Star Force: Summit
Author: Aer-Ki Jyr
Date: 2017-10-18T22:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Archon Lore

1

December 19, 4882

Zafrena System (Hadarak Zone)

Dead Hadarak site

Mak’to’ran had returned to the Hadarak front, leaving a stable situation in Itaru for the moment, but it was the activity on the front that disturbed him the most. The V’kit’no’sat had monitoring stations set up around the perimeter of the core, supplemented by patrols, and detailed tracking data for the outer region of the Hadarak Zone was constantly being pumped through the Urrtren so fleets and planets could prepare well in advanced of an approaching Hadarak.

They moved so slow that entire populations could be moved out of their way in some cases, but in order to make the most of such spottings there had to be a quick exchange of information, and sending information over such great distances was not simple or quick, though compared to the movement of ships it was far superior using the Urrtren.

But it wasn’t just for the warnings delivered to individual systems that the detection net had been created. It was also to monitor Hadarak movements on a large scale, and since their 7 recent Hadarak kills he had begun to notice a change.

It wasn’t large, and he knew there was a serious reporting lag for the Hadarak. They only had 2 known methods of communication, and sending couriers was the faster of the two. None had gotten away during the 7 kills, including this last one, with the dead hulk of the Hadarak visible beyond Mak’to’ran’s ship as the V’kit’no’sat picked at it for research and harvesting purposes. The skin, especially, could be used to make Yeg’gor armor much more easily than pure synthesis, not to mention the raw amounts of corovon the Hadarak contained.

The Harthur was gone now, broken apart and waiting in transit mode further out in the system now that the Hadarak was fully dead. Its death scream had gone out before it finally died, sending a burst of telepathic information that would not transit to the nearest of systems for months, if not years. Another Hadarak or their minions could theoretically pick it up more than 50 years from now before the signal deteriorated, but he didn’t think any of the 7 dead Hadarak could have had their death screams noticed yet.

That, coupled with no couriers getting away, meant that he was either imagining the 8% increase in tier 3 Hadarak traffic as something more than normal fluctuations, or it was in response to some of the dead Hadarak not reporting in. And given that the new tier 3 sightings were appearing in the regions where the Harthur had made their kills, made him think this was more than coincidence.

Mak’to’ran had chosen 7 different regions around the galactic core to hunt the Hadarak for just this purpose. He was hoping to be able to provoke a reaction, now that he knew they were in fact patrolling. They might not be looking for V’kit’no’sat, but if Hadarak started to go missing with no information on who killed them, he suspected the Hadarak might respond to come looking for the mystery threat the Uriti had suggested the Hadarak were searching for.

And now it looked like he might have got their attention. It wasn’t a big response, but it suggested they were hyper aware of what was going on despite the lack of a real communications system…unless they had one that the V’kit’no’sat hadn’t discovered. He didn’t think that was likely, but he hadn’t ruled it out completely.

Mak’to’ran was studying the reports as they came in, being updated by couriers of their own since no relays were extended this far into the Hadarak Zone, though they were only a few hundred lightyears in. Before he got finished another courier arrived, and with this one came a priority message from Star Force requesting a personal meeting with him to discuss the Hadarak.

A date was added, some 7 months away, which would give him enough time to get there from his current position. He didn’t want to leave the front again, but if this involved the Hadarak it had to be something to do with the Uriti, and that was worth investigating as opposed to running back to Itaru to deal with more incompetents. So far Hamob hadn’t reported any further trouble, and to be blunt, if they did sent a fleet out against his orders, he’d rather be on site to deal with it personally.

He was very curious as to what Star Force had to say, and whether or not they were aware of the Harthur yet. This would be a good test of their intelligence operations within the empire, which was yet another reason why he was going to honor their request and go in person…

Mak’to’ran’s trip out to the destination system was an easy one. The timetable wasn’t tight, and he arrived a few days early in an uninhabited system four jumps away from Terraxis. That was where the Humans wanted to meet, and he came with a trio of Kafcha and a pair of Na’shor just to have enough firepower to discourage any bad behavior. All four of the ships in addition to his personal Kafcha came from the defense fleets at the nearby V’kit’no’sat colonies that were being developed just outside the boundaries of what Star Force called the ‘Devastation Zone.’

Those colonies would be useful when the truce came to an end, but right now they were being used as resupply bases for the numerous reconnaissance ships mapping the star systems around Star Force territory, many of which were not in any V’kit’no’sat database. And with the growing number of annexations further into the Rim, the V’kit’no’sat needed a better navigational database than relying on the public information Star Force put out.

Mak’to’ran waited patiently until the day came, then on cue a small fleet of Star Force warships emerged with a single command ship amongst them. The V’kit’no’sat were not hiding, with none of their vessels being equipped with cloaking devices, so they were easy to find sitting in an upper low orbit around the single star in the system.

The Star Force ships moved to their location then approached slowly, coming in far closer than communications range required, before a hologram of Morgan-063 appeared before him. He knew her image intimately, along with the other 99 of her kin who led Star Force. Mak’to’ran had studied them and their methods closely, which were almost identical save for several small variations, and had learned a great deal about Star Force by watching records of their fleet battles.

Morgan-063 was now stationed in Terraxis, but where most of the others were Mak’to’ran did not know. Her coming out to meet him had been expected, and it imparted something very important they wished to discuss.

“Mak’to’ran, I presume?” the Human asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “What concerning the Hadarak do you require my presence for?”

“I’m not discussing it here. I need you to come over to my ship, alone.”

“This is a secure transmission. No one else is monitoring…unless there is a breach in your systems.”

“Not good enough. I need to talk to you face to face. I have a cargo bay with all surveillance equipment disabled. It will just be you and me, and we have a lot to talk about that others should not know.”

“Have you reconsidered my offer?”

“I can’t discuss anything over the comm. We have to meet face to face, and I don’t trust you guys not to try and mind rape me if I came over to your ship. So you’re coming to mine.”

“And why should I trust you?”

“You’re a lot bigger than me,” Morgan said with a hint of a smile.

“Killing me would aid you, but it would also end the truce you are relying on,” Mak’to’ran pointed out. “If this is not worth my time, you will soon suffer for it personally, little one.”

“I’m not worried. Have your drop pod leave you. There can be no surveillance whatsoever. Including from your armor. Wear it if you like, but shut it off.”

“As you wish,” Mak’to’ran said, cutting the transmission. Either this was something vitally important or Morgan was just playing dominance games. If it was the latter, she would be leaving this meeting with injuries.

His crew weren’t so keen on the idea, but they obeyed and a drop pod flew him over to the command ship and dropped him off on the very large and very empty deck, then flew back out through the atmospheric containment shield. As soon as it left the hangar doors began to close behind him.

Mak’to’ran was wearing his armor in retracted mode, looking like jewelry but available to him at a moment’s notice if needed. If Star Force intended to chuck him out into space he could survive long enough to be picked up, but he doubted that was what they intended…though he couldn’t figure a guess at why this much secrecy was needed, but the one who held the answer to that question was standing in her blue/orange Archon armor near the far wall. She did not move until the hangar bay doors fully closed, then a small door beside her opened and another figure walked out.

It also wore Archon armor with the helmet retracted, same as Morgan, but the armor was pure black, which denoted a Striker-level Archon. They were junior, and not much of a threat to an experienced Zen’zat, but only the trailblazer was supposed to be here.

“You said it would only be the two of us, little liar,” Mak’to’ran declared loudly as he walked across the bay far quicker with his larger steps and met up with the pair on the other side.

“A necessary lie,” Morgan said, looking up at the big Era’tran’s head as both of them stopped walking before the Humans could get stepped on. “You guys are too untrustworthy. I couldn’t let the others know that he was here.”

Mak’to’ran looked down at the second Human, whom he did not recognize.

“And you are?”

“Guess I’m not that famous,” Davis said, glancing at Morgan. “I’m Director Sean Davis, leader of Star Force, needing to discuss something of significant importance with the leader of the V’kit’no’sat.”

Mak’to’ran huffed approvingly. “You finally emerge from hiding.”

“When necessary. Can I assume we’re not going to have to fight here?”

“I came here to talk, not to fight. However, if you have wasted my time…”

Davis raised a hand to stop him. “I have not, nor am I wasting mine.”

“What of the Hadarak do we need to discuss?”

“The official reason you are here is to discuss an intelligence sharing agreement. The Uriti have been inquiring about the status of the Hadarak. If you will give us access to recorded telepathic communications between Hadarak or between them and their minions, we will have the Uriti translate them and then share that intelligence with you. I assume you haven’t yet found a way to decipher their telepathy?”

Mak’to’ran’s eyes narrowed and his teeth showed slightly between his lips. “We have not, though we have recorded a great deal. Are you asking for all, or just recent intercepts?”

“Anything you can get us. Including their death screams.”

“Exposing the Uriti to them could be problematic,” Mak’to’ran warned.

“But you’d like to know their content regardless?”

“I would. Why are you convinced the Uriti will be able to decipher them into a form that you can understand?”

“We expect to lose some context, but any information is more than you currently possess.”

“A worthwhile exchange, which I accept. I also suggest you extend your relay network to the edge of your Devastation Zone. We will likewise extend our Urrtren and arrange a suitable system for signal exchange. If we get information that is time sensitive, I do not want to waste unnecessary days on couriers.”

“That is acceptable,” Davis agreed, with Morgan standing by as an observer and, if necessary, body guard, for this was the Director’s conversation…and she didn’t entirely agree with his decision.

“Now that we have that settled,” Mak’to’ran continued, “what is the unofficial reason I am here?”

Davis cracked a smile, then sighed. “New information has come to my attention that has changed the status quo. We have no good options, so I am here to pursue a bad one, based on my limited knowledge of you. Is the offer you made previously still available?”

“It is.”

“I would like to make a counter offer.”

“Speak it.”

“We hate you,” Davis said bluntly. “Her more than me, because she’s been on the front lines and seen your carnage personally. But I’ve watched as you’ve torn apart the systems I’ve worked long to build, and I’ve seen the death totals continuously rise. I hate you as well, but in making us an offer to allow us to live you broke with the death mark that was supposed to be irreversible. This tells me you’re not totally blood thirsty, but make no mistake, we are enemies.”

“We are unless you want to change that arrangement,” Mak’to’ran said evenly, sensing some capitulation in the Human.

“We will never accept your authority over us. We are at war, and will always be so, unless the V’kit’no’sat change their ways.”

“You will expire long before that occurs.”

“So we’re going to fight,” Davis said sternly. “But you’re not our only enemy, and we can choose to bump you down the priority list if we choose. Far down, in fact. Am I right in assuming you value the Hadarak as a higher priority than us?”

“They are the reason our empire exists.”

“And they are the reason why I am standing here now. As bad as you are, the V’kit’no’sat are doing the galaxy a service holding back the Hadarak. If that were not the case, I’d happily stand by and watch you destroyed first.”

Morgan raised her armored hand above her head. “I’m still voting for that option.”

“Destroyed by whom?” Mak’to’ran asked, dismissing the trailblazer’s insolence. “You are not referring to the Hadarak.”

“I am not,” Davis said, knowing this was the moment of truth. He exchanged a glance with Morgan, along with a brief telepathic conversation. She gave him the go ahead, having snuck a quick look into the Era’tran’s mind using her Orren before his formidable defenses slammed shut on the attempt, but it had been enough to ascertain his mood. He wasn’t blood thirsty. He was someone who had come to negotiate.

“You cannot share this with anyone,” Davis said with an icy lethalness to his voice that Mak’to’ran picked up on. “Your life will be in jeopardy if you do. That is why your crew cannot have the opportunity to overhear.”

“That is for me to decide.”

“I’m trusting that you are wise enough to keep your mouth shut,” Davis said, knowing that this part of his partial plan relied on the Era’tran doing just that. “We have information we are going to share concerning two massive threats to the galaxy that you are not aware of. Two threats that are going to wipe out the V’kit’no’sat…and potentially a lot of others.”

“What threats?” Mak’to’ran asked icily.

“We have knowledge from the Chixzon,” Davis began. “They dominated the non-Hadarak portion of the galaxy before the V’kit’no’sat existed. They were overcome by an alliance of enemies when the weakness in the Uriti was discovered. They did not fight with the Uriti as we do, they used them as tools of intimidation and, when necessary, destruction. When they lost that primary tool they did not have the strength to survive, and the hatred of them by the rest of the galaxy would ensure that they did not.”

“They devised a plan,” Davis continued, “to lay dormant, allow the galaxy to think they were destroyed and to forget they ever existed. Millions of years later they would come out of their stasis to a galaxy that did not know who or what they were, then begin again. The data we recovered did not give a specific time when this would happen, but it is coming. We have been looking in secret for their method of stasis…which I will not reveal to you…and have been eliminating all we can find. That will not be enough. They hid them across the galaxy in such a manner that not all of them could be destroyed. The Chixzon are returning at some point, and they will destroy the V’kit’no’sat, for you stand in the way of their galactic domination.”

Mak’to’ran was silent for a long moment, glancing at Morgan, then back to Davis.

“You awoke one of them?”

“I am not discussing what happened, but we obtained a complete set of their legacy data. I would like your help destroying the rest of their caches, but I know you’d try to gain the knowledge of how to control the Uriti from their information, and that I cannot allow.”

“Is stopping them from returning not more important than your ownership of the Uriti?”

“Giving you the ability to control them would be worse. We know the Chixzon will not try to use the Uriti again. It was their weakness before. They will seek out other means to dominate, and they will not fight you face to face. They will come at you sideways. Perhaps create a virus and infect your planets, never having to fire a shot to destroy you.”

“Kich’a’kat would rectify that problem.”

Davis swallowed hard, knowing that wasn’t true from Kara’s experience, but he wasn’t going to trust her continued existence to Mak’to’ran’s confidence.

“Not always. Our information suggests a level of biotechnology superior to the V’kit’no’sat, and we know they will not strike until they have found a way. Even when they sought to control the galaxy the first time, they rarely used their own fleets in combat other than to defend their worlds. They used intermediaries. They were manipulators and schemers. When they return, they will not fight you directly. They will find a weak spot and exploit it. I can guarantee it.”

“If you do not wish us to help you destroy them before they can return, why are you telling me this?”

“In order for them to obtain control of the galaxy, they must go through you…and us. We have a common enemy in the Chixzon, and if they take you down unprepared, it makes our survival even more tenuous.”

“You presume you will survive against us long enough to find that a problem.”

“I do.”

“If you have the full Chixzon knowledge, can you produce more Uriti?”

“It would require a Hadarak, and the specifics of their construction was not included in their database. It is dead research to them now. They will not repeat it.”

“If I supplied a living Hadarak to you, could you create another Uriti?”

Davis frowned, glancing at Morgan, before he slowly shook his head ‘no.’ “We do not have that capability.”

“Are you aware of how they captured one?”

“They damaged it to near death, then laid claim to it.”

“How did they lay claim to it?”

“We don’t know the specifics.”

Mak’to’ran growled, seemingly confident that the Humans were unaware of the Harthur.

“We now have the ability to capture and kill Hadarak more easily than in the past. If I could deliver one to you, could you use your Chixzon knowledge to figure out how they created the Uriti?”

“Theoretically yes. Why do you ask?”

“Because there are massive Hadarak at the core of the galaxy that we can barely scratch. We continue to seek a way to destroy them, and the Uriti are the best option we have discovered. Even if you remained in control of them, could you potentially breed an army?”

“Theoretically yes, but we would not do so,” Davis said, not lying but closely avoiding a project that Nefron was engaged in that was studying the possibility of spawning Uriti without using a Hadarak. It was just a curiosity now, but something Davis had wanted him to look into.

“And why not? You claim to care about defending others, and the threat of the Hadarak is second to none.”

“We would not do so because we will not enslave the Uriti, and we will not torture a Hadarak to force it to spawn. We do not know how the Chixzon did it, but the few suspicions we have are gruesome.”

“And you do not feel the means are inconsequential to the great gains they would yield?”

