as much as they should have. They’d had over 2 months on the ground and more than half the shield generators were still intact.

That hadn’t happened on any other planet so far in this invasion campaign, and Paul quickly figured out why as his fleet bombarded the planet and he along with a lot of other Archons in his fleet went down to relieve the very battle fatigued troops that had successfully defended the planet for so long. Had they only fought well the entire planet would have been exposed and bombarded weeks ago, and Paul couldn’t overstate that fact enough as he met with members of the ground team…who had no idea what was going on elsewhere.

They thought they were losing, and technically they were as the V’kit’no’sat inched forward, but compared to everywhere else where the overwhelming number of enemy troops were steamrolling across planets to pluck their defenses and let the fleet do the majority of the destruction, Voran had held their ground and made them fight extremely hard for even the smallest of gains.

The planetary defenders still couldn’t comprehend that, for the wounds and fatigue were still too new and the fact that they’d lost more than a third of the planet did not reinforce victory, rather the opposite, but coming from a trailblazer the praise was not ignored and as some of those troops got rest breaks they began to digest what had happened here and had a chance to look through battlemap data from other systems, beginning to see the magnitude of what they’d accomplished.

But not all of them. The most active of them all was not right, so said her own unit, and as Paul finished up his own part in the cleanup and was getting ready to leave with his fleet to head elsewhere he had a few hours to spare, so he headed across the planet until he found where Ginsi was still in the field. When he got to her she was high in the sky, floating above an area that was seeing a few remaining V’kit’no’sat still active as teams of mechs hunted them down.

He’d expected her to be on the ground, but it looked like she was keeping an eye out from above and ready to swoop down and help with any problems…though Paul could tell that wasn’t true, at least not in full as he got closer, flying up in his blue/orange Goku armor until he floated side by side with her purple/white Frieza armor that was barely intact, with him seeing several breaches that revealed smooth skin beneath.

“Hello, Paul,” she said amicably. “You have no idea how glad we are that you showed up.”

“We’re about to pull out, but we’re leaving some ships behind just in case. How are you doing?”

“Alive. A lot of our people aren’t.”

“Have you checked the other invasions?”

“A little. We’re getting hammered everywhere, aren’t we?”

“We’re pushing back now thanks to the Paladin, and some of The Nexus races came to help.”

“I saw that.”

“Did you see how fast the V’kit’no’sat were conquering other planets?”

“Not really.”

“Voran would have been completely destroyed by now. You held them back far better than any other world.”

“It wasn’t enough.”

“Damage done, I know,” Paul said, understanding that part. “But the part you saved is significant. They hit you hard here and you defied them in a way that’s never been done before.”

“Olivia taking a Mach’nel was bigger.”

“Sneak attack and significant. This was grinding fighting and you were a big reason why the planet held out. I heard your kill count was over 18,000.”

“I have no idea,” she said, still looking at the ground as she talked from behind her helmet.

“This was probably the toughest battle you’ve ever fought, but not by much. You’ve had to grind your way through losing efforts with far less help than you had here. Something else is bothering you beyond the losses. What is it?”

Ginsi was quiet for a moment, then finally looked at Paul. “He broke my legs.”

“Who?”

“The Oso’lon we killed. My unit, I mean. Just a bunch of Humans and no mech or aerial support. I got a tag on him then dove into the breach when he took the bait. Got my fingers in his body and fought him inside his head enough for the rest of my team to take him down.”

“Is that why your armor looks so bad?”

“Different set. That one got trashed more than this.”

“How did your legs get broke?”

“My Rentar slipped. Not on my torso or my head, thankfully, but his mind was so powerful that the coverage on my legs dipped for just a moment. He responded so fast and with such force my legs felt like twigs. He didn’t even damage my armor, just reached inside and snapped both of them. I don’t know how I held my focus after that, against his mental pressure, the pain, and the fire from his neck turret. Somehow I did long enough for my unit to do enough damage, but I should have been dead.”

“Bad, but that’s not the first time you’ve been wounded.”

“I pushed it too far, Paul. I shouldn’t have survived that.”

“And Morgan shouldn’t have survived that Nestafar gravity trap long before you were born…but she did. Even if she doesn’t remember how she summoned the strength to do it, and so did you.”

“I think I tried to do too much, and now I’m worried that I’m going to be hesitant. That’s not me, Paul,” she said, retracting her helmet so he could see her face, with him doing the same.

“Give it enough time and you’ll recalibrate. Right now you’re still rattled. You haven’t gotten a good sleep in yet, have you?”

“Bits and pieces,” she said, a tear streaking down the left side of her face.

“That’s not what’s gut punching you,” Paul guessed. “What else happened?”

Ginsi sighed, then retracted the armor over her left hand. It looked tiny, betraying the strength in it, and she reached it out towards him meekly.

“Tell me what I could have done differently,” she said, now fully crying.

Paul retracted his own armor, his hand no bigger than hers, and wrapped his fingers gently through Ginsi’s, making the flesh contact required for him to bypass the Ikrid block and let him look around in her mind.

She pointed him to where he needed to go, then let him feel through her memories of the Oso’lon takedown. Ginsi watched him, her powerful mind holding back her natural reaction to push him out, while giving him a few pointers here and there. She could have sent him the memories telepathically, but she needed an answer and that required Paul be able to look where he wanted and see things that she might have missed…but the underlying problem became obvious as events played out at super speed thanks to his Sav.

She’d been mentally linked to the Oso’lon when it died, her interfering with its mind just enough to make it fight sloppily. It had fought back against her, with Ginsi losing but holding on long enough to do her job. She could feel some of its thoughts, and since both her and the Oso’lon also had Sav their mental battle had encompassed what felt like hours despite it being only a few minutes.

Ginsi had felt what the Oso’lon was thinking, including its death. It went from confident to surprised to panicked as it became apparent that it was going to die. It was unpleasant to feel, but Paul now saw what was bothering Ginsi. This Oso’lon hadn’t been a monster. It had been given a mission that it felt was essential to the stability of the galaxy, and more importantly for this planetary invasion. The V’kit’no’sat were stalled and losing so many troops that something had to change, so this Oso’lon and a few others had tried something rash and nearly pulled it off.

It was something just like Ginsi or Paul would have done, not something to murder civilians but an objective to open up this planet to the purging orbital bombardment similar to what Star Force had to do during the lizard war. Star Force had offered them surrender and they didn’t take it…which was a huge difference to the V’kit’no’sat who decreed all the rogue Zen’zat must die regardless…but they’d had to kill so many lizards that it had gotten to Paul several times, especially when he had to do it personally rather than from orbit.

There were many parallels between the two, but Star Force had been in the right and the V’kit’no’sat were definitely in the wrong…except this Oso’lon didn’t think so. For whatever reason he saw the Terraxis abominations as a threat. An unregulated mess that couldn’t be accommodated, knowing that no Zen’zat would wish to be turned back into a Ter’nat, and that if Star Force was offered a surrender they would refuse on that reason alone. Not to mention that some things like Sav couldn’t be reversed. Those that had it would have to be killed, otherwise the balance within the galaxy would be wrecked.

To this Oso’lon balance was insanely important, for without it the V’kit’no’sat would tear themselves apart as they almost had during Mak’to’ran’s rise to rule. Mak’to’ran had restored the balance that had been slowly eroding over the millennia, saving the V’kit’no’sat and the galaxy, for without the V’kit’no’sat to hold balance everything would devolve into chaos.

Star Force, despite its success, was deemed as unsustainable and a threat to the V’kit’no’sat. No race was allowed to exist outside the V’kit’no’sat, yet these Zen’zat were and they were not following the rules. Their psionics were not earned, and they possessed technology that Zen’zat were never meant to field unless in the service of another race.

The underlying reason that Zen’zat were not allowed to reproduce was not a feeble one, and the threat of disruptions if it did happen was not something the V’kit’no’sat took lightly. This Oso’lon felt that the mere existence of these abominations was chaos incarnate and had to be eliminated similar to the way Star Force had to eliminate the lizards. He thought he was doing the right thing and was fighting hard to accomplish it, and when he was dying Ginsi had felt his despair. He’d been doing everything he was supposed to do, but the chaos was winning.

He felt like a victim, not a murderer, and had died fighting bravely with no malice towards Star Force above and beyond the fact that they were killing him. To the Oso’lon they were no different than the mindless horde of the lizards…only lizards given technology they hadn’t earned and didn’t deserve, and that were far too dangerous with it to be allowed to live.