“We acknowledge the gains, but the means are unacceptable.”

“Such foolishness does not befit a splinter race that has survived so long against us.”

“It is not foolishness. You fail to see the grander scope.”

“Then explain it.”

Davis sighed, knowing this was going to be difficult, but at least Mak’to’ran was listening…

2

“We cannot,” Mak’to’ran said firmly some two hours into the discussion. “If we relinquish our dominance our enemies will multiply. We cannot waste our strength against them and ignore the Hadarak. We must keep them suppressed.”

“And you assume no one else would help fight the Hadarak?”

“Few are sufficiently advanced, and none would volunteer the sacrifices needed.”

“Why do you?”

“The Zak’de’ron created the V’kit’no’sat for this purpose. It is what we are born to do, and prior to that the Era’tran were victims of the Hadarak. There are no significant powers suffering from them now. No one has the motivation to wage this endless war save for us. Domination is the price the galaxy will pay for our protection.”

“Did you ever bother to ask?” Morgan quipped.

“Of course they didn’t,” Davis answered before Mak’to’ran could. “But I suspect he is mostly right. Why do you refuse to use unmanned vessels against the Hadarak? Others would probably assist if they didn’t have to shed blood. They might even be willing to give you supplies if you did the fighting. There are many potential options.”

“We have experimented with drone technology similar to your own. The signal delay is too tedious. Fighting the minion swarms requires quick alterations. When we used drones, our fleet combat diminished its already limited effectiveness. We lost more ships that way, so the practice was discontinued save for fixed emplacements in our border systems.”

“The Rit’ko’sor had more success. Have you incorporated their methods?”

“No. Theirs were equally inefficient. We must have minds on site to control the flow of combat. The Rit’ko’sor did not have enough population to fight in this manner, so they chose the inefficient one. Fortunately for them they were not seeking combat, but we must. If we do not, the Hadarak will spread.”

“When the V’kit’no’sat began, were they still spreading rimward, or had they stabilized?”

“We are uncertain, but they were encroaching on our territories, so they had to be driven back. We do not know if they would spread across the entire galaxy. There are differing opinions on an eventuality we cannot test. Did the Chixzon not combat them?”

“They preferred to avoid them, save for when they entered their territory, though that was rare. They had no intention of pushing them back, which was why they planned their galactic conquest for the Rim only. They were never going to fight the Hadarak.”

“And if they challenge us in the future, and succeed, they will make no attempt to hold the Hadarak to their current boundaries?”

“They will not waste their resources or allies doing so. I would expect they would establish a power base in the far rim, well away from the Hadarak, and not care what happened in the core. In fact, they might try to weaken you to the point where the Hadarak can finish you off, or vice versa. Wait for you to be damaged by combat with them, or us, and then move in to finish you…or send intermediaries to do it for them.”

“Why are you so certain they cannot take control of the Uriti from you?”

“Because we have established a relationship with them, and we can tug on the reigns same as the Chixzon. But the Chixzon viewed them as assets, not people. Our relationship will be the deciding factor.”

“I suspect that is a reason you do not want to use them as weapons.”

“They are our allies, and we will treat them as such.”

“If it denies the Chixzon from reacquiring them, then you are wise to do so. What of the other Uriti hidden in the galaxy?”

“We are not searching for them. The Knights of Quenar are better suited for such a task.”

Mak’to’ran stared at Davis closely, not saying anything for several seconds. He could not break into the Human’s mind past his Ikrid block…at least not without touching him…but he saw no flinch in his mannerisms or voice.

“Where is the Uriti you stole from us?”

The Human’s face altered considerably. Both of them did. And Mak’to’ran knew they were worried about that causing the V’kit’no’sat to break the truce.

“Before I answer that, I will state my counter offer,” Davis said, his jaw set firmly against the implications of what was about to happen. He still had an out if he wanted it, but Mak’to’ran was being too genuine. He wasn’t going to pass up this opportunity, no matter how bad it might turn out. “We are enemies, and I am not suggesting we will ever be anything beyond that. We can cooperate as far as the Hadarak are concerned, but beyond that we suggest this...you have kept to the inner half of the galaxy. Why?”

“To focus on the Hadarak threat. They are not in the Rim as far as we know.”

“But why not conquer it all to eliminate the threats to your dominance?”

“That has been a matter of debate for some time.”

“Why have you not thus far? The Rit’ko’sor rebellion did not hurt you that badly.”

“It did, for a time. Afterwards we saw no reason to expand. Preventing another rebellion took priority, and there are more worlds in our current domain than we could possibly use. We decided to wait for the threats to come to us rather than searching the vast expanse of the Rim for them.”

“You didn’t agree with that?”

“I am aware of the potential for problems. We were also under population restrictions, so expansion was pointless.”

“Why?”

“The former leaders of the V’kit’no’sat were more interested in maintaining what they had than pushing further into the core. I have rid the empire of that stagnation, and our population is growing considerably now, for we will need them to compensate for our losses against the Hadarak…and against you.”

“My offer is this. We are enemies, but we both have greater concerns. The Rim is a mess and we’re trying to clean it up. This is more important than picking a fight with you that we cannot win. You have too many systems with too deep of defenses. It will take us forever to conquer you, and we would prefer to wage the smaller battles in the Rim where we can help more people. Saving their lives comes first for us, taking you out is a lesser priority. Fighting the Hadarak is your primary objective, so why don’t we both attend to what is most important and ignore each other for the next million years or so?”

“You to the Rim and the V’kit’no’sat to the Core?” Mak’to’ran asked.

“Yes. We wouldn’t join you, but we would ignore you so long as you did not venture beyond your original border as of two millennia ago. And we both could prepare for the Chixzon threat.”

“I would greatly prefer to keep the Uriti in play, if you are accurate in that you can prevent the Chixzon from reclaiming control, but what you ask is not possible. I lead the V’kit’no’sat, but I do not control them. I cannot grant you such independence. The others would not allow it.”

“But you would, if it was up to you?”

“It is not, so the question is irrelevant, but yes I would.”

“Why?” Morgan asked. “You’ve been dead set on exterminating us up until now.”

“You have earned your survival.”

Both Humans exchanged glances, not having expected to hear that.

“Then are you and I truly enemies?” Davis asked.

“If you seek to conquer us one day, then most definitely yes.”

Davis raised a hand and grabbed the bridge of his nose, half covering his face as he thought. “Have you and I accidentally ended up on the wrong side?”

“Perhaps so, for I think you hold a desire to deal with the Hadarak threat. That is what true V’kit’no’sat live for. Had you been born within the empire, you would be a valuable Zen’zat.”

“I am far more useful in my current position,” Davis pointed out.

“Indeed you are. If not for the empire you’ve created, we would not have the Harthur. It was inspired by the vessel you used to destroy Dimu. You have also given us our first glimpse into the purpose of the Hadarak. You have accomplished more for the furtherance of our mission than most V’kit’no’sat have.”

“Then why be enemies? If our methods are proving superior, reconsider your own.”

“I have already, or I would not be here speaking with you. But what you fail to recognize is the combined will of the V’kit’no’sat. I lead them because I stepped away from it, became a rebel to do what was necessary. I have been labeled a traitor before, and I have seen what it looks like from the outside. The others have not. Our empire was designed to be led by the Zak’de’ron, and in their absence we hold to protocol rather than following true leadership. It is why we have not made gains against the Hadarak until recently. I am having difficulty dragging the V’kit’no’sat out of their complacency, which is one reason why I want your empire annexed under my personal control…not theirs. I want you as a counter balance. As competition to wake them up further. But I cannot shield you if you do not submit to my personal authority.”

“You eliminated any chance of that when you wiped out our worlds in what’s now the Devastation Zone. It stands as a reminder of why we will never join you.”

“Yet you let the Rit’ko’sor join you. Was it only because they had not participated in the destruction?”

“No. We also annexed a portion of the Li’vorkrachnika. I assume you know something of our history with them?”

“So you must maintain dominance?”

“We don’t employ your definition of that word.”

“Yet you do, though your methods differ.”

“No. There are many races without our borders that we do not control.”

“The same is true of the V’kit’no’sat.”

“Nor do we destroy them when they grow to a certain level of strength.”

“Because your growth rate has exceeded theirs. You have begun to plateau now that your technology has caught up to ours in most cases.”

“That is not the reason, but it has been helpful.”

“So you would truly let a non-hostile grow to a strength where they could challenge you?”

“Yes.”

“That is stupidity if you can prevent it.”

“An old saying that has been misquoted often goes, ‘Never start a fight, but always finish one.’ To some that sounds like pacifism, but I have never thought so. When someone misbehaves within their own culture, that is starting a fight. One we will step in and wage on behalf of the victims. But if there is no fight started, if there are no victims, then we will not start a fight simply to prevent another power from arising. We prefer to see it as competition, and our response to competition is to grow stronger, not try to hobble the growth of the other.”

“You allow so many problems to arise using such methods.”

“Have we? Or is that just speculation on your part?”

“You would argue that true threats would violate your principles at some point, thus starting the fight on their own, and those that would not would never become enemies?”

“Close. We can never guarantee changes in the future, but bad guys behave like bad guys and identify themselves early, in most cases. Often they do not even know how to pretend to be good.”

“I do not know how to be your version of ‘good,’ for it seems to lack a clear mission, but your short history appears to testify otherwise. Though without the threat of the V’kit’no’sat binding you together, would you be so united? Are you truly stable, or bound by fear?”

“I will not speak of our allies, but Star Force is solid.”

“I wonder, though I doubt you will ever have the opportunity to find out. What happened to the Uriti you stole from us? It is not in your Preserve,” Mak’to’ran said, getting back to the earlier question that Davis had veered away from.

“I said there were two threats.”

Mak’to’ran tilted his head slightly. “You never received the Uriti from the Knights of Quenar?”

“No, we did not. We did not even know you had one, nor that they had attacked and took it from you. They don’t bother to tell us where they acquire them, or how, knowing that we would probably not approve. We are not in a position to stop them, so we don’t demand to know. The Uriti are safer with us than they are remaining in sedation. We don’t like how they are probably being acquired, but we cannot stop it.”

“You could refuse them.”

Davis raised an eyebrow. “By the time they arrive with one, the damage is already done.”

“Yet you allow them to continue by accepting them. They do the necessary work you refuse to do.”

“Most of the Uriti in our region were given to us willingly. Their former caretakers did not want to continue to risk their territories to an accidental waking. If we knew where they were, we would acquire them by different means.”

“And if the owners refused?”

“We would wait and watch, but eventually we would obtain them. The Uriti take damage being sedated for so long. We would not allow that to continue, for the Uriti’s sake.”

“So you would fight to retrieve them as well?”

“If needed, but we wouldn’t use the same methods.”

“Interesting,” Mak’to’ran mewed. “What happened to the Uriti they stole from us?”

“It was stolen from them.”

“By…whom…?” the Era’tran growled.

Davis looked up at him, holding his stare for several long seconds. “The Zak’de’ron.”

Mak’to’ran flinched, a moment of confusion on his face, then his eyes widened as his mind began to put together the various clues. The Era’tran stumbled backward, taking a step away from the Humans as his mind raced and Davis could see the sheer terror in his movements as he tried to rectify what was going on.

“The Rit’ko’sor told us of your civil war and how you were looking for our sponsor,” Davis said as Mak’to’ran only paid half attention to him, lost in thought. “You believed it had to be the Oso’lon or the J’gar, but you ignored the third obvious alternative because you were so arrogant, and perhaps fearful, that you had failed to completely eliminate them. The Zak’de’ron hid a single ship from you, with one Zak’de’ron in stasis along with a cargo of eggs. We stumbled onto the ship accidentally and revived the Zak’de’ron without knowing who it was. It did not kill us, but rather rewarded our assistance with unlocking the planetary defense station database while taking a look at your recent history.”

Mak’to’ran didn’t say anything, so Davis continued.

“They have contacted us only a handful of times, and our war against you is our own doing. They just gave us a little nudge, happy to see you taking damage, until recently when they made contact with one of my elite Archons and stole her memories. They apologized profusely, citing it was necessary to determine our intention for the Rit’ko’sor, then they rescinded their death mark against those in our empire. They also gave us a new sensor that will be able to detect your ships and theirs upon jumppoint entry. They also gave us a rundown on how they thought you would invade us after the truce expired, as well as giving us complete data on how they upgraded the Rit’ko’sor and every one of V’kit’no’sat races, hinting that we could annex any of you that we wanted while making it clear they are going to wipe out every last one of you that we don’t take under our umbrella.”

Mak’to’ran’s stunned and quickly catching up mind reacted instinctively to that, his talons glowing red as he reflexively activated his Saroto’kanse’vam as he took another step backward.

“Yes,” Davis confirmed. “They are going to kill every last one of you, and have made it clear they cannot assist us when you invade after the truce. They’re not ready yet. They’ve only had a couple of millennia to start rebuilding, but they want to be allies of a sort regardless. We’ve kept their confidence to this point…then we hear from the Knights of Quenar that a single survivor came back to them from the fleet that had stolen the Uriti from you. He was left for dead in the wreck of a starship the Zak’de’ron had dragged and dumped into a star. A small survival ship inside was not destroyed, and he played dead long enough for them to leave, thinking they had eliminated all witnesses. It took years for him to return in his small-engined ship, but return he did, and the Knights of Quenar told us what happened.”

Davis held up his palm, generating a hologram of the battle records the KoQ had given him. He had his armor enlarge it to many times the size of his body so the Era’tran could clearly see.

“Those are not Zak’de’ron ships,” Mak’to’ran finally said, drawing curious glances from both Humans.

“That’s the same make of ship that we found the original one in,” Morgan admitted. “Perhaps a redesign to further hide them from your reconnaissance.”

Mak’to’ran stared at the battle footage for a long time, and Davis just let it play out. Eventually the Era’tran could see the truth. The ship designs were quite different from what the Zak’de’ron had fielded, but the technology was the same. The physical grapples to the KoQ ships, ripping them apart from the inside was telltale Zak’de’ron.

“Have you seen them in person?”

Davis reach out to Mak’to’ran’s mind, barely knocking on the door but making enough of a connection to transmit a weak burst of memory that Kara had given him, showing the Dragon onboard her ship, and Davis could sense the cold confirmation within Mak’to’ran.

“It is them,” he said aloud, hardly believing it, but the warrior within him wasn’t going to ignore a potential opponent, no matter how impossible their existence was. “Thought I do not know how. We were thorough in their destruction.”

“The galaxy is a big place,” Morgan offered. “Easy to hide in.”

“No. We took no chances. I was not privy to all our methods, but we had many. We know how easy it is to hide when one has a head start. We allowed them none.”

“How could you be sure you had gotten them all?” Davis asked.

“Something sinister that I was not told about. No record of it remains. You said only one survived?”

“That is what they told us, but it could be a lie. Their ability to attack the Knights of Quenar and steal the Uriti, let alone the boldness of it, suggests they are stronger than they let on.”

“A single attack is nothing compared to the war they will face against us.”

“They also said they can monitor your Urrtren, which is why you cannot tell anyone, nor make any recordings. They know everything that happens in your empire.”

Mak’to’ran took a third step back, still finding this hard to believe, but now sensing a more immediate threat. “They revealed this to you?”

“They took a great chance stealing our secrets, and have been very forthcoming with information in compensation.”

“The Uriti,” Mak’to’ran realized. “Did they take your knowledge of the Chixzon?”

“They know the source of it,” Davis admitted. “It is possible they will attain it the same way we did. And I highly doubt they stole the Uriti only to keep it sedated and away from us.”

Mak’to’ran spun around, walking quickly away from the Humans only to circle back around as he began to pace frantically as he thought, tactical situations flowing so fast through his Sav-enhanced mind that neither Human could have kept up. In fact he ignored them both for several minutes, just pacing around frightened…but that fear slowly turned to anger that he did not bother to shield from the Humans’ telepathy.

Davis just let him go, waiting as he paced to see what would become of this. He’d passed the point of no return. The secret was out now, and it was up to this Era’tran, a long time enemy, as to what he would do with it.

3

“What else do you know?” Mak’to’ran finally asked, stopping his pacing and facing the Humans again.

“They can monitor anything you send through the Urrtren,” Davis said plainly. “Which is why we had to talk to you in person, and why you can’t record anything.”

“They told you this?”

“Yes.”

“But they didn’t tell you about our Harthur?”

“They don’t give us updates. They were very forthcoming only on the one occasion, I believe, so we didn’t become angry about the theft of our secrets and rat them out to you guys.”

“Which you have done now. Why warn me?”

“Does it make any sense for us to both be wasting ships and personnel when a great threat lurks in the shadows waiting for an opportunity to move against you?”

“Do you know where they are?”

“No. They were not that trusting of us. They didn’t even give us a means to communicate with them. They choose when we interact.”

Mak’to’ran paced again, this time only one circuit before turning back to Davis. “You were wise to bring this to me, for without a target we can do nothing. I am sure they have hidden themselves away so cleverly we could never find them all. Our purge was predicated on eliminating them entirely, which we apparently failed to do. Now that they’ve had time to build towards evasion, we have no hope of destroying them. They will hunt us to our destruction, no matter how long it takes.”

“That’s pretty much what they said to us.”

“So why leave their service?”

“We were never in their service, and another event that shall go nameless showed us their true nature. They are unaware of it happening, but we know the truth. If we do not serve them, they will kill us. They do not tolerate strength when it is not under their control. They taught you their methods well.”

Mak’to’ran growled, but there wasn’t a lot of power behind it, for he couldn’t truthfully disagree. That was exactly how the V’kit’no’sat regarded other powers in the galaxy.

“What is your suggestion, little Human?”

Davis sighed. “I don’t know. You are their greatest target, and greatest hurdle to reestablishing their own galactic dominance. If we stand by, play along while they kill you, we’ll be next if we don’t fully submit. They may not seem to be too concerned about our current independence, but they’re already taking small measures to curtail it. I can see the trend, and we will not allow it to creep in that direction. We will remain independent, and I do not think the Zak’de’ron truly want allies. They only want servants or corpses.”

“You come to me with no plan of action?”

“My plan of action is for us not to annihilate each other. Your worlds are strong, but without your fleets how long do you think it will be before the Zak’de’ron hit you? We will not die quickly or easily, and the war will drag out a long time. I cannot say how much strength they have rebuilt, but if they’re willing to take a Uriti from the Knights of Quenar, they are more bold than I had anticipated. I had assumed they would stay quiet and hide until they were ready to act against you. I was wrong.”

Mak’to’ran shook his head and took a step to the right…then froze and turned back, this time looking at Morgan. “What do you recommend…other than letting them kill us first?”

“You need to reform, impossible as that seems.”

“And then?”

“I’ll jump off that bridge when I come to it.”

“So you come with no plan,” he said, turning back to Davis. “You break your bond with the Zak’de’ron, endangering yourself in the short term, to warn me of the biggest threat to the V’kit’no’sat? You are acting as if you were my ally, not an enemy.”

“You have much evil in the V’kit’no’sat, but buried underneath it is a good purpose. I believe you can be salvaged. I’ve already seen it happen with the Rit’ko’sor that joined us. And their power has increased greatly as a result. If you truly value your mission of defeating the Hadarak, then you need all the power you can get, and the quick and easy path to results is not necessarily the most powerful over the long run.”

“I should disagree with you, but your continued existence forces me to consider the stupidity of your claims. We cannot fight the Zak’de’ron and the Hadarak simultaneously. The first time we had surprise on our side, and we still had to relinquish a lot of territory to the Hadarak. We cannot fight both, and if the Zak’de’ron have truly been planning this for 900,000 years, they will not attack before they have the advantage. If they have only been building for 2 millennia then they cannot challenge us yet, but the seizure of the Uriti is beyond worrisome. They are formidable enough on their own. If they manage to get even one Uriti to obey them, they will have a weapon we will be unable to stop.”

“We share the same nightmare. What would you suggest?”

“You continue to surprise me. You have no cards to play. You have weakened your position and betrayed a very strong ally, even if they aim to become your master. And what do you gain by it? You don’t expect us to rush to fight them, or you would not have brought me here in secret. You know we must keep this information from reaching them, so a war of distraction to keep yourselves alive is not your aim. I will not make the mistake of underestimating you again, for you look to be stupid. Rather you come to me from a position of equity, or co-codominance, and I will grant you that, for we are now both the targets of the Zak’de’ron, and there is parity in that. If there was a permanent truce between us, what then?”

“We would continue to grow stronger, you would continue to fight the Hadarak, and we would not provide the Zak’de’ron as easy of a target. That will not stop them, but it will delay whatever they have planned. Beyond that, you also have Sav, plus a much larger brain, so you tell me?”

“You have attained Sav, but was it earned or stolen?”

“Shared,” Davis answered shamelessly, “and we didn’t get our psionics from the Zak’de’ron. We earned them. Even the tier 4.”

“There are no tier 4,” Mak’to’ran said, suspecting otherwise as soon as he said the words.

“Morgan?”

“Behave yourself,” she said to the Era’tran as her armor began to disconnect from her body and she stepped out…then flew up into the air until she was at eye level with Mak’to’ran.

“Yen’mer,” Mak’to’ran said, wide eyed. Most of the avian V’kit’no’sat possessed it to aid their flight, but Zen’zat were not supposed to have it in their genome.

“The Zak’de’ron put more psionics into the Zen’zat genome than they told you. Your Zen’zat never discovered them, but we have.”

Morgan opened the slits on her hands and shot a beam of fire between them, containing it in place as she smiled at Mak’to’ran. “Not exactly a Dre’mo’don, but it comes in useful.”

“How many?” Mak’to’ran asked.

“We have found many that the V’kit’no’sat have not. A little information from the Zak’de’ron nudged us in that direction, but we had to earn all of them. Some of my people have been training to do just that and nothing else, and they have not been easy to find.”

“How many?” he repeated.

“There are 7 tier 4s that we have discovered so far, 8 tier 3s, 27 tier 2s, and the basic 7. And if you haven’t noticed us using it already, there is also a category for binary abilities that require 2 or more individuals working together. It’s called Pa’no’semak, and if I’m right you have never discovered it.”

The shocks kept coming, but the more the Human spoke the more past mysteries began to reveal themselves.

“We assumed you had fashioned new psionics, or reworked existing ones. It is forbidden for us, but since your heresy is so blatant we assumed you had created them all,” he said, then glanced at Morgan as she finally dropped to the ground and put her armor back on. “And we assumed your armor is what let you fly.”

“We have learned a lot,” Davis said, “because we are not bound by your rules and we are good at what we do. You claim dominance, yet the Zak’de’ron put powers right under your nose and easily accessible, but you never found them. You’ve kept your Zen’zat suppressed, just like you did the Rit’ko’sor, and because of that you never saw their potential. As strong as you are, you are not as strong as you should be. They are probably laughing at your assumed dominance…or maybe not, for you did kill almost all of them.”

“I’m still laughing,” Morgan added with a straight face. “On the inside, at least.”

“If I were not indebted to you for this information, I would teach you a lesson,” Mak’to’ran half snapped, but his anger drained quickly, for the Humans were right. If the Zak’de’ron had put these abilities into the Zen’zat coding, then their own Zen’zat might not have been enhanced as was thought. They had simply earned abilities that the rest of the Zen’zat had never realized they possessed the ascension triggers for, and that was truly humiliating to discover.

“If he wasn’t here, I’d welcome the challenge,” Morgan said, not making any aggressive movements and simply standing protectively beside Davis. “But we’re only here to talk.”

“And you are sure this hangar is secure?”

“Completely,” Morgan answered.

A quick ripple formed in front of Mak’to’ran and shot towards Morgan. To her credit she saw it coming, but she thought it was heading for Davis and made a sidestep to get in front of him. The trailblazer’s guess was wrong, and it slammed into her as she threw up a bioshield in front of the Director, knocking Morgan back like a rag doll and rolling across the floor for some 30 meters before she got her feet under her…all the while leaving Davis standing right where he had been.

“I am here to talk,” Mak’to’ran said, looking down at Davis, “but let’s not forget who holds the greater personal power.”

“Easy, Morgan,” Davis said in English as he felt her getting ready to hit him back. “That was just a love tap.”

She swiped a bit of blood from her nose as she used her Haemra to rapidly heal the break and cut off the flow, for Mak’to’ran’s Jumat blast had hit her with her helmet down and her bioshields over Davis.

“One hit, Sean.”

“One,” he said, then saw a ripple of energy form around her…only it didn’t fire off at Mak’to’ran. Rather it seemed to solidify and get thicker until the point where the spear-like shape shifted to become linked to her arm as she lifted it up.

“Catch,” she said, throwing it towards the Era’tran at a speed far faster than her arm could move. The semi-invisible missile he could not catch with his Lachka, and it hit him in the chest…or would have, if his shields hadn’t flashed up just in time. The spear hit and melted into them, penetrating completely as the remainder of the Jumat energy blew through and knocked him back a step.

“That’s our newest tier 4,” she said as Mak’to’ran looked startled. “It’s called Si’mosa, and is a very nice shield penetrator.”

Mak’to’ran wasn’t angry, rather he was impressed, but he swiped at her with his Lachka anyway, with the Human standing her ground and disintegrating it with a Rentar field.

“Shall I demonstrate these as well?” Mak’to’ran said, flashing his Saroto’kanse’vam into glowing red brilliance.

“Pretty,” Morgan commented, but she didn’t move. “Aren’t those illegal?”

“They were,” Mak’to’ran said, letting them burn for a few more seconds, then he deactivated his talons. “Until I made them legal. We’ve made a few alterations from the old code. The Zak’de’ron no longer rule the V’kit’no’sat, and I know the path of a heretic from personal experience. I do not begrudge you your psionics, but I do wonder how you maintain stability if they are not earned.”

“They are earned,” Davis said, feeling that the impromptu ‘arm wrestling’ was over, “but we have different standards for them. Unlike you, our younglings are not given psionics at birth. Individuals have to earn them.”

“And how did you earn your Sav?”

“I created an empire from scratch,” Davis said simply. “Something the V’kit’no’sat never did. You were fed everything from the Zak’de’ron, so I have a skillset you lack. A very rare skillset.”

“And what does your skillset say about the Zak’de’ron threat?”

“That you and I need to come to an understanding, or our odds of survival drop even further.”

“Be specific. What do you want?”

“You fought them before and won. Not as complete a victory as you thought, but close. You tell me.”

“We only beat them because we were more numerous and the fact that they did not see the betrayal coming. We did not let them gain an advantage, but if they are still alive and preparing to strike us…we will not win,” he said, feeling like a traitor for even saying that.

“I don’t favor our odds against them either. So what do we do?”

Mak’to’ran was silent for nearly a minute before he spoke.

“How sure are you that they do not know of our meeting?”

“They probably know of it through the Urrtren, which is why I am extending the offer of Hadarak intelligence translation. It’s useful to us, but makes for a good excuse for talking to you personally. Only a handful of my people know about this, and there are no computer records of it. You are the only security risk, and a big one at that.”

“The only advantage we have is that they do not know that we know. I will not squander it, but I do not know what we can do. They hold every advantage if they can choose the time and place of battle. We may have time, due to our current size and strength, but the more years that pass so will their strength, for they are not fighting the Hadarak and suffering those losses. They can fully prepare to fight us while we cannot,” Mak’to’ran said as he began to pace again, lost in thought.

So much for Era’tran superior intelligence, Morgan said to Davis telepathically.

Give him a break. He hasn’t had much time to process this. We’ve known they’ve existed for a long time.

I’m still not impressed.

Nice shot, by the way. How’s the nose?

Healing. He caught me off guard. I thought he was aiming for you.

You’re the one who insulted him.

Hard not to, he’s such a big target. What now?

We wait and see if the superior intelligence comes up with something. At the very least, he’s going to be hesitant to throw everything they’ve got at us. He’s going to be looking over his shoulder constantly now.

As we already are.

We had time. Now, if he leaks this, we won’t. We have so many weak spots the Dragons could hit. And I really don’t want to have to fight the Voku.

Neither do I, but we can’t warn Cal-com without the Zak’de’ron being informed. At least not until the V’kit’no’sat leak this out.

You assume they will?

50/50.

And what are we gaining from this?

Hopefully a frenemy, Davis said, watching Mak’to’ran pace. It’s a bad play, but the only one with the potential benefit of victory in the long run.

I still hate them.

And you should, unless they change…and I have a feeling that this one might.

Wanna put some credits on that?

Sure. If we die I don’t have to pay up.

Not that I can use credits for anything anyway. We’re both beyond rich, but the point holds. This is very risky.

I know, Morgan, I know. But if we wait this out it only gets worse in the long run. And the longer the V’kit’no’sat hold out, the more time we have to deal with all our threats.

Unless the Dragons come after us first.

If that happens, you get to become a dragonslayer.

I do like the title, but they’re likely to use their servants for most of the combat. And unless they develop drone technology, they’re not going to use their own ships for anything other than a beatdown. They don’t have the population to spare.

Unless they figure out a way to disrupt our comms.

Please don’t let that happen, Morgan pleaded.

It’s all physics. If they’ve found some corner of it we haven’t yet, there’s a threat. If they haven’t, we’re good. Care to place a wager on that?

You used to be a card shark, weren’t you? Morgan joked.

Yes, I was, Davis admitted, surprising her. But this isn’t a bluff. This is a laying out of our cards so he can see our hand. I’m trusting he’s smart enough to not do something stupid, and an escalated war would be incredibly stupid.

4

November 13, 4883

Jamtren System (Era’tran capitol)

Holloi

Hamob had been in Itaru when he’d received Mak’to’ran’s request for the elder Era’tran to return to Holloi so they could speak in person about the deal he’d made with Star Force concerning the Hadarak, but he knew there was more to it than that. No such talk was necessary, for the terms of the deal were straightforward, but it surprised Hamob when Mak’to’ran refused to meet him at his personal estate. Instead he insisted that Hamob come to a random location on the planet, far from any infrastructure and out in the Dennari Plains.

Mak’to’ran was waiting there when Hamob’s barge arrived and telepathically instructed the pilot to leave until called for. Hamob didn’t say anything, merely scanning the perimeter with his senses until the barge disappeared over the nearby ridgeline.

Why are we here? Hamob finally asked telepathically.

“You may speak freely. There is no one here but us. I have scanned the area thoroughly,” Mak’to’ran said, his voice sounding odd…with Hamob realizing that he was truly afraid of something.

“What is it?”

“We are in trouble, and I do not know what to do. I need your wisdom now more than ever.”

“This is not about the deal with Star Force?”

“The deal has been made, but it was merely a ploy for them to talk to me alone. They needed the cover, for the Urrtren is compromised. Everything transmitted on it unsecure.”

“Who has compromised it?”

Mak’to’ran could barely make eye contact with Hamob, and the elder knew something was seriously wrong.

“Who?” he repeated.

“According to the Humans, whom I do not doubt, we missed a single vessel in the purge. A vessel with one occupant and a cargo hold full of eggs put into stasis.”

Mak’to’ran didn’t say the name, rather looking at Hamob as the elder put the pieces together. Then his eyes went wide.

“The Zak’de’ron?”

“Yes. They are still alive and plotting to destroy us.”

Hamob didn’t seem too shocked, at least not as much as Mak’to’ran had been. “They were the ones who unlocked Terraxis?”

“Yes. Did you know?”

“I had my suspicions. I always felt our victory over them was…incomplete. Why have they not moved against us previously? How long were they in stasis?”

“The Humans stumbled onto their hidden ship two millennia ago, reviving the occupant without knowing what they were doing. Rather than kill them, the Zak’de’ron repaid their naivety by unlocking the planetary defense station and using it to get up to date with what had transpired during his slumber. I do not know if this is correct or subterfuge, for the Zak’de’ron may have lied to the Humans, but there was only one Zak’de’ron remaining. All others had previously been killed. We missed one ship, Hamob. One ship. Why were we so convinced we’d gotten them all?”