The Oso’lon thought he was protecting the galaxy, and Ginsi could feel beyond his reasoning that he was a good person…and she’d killed him.

“Evil fights evil,” she said as Paul continued to look through her mind. “Evil fights good. Good fights evil…but good doesn’t fight good. What could I have done differently? I’ve been over this in my mind so many times and I can’t find a flaw. I can’t find a mistake I made. Please tell me what I did wrong.”

Paul took a long moment to gather his thoughts, going through this in his mind many times before he squeezed her hand tighter and looked her in the eye.

“They invaded us. We didn’t invade them. They chose this fight, and forced you to defend the planet. You didn’t have a choice but to fight back and you didn’t have the stun weapons necessary to disable the Oso’lon…and even if you did troops would have to be devoted to guarding it and keeping it down. If you kept him alive it meant Star Force personnel elsewhere would die.”

“But he wasn’t an enemy. He should have been an ally. I should have rescued him.”

“You didn’t have the power to without leaving someone else in jeopardy.”

“It doesn’t feel right, Paul.”

“It’s not right, but he forced it upon you. It takes one to fight, but two to make peace. He wasn’t interested in peace.”

“He was attacking a building, not us when we ambushed him.”

“And without that building his buddies would have killed a lot more people, along with him. You didn’t kill him in a moment of atrocity, so it feels worse, but…”

“He was a good person, Paul. I can’t get past that. I should have done something different.”

“Could you have captured him?”

“Not without letting him take the turret first…but it’s just a building. We can build another in a week.”

“They forced this fight on us,” Paul reiterated. “If we invaded their territory there would be lots of tactics that we would not use because some of the people on the receiving end might not deserve it, but every V’kit’no’sat here came to kill us.”

“He didn’t deserve it,” Ginsi said, and Paul knew she was firm on that…and he couldn’t rightly disagree.

“So what, you let yourself die so he could live?”

“Of course not, but when he broke my legs it was like I wasn’t a person to him. I was just a gnat he should have been able to swat away but couldn’t. He didn’t see me as a good person, just a force of nature that had to be destroyed and that doing so he was doing the right thing.”

“But he wasn’t doing the right thing, and he didn’t stop when he sensed your mind.”

“He didn’t have a choice! We were killing him.”

“And vice versa.”

“We kill people for doing that, Paul.”

“Ah…” he said, getting a glimpse of what else was bothering her. “And when he broke your legs, you saw yourself on the reverse side.”

“I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to. I was committed and I had to see it through. If it had been just me I might have tried to run, but my unit was right there around his feet and if I didn’t keep messing with his mind…”

“So you blinded yourself to get through the moment.”

“I didn’t know what to do so I held course…and I’m wondering if he wasn’t doing the same thing.”

“You can’t control others, so let’s focus on you. You want to know what mistake you made that led you to kill a good person?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“I need to know, like it or not.”

“You’re not omniscient. You can only play the circumstances that are presented to you. In the moment you were so overtaxed you couldn’t do anything else, so you held course as he was in your head trying to mess with you. You put yourself in a compromised position based on the assumption that he was the enemy that needed to be stopped and the only way to stop him was to kill him. Then you get hit with a revelation you didn’t expect and were ill prepared to deal with because you had gone all in to make the kill. You couldn’t find a solution then and you can’t find one now, so you stayed the course and you’re worried that such willful blindness is a problem.”

“Am I wrong?”

“Not when it’s necessary.”

“Define ‘necessary.’”

“When people will die if you hesitate. If you can’t find another way, you continue with what you were doing.”

“Even if it’s wrong?”

“No, but what options did you have?”

“None. But that doesn’t make it right. He was one of the good guys.”

“Deluded into doing something wrong. We have to make sure we are not deluded, that’s our responsibility, but against an opponent this strong we don’t have the luxury of helping them survive their delusions when they push us to the breaking point. We have to fight to survive first, then help others.”

“We killed him. We didn’t give him a chance to run away.”

“Would he?”

“Yes, he would have.”

“And then what? Would he have left the planet or continued to fight after repairing his armor?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if having access to my mind would have affected him the same way.”

“Then there’s your problem. You don’t know if he would continue to be a threat or not. If he would have had a change of heart you should have let him go. If he wasn’t going to, then killing him before he could kill more of us was the right call. There’s no way for you to know.”

“I feel like I should have at least given him the chance. I feel like the monster now.”

“If they were weaker we could err on the side of caution…”

“But their strength demands we don’t take chances or we get ourselves killed, I know…I know.”

“Still doesn’t feel right, does it?” he said, letting go of her hand.

“I feel duped into becoming the enemy and I don’t know how to deal with this. I can’t just ignore it.”

“Can’t ignore it and can’t solve it, so you’re stuck in a cycling rut.”

“You been there?”

“Yeah, and it’s not pretty.”

“How did you get out of it?”

“Time and some good counsel.”

“Like you’re doing now?”

“Trying to. But you killed a good person. That’s never going to feel right and you can’t undo it. But unless you identify the mistake you can’t call a Mulligan and shake it off, so you keep endlessly looking for a mistake that isn’t there.”

“If there is no mistake then how did it happen?”

“The mistake was his, and it put you in a situation that never should have existed. He attacked good people.”

“And they killed him. We have to find a way to spare the good ones, Paul. I don’t know how, but we have to. If there’s one of them, there have got to be others.”

“We are not taking prisoners to mentally check, because we are not going to kill prisoners when they turn out to be baddies.”

“I know, but we have to do something.”

Paul put a hand on her shoulder, skin against armor, and nodded slowly. “Alright, alright. I’ve had a few more centuries than you to work through this, and I’ve developed a few tricks to work around the darkside trap you got ensnared in.”

“Such as?”

“There’s some V’kit’no’sat ship salvage up there we can use. Whatever resistance is still left on the planet we’ll capture rather than kill, then after interrogation we’ll put them on the salvage and tow it to Sol if we have to. We’re not keeping prisoners, but we can send them back.”

“To fight us again later?”

“We’re now dominant in this system, so we have the option of mercy, even if they don’t deserve it. We’ve done it before, and sent a message with them. Hopefully the V’kit’no’sat don’t think it’s a trap and kill them on the spot…but at least they’ll have a chance this way.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. And to make sure no one gets killed trying to capture them, you’re getting another set of armor and go with me to personally handle this.”

“I don’t have another set. This is my last one.”

“Then don’t punch as hard. You won’t need to anyway if we’re using stun weapons.”

“Point,” she conceded. “Thank you.”

“You didn’t screw up as far as I can see, but when we do we have to get ourselves back in the right and shake off what happened. We don’t forget nor condone. We learn and move on until such a time that we find a Tardis and can actually do something about the past,” he said, sending out a mental order through the battlemap to stop eradication missions and switch to reconnaissance until properly equipped capture teams could be assembled. It would be harder, but they had time and the Excalibur didn’t have to be the first ship out in the system exit convoy that he was not going to delay. Plus he wanted to take Ginsi with him once this planet was secure and put her to use in the next place they ended up at, which at this point looked to be the Davmes System.

Epilogue

April 5, 4815

Terraxis System (V’kit’no’sat territory)

Terrax

Dorchav arrived in planetary orbit in a small Ti’mat, having returned from the fighting now that his fleet had been disbanded and reforged with other surviving fleets as they were pushed back from the systems they were assigned to destroy. Some had finished their tasks and moved on to secondary ones, but Dorchav had been forced out of the Karthus System before the last few bits of Star Force civilization were eradicated.

He’d held onto orbit, fighting head on the massive reinforcements that had come out of nowhere until he’d been able to evacuate his ground troops just shy of completing their task. Had he not they would have been slaughtered, for he couldn’t hold the system with the ship counts arrayed against him. Had he still had a Mach’nel it would have been a fair fight, but by plucking that key asset from him Star Force had managed to retain the planet…though there wasn’t much left of it.

Still it was another defeat, and here he was returning to V’kit’no’sat territory in shame while the other fleet commanders continued to hit what systems they could, but Star Force was quickly regaining control despite the losses they’d suffered.