“I do not know, but my gut tells me we had intelligence of their positions. It would have to be something fiercely efficient, but if we got all their ships but one, then it proved extremely effective.”

“The vessel was not one of theirs,” Mak’to’ran continued. “They showed me what they look like. It is their technology, but the design has been changed. I did not recognize it at first. Could such a simple alteration fool our ancestors?”

“Unlikely, but there are a few remaining who could answer that question.”

“I am telling you this because I trust the fate of the V’kit’no’sat on your loyalty. If we know of the Zak’de’ron but they still think they are hidden, then it is a small advantage, and one I do not want to give away…”

“But you have no idea what to do to fight them?”

“Before we had them in the open. Now they are in shadow and will not reveal themselves until a time of their choosing…and they have the Uriti the Knights of Quenar stole from us. They attacked and stole it from them, unwittingly leaving a single survivor that reported back. They assume their theft has gone unnoticed.”

Hamob’s demeanor changed greatly. He might have subconsciously suspected there was a chance that the Zak’de’ron were still alive out there somewhere, even if just as an academic matter, but this completely floored him and Mak’to’ran finally saw the same fear in his eyes that was uncomfortably seething in him.

“It gets worse, my friend. The Chixzon are not destroyed either. The Humans would not be specific, for they fear us obtaining the ability to control the Hadarak, but the Chixzon are in some form of stasis and spread across the galaxy, waiting for some trigger to awaken them. I believe Star Force found one, and they admit they now have the full database of Chixzon knowledge, which is how they know of their plan. They are seeking out and destroying all they can find, but they claim they will never discover them all. And to make matters worse, the Zak’de’ron have mind raided an elite Human and stolen most of Star Force’s secrets, including the existence of the Chixzon. So they may very well have the ability to command the Uriti.”

Hamob was silent for a long moment, but the elder Era’tran quickly regained his composure and focused on the problem at hand. “Why did the Humans share this?”

“Because they recognize the threat to us both, and they value our mission against the Hadarak. I spoke with their leader, Director Davis, personally. The trailblazer Morgan-063 preferred to let us die and take their chances, but their leader did not. He does not know how to fight these two threats, but argued that a resumption of our war would be folly.”

“They want to ally with us against the Zak’de’ron and Chixzon?”

“They want the Rim and to leave us the Core. Then we fight separately without diminishing each other’s forces.”

“That is all they suggested? It is blunt pragmatism, but if they chose to betray the Zak’de’ron’s confidence I would have thought they would have a grander plan.”

“Perhaps they do. There was much about the Chixzon they were not sharing, but they offered their knowledge of the Zak’de’ron freely. They have met with them on a handful of occasions, and most recently they were granted a jumpline sensor that even we do not possess. In compensation for the mind raid. They wish to keep the Humans as their allies, but the Humans have seen through their ploy. They will only be treated well so long as they serve, and the Humans will not accept a master, so they know their own throats will be slit when it becomes advantageous for the Zak’de’ron to do so.”

“There is the wisdom I was expecting from them,” Hamob commented, pulsing outward with his Pefbar again, checking for security threats. They should have been having this conversation telepathically, for such things were virtually impossible to intercept unless the recorder was situated between the two Era’tran, but apparently Mak’to’ran didn’t wish to admit such inferiority. On Holloi, of all places, they should be safe. And if they couldn’t hold an open conversation in the wilderness on their most sacred world, then the Era’tran were already lost.

“I do not believe they could possibly be ready to strike after two millennia, but we have only their word that the ship that Star Force discovered was their sole survivor. They are out there, with sufficient strength to ambush and totally destroy the Knights of Quenar fleet that took the Uriti from us. That does not give me comfort that we have a great deal of time. How much of our infrastructure can we replace?”

“If you’re referring to the Era’tran, we’ve already quietly replaced 7%, but we don’t have equivalent systems designed yet for most of the rest, including the Urrtren.”

“We have to develop a secure line of communication. If they can monitor it, they can also shut it down on a whim.”

Hamob flinched, not having figured that out yet, but Mak’to’ran had had months to go over the possibilities.

“If they want to break us down before they attack, they can do it now,” he warned. “We have to established a secondary communications grid and guard it. Star Force said the Zak’de’ron have not been able to breach their systems remotely, and that they have not tried physical contact with their grid out of respect. Again, the Zak’de’ron could be lying, but even the mention that they would attempt to hack a grid using physical contact means anything we produce must be guarded or they will literally rebuild it in order to bypass our security, and their cloaking technology is superior to ours.”

“Did the Humans tell you that as well?” Hamob asked.

“They did. They cannot penetrate their stealth, even with the Neavi sensor technology that they stole from us.”

“How?” Hamob asked.

“From a wrecked scout ship. They have their own version, and it will not detect the Zak’de’ron ships. They claim a defense against it, but that defense also means the Zak’de’ron cannot use the sensor to track other ships.”

“Why have the Zak’de’ron confided so much information in Star Force? Why trust them at all?”

“I believe they are a useful tool against us…as well as a taunt. If we were able to conquer them and pull the information from their minds, it would be a way of letting us know the Zak’de’ron were still out there. If we didn’t conquer them, then they would know they found a trustworthy ally. They can monitor the Urrtren, so if they were ever found out they would know. That has not happened, and cannot happen now.”

“So they were testing the Humans, and pushed that test too far with the mind raid?”

“Yes, but something else happened that the Humans would not share. Something they say the Zak’de’ron are also unaware of. Something that has shown their true colors. Perhaps it has to do with the Chixzon knowledge. Maybe something they could understand about them that we cannot. I do not know, but they now hate the Zak’de’ron and know they are not in a position to fight them…but they are preparing for the Chixzon and have warned me that they might attempt a poison attack against us. One that the Kich’a’kat would not be able to heal.”

That also floored Hamob, and he was becoming all too familiar with the emotion he hadn’t experienced in over a million years.

“They will come at us sideways. That is what they said. They will not attack us strength against strength. They will use guile and intermediaries. Star Force fears such an attack and has been developing immunities for the biological weapons already created by the Chixzon, but they warn they could create new ones easily.”

“They did create the Hadarak,” Hamob agreed, which was a feat that V’kit’no’sat biology could not match.

“They also acknowledged that they could theoretically create new Uriti, but would not, for it would involve torture of a captured Hadarak. I do not think the Zak’de’ron would be so easily blunted.”

“Star Force can create new Uriti?” Hamob said, again floored.

“In theory, yes. The Chixzon knowledge did not give the method, but they have figured it out none the less.”

“If the Zak’de’ron also possess the knowledge of the Chixzon…then we are at risk of a biological attack from them as well.”

“They will show their face at some point. They will not be content to destroy us from the shadows. It will be different than the Chixzon.”

“You are right, I believe, but it does not mean they will not weaken us with it. I understand your panic now. Is there any other bad news you have for me?”

“The Zen’zat coding contains additional psionics that we are unaware of. The Humans did not fashion new ones. The Zak’de’ron put them in there for those who are worthy to discover. Apparently we have failed to measure up, yet Star Force has at least in one case for each. Then they share what they discover. There is a fourth tier and a linked set called Pa’no’semak that we never even suspected.”

Hamob lowered his head in shame. “We are truly the inferior, and if they have obtained Chixzon knowledge we are even more so.”

“What can we do, Hamob? I see no way to do more than delay our destruction, even if we abandoned the Hadarak front. And we definitely can’t fight the Zak’de’ron and the Hadarak at the same time.”

“Did the Humans have an estimated time for the Chixzon to return? They have been gone for millions of years, correct?”

“6 million since their defeat. They say it is growing close, but they do not know exactly. Perhaps another million years, if we are lucky.”

“And if we are not?”

“They could already be awakened now. Whatever mechanism used, it will not be the same for all across the galaxy.”

“Staggered release, in case one group fails to survive,” Hamob theorized. “It seems we were not the only ones who mistakenly believed we wiped out our foe, but six million years of stasis seems implausible.”

“I do not believe it is simple stasis, Hamob. But rather something more clever.”

“Granted. But if the Zak’de’ron have their knowledge, will they seek them out and destroy them before they can revive?”

“Only if we are lucky. Right now I can count on nothing as assured beyond the Zak’de’ron’s wrath.”

“This is not a threat the Era’tran alone can face. We must consult others.”

“We cannot breach security, Hamob. We can take no chances. The Elder Conclave cannot be informed or the Zak’de’ron will know instantly.”

“Not the Conclave, but there are other elders who we can trust. Not in all races, but in many. If we are going to find a way to survive, we need to work together.”

“Can you assemble them without suspicion?”

“I will use couriers so no record is on the Urrtren, and I will use genetic locks on the message orbs. I will summon those I trust, and we will seek a path forward. At this point, I have no answers for you, Mak’to’ran. I feel this is due payment for our collective arrogance and assumption of dominance where none truly existed, but I am at a loss at how to proceed. Have you not come up with any possibilities in the past months?”

“We cannot find them, so we cannot fight them. They did not reveal their location to the Humans, and we rely on the Urrtren too heavily. Without it, we are not an empire. We are widespread and easy targets that cannot be sufficiently defended against a threat of this magnitude. We must have our eyes to see and move, and the Zak’de’ron can blind us at will. I have no way to count this other than to build our own network anew, and that will take an enormous amount of time.”

“And will give away our knowledge of a problem.”

“We finally have a small means of defeating the Hadarak after all these years, and now we are faced with our destruction from two other threats we thought were long gone. It seems our efforts are being rewarded with plagues.”

“Our territory…” Hamob said, realizing another problem.

“Is too spread out,” Mak’to’ran finished, already having been down this logic path. “We can’t consolidate our strength. We either fight as an empire, or we die split apart. The Zak’de’ron sabotaged us from the very beginning.”

5

February 3, 4885

Attiov System (Unclaimed Territory)

3rd planet

Hamob was the last to land on the uninhabited planet, due to the location being almost opposite Holloi across the galactic core, but there were 34 drop pods waiting for him on the planet with their starship transports ostensibly cloaked somewhere in orbit. When he walked down the boarding ramp onto the light gravity of the hot and very dry world he saw that the others were waiting for him…one for each drop pod.

They were 34 elders from 34 different races. Ones that Hamob knew could be trusted on his life, and in this case, on the life of the empire. There were many others who should be here, but he couldn’t be absolutely sure about their intentions and he had scratched them off the list for even the slightest doubt, leaving these 34 peers of his who had come on nothing more than a cryptic message from him.

They trusted him as much as he trusted them, but none of them knew the importance of what he was about to tell them.

Mak’to’ran was not here. He didn’t need to be and his movements were the most well known in V’kit’no’sat territory, so having a clandestine meeting outside V’kit’no’sat territory made more sense if he was absent, and like Hamob, these other elders were used to moving around very low key and avoiding the public. Too many young minds were an irritation to them, so they kept to themselves and nudged their races one way or another from the shadows, leaving the day to day operations to lesser minds.

Is the planet secure? Hamob telepathically asked as he walked underneath a huge outcropping of rock that stood nearly 300 meters high. It was more than a half mile long, tapering down to a ravine with a series of caves in it, but all the V’kit’no’sat were outside underneath the overhang while their drop pods were landed around the perimeter and out in the open. No one should have been in the system to observe them, but the overhang added just a little more privacy from anyone passing by overhead.

“We are alone,” Yaquik confirmed, yet his armor was fully deployed save for his helmet. The others had theirs fully retracted into jewelry mode, but the Hjar’at was, as expected, the most on edge of them all where security matters were concerned. “What do you have for us?”

“Our deaths,” Hamob said bluntly. “The Zak’de’ron were not fully destroyed. At least one survived, and they are rebuilding with vengeance in mind.”

He could sense the shock evident the telepathic auras of the others, but none of them panicked, nor disbelieved him. They knew the gravity of what this entailed, and some had probably suspected as he had, that they’d been too lucky to find all the Zak’de’ron during the war. It was the timing, some 882,000 years later, that was so surprising.

“Star Force has contact with them, and they just confided in Mak’to’ran. They stumbled onto the Zak’de’ron approximately 2,000 years ago and released one from his stasis along with a large number of eggs. The Zak’de’ron did not kill them, but befriended them and unlocked the planetary defense station on Terraxis. Beyond that they did little, and Star Force’s victories have been their own, but the Zak’de’ron have been trying to exert increased influence to the point of stealing the memories of a highly placed official. Those memories contain information on the Chixzon, where Star Force obtained that knowledge, and the fact that the Chixzon are not dead either.”

“We have two superpowers that will be coming for our throats in due time. The Chixzon status is undetermined. Star Force would not comment much on it, fearing we might claim the knowledge they possess, but the Chixzon faked their deaths then hid in a stasis of their own long enough for the galaxy to forget them. When they return, they plan to start anew and we stand in their way. The Zak’de’ron threat is the nearer, but if they have obtained the knowledge of the Chixzon then we are in an even worse position. And we have been told that the Uriti we discovered, and that the Knights of Quenar took from us, was taken from them. It never arrived in Star Force territory, and much belated a single survivor crept back to tell the story of who took it from them.”

“The Zak’de’ron,” Ummva said, the Qua’cho’s expression deathly cold.

“Yes. Using ships unlike they previously possessed, but it was them. They slaughtered the Knights of Quenar and took the Uriti. Star Force was not supposed to know this, and they have come to the conclusion that the Zak’de’ron have no intention of being anything other than their master…and if not master, their executioner. They fear what is coming, from both the Zak’de’ron and later the Chixzon, but it is the Zak’de’ron that have prompted them to confide in us. They state we are still enemies, but they have no wish to weaken either of us to the point where the greater threats can step in and take advantage of the situation. They wish a full, permanent truce where we hold to our borders and leave the Rim to them as we both prepare for the nightmare to come.”

“There it is, my friends. Neither I nor Mak’to’ran have a course of action for us. I need your wisdom and experience, as well as your absolute secrecy. So long as we know of the Zak’de’ron and they are unaware of it, we have at least one advantage. Star Force told us that the Zak’de’ron have full control over the Urrtren, thus the couriers I sent to fetch you. I wish there were more, but you are the only ones I fully trust. What are we going to do about this fiasco?” Hamob said angrily. Angry at their previous failure to destroy the Zak’de’ron, along with their arrogance for assuming they’d gotten them all.

“So the Terraxis sponsor was not the J’gar,” Yaniel noted with shame.

“I had always suspected it was you,” a Kar’ka named Bennak said to the Oso’lon.

“Was the recent war the Zak’de’ron’s doing as well?” the Voro’nam Keesa asked.

“I do not know,” Hamob answered. “But the time line fits. If they have access to the Urrtren, they may well have engineered it.”

“Or pushed our own distrust,” Yaquik added. “We were at each other’s throats even before Terraxis.”

“They’ve been playing us for fools,” the Wass’mat said, being the largest of all those present here. Even slightly larger than the Oso’lon.

“No longer,” Hamob insisted. “We must find a way to survive. I do not believe we can kill them now. Not all of them. And I must now ask what was forbidden before. Do any of you know why we thought we had got them all the first time?”

“None of them know,” the tiny Ari’tat said. “But I do.”

Yaniel rotated his long neck down towards the meter-tall V’kit’no’sat. “You were not senior leadership at the time. How do you know?”

“Because Ari’tat like secrets. The more of them we can acquire the better, but we share amongst ourselves. I know how it was done, and why we assumed they were all dead, but you’re not going to like the answer.”

“Something vile?” Yaquik suspected.

“Yes. The leadership who arranged it were all killed during the war, but not all at the hands of the Zak’de’ron. The others were quietly executed when others found out what they had done. One of the executioners involved was an Ari’tat. He intercepted and destroyed a vessel carrying Neamri, and was supposed to not make record of it. He did not, but he passed the memory along. It is vague now, after so many years, but I possess it. It does not appear in any database, however.”

“Neamri executed?” Hamob asked, shocked. The J’gar had been one of the V’kit’no’sat’s greatest leaders.

“He and a small group of others developed mind rippers…and used them to steal the Zak’de’ron’s secrets. We knew where they had everything, where they would fall back to, what their true population was…everything. Though apparently they didn’t tear apart the right ones, or perhaps additional plans were formulated during the war. All their ships had a location tag, so the Zak’de’ron could identify others even when cloaked. The tag allows them to communicate too without giving themselves away. The tags were stolen, so we could track all of their ships. It was just a matter of setting up a detection grid. All the ships that fled to the rim were tabulated, and when we destroyed all on the list, we knew we had them all.”

“Mind rippers?” the Tev’nan Faer roared, his starburst-like armored spikes erupting in energy as his anger spilled over into his Saroto’kanse’vam, and the same was true for the Wass’mat and the Hjar’at.

“Yes,” the Ari’tat confirmed. “The technology was destroyed along with those who produced it.”

“Did the Zak’de’ron know?” Hamob asked.

Wenni shrugged his tiny shoulders. “Unknown. Even if not, they may have suspected. We knew everything.”

“Then why do we not also possess their technology?” a Fi’ti named Vono asked, being the only aquatic here, though he was actually a hybrid aquatic/avian that had flown from his dropship over to where he was uncomfortably perched on the ground where his shield were holding in a moist layer of atmosphere around his smooth, aquatic skin.

“We obtained massive amounts of data…but we also recovered massive amounts of their technology. We simply cannot understand it. The mind ripper took information. It cannot take understanding.”

Hamob kept silent as more questions were asked of what the Ari’tat knew. He listened, but his shame was consuming him. He had known killing the Zak’de’ron had been a miscalculation, but now that he knew how they had done it he was sickened by it. They didn’t deserve their victory, and had violated one of the most basic principles the V’kit’no’sat had been formed upon.

That being that strength reigns, and it was why only the Zen’zat had Ikrid blocks. All of the V’kit’no’sat races were required to have strong minds to keep others out, and if you forced your way into one it was a deep breach of protocol, but tolerated in some aspects because of the superiority it required.

But a mind ripper didn’t require strength. It was a wicked technology banned long ago, even for use against races outside the V’kit’no’sat. It slowly took apart a mind, replacing the biological components with mechanical ones and copying the data they contained, gradually tearing the individual apart piece by piece until nothing was left but a body with a machine mind left inside. It was a horrific way of torturing someone to death, for there was no way to defend against it. A mind ripper also was equipped with psionic inhibitors, so you didn’t even have a chance to use your Lachka to fight the Kich’a’kat tendrils inside you…not that anyone would have actually been able to win that war, but not even having a chance to fight back was abhorrent.

If the V’kit’no’sat had done that to the elite Zak’de’ron Wenni was saying had been mind ripped, then it explained how they knew so much and were able to ambush the Zak’de’ron so effectively, but knowing that their victory had been based on this abomination made Hamob ashamed to have been on the winning side.

Others were voicing the same thing, with the Ari’tat simply summing it all up by saying that was why they had been executed.

“What have we become?” the Bez named Gavi asked.

“The Zak’de’ron built the V’kit’no’sat,” Hamob answered. “We have not had a clear path forward since we betrayed them. We fight the Hadarak, but many do not truly know why. We were told to do so, and they obey, even though those who gave the order are long gone.”

“So we thought,” Yaniel added.

“Even if they offered reconciliation, which I doubt, would any of our races accept it? The Era’tran would not.”

“Why?” Gavi asked curiously.

“For the same reason Star Force betrayed them. They will be the master or they will be the executioner. There is no parity with them. They treat those that serve them well, but it is always servitude.”

“Do you remember the Chani?” Yaniel asked.

“No, I do not,” Hamob admitted.

“Does anyone?” the Oso’lon repeated.

“I do,” Yaquik finally answered. “It was removed from the database, but the Hjar’at along with the Oso’lon were the ones who destroyed them.”

“The Chani were a race that the joined the V’kit’no’sat…briefly,” Yaniel explained. “They did not do everything the Zak’de’ron wished them to do, and we were told they were trying to steal advancements without earning their keep. That was a lie. They contributed as much to the Hadarak front as any other, especially considering they were never fully advanced. They wanted to fight, and sacrificed many of their people before they were ready. The Zak’de’ron told them not to, but they did anyway. They did not want to sit and wait to build strength, but it was not that alone that doomed them. It was the idea that the Zak’de’ron were not fully in control, that their orders were merely suggestions.”

“The Zak’de’ron ordered them destroyed, and we did so,” Yaquik said, though he hadn’t been alive at the time. “I know of the story, but it was more than 4 million years ago, before many of the current races were included. It was one of the primary reasons the Hjar’at agreed to free ourselves from their servitude.”

“When was the first race annexed?” a Bav’tor named Charbij asked.

“It is hard to say, for there are no Brat’mar here to ask,” Yaniel answered. “They were the first I know of. The Oso’lon were the third. The Zak’de’ron did not reveal their interaction until after they founded the empire with us and the J’gar, but they were elevated first and brought in later. There’s not much information available from back then. I suspect a lot was altered or erased. My best guess is between 4 and 5 million years ago.”

“The Era’tran joined 3.2 million years ago,” Hamob said evenly as more of the dark past continued to surface. “But I have never heard of a race being eliminated, only culled.”

“I know of 3,” the Oso’lon answered. “Long ago. I think the Zak’de’ron got better picking their candidates, though they always kept some races in their personal servitude beyond the V’kit’no’sat.”

“Why did we not kill them as well?” Gavi asked.

“They were irrelevant,” Wenni said. “They were not harboring Zak’de’ron, so they did not matter. None were advanced to our level, and those beyond our borders were left alone. Those within were killed, in some cases, and ignored in others.”

“What else do you know?” Hamob asked.

“A lot from recent history, little from ancient times. As bad as the Zak’de’ron are for us, I am interested in this Chixzon threat. Does Star Force believe they will reclaim control of the Uriti?”

“They do not. They claim to have developed enough of a relationship with them that they would side with the Humans if given conflicting orders. They also say they will not try, for they feel the Uriti are a failed experiment. The Humans warn of biological weapons and other indirect methods of our destruction.”

“Does Star Force possess these weapons?”

“I do not know.”

“How did we not gather that when we conquered their homeworld?” a Zep’sha named Tio asked, looking almost identical to the Oso’lon, save for the length and angle of her head and tail, which were much longer and flatter.

“They have been very good at hiding their secrets,” Yaquik said with a growl. “And we have never captured one of their senior leadership.”

“Their Director spoke to Mak’to’ran personally,” Hamob added. “They are taking this matter very seriously. The question is, what are we to do about it?”

6

“We have no choice,” a Deo’mat named Jaxen demanded several hours later. “We cannot tell the others, and if they do not know they will never accept Star Force’s existence. They will demand they are destroyed, as they are now. They are barely obeying the truce as it is.”

Hamob looked at the Ankylosaurus, knowing he was probably right. “What would happen if we did? If we told the entire empire the Zak’de’ron were still alive. Worst case scenario?”

“They could shut down the Urrtren,” Keesa said gravely. “We have to assume they have that power and not just the ability to eavesdrop. If they completely shut it down, they wouldn’t need a large fleet to kill us. We’d be blind to what was happening, separated, and they could cut us down one region after another. The V’kit’no’sat cannot operate without the Urrtren. We rely on it too heavily.”

“Our territory is too spread out,” Hamob agreed. “They mandated that long ago, and our worlds are spread far and wide. Even if we organized regional clusters between races, the distances are still too vast for couriers. The Zak’de’ron could isolate and kill us at their will. What else?”

“We would hunt them to extinction…again,” Gavi added sarcastically, looking slightly down on Hamob from his greater height.

“We would try,” Yaquik added. “But we would fail. They are hiding now, and I do not know how to find them all. They would evade, and we could never eliminate them. We have no ability to end this. They will forever be hunting us.”

“Unless we’re destroyed,” a Ranto’non called Plaszo noted. “We are the easier to kill, for we are not hiding anything.”

“The Rit’ko’sor did,” Wenni pointed out. “Who knows what our races are hiding from each other now?”

“I will tell you now,” Hamob revealed, “that the Era’tran have been working for some time to find replacements for Zak’de’ron technology, with limited success. We recognized that we were not the masters of our own equipment, for we had simply copied what came before. We have a few small replacements, but we are still dependent on Zak’de’ron technology and software. And until we free ourselves of it, we have no idea how much real control they have over us.”

“Are our warships at risk of being compromised?” Yaquik asked worriedly.

“I do not know. I have studied every component and there appears to be no coding that would allow them to take control or interfere with them, but the fact that we can’t write our own coding to such a level does concern me.”

“How much of a loss would we take if we ripped out all those systems and built our own replacements?” Yaniel asked.

“Power would be the same, for the raw technology we understand, but the efficiency of targeting and navigation and other automated processes would decrease by more than 20%.”

“That is preferable to our guns turning against our own fleet,” Yaquik said angrily. “Why have you not mentioned this before?”

“Because I didn’t know the Zak’de’ron were still around to mess with it…and they never used such capabilities during the war, so I doubt such things exist. However, I’d like to be fully producing our own software.”

“They didn’t crash the Urrtren either,” a Tido’cor named Vokey pointed out. “One would think they would have then if they could.”

“How did we kill them if they could read everything we sent through the Urrtren back then?” Yaniel asked.

“Has the coding quietly changed since then?” an I’rar’et named Ollo asked dangerously.

“I have nothing to compare to,” Hamob said, not having thought of that possibility.

“If they’ve been active for the past two millennia, and have cloaking technology that we can’t track, they may be setting us up for a massive fall and taking their time to quietly do it. Maybe they didn’t need a failsafe in the Urrtren back then, but what’s to stop them from making one now?”

“They understand those systems far better than us,” Vono warned.

“They had no clue we would ever betray them,” Yaniel reminded the other elders. “Their ego could not comprehend the possibility that we could ever pull it off. That was one reason why they were taken off guard.”

“We also attacked simultaneously when we set up the blockades,” Hamob added. “There wasn’t a lot of useful information they could have gotten from the Urrtren anyway.”

“And we were using those back channels to communicate,” Yaquik noted. “I don’t think we ever stopped during the war. That could be why.”

“Everything sensitive went via courier then,” Keesa remembered. “But I do not believe we can fight a war like that now. Not when we don’t know where they are or how many ships they have.”

“No, we cannot,” Hamob agreed. “The only advantage we have is that they don’t know we are aware of their presence. Do we gain more by concealing that or revealing it?”

“We should tell everyone,” Yaquik said firmly. “Even if it does us no good. They deserve to know.”

“They have a Uriti now,” Yaniel argued. “If they can crash the Urrtren, and if they can control the Uriti, they can use it to crush systems before help could arrive, then flee before they get into too large of a fight. A Uriti means no long blockades and fleet engagements. Just a short, very lethal fight to break through planetary defenses, then easy bombardment of the surface. They will eradicate us, not conquer us. And if we have no Urrtren, there is little to stop them from cloaking a transport vessel and disappearing with the Uriti again. We are facing a nightmare situation if we lose communications.”

“One Uriti could destroy us all, given sufficient time and fleet backing,” Wenni said sadly. “The Harthur will not work against them.”

“And we can’t pool ships in every system,” Yaniel added. “Itaru would be safe, as would the other major systems, but the bulk of our territory could be assaulted quickly and efficiently before we even knew of the attack to send reinforcements.”

“Or they could attack, let us reinforce, then hit the system that the reinforcements left,” Yaquik warned. “We have to have a functioning Urrtren.”

“Which is why we have to keep this a secret until we can build another one,” Hamob said with finality.

“Agreed,” Yaniel said along with a chorus of telepathic pings gesturing the same.

“Won’t they realize what we’re doing?” Gavi wondered.

“I do not believe we could keep it secret for long,” Faer suggested.

“Upgrades,” Vono said, seeing the perfect subterfuge. “Incorporating the Neavi sensor. We add redundant ones to those systems that already have multiples, not discarding those that exist, as well as expanding out into currently empty systems to widen the grid. We have a Uriti on the loose now, so we need more vision. We don’t destroy or deactivate the existing ones, but we use our own software on the new ones. Hopefully Hamob has some functioning models by now?”

“They are less useful, but functional. The Era’tran have already built several units.”

“Speed?” Yaniel asked.

“Unchanged. It’s the data sifting that is lacking. If we only use them as transfers and let the current Urrtren do the sifting, I agree that we can quietly string together an emergency grid within the existing one. Civilian traffic would still be shut down, but basic communications would remain. Vono, you are beyond wise.”

“We use such relays in bad water, so it is not such a foreign concept to an aquatic.”

“Then our official reason for building them will be the Uriti?” Yaniel asked.

“And the Knights of Quenar,” Yaquik added. “Their cloaking technology is formidable, and has even defeated the Neavi sensor. We cannot allow other races to move freely through our territory unnoticed. The Knights of Quenar will be a wake up call, and even if we cannot track them, we need to track other developing races that are gaining cloaking technology. Once stung, the V’kit’no’sat have a history of hitting back, and this will be no different. We will shore up the Urrtren with added Neavi, and expand it as well. We must get a better grip on our domain, and these Neavi relays must have massive capability. Yet another reason why we won’t use full Urrtren systems.”

“Supplements and scouts, I like it,” Tweva, a Kret’net, declared.

“So we play for time,” Hamob finalized. “And that means not telling the others, unfortunately. What then do we do about the pressure to fully attack Star Force? It will be a costly war no matter how it plays out, and right now they are an ally against the Zak’de’ron with a fleet of Uriti. I would prefer not to waste that.”

“They are still a threat to us,” Yaquik reminded him. “A small one, but given time it will only grow larger.”

“That’s what we need,” Gavi argued. “The more powerful they become, the bigger a problem they are to the Zak’de’ron. One Uriti compared to the 74 that Star Force has. The Zak’de’ron cannot ignore that, no matter how much they hate us.”

“I doubt they care,” Yaniel said, siding with Yaquik. “The Uriti are of no use unless you have an identified system to smash, and we do not know where the Zak’de’ron systems are. Even if we did, I would expect them to flee. So long as they are the hunters the Uriti are not a threat to them. They only become a threat when the Zak’de’ron try to reclaim dominance and hold fixed territory. They will come for us first, not Star Force.”

“What are you saying, Yaniel?”

“I’m saying that we should use what time we have, get rid of Star Force now, then prepare for the Zak’de’ron. Two millennia is not enough time to build enough ships. Not on the number they need to reveal themselves to us. We have time and Star Force is our enemy. We need to eliminate them now, and steal the Uriti if we can. Not to mention whatever Chixzon knowledge they possess if we cannot find a source of our own.”

“Mak’to’ran will not agree to that.”

“He does not hold all decision making power,” the Oso’lon reminded Hamob. “The question before us is not what Mak’to’ran wants, but what is best for the V’kit’no’sat. We face our destruction, not just from the V’kit’no’sat, but from Star Force, the Knights of Quenar, the Chixzon…we have never had so many technologically powerful rivals all in contention simultaneously. The Zak’de’ron are the greatest threat, and even if it was them alone I would be fearful. We must eliminate one of these immediately. We cannot find the Knights of Quenar, nor do we know how large they are. The Zak’de’ron are hidden and the Chixzon might not have been revived yet. The choice before us is clear. If we wait, our opposition grows stronger on all fronts.”

“We are growing stronger as well now that the population limits have been eased,” Wenni pointed out. “Maintaining the least combat while we build is preferable. Star Force will gut our fleets, but they cannot take many of our worlds even if they tried. The defender has the advantage here, even with the Uriti.”

“So long as the Urrtren stands,” Yaquik reminded the little Ari’tat.

“All the more reason to wait while we build a grid the Zak’de’ron cannot take down with a single command.”

“It must be Star Force first,” the Lir’nen Aron agreed. “I do not like what it will cost us, but they are the only threat we know we can eliminate. Any secrets we can steal will be a bonus, but we must take them out.”