When Dorchav left the Ti’mat the ship departed immediately, for it wasn’t assigned to him other than for the transport back to Terrax. Where Dorchav would go next wasn’t determined, and he may have to wait on the planet for months before finding a ship to head back to Iguar on, for he knew his fellow Brat’mar would want answers for why their Mach’nel had been lost. He would, if he was in their place, but first he had to report to the campaign commander.

It wasn’t until he was on the way down to the planet that he noticed the damage to Terrax. Entire cities were missing and in their place ruins with construction crews combing over and devouring them. His view from the drop pod quickly rotated around the planet to the southern hemisphere where it began its landing sequence over the green and untouched southern continent.

It was pristine, with the planetary defense station at the center of a reshaped landscape. Star Force had it buried beneath their own city originally and the planet was so far gone that it was covered in ice. Once the proper owners had reclaimed it they’d built the climate managing stations that had been destroyed during the Rit’ko’sor rebellion and returned Terrax to its warm, humid, natural state. Gone were the offensive polar ice caps and the primary continent was now filling with infrastructure again.

But it was the infrastructure elsewhere that concerned Dorchav. He’d been in his private quarters for the entire trip and had not received any news reports, but something had happened here. He didn’t question the Zen’zat piloting the drop pod, rather waiting until they landed and he stepped out into the planetary air in view of a small honor guard of Voro’nam waiting for him.

“Dorchav,” one of them said respectively. “We are to escort you to Zyrnox.”

“What has happened here?” the Brat’mar asked as the drop pod sat on one of the flat tiers of the pyramid-shaped defense station with its black/green Yeg’gor armor beneath them. “I saw damage elsewhere on the planet.”

“You weren’t told?” one of the Pachycephalosauruses asked in surprise.

“I have not been. What happened?”

“The rogue Zen’zat raided the system and destroyed everything not within range of this defense station.”

Dorchav’s eyes narrowed angrily. “How?”

“Our defense fleet was thinned to a few hundred vessels. They arrived with tens of thousands of their carrier ships. We were horribly outmatched.”

“The shipyards?”

“Gone. All orbital facilities were destroyed. Please come with us. You can better discuss the matter with Zyrnox.”

Dorchav huffed with increased displeasure, but it wasn’t directed at the Voro’nam. “Lead on.”

The dome-headed bipeds turned and led him inside the defense station then down through the various levels until they came to the area reserved for the legendary Voro’nam commander. His accomplishments dated back to the Zak’de’ron war where he had several notable victories that had propelled him to a prominent position in the fight against the Hadarak that had followed. Him being assigned to this campaign along with Dorchav and other veterans by Mak’to’ran himself was a sign that the V’kit’no’sat were going to tolerate the remains of the rogue Zen’zat no longer…and it galled Dorchav to have to personally answer for his failure regarding the Mach’nel and his incomplete destruction of Requiem.

The honor guard stopped outside a closed door, saying nothing, and the Brat’mar assumed he was meant to go in. He searched for the telepathic node in the frame and toggled it, peeling the door open to reveal a modest command deck with four individuals inside.

Dorchav knew this was going to be unpleasant, but he wasn’t going to hide his shame. He had lost a Mach’nel and there was no getting around that, and because of it the invasion had been hampered considerably.

Two of the others were also Voro’nam, but the fourth was a Rit’ko’sor, tiny in comparison, but his presence here was unusual. Their race was still undersized in population, and what help they’d been to the empire during their rebuilding had been focused on the Hadarak where they had ample experience. None, as far as Dorchav knew, had been assigned to the Terraxis campaign, nor did he recognize this Rit’ko’sor, but he did recognize the other Voro’nam. Both were senior commanders, one of which he had assumed was still on the Star Force front heading up the ground campaign in the Camille System.

“Dorchav,” Zyrnox greeted him neutrally as the door resealed behind him. “Come forward and join us. We have much to discuss.”

“I have failed,” the Brat’mar said bluntly. “What more is there to discuss?”

“You lost a Mach’nel, and that will be attached to your reputation for the remainder of your life, but the data returned to me shows no fault on your part. I too thought they had rebuilt Kamenor, and had that been the case your positioning was correct. To allow the fleet to engage another Mach’nel while Dimu sat back would have been folly.”

“It is still a loss that I bear, and had it not occurred the destruction of Requiem would be complete.”

“Why did the Archon spare you?” the Rit’ko’sor asked.