“How do we deal with their Uriti?” Gavi asked.

“We do not fight them. We only attack systems were they are not. If they arrive, we withdraw. We do not invade the surface any more than necessary to bring down shield generators. We obliterate from orbit and do not worry about the scraps. We hit fast and move on before the Uriti can come to us.”

“No,” Tweva said angrily, “we do the exact opposite.”

“Leaving them alive is too great a threat.”

“I agree with you on that, but your methods are wrong. We should avoid the Uriti, but we do not bombard. We do not eradicate. In fact, we remove their death mark entirely…and absorb them.”

Aron looked at the Kret’net oddly. “To what gain?”

“We preserve most of their people, and their subjugated races, and add their strength to our own. Mak’to’ran wants that, by their choice. If they refuse, we make them join by force.”

“They would not use their Uriti against captive populations,” Yaniel added thoughtfully. “We could take their worlds without worry of bombardment beyond shield generators. They would have to fight on the ground to retake them, and their civilians would be the living shield we need to forestall the wrath of the Uriti.”

“You would risk much on your assessment of what they would or would not do,” Vey said icily.

The Oso’lon looked down on the very flat and wide Ansot. “They maintain the loyalty of their servants via a strict code of behavior that they have not violated once during our destruction of their prime worlds.”

“We didn’t take their worlds then,” Wenni pointed out. “It is an unknowable situation.”

“I do not approve, but I concur,” Hamob interjected. “They will not kill their own people in order to get to us.”

“Exactly,” Yaniel pointed out. “We can take their smaller worlds before a Uriti can arrive, then if we hold them the Uriti can only blockade. They do not have the precision firepower to not kill specific targets. Star Force would have to mount a surface attack to remove us.”

“They could still claim orbit and their warfleet could do the pinpoint shooting,” Gavi noted.

“And we can bring our fleet down to the surface if that occurs,” Yaquik countered. “They will not shoot down our ships so they can fall and crush their own people. I am liking this strategy…plus it will make the arrogant left among us realize that we are not the superior here. We will treat Star Force as a worthy opponent, not vermin to be eradicated. And perhaps if we stop blasting every building they possess we will have more luck in plucking their secrets from them.”

“The Era’tran will not take part in this,” Hamob said angrily. “We have the Hadarak to fight as well, or have you forgotten?”

“I never forget,” Yaquik responded with a growl.

“We have to fight them while fighting Star Force, the Zak’de’ron, and everyone else that comes to join the cataclysm before us. Do we pull our fleets away and let the Hadarak spread or do we try to fight with less than our full forces against the Zak’de’ron?”

“All the more reason to eliminate Star Force quickly, before the Zak’de’ron are ready to hit us,” Yaniel argued.

“That doesn’t answer the question of what do we do when the Zak’de’ron do strike?”

“Or what we do about the Hadarak if we lose the Urrtren?” Wenni added.

Hamob saw the body language of almost everyone change, save for him. That painful thought had already occurred to him.

“We cannot hold the line without the Urrtren,” he said flatly. “If we are blinded, Hadarak will be able to get past our lines before we can identify them and rally a response. They won’t penetrate too far, but it will take more ships searching to maintain that. We will lose territory, at the minimum, even if we make the maximum effort.”

“We abandon our fight with the Hadarak,” Yaniel said softly, “or we end it permanently with our defeat. We cannot fight them and the Zak’de’ron simultaneously. We have no choice, as repugnant as it is. And the situation only becomes worse if we have to contend with Star Force and the Zak’de’ron simultaneously.”

“Do we? Or can we come to an arrangement with them?” Gavi pressed.

“Based on what? Even if we can, what do we tell the empire that will satisfy them?”

“We cannot fight a war based on a lie,” Hamob said firmly. “None of us should die for a lie.”

“Please tell me another solution, for I do not see one,” Yaniel requested.

“We ally with Star Force in some measure, even if it is just one of mutual exclusion, and we both prepare for what is coming. As for those needing to fight…I do not care.”

“That will not stop them.”

“The Era’tran will not go. Is your race so belligerent they cannot obey a stand-down order?”

“They must understand the order. Blind loyalty to Mak’to’ran is not as much of a virtue as you believe.”

“Will they not take your word for it?”

“They might, but I believe we should eliminate Star Force for a variety of reasons. This war against the Zak’de’ron is not going to be soon or quick, though I do worry about the Uriti in the short term. They are playing a long game, and if Star Force has both our technological knowledge and that of the Chixzon, I fear them growing too fast and too far. We cannot let another rival of such magnitude come to be. They have been allowed to grow so much already, and I fault Mak’to’ran for that. He should have sent more ships initially and crushed them before they could rise to this level.”

“If he had, we would not know about the Zak’de’ron now,” Yaquik argued.

“An accidental benefit.”

“We all underestimated Star Force,” Wenni admitted. “But we crushed their capitol and tore through the heart of their territory. No one suspected they could rebuild so fast or so repetitively. Nor did we know they possessed Chixzon knowledge, which probably aided them greatly. And we also did not know they could use the Uriti, for they did not for such a long time. Regardless, I do not blame Mak’to’ran. He saved us from destroying ourselves, and his focus is rightly on the Hadarak now. Star Force doesn’t want a fight. We should just leave them alone…let them have the Rim, all of it if they want, while we focus on the Hadarak and the Zak’de’ron. As you said, that is more than we can handle already.”

“If we do not destroy them now, we will regret it later. I can promise you that. They are not our ally. Not after all we have done to them.”

“Which is why we absorb them,” Tweva reiterated. “So we can gain something from this heresy as we stamp it out.”

“Agreed,” Bennak said with a nod of his long neck.

“You will need our full strength to destroy them,” Hamob warned. “And the Era’tran will not help.”

“We cannot risk another civil war over this,” Wenni said, vexed. “Or we will not need the Zak’de’ron. We will fall apart before they even strike us.”

“Can we beat Star Force without abandoning the Hadarak front?” Yaniel asked, glancing at Yaquik.

“I believe so.”

“Easily?”

“Fairly, but we will be vulnerable elsewhere should we be hit by the Knights of Quenar. We still do not know how many of them there are.”

“They ran from us,” Hamob reminded them. “I do not think they are looking for a fight. Only the remaining Uriti. And you will not defeat Star Force easily.”

“We are making the same mistake again,” Gavi pointed out.

“Which is why we do not hold back, except for the Hadarak front,” Yaniel insisted. “We send our full might…and if we do not have the Era’tran, we will be weakened. We must fight as one.”

“Perhaps we can,” Wenni said as inspiration hit him. “If the Era’tran do not want to fight Star Force, then trade us. Use your forces against the Hadarak so the Oso’lon can pull their fleets back. That way the number of ships we send against Star Force doesn’t change. The amount of ships on the Hadarak front doesn’t change. We just exchange assignments, and we avoid a civil war.”

“Yes,” an Uvbor called Neien said emphatically. “We do not want to waste our ships in the face of the Zak’de’ron threat, and I believe I could convince the others to take the place of another race on the Hadarak front. With more Harthur being built, our losses will go down dramatically…and if those races attacking Star Force fail, they will be the ones to take the losses.”

“And if they fail,” Gavi added, “then we give Star Force the Rim and waste no more time and resources on them. Call it a trial of worthiness.”

“You doubt our combined ability to destroy them?” Yaniel asked, almost as if it were treason the Bez was suggesting.

“If the races that do not fight them declare so prior to the invasion, we may gain Star Force’s assistance against the Hadarak, at the very least with the translation offer they made.”

“I would not count on that,” Hamob warned.

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Gavi offered, “but if we tell them that we are removing the death mark, and that if they can survive this new invasion we will grant them autonomous status within the Rim we lose nothing, assuming Yaniel is right that they can be destroyed. If by some chance Star Force surprises us again, then we still have some diplomatic relationship with them. To be truthful I am concerned about the Uriti, and I do not want any Bez vessels fighting them unless absolutely necessary.”

“Our primary fight is with the Hadarak,” Keesa reminded them, “and they are not in the Rim. We do not need to be their either, unless we anticipate massive failure and the loss of all our territory. Let Star Force have it if they can earn it one more time. If not, we will preserve their people and incorporate them into the empire and they will operate on the Rim under Itaru’s direction. They have earned the removal of the death mark, in any case.”

“Can we at least agree on the removal of the death mark?” Hamob asked, not entirely liking where this was going.

They all exchanged glances, along with a few private telepathic comments between individuals, and it appeared the decision was unanimous.

“Alright then,” Yaniel stated. “We will have the death mark removed. The war will be one of subjugation. We will need as many resources after the fact as we can get to fight the Zak’de’ron, and if we can gain from this, Itaru can be convinced to remove the death mark without our explaining the threat of the Zak’de’ron.”

Hamob sighed. It wasn’t what he wanted, but it was something. He had come here with no answers and no path forward. Now, at least, there was a path. Whether or not it was going to be beneficial was another question entirely.

For he too, like Gavi, was not convinced of what would happen when they eventually engaged the Uriti with Star Force warships in support…for there was no way to take their primary worlds without facing that eventuality, though that would be left to last, and Hamob would make sure of that wrinkle being included in whatever plans they formatted going forward.

7

December 12, 4885

Solar System (Star Force territory)

Earth

Morgan was busy in a planning meeting, working on the construction schedule for a year and a half in advance as Earth continued to be rebuilt into a battlefort. The population now was up to over 80 million, but those were all workers and fighters, without a single civilian present. She knew there was going to be a big fight here, but it was Earth and she wasn’t going to give it up again without exacting a hell of a price…though it was also a way to pull the V’kit’no’sat to a target of Star Force’s choosing where they could prepare for a massive strike without having to guess and pull ships away from the true targets.

Seeing as how this was by far the closest system to V’kit’no’sat territory, as well as Star Force’s original capitol, it literally begged to get hit first, so Morgan was continuing to lay out an industrial plan maximized for ground combat. She knew she was going to lose all the equipment on the surface and these tracts of land were going to become either craters to orbital bombardment or a battlefield for V’kit’no’sat troops trying to take down the shield generators and spare their warships additional losses.

If it was orbital bombardment it wouldn’t matter how she built them, but if there was to be a ground invasion it definitely did matter, so she was personally designing the layout for every square mile of Earth’s surface and she had to get it done well prior to construction, for the Kiritak, Bsidd, and assorted work crews were eating up her to-build list at a furious pace.

It was a surprise, however, when the V’kit’no’sat alarm sounded. Morgan linked her mind into the nearby node in the ceiling and got a data feed from sensors, finding a fleet was jumping into the system…or rather had, for there was a big delay in the feed from the warships she had in stellar orbit. No fighting had broken out, and they relayed the hyper-compressed message they’d picked up moments before the first ship arrived, declaring they were here to talk.

The message was repeated in normal compression once the first ship exited, and Morgan saw that the fleet only consisted of 12 ships in total, two of which were Kafcha, and all were Era’tran, easily identifiable by the tuning fork shape of their hulls. A few minutes later a follow up message was relayed to her, with Morgan already having moved over to the nearby control center and into a command nexus where she could get full data streams.

Mak’to’ran was in one of the Kafcha, and he wanted to talk…now.

Morgan waited while the drop pod crossed over to her new beastly command ship Gold Ranger, with her having flown out to the star rather than having the V’kit’no’sat come to Earth. All surveillance in the cargo bay had been deactivated and the crew cleared out, leaving her alone to talk to the Era’tran that came stomping down the boarding ramp into the Star Force vessel. He waited until it had left the bay before he spoke, but Morgan could already tell he was not happy.

“Davis is not here,” she told him.

“I did not expect him to be, so you will have to relay this conversation to him,” Mak’to’ran said, his voice not betraying the anger and shame his telepathic aura suggested. “The truce is about to be ended.”

Morgan frowned. “You’re breaking it?”

“Unfortunately yes. I do not have the power to stop the others without revealing the existence of the Zak’de’ron. Short of that, they are committed to destroying your autonomy if you will not willingly accept my command. I am here to ask you to reconsider, but I already know your answer.”

“We’re not joining you,” Morgan said flatly.

“And I do not blame you for that decision. We should be honoring the truce, but the others are lacking in honor. The few that were entrusted with knowledge of the Zak’de’ron have been emboldened to attack you now, before you can grow stronger, and eliminate the threat you pose before we have to fight the Zak’de’ron. You have 8 more years, then the truce will end. That is all I could force of them to wait.”

“I told Davis that telling you was a bad idea,” Morgan said, putting her hands on her armored hips.

“I am sorry,” Mak’to’ran said plainly. “I came here to explain exactly what is happening, for almost all of our empire does not know the full truth. The death mark on Humans has been lifted. It has been deemed that you have earned that much by your past efforts, so your worlds will not be obliterated through orbital bombardment. They will be conquered and your populations annexed into the V’kit’no’sat.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow. “So we join you willingly or by force?”

“That is what was decided. Also, we will not be engaging your Uriti. That would cost us too much. So we will strike where they are not, then use your captive populations as a shield against you using the Uriti for orbital bombardment.”

“Of course,” Morgan scoffed, but it was considerably better than everyone getting outright murdered. At least she’d have a chance to rescue them later. “Why are you telling me your battle plan?”

“It is not mine. I will not be fighting you, nor will the Era’tran. Of the 194 races in the V’kit’no’sat, there are 38 that have refused to take part in the invasion. Those 38, with myself included, agree to your proposal. We will keep to the Core, while we grant you the Rim to do with as you like. So long as you do not invade V’kit’no’sat territory, of any of the 194 races, we will ignore you. And I do not count the expansions as our territory. Our border prior to our invasion of Terraxis will be the boundaries. Anything beyond that is a fair target for you.”

“Having civil war issues again?”

“No. We have avoided that, though the divisions are there and growing. The 38 races not participating will take the place of the others on the Hadarak border, freeing them up to be used in the invasion, so you will still face the same number of vessels…the quality of which may have been lessened with our absence.”

“So you’re not really helping out any, are you?”

“If it were up to me no one would be attacking you. Every ship lost, on both our parts, only makes it easier for the Zak’de’ron to push their reclamation of the galaxy. For those of us that know the truth, we have agreed that we need time to upgrade the Urrtren to the point where the Zak’de’ron cannot shut it down on us. If they did so, it would destroy our ability to function as an empire, far beyond anything you can imagine. The Zak’de’ron mandated that our territory be spread out, with no clump of systems belonging to a single race. Because of that, if we lose communications, the Zak’de’ron could pick us apart with a fraction of the fleet necessary to fight us directly. And if they have a Uriti and the ability to command it, that blackout scenario becomes far worse. The others are playing for time, using the invasion of you as cover, amongst other things.”

“That is insane.”

“It holds some merit, but the losses are not worth it. The Era’tran will not suffer them, nor will the other 37 races. We at least will stay strong to oppose our true enemy, for our Harthur are diminishing fleet losses on the Hadarak border significantly and we will continue to produce more over time.”

“Are you supplying the invading fleets?”

“No. Our resources go to the Hadarak border and our own security. The others are on their own, but we have forced a promise from them. They will not destroy you, only conquer you, and if they fail to do the latter this one last time, the other races will be obligated to join us and grant you full authority in the Rim. One way or another, the war between Star Force and the V’kit’no’sat will end and we will focus on the Zak’de’ron.”

“That means you’ll be coming after us with everything you’ve got.”

“Indeed they will, but they will not have the 38 races with them. Even if an equal number of ships are present there are differences between the races that have an effect on combat. Those which you face will be slightly weaker due to the lack of diversity and Era’tran leadership. We are now one of the three leading races in the V’kit’no’sat along with the Oso’lon and J’gar, and the J’gar are one of the 38 not attacking you. They do not know of the Zak’de’ron, for there is not an individual in their ranks that I can completely trust, but they see the folly in wasting our forces against you when we have the Harthur and could be doing serious damage to the smaller Hadarak.”

“How firm is this dividing line? Could the J’gar or others change their mind?”