“And you are?” Dorchav demanded.

“Sess’met,” the Rit’ko’sor answered simply, for that name was one that Dorchav recognized vaguely. He was one of the senior commanders tasked with keeping their race alive within Hadarak territory, but not the most senior.

“She sparred me to gain time for her troops on the ground and to evacuate some of her people from the planet. I found such a delay unimportant, thus I made the bargain.”

“Odd that it was offered,” Zyrnox said, “but I agree. You and your crew were far more valuable. The Archon erred.”

“So I told her at the time,” Dorchav growled.

“You are not the only one to be spared,” Sess’met noted. “There haven’t been many, but Star Force has returned other people to us previously and on multiple occasions during this renewed invasion.”

“In exchange for what?”

“They sent a message,” Zyrnox explained. “Several, actually, and nothing of consequence. It’s their way of gloating over victories that they never should have achieved.”

“Did I not warn you?” Sess’met asked, looking up at Zyrnox.

“You did, but even you were wrong about their numbers,” the Voro’nam mildly shot back. “Fortunately we incorporated contingency plans.”

“May I ask what?” Dorchav wondered.

The campaign commander glanced at one of the other Voro’nam.

“While you were fighting we had several smaller fleets hunting down comm relays so we could blind the rogue Zen’zat…”

“Star Force,” the Rit’ko’sor corrected, reiterating an ongoing dispute between the advisor and the command staff.”

“The vermin,” the Voro’nam said, choosing a third option, “now have uninhabited regions of their territory that are disconnected from their comm net. Within them we have established three separate footholds where we are constructing defenses.”

“What fleets?” Dorchav asked darkly.

“The bulk of this system’s defenses,” Zyrnox admitted. “It was a gamble that we lost.”

“What specifically happened? I did not view a report on the way in.”

“A fleet of Star Force vessels arrived en mass,” the Rit’ko’sor said with a sneer. “Ships that have never before been seen bearing this marking…”

A hologram appeared showing an inverted sword swathed in purple and white coloration and backed by a sphere.

“Correction,” Zyrnox interjected. “It has been seen before, but only on a few rare occasions.”

“It is unfamiliar to me,” Dorchav noted. “Where have these ships been seen before?”

“During shipping raids. Twice escort warships have been attacked never to be seen again, but the transports they were guarding escaped with incomplete battle reports that showed Star Force vessels with this symbol. I am assuming that other missing ships may have fallen prey to them, but never during the fall of their worlds has the fleet that hit us been seen. Why, we are unclear. There is no data from our spies concerning this symbol, and the technology used matches their ‘mainline’ fleet.”

“So they had a phantom fleet standing by for the right moment?” Dorchav wondered.

“And when we compromised the defenses here,” Sess’met added, “they took advantage of our lack of caution.”

“This makes no sense,” Dorchav said before Zyrnox could respond. “These Archons do not let people die when they can save them. Holding back a fleet that could be used to repel our attacks makes no sense. Their sense of ethics would forbid it.”

“Perhaps they are more duplicitous than you give them credit for,” the Rit’ko’sor countered.

“We knew of the Paladin,” he countered, not about to be lectured by this little imp no matter what shame he bore for losing Dimu. “We did not know of their numbers, but we did know they were engaged in fights further rimward. How did we not know of another faction large enough to raid Terraxis? How many ships did we have left to defend it?”

“814 warships,” the other Voro’nam supplied.

“And how many did this phantom fleet bring?”

“103,622 of their jumpships, all appearing to be fully loaded.”

Dorchav fell silent, long enough for Zyrnox to nod approvingly. “You and I have both been surprised by unexpected strategy.”

“How could they hide that many ships…why would they hide that many ships? Even if we lost everything in this system aside from the planetary defense station I do not see the value in it. Have they also hit the Grid Point?”

“No, and we have an Urrtren relay link established there now. We received a test signal from the new Bocharak System two days ago as well, meaning we will be receiving regular updates from the front…”

“Assuming Star Force doesn’t hit our relays,” the Rit’ko’sor amended.

“And we will have links to the other two established shortly,” the other Voro’nam continued, ignoring the ‘advisor.’ “We are going to hold all three even if we have to withdraw all fleets to them.”