“No. I have made sure of that. None of the 38 can alter their choice now, though any of the others can relinquish their attacks on you if they find the task untenable. And that is a line that cannot be crossed without starting a civil war. The Era’tran will enforce it with our fleets if needed. We are breaking our truce now, but I cannot stop it. If there is to be another breach of honor, it will split the empire. All know this, so it will not happen. You will not have to face the J’gar or Era’tran, but you will have the Oso’lon…and the Hjar’at, which is in some ways worse.”

“I’ve noticed,” Morgan said, remembering the furious combat with them quite well. “So our translation agreement is off?”

“That is up to you. I have brought with me all the data we have collected. I will give it to you now. If you choose not to send us the translation, I will not fault you for that given our upcoming breach of the truce.”

“There better not be any code hidden in that data.”

“There is not, though your security measures seem adequate to filter out any such intrusion.”

“So what are the Era’tran now to us?”

“We are too busy with the Hadarak and future enemies to bother with you anymore. Stay away from us and we will do the same.”

“Well that’s something,” Morgan admitted. “So how do we beat the other races bad enough to force them to accept our independence?”

“We have an internal measurement that I will not share with you. If they do not meet it, they will pull back. It is a long term measurement, so do not think a furious defense in the short term will save you. They will not be attacking the Uriti, so this will be a long, grueling war. If you can somehow survive, the Era’tran will welcome you as an ally against the V’kit’no’sat. If you are annexed, I do not think you, Morgan-063, will live as a servant. You will die fighting, like the rest of your kin, and we will take possession of your less valuable population.”

“You can be sure of that,” she all but spat.

“Both I and our empire deserve your ire for the breach of the truce, as well as past actions, but what is done is done. I cannot stop what is to come, but I have tempered it as much as I can without inciting another civil war within the V’kit’no’sat. I fear the coming fighting will weaken us to the point where the Zak’de’ron can exploit the opportunity, but the others do not agree. I have learned to think differently, but they are still clinging to protocol. The V’kit’no’sat must adapt if we are to survive, and it may come to pass that the 38 races refusing to attack you will break off and form a new empire if the others are taken out in their weakness. The future is grim for us, and this upcoming war makes it even more grim. It seems Star Force is wiser than Itaru, and that only adds further to our shame, but things are the way they are and I cannot change them.”

“If you do not resupply the attacking races, we promise to not attack your Core territory. If you do, then we have nothing to lose by doing so, for the bulk of your ships will be tied up on the Hadarak front anyway.”

“The annexers must do so on their own strength, and they must not obliterate any world. Those are the rules that are avoiding a civil war, and if we should face another the empire will end before the Zak’de’ron can take overt action against us.”

“You suspect they’re already stoking the divisions?”

“I do. I think they were previously as well, if your timeline is accurate. They knew unlocking the planetary defense station would cast blame on either the J’gar or the Oso’lon, and I think they did it as much for that reason as to help you grow stronger to further hurt us. Had I not turned rebel they might have succeeded by now. We cannot risk it happening again. This invasion, under the current terms, is a bad solution, but anything else will tear us apart, for there are those who will not follow my leadership. If they did, we would be facing an entirely different future.”

“Even when your own asses are on the line, you guys can’t be smart. You just won’t relinquish control.”

“To our doom, I fear.”

“If this is your way of trying to apologize, you’re extremely bad at it.”

“I have thought about what you said before, about the V’kit’no’sat learning from the Zak’de’ron and emulating them. Sadly, I believe you are correct. Our concept of dominance has been corrupted, and I have been forced to reevaluate everything I have ever been taught. I cannot fix the empire, but within the Era’tran we are learning. I know we must now lead, in ways the other races do not yet comprehend, but there is much within our race that has to be altered to remove the taint of the Zak’de’ron. Star Force has shown a superiority to us, one that has made us angry rather than taking the opportunity to learn and advance ourselves. It is the way of the Zak’de’ron to strike down rivals. You, I believe, use rivals to drive your competitiveness to new heights.”

“If you eliminate your competition you get lazy,” Morgan added. “So I guess you have been paying attention.”

“Though I cannot make an official statement, I apologize for what I personally did leading the first invasion, and I apologize for the actions of the Era’tran since then. We are responsible for our actions, but in truth they have not entirely been of our own making. We have been influenced by others far too much, and going forward I am not going to make the same mistakes again. We hereby denounce the war against you, and end all hostilities on our part. If you still claim us as an enemy I understand. We have earned that status and we do not shirk from it.”

“I still hate you guys,” Morgan said flatly. “And I’m not going to forget all my friends you killed, but the past is the past and I can’t change it any more than you can. My focus is on the future. We may never be friends, but so long as you stop misbehaving we won’t have any reason to attack you, now or in the future. We have far too much to do, so we will also relinquish the state of war against the Era’tran, unofficially, so long as you stay on your side of the fence.”

“Agreed.”

“With one caveat,” the trailblazer added. “While we’re fighting your brothers, find a way to kick the crap out of the Zak’de’ron. We know they have subservient races already. The Voku are one of them, and you will not touch them, for they are our allies. That is not a pleasant situation we are going to face, but leave them to us. I suggest you try and identify the others, for they will not be hidden as the Zak’de’ron are.”

“The Voku serve the Zak’de’ron?”

“They did before you thought you destroyed them, and they stayed loyal through their absence. There are probably others spread across the galaxy as well.”

“In the Rim, perhaps, but we eliminated those in the Core.”

“They can always add new ones. I do not believe they will destroy you through just the strength of their own fleets.”

Mak’to’ran considered that for a long moment. “Thank you for trusting me with that fact. The Voku are in the Rim, therefore they are your responsibility and we will leave them to you up until they choose to attack us in the Core. If they come to your aid against the other races, we will not interfere.”

“And while we’re starting to get along,” Morgan added, having to clamp down on the uneasiness in her gut resulting from playing nice with this bastard, “let’s discuss these Harthur you’re building...”

8

March 23, 4886

Meinto System (Zadjen Region)

Treneis

“So that’s where we are,” Davis said as he sat at the head of a rectangular conference table inside his massive office with the 18 available trailblazers and all 8 Arch Dukes as Morgan finished explaining her lengthy conversation with Mak’to’ran. “We’ve got 8, maybe 7 years before they drop the hammer on us. How do you want to play this?”

“Told you so,” Rio-058 declared.

“Yes you did,” Davis acknowledged. “As did several others. In light of what has transpired, would you go back and withhold the information?”

“We needed the time to build,” he reiterated. “But we didn’t know they were on the verge of breaking the truce anyway. Could Mak’to’ran have held them back for the duration? I don’t know, but we’ve lost a number of years at least and if they can’t keep their mouths shut the Dragons are going to know we betrayed them. We’re not ready for this.”

“We were never ready,” Beck-061 noted. “Same old, same old.”

“The status of the V’kit’no’sat is not what I thought it was,” Taryn-047 said with her dark brown ponytail hanging over the front of her right shoulder as she sat in the high backed chair. “Our information, even our captured updates, is woefully inadequate. We’ve been making a number of wrong assumptions for some time now. I’d glad we’ve come to this, despite the ass kicking we’re about to get, because I think we can survive it…and if we do, they will grant us dominion over the Rim. Not just permission to exist here, but the entire Rim all the way around. This is a test of worthiness, and though I don’t like playing by other people’s rules, at least we have an end game now.”

“A lethal test,” Morgan pointed out.

“They’ve been out for our heads since the beginning,” Jason-025 scoffed. “That’s nothing new.”

“Them using our own people as shields against the Uriti is,” Rio reminded him.

“They have to take them first.”

“They will. We can’t put a Uriti on every front porch.”

“Then we have to keep them moving around,” Jack-020 suggested. “Give our systems a ‘hold out to’ window.”

“We have to avoid blockades and keep the main jumplanes free if we are going to maximize that tactic,” Arch Duke Hightower warned. “I would also suggest we not display the current location of all the Uriti. The threat of one potentially being nearby may discourage some attacks, or we could catch invading fleets off guard and do some significant damage if they’re fully engaged when one arrives.”

“We need to do some blockading of our own,” Wes-049 insisted. “We can’t let them choose targets then respond. We need to be outside our borders causing trouble for them and limiting the number of jumplines in. And by that, I mean mine fields. Lots of them.”

Davis narrowed his eyes slightly. “Elaborate.”

“There are too many easy routes, so we need to thin them out and force the V’kit’no’sat to choose to come through heavier defenses or even a Uriti. We declare the jumpline as closed, make sure everyone knows, and put warning beacons up on either end. If the V’kit’no’sat want to come through anyway, they’ll have to take the time to clear the mines first.”

“One sided?” Sara-012 asked.

“We don’t have time to do doubles, and we can always backfill them later once the war ramps up. I’m talking about getting as many roadblocks as we can that will allow us to slow or divert the V’kit’no’sat attack fleets, and they’re going to be huge convoys. We have to be able to position the Uriti where we want and when we want, but in order to do that we have to know where to put them. Scouts alone aren’t going to do the job, so we need to limit the jumplines the V’kit’no’sat have available.”

“They can curve their lines,” Morgan reminded him.

“But they can’t send huge convoys in curved jumplines with normal staggers. They’ll need bigger gaps for safety margins, and if we have even a small fleet at their arrival point we can do a lot of damage as they enter.”

“We can calculate arrival jumplines off curves as well,” Arch Duke Karthen pointed out. “It’ll be arrival points no one else uses, so we can also put mine fields there without any warning beacons.”

“We’re talking a lot of mines,” Rio said warily, “even if we isolate a handful of routes.”

“We pick the best ones to start with,” Wes answered, “then add to them over the decades that follow. It’s a lot cheaper way to take out ships than with drone production.”

“Assuming they ram them. If they go around all we gain is a delay and better positioning…which may be worth it. Still, it’s not a solution, merely a beneficial wrinkle.”

“I’ll take as many of those as you can come up with,” Davis said eagerly. “What else?”

“If they’re not going for the largest targets first,” Kent-076 said, “then they could hit our backwater and do a massive amount of damage. The Frontier Region can’t defend itself, and from what Morgan has said, the V’kit’no’sat are going to be using a very different playbook this time around. No more hard charging with the expectation they’re going to break us early and sweep up the pieces. I’d wager they’re going to be sneaky and adaptive, especially since it seems they’re only getting a single opportunity to do this.”

“How sure are we of that?” Hightower asked.

Morgan sighed. “There’s no way to tell, but taking Mak’to’ran at his word, this compromise is the only thing holding off another Civil War. They know they have to do something now before the Zak’de’ron make their move, and they’re split between letting us go and taking us out first. I don’t think the races that have agreed to our dominion of the Rim will have second thoughts if the others fail to take us out. If their empire stays together, I think the one shot holds. But we could see their empire split apart if the attackers don’t want to honor it. Mak’to’ran was in a state of barely controlled rage concerning the breach of the truce. He won’t tolerate any more word breaking, and he gave me his and the Era’tran’s guarantee that if we can survive this we will have a permanent truce. And I think he meant it.”

“But how far does his influence go?”

“Good question. I don’t know, but it seems like the V’kit’no’sat are harboring some major bad blood amongst themselves. I wish we knew more, but from the way he talked the Era’tran might be going it alone in the near future as a fallback plan, but he feels that would doom any chance they have against the Zak’de’ron. Keeping the empire together to prepare for them is the only reason he isn’t attacking Itaru himself.”

“They’re that divided?” Davis asked.

“I couldn’t sneak much of a peak into his mind, but that’s my gut feeling. The Zak’de’ron were the glue that held them together, and the fear of them may well be again, but the recent civil war showed how shallow their unity is, even if you factor in any poking and prodding the Zak’de’ron did in secret. I don’t like the bastards, but I think those staying out of this fight are genuine. They don’t want to mess with us anymore, and won’t, unless we encroach on their territory. I think they’ve given up on the idea of full control over the galaxy. There’s just too much damn space out there and the reason for their existence is in the Deep Core. Maybe if they were bored they might try to expand again, or go looking for a fight to pick, but right now their plate is full to overflowing.”

“So they’re not asking to be allies?” Arch Duke Dante asked.

“No. They just want us out of the way, aside from Mak’to’ran’s interest in the Uriti and future applications against the Hadarak, but right now I think the Hadarak front is being put in a holding pattern. The Zak’de’ron still being alive is scaring them shitless. That much I know for certain.”

“And their panic is driving most of them towards us,” Davis summarized. “They can’t fight the Zak’de’ron, so we’re the only visible target and the only way for them to do something to improve their situation.”

“But they’re not telling them why. Only their leadership knows?” Jason asked.

“A small fraction of their leadership,” Morgan amended.

“So why are the masses doing it?”

“To force us to submit. They don’t want us free and clear to do what we want in the Rim and potentially come back strong enough to hurt them later. Which we will, assuming we survive everything else coming our way.”

“Mak’to’ran is beginning to see the value of negotiation,” Davis added. “We are not out for their throats. Not like a conventional enemy. And he’s been outside the V’kit’no’sat before, branded a traitor, so he has a perspective the others do not. They are still unused to losing and believe in their doctrine of dominance. To fight the Zak’de’ron they are going to have to abandon that. I think Mak’to’ran is also using this invasion as a way to educate them. If we beat them this one last time, we earn our freedom and their egos are destroyed. In the aftermath he can rebuild the V’kit’no’sat how he likes and prepare them for the Zak’de’ron. That’s my read on it, anyway.”

“Terms accepted,” Ethan-014 said, pounding his right fist into his left hand. “Let’s end this so convincingly they never even think about invading us again.”

“I think you’re underestimating what is coming,” Rio said with a glare. “Which is basically their entire military minus what they have on the Hadarak front and a few patrol fleets. We’ve never dealt with that level of opposition before.”

“Which is why we need to ambush them on their way here,” Wes reiterated. “Not in their territory, but on the way through the Devastation Zone and the other stretches they have to cross. If we wait for them to pool their ships in a single system they’re going to have the advantage. We need to catch them coming out of their jumps, and not at the destination points. They’ll split up and arrive through multiples simultaneously, I can guarantee it if they’re not playing this dumb. We’ve seen it before in their history, and if they take us seriously this time, we have to hit them on the way in.”

“We also need a massive amount of surveillance,” Hightower added. “Far more scout ships than we’ve got deployed out there. We have to pull back from Nexus territory now if we’re going to reposition enough to make a difference.”

Davis cringed, but he knew what the Arch Duke said was true. They’d run out of time, and looking for new ways to help those suffering and dying out there would have to be put on hold. No more expansions, no more annexations except where minimal resources would allow. Everything had to be devoted to this upcoming invasion…meaning a lot of people were going to left hanging who needed help but were just on the other side of the territory line. Davis wouldn’t abandon anyone already in their care, but it sickened him to turn people away who were asking for help.

There was no choice though, for if Star Force fell to the V’kit’no’sat they’d leave all those other people out there to die anyway. Their only hope was Star Force surviving this war, and unfortunately that was going to take too long to shake out, and most of them were just going to be screwed.

“Expansion programs have to be suspended,” he said, making it official, “in almost all cases. We have to turn everything we’ve got to this and win it. And we win by surviving long enough that the V’kit’no’sat give up. They don’t have time for an unending war. They have to annex us quickly in order to prepare for the Zak’de’ron. So we don’t let them do that. We drag this out, whittle them down, even as we lose worlds. And those we lose, we retake when we have a chance, forcing them to defend territory rather than sterilize it and move on. We’ve played the stall and run game up until now, but this is different. We’ve had a chance to catch our breath. Not as much as we’d hoped, but enough to stabilize our territory and this time we have the Uriti willing and able to fight with us. That’s never happened before, so we’re not in the same situation. We’re playing aggressive defense this time.”

“So mines?” Wes asked.

“Mine the hell out of the approaches to our territory and anywhere within it you see an advantage to do so. Pull out every trick you’ve ever used and come up with some new ones. All trailblazers are going to be recalled with their current missions delegated to high ranking second gen. You too Rio. Training time is over. We need all of you out there.”

The top ranked Archon smiled. “Gladly.”