“Are additional ships coming?” Dorchav asked, looking to the campaign commander.

“No. Not as we now require. Regular reinforcements will be sent, but they will not replace the losses we have suffered, nor will suffer if we press forward as planned…thus we are not. We have done considerable damage to 39 worlds, 16 of which were completely cleansed, and we cost them far more ships than we lost. The Mach’nel, however, is a significant victory for them,” he said, looking down at the Rit’ko’sor. “And as has been pointed out, if Star Force can hide fleets of this magnitude from us, and have the patience to wait until the right moment to use them, they could still be holding onto a rebuilt Kamenor to deploy against us later. The ruse they used implied that they thought we suspected them of having it, and they would be fools to have disassembled it, but so far we have not seen any Yeg’gor production from them.”

“We assume they have the knowledge at this point,” the other Voro’nam said while the third remained silent. “The fact that we have not seen any may suggest that they are using whatever production they have to repair the Mach’nel.”

“Even if they did not,” Dorchav added. “Conventional armor placed over the exposed areas in excessive amounts will suffice. That is what I assumed they did with the fraud, covering the entire ship and shielding it from sensors so we could not identify and target where the damaged areas were.”

“Possible,” Zyrnox agreed. “And so far they have not used their altered Hadarak against us save for defensive operations, but they are rumored to have been designed specifically for system assault.”

“Do we still have scouts watching for their departure?”

“Yes. Those have not been compromised, and I am well aware that Terraxis would be the primary location for such a strike, but I did not expect them to use convention fleets that we did not have reconnaissance on. The raids on their hidden bases were meant to draw any such fleets out. The one that hit here is an annoying mystery, and one that I want you to personally uncover.”

Dorchav’s head raised. “I am remaining?”

“You are too valuable to send back, and after such a loss you will be uniquely motivated to look for deception where others would not. Your shame will always keep you on guard, and as we have been instructed, we have to take Star Force far more seriously than even I predicted.”

The Rit’ko’sor knew he was being referred to, for he’d worked long and hard with Zyrnox on planning this invasion, but even he hadn’t expected this much resistance.

“We have been blunted and embarrassed, but the gains we made are significant,” he added, addressing Dorchav. “Terraxis is no longer our most forward colony. We have three to draw their attention away from here, though the loss of our shipyards is going to be a problem. We were expecting to use them to repair damage from the recent battles. Now we will have an addition two to three months travel time one way for those vessels to get to the necessary repair yards. We will have to bide our time or attrition rates will eat us alive, but we have gained ground and we are going to expand upon it. We simply have to be more savvy than our enemy, and the contingency plans we built in have prepared for this unexpected turn of events.”

“What else has been done that I am unaware of?”

“While we will not be getting many additional warships, we are going to be receiving immense cyclical cargo fleets that will allow us to construct our three new colonies in short order. Those must be protected at all costs, and if they are, and we pull back and bide our time while construction occurs, we will be able to base off of those systems for deeper incursions against targets of our choosing, for they have too many to defend. It is simply a matter of drawing them away from our true targets and quickly getting to them. We cannot do so from here.”

“If we had overwhelmed them as anticipated,” Zyrnox continued, “we would still be establishing one new colony to further our supply chain. Unfortunately they are not in retreat, which will make this campaign even harder. We have a worthy fight on our hands, rogue Zen’zat or not, and I am preparing myself for further surprises. We will suffer them and take worlds through the losses. Eventually they will be unable to build replacement ships as fast as we can destroy them.”

“But it takes much more from us to penetrate their planetary defenses,” Dorchav argued. “If we cannot gain regional naval superiority we will kill ourselves on that attrition without the Mach’nel.”

“Agreed, which is why its loss is so significant, but this invasion is still viable. I will not ask for a replacement Mach’nel, for I know the request will be rejected despite the irregular circumstances regarding the loss of yours. We have made gains along with the losses, but make no mistake that this is our fight to win or lose and we have the bulk of the fleet available to us. How we use it will determine whether or not we are superior. If we are not, then we deserve to be replaced with someone who is…and if this group cannot find victory here, I question whether any within the empire can without devoting our full might to snuff out the remains of this foe.”

“Which would be wise,” the Rit’ko’sor added, “while the Hadarak are in remission.”

“We have already been given an unprecedented number of vessels,” Zyrnox reminded him. “And the incoming supplies will enable us to build what we need. Replacing the shipyards is simply going to take time.”

“Time that Star Force will have as well.”

“We will not remain idle, but we will continue to be cautious,” he said with both threat and acceptance in his voice. “And the one who believe he knows warfare better than the rest of us will be given the chance to prove it.”

Sess’met’s head poked upward. “How so?”

“Dorchav will oversee the convoy protection and search for this phantom fleet. You…I am giving battlefield status and command of the fleets operating out of the Medforjet System.”

“A regional commander?”

“Yes, and I will give you considerable lenience within my overall orders so you can probe the enemy as you like. I will suffer no more of your counsel. Do as you recommend or fail. Time to prove your worth.”

The Rit’ko’sor snorted once merrily. “Itaru will not be thrilled to hear that.”

“They will not know unless you succeed. If you fail I will bear the responsibility. I am trusting your assertions are based more in knowledge than ego.”

“Was I wrong about Star Force?”

“You were not.”

“Then trust without worry. They will be a difficult opponent, but compared to the Hadarak they are nothing.”

“Your transport is waiting. Dorchav will take over your duties here. Now go, and do not make a fool of me.”

“You will not be disappointed,” the Rit’ko’sor said, lazily running in the annoying hopping motion of the smaller races as he left the command deck.

“I am grateful for your faith in me,” Dorchav said when he had left and the doors resealed.

“I am not angry with you,” Zyrnox said, almost growling. “I am angry with those assigned this extermination before us. They have failed and allowed this heresy to grow to this point. Their territory has been savaged, but they have grown stronger and bolder because we did not act strongly or quickly enough.”

“The Hadarak played a role in that.”

“A role, but not the primary one. Mak’to’ran should have snuffed these rogue Zen’zat out long ago rather than assign lethargic fools that continually underestimate them.”

“I am one of those fools.”

“You have provided me a valuable lesson. This is not an enemy to fight with singular strengths. They are to be fought by the masses, ship to ship, planet by planet, and ground into dust. We trusted too much in the Mach’nel and they found a way to neutralize it. We must decentralize in order to defeat them.”

“Hence the three new colonies?”

“They will not be the only ones. If and when we can push further we will establish more. Our territory must extend rimward in order to defeat our enemy. We cannot arrogantly hold to old habits. We must adapt, and so we will. You will organize your new fleet from here, and they will be largely made up of damaged vessels. Do not call for the supply convoys until you are confident you can protect them. What we have on site will be sufficient for now. The additions will only spur development further.”

“We need Urrtren surveillance along the resupply routes or we could be sending them into a trap if that phantom fleet is still out there. Have they been seen since?”

“No. They have not reinforced those currently fighting.”

“Then we must build a proper detection net. We cannot use scouts alone.”

“I agree, but it will take time and I will leave you to it,” the Voro’nam said, motioning with his head towards an empty platform.

Dorchav spun and walked towards it, stepping up on the padded surface and placing his feet on the few silver metallic spots that gave him a physical connection to the computer systems. With a thought he brought up a wealth of data in holographic form as well as direct input into his mind, allowing him to see in detail the raid on this system and everything else that had worked its way back from the front.

He wasn’t returning in shame as he had assumed. He’d been given another task and another chance…but not just because of Zyrnox. It was because of Olivia-051. A Zen’zat abomination that should not even exist. She’d given him a second chance and here he was using it to help kill her and all of her kin.

Something about that didn’t sit right with Dorchav. He should be dead now, and it felt like everything he did from this point on he didn’t deserve, but he had a task and he wasn’t going to fail it…but he also wasn’t going to assume victory. Zyrnox was right. He would forever be on guard now, taking nothing for granted as he began designing his convoy security protocols.

Every ship that was going to pass through the Devastation Zone was going to be vulnerable to assault, and his goal was to not lose a single one. He didn’t know how Star Force was going to respond, so he had to plan ahead and try to think like them…or rather think about what could be done that was not expected.

It was not an easy task, but it was his now and he was going to have to adapt and grow stronger in order to acquit it…otherwise the devious Archons would find a way to best him again.

And that could not be tolerated.

"Imperial March"

"Kill the light"

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