“We also need to have a chat with our allies and coordinate with them, as well as spread the word that this fight isn’t just about our survival, but the future of the galactic Rim. If we win, the V’kit’no’sat turn it over to us, and I think there are a lot of races near the border that would be willing to help fight if they saw us winning, for they know we’ll be much more benevolent landlords.”

“The Preema?” Jason asked.

“Doubtful, but possibly. I think they’re gonna sit and watch, but there are undoubtedly others on the other side of the galaxy as well. We need to spread the word of the terms of this war so they know what’s happening and what the stakes are.”

“Paul’s not here, so I’ll say what he would probably be thinking,” Sara said with no hint of a smile on her face, but rather a lethal intensity born of new hope. “Did we just become the leader of the Rebel Alliance against the Galactic Empire?”

“I hope so,” Davis said earnestly. “If we can’t divide their attention, then we’re going to lose at least half our systems in the best case scenario…but if they’re getting hit in their own territory by other races, they’re gonna have to pull ships off to defend those systems, either from the invasion or the Hadarak front, and I can guess Mak’to’ran won’t let the Hadarak front be weakened. Also, if we arrange that only the territory of those races involved in the invasion are hit, and not those who are sitting it out, we can drive a further wedge between them…”

9

January 4, 4890

Khaterass System (Kiritak colony)

Mewsovex

Paul flew down to the glacier under his own power, landing in nothing but his Archon uniform in the frigid temperatures near the concealed entrance. He triggered the automated drill that cleared the ice and gave him access to the lift that he then took down into Kara’s fortress of solitude, but she wasn’t waiting for him below.

Once he was inside and beneath the psionic concealment layer he could sense her presence and made his way through the large facility to one of the training chambers, drawing a raised eyebrow from Paul as he saw her bouncing around from platform to platform in a zero g sphere with a multitude of drones hunting her. It was an evasion challenge, but one with little use at her level, begging the question what exactly was she working on.

He waited patiently until she finished, then pulsed a telepathic ping to get her attention, seeing her visibly flinch. Apparently she was so focused on her training she had no idea he was there, but as soon as she saw him a wide smile broke out on her face and she launched herself off one of the platforms until she passed through the zero g field and dropped to the floor…only to curve her trajectory and fly the last little bit of distance over to Paul where she landed in a sweaty mess with a Vorch’nas that now extended all the way up to her right elbow and extended past her wrist down to her knuckles.

“Hey, Paul, what’s up?”

“How are you doing?” he asked, not having gotten any updates because they couldn’t risk any messages that might be intercepted by Zak’de’ron surveillance of the Star Force relay network.

“Good and bad.”

“Start with the good.”

“I’m stronger than Rio now,” she said with a smirk. “A lot stronger. This baby has massive strength enhancements on a genetic level, and with each increase I get a boost. This is a level 7 Vorch’nas. I have to go through each and adjust. I tried to go straight to level 12 and it killed me…then I revived, woke up, and it was back to a level 1.”

“It killed you?” Paul asked slowly.

“Not fun,” Kara said with all seriousness. “Took several hours, but my body couldn’t handle the upgrades. They have to be made through adaptation, and that only occurs with a lot of training and experience, but I know what to do now and I’m gonna get it maxed out within another 10 or 15 years.”

Paul looked down at the now pure white jewel that looked like frozen ice on her arm that had been buffed into a glorious sheen.

“How much control do you have?”

Kara frowned. “That’s the bad part. I can block detection now. They can enter the system and send out a location ping, but it won’t respond. I’ve got it turned off. The problem is, if they get within close range they can send a control signal to it that I cannot block. They can’t use it to find me, but if they do and they get close I’m toast. There’s also a kill code they can send, and I’ll be dead within seconds. I can’t delete it. I can hide and evade, but if they find me they’re in control and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Manageable. Who was your last visitor?”

“You’re the first,” she said, her smile returning.

“So you don’t know?”

“About what?”

“They stole a Uriti from the Knights of Quenar.”

Kara’s jaw dropped. “What the fuck?”

“A single Knight survived and managed to get back with the news. They think they all died, but we know now, and so do the V’kit’no’sat. We told them.”

Kara’s face clenched up, but she said nothing, thinking hard. “What else is going on? You didn’t come here for a visit, because you’d be worried that someone could track you here.”

“I have ninja skills,” he reminded her, “but I need you to leave. The truce is going to be broken in a few years and all trailblazers are being recalled. I need you to take Megan’s place with the Paladin.”

“Will be? How do you know?”

“Because we have an understanding with Mak’to’ran now. The Era’tran and 37 other races have agreed to give us our freedom and dominion over the Rim while they prepare for the Zak’de’ron threat, though only a handful of their leaders know of it. Some of them decided the best move was to take us out first, then worry about the Zak’de’ron. Rather than fight a civil war over it, they agreed to split up. Mak’to’ran’s group will take the place of the others on the Hadarak front, freeing them up to hit us at full strength. If we survive, we earn our freedom and the Rim. If not, we’ll be conquered and absorbed. They’ve removed the death mark and intend to get as much out of our strength as possible, including the Uriti if they can…which they won’t.”

Kara’s jaw was still hanging, then she finally made herself close it. “I am so out of the loop.”

“I’m catching you up now. Mak’to’ran told us what’s coming, and we’ve got about 3 more years before they hit us. Megan has to come back, and I’d like you to as well, but combat against the V’kit’no’sat will probably reveal you to the Zak’de’ron. But they’re not with the Paladin, so I need you…”

“I’ll go,” she said before he could finish. “I know enough from the public grid where the Paladin are. The Zak’de’ron won’t have much out there, if anything, but I’ll need a different identity.”

“Already got it worked out. Officially you’re still with Ghostblade, but now you’re a Protovic Administrator named Mara Jade. All the files have been scrubbed so there’s no trail.”

“Mara Jade?”

“Only in the files. The Paladin will know who you are when you arrive and tell them, but back here there will be no trace.”

Kara nodded. “Alright, I’ll get up to speed. How are you guys playing the invasion?”

“All in. The V’kit’no’sat are going to hit us with everything they’ve got minus the Hadarak fleets and some light patrols. Mak’to’ran said they were not going for the Uriti, so we assume they’re avoiding the big systems and going to hit the small ones and work this in reverse. It’s possible they might end up fighting the Paladin early, but I doubt it. Megan and Thrawn don’t have much out there yet, and the V’kit’no’sat need to hurt us badly and quickly. Mak’to’ran said there’s a timetable they have to meet, though he wouldn’t say what. We got the impression it was fairly long, but they can’t fail this time or they’ll be forced to let us go. That means they have to take out the Paladin eventually.”

Kara bit her lip in a conflicted manner. “If you’ve got me labeled as a Protovic then I should be safe from tracking. What ship will I have?”

“You’ll be with the Paladin. I didn’t think you’d want a normal command ship as a giveaway.”

“I don’t. I can play Paladin even if we have to fight the V’kit’no’sat. I can hide and do this at the same time if there’s no trail out there.”

“There’s a group of Administrators from other races going to help with some of the annexed races that Morgan took under her wing. You’ll tag along and blend in.”

“Good. How soon?”

“A couple months.”

“And you?”

“Getting a new fleet, then it’s off to patrol the Perimeter Zone and break it in, which is now the Devastation Zone and everything else beyond our borders that the V’kit’no’sat will be coming through.”

“You going to hit them first?”

“We’re gonna do everything we can to drag this out, including a lot of mine laying.”

“Slip’n’slide?”

“Everything,” Paul reiterated. “If we don’t, we’re going to get run over.”

“Who’s not coming at us?”

“The Era’tran, J’gar, and Brat’mar are the only major races opting out. The other small ones are following their lead, but most don’t know about the Zak’de’ron. They just don’t want to go up against the Uriti. And the Rit’ko’sor don’t want to fight their kin.”

“I don’t blame them, but I’m surprised.”

“A lot of things are surprising lately. Especially the Zak’de’ron getting a Uriti, and perhaps more if they find them first. The Knights of Quenar are intent on not letting that happen.”

“They can’t be ready to fight. Not yet. It’s too soon…even if they have their own Chixzon now, thanks to me.”

“Yeah, that’s a big problem,” Paul admitted. “But there’s no undoing it.”

“Still happened,” she argued. “You did get rid of the sword, right?”

“Chucked it in a star.”

“Good. How do we stand on drones?”

“A lot more than we’re used to, but not enough. They’ve got an attrition edge on us, but they have to ship their reinforcements a long way. We’re going to ambush what we can, but this is going to get messy even if it goes well for us. I’m still not sure how we’re going to survive this.”

“I’ll do what I can, if you need me on the front lines. No point in hiding if the empire is going to fall and we’re all gonna die anyway. I assume they’re going to kill us, right?”

“Probably. We wouldn’t submit anyways.”

“So they want our civies?”

“Not sure, but one thing they want is living shields against the Uriti.”

Kara sighed. “Of course. They don’t really want us.”

“Mak’to’ran does, and I think he’s leveraging the others to attacking on his terms. Regardless, they shouldn’t be glassing any planets and moving on. They’ll have to take and hold them, which will make this a very different war…but we also can’t attack their current worlds or the races sitting it out will get involved.”

“So we fight on our turf to win the Rim?”

“Basically.”

“And they’ll honor that if we win?”

“If they don’t it’s gonna cause a civil war. Mak’to’ran was clear about that. And they’ve got bigger worries to deal with.”

“Still, their egos…”

“The Zak’de’ron scare the shit out of them. So expect a lot to change.”

“How are we going to deal with them if they find out we snitched on them?”

“I don’t know. But we got 38 races to sit because we shared. Same number of ships, in theory, but I think we’re slightly better off not having to fight the J’gar on waterworlds…not that we have that many.”

“What do you need me to do with the Paladin?”

“Own the place. No resources sent to us, just camp out, build, and kick local ass.”

“I can do that.”

“I know you can…if you haven’t lost your edge.”

“My edge?”

“How much naval training have you been doing?”

“Enough.”

“Where you at?”

“Goku 18…for naval. Commando is off the charts.”

“Cheater.”

“I know,” she said, chagrined. “Some things never change.”

“Let’s find out,” he said, taking a step backwards. “Unless you’re too tired?”

Kara took a half step back as well, dropping a couple inches into a combat stance. “I’m good.”

“Are you now?” Paul said sarcastically, pushing a Jumat blast at her then following up with a dive run while she braced against it…then the two were at it in close range, blocking, dodging, punching, and kicking at such high speeds it was hard to follow, but with their Pefbar and Sav they could think and perceive faster than they could move, making it feel like they were always in slow motion.

They went at it for more than half an hour…before Kara kicked it up a notch and methodically kicked his ass.

10

July 8, 4890

System 289456

Stellar Orbit

Kara and a batch of Administrators arrived in the uninhabited system, one of the many out here that didn’t even have a name, and transferred over from the Calavari Warship-class jumpship to a Paladin one, which was twice as large and carried 6 times as many drones. Neither side had opted to send an unarmed cargo ship, for these areas were rife with piracy and other lawlessness, but no one was going to be stupid enough or fast enough to catch either of these two ships, though the Paladin one was the slower of the pair considering it was fully loaded with drones.

The Calavari one was as well, but its design made it faster when fully loaded, while Thrawn had wanted to rely more on combat power insystem than speed when loaded. It was one of many variations on the same basic design that all Star Force factions used, and Kara noticed that this one had a new paint job. Normally Star Force ships were gray, white, black, or some combination thereof, but a rising trend had the more prominent factions painting their ships. Canderous had been the first, with their sedas always having been a dark green, but now the Paladin had taken on the blue that their bodies now bore…and a bright blue at that.

Kara transferred over via dropship, then walked out into a sea of what used to be lizards, but were now Paladin. Still, after so many battles, Kara’s first instinct was to be on guard and she hadn’t shook that habit yet, but with a light scan of their minds she confirmed they were friends and her bit of unease disappeared as a taller Paladin approached, this one a Viceroy.

He greeted the Administrators and sent them off with handlers while Kara stayed in the back of the hangar bay as the Calavari dropship left, heading back to its mothership that would be leaving the Paladin Zone and her behind, with Megan already having left a month ago on another ship if the time table hadn’t been altered.

“Archon,” the Viceroy greeted respectfully, despite the fact that Kara wore an Administrator’s uniform, so Megan must have told him before she left.

“Viceroy,” she said, looking up at his 8 foot height and round, muscular head. He outmassed her by at least triple, but even without her Vorch’nas she would have no trouble taking him down and both of them knew it.

“I am Brisco, and I will be your second, relaying orders on your behalf so they do not have to go out in your name. Thrawn has so arranged it that I have authority equal to his, meaning there will be no hindrance to your efforts as we hide your presence.”

“You were born Paladin?”

“I was. Thrawn elevated my status in order to accommodate you. What are your orders?”

“I need information, as recent as possible, to get a feel for what’s going on out here.”

Brisco nodded. “We should go to Vanaat then. It is a nexus for our limited relay grid and closest to our current position.”

“Set course then. I may be new here, but I do not have time to waste. Star Force will come under V’kit’no’sat attack within a few years, and there is a possibility they may even strike the Paladin Zone.”

That came as a shock to the Viceroy…along with the others in the hangar bay that overheard their conversation.

“What of the truce?” he asked, apparently not having been told more than that she was coming to replace the trailblazer.

“Things have changed, and it is about to be violated. We expect them to avoid the Uriti and hit us where we are weak, which may mean they send some ships out here. Even if they don’t, we are not going to assist the others. Our orders are to strengthen the Paladin Zone as much as possible, and if we are attacked, we will receive no support. We’re on our own either way.”

“We are not as weak as you believe, but we are spread out. If the V’kit’no’sat attack in even light numbers, we will have a problem.”

“I doubt we will be a primary target, and if we can draw off ships from the rest of the empire, so much the better. It’s going to get ugly regardless, but if we’re not hit we have to spend our anonymity wisely.”

“But not on sending them additional drones?”

“No. We reinforce ourselves…so if the others have to run, they have a place to run to.”

“I understand,” Brisco said, feeling the importance in those few words to their fullest. “We expect to lose?”

“We will lose systems, but we will be fighting the full power of the V’kit’no’sat minus what they have on the Hadarak front. However, we will not be fighting all the races. 38 have agreed to our terms and have bequeathed us the Rim. The others have not, but the 38 have replaced their fleets on the Hadarak front so we will still be hit with full force…however, if we can hold off long enough, the V’kit’no’sat will leave. This is to be a test, and if we fail, we will be absorbed into their empire. They will not be eradicating our population, but probably our warriors.”

“How long must we survive?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s more a matter of whether we are conquerable or not, and we have to hold our little corner of it.”

“Or die trying.”

“That’s why we build drones,” Kara said with a smirk. “Get the ship moving, then I’ll bring you up to speed on everything else that is going on.”

When Megan got back to the prime territories it felt weird. She’s spent so much time in the Paladin Zone that it was strange to see such developed worlds with so many different races. It was a familiar weird, but it underscored just how much effort she’d put into so few years building up the Paladin and doing the vital, if disgusting, work out in the aftermath of The Nexus’s bull shit failure. It still angered her to this day, but back here, where everything was shiny and new…well, it just felt wrong leaving the people who needed her, but it wouldn’t take long before all this shininess was going to end up turning into rubble.

Which was why she needed to be here.

It took a few more weeks to get to the Raptor homeworld of Turok, which was where the other 99 trailblazers were gathered as they were waiting and planning for what was coming their way. A few of them had already been out to the border areas where the mines were being laid, but they’d all cycled back here so they could brainstorm together without suffering through communications lags of days, if not weeks.

Megan was the last to get here, but the system was already packed with ships. Apparently some of the trailblazers had brought their fleets with them, and at the moment it looked like the Axalon System was the most heavily defended within Star Force, almost comically so.

She knew it wasn’t going to stay that way, and after a few months, or maybe a year at most, they’d be spreading out to implement whatever battle plan they were working on now, but this was going to be a small respite, at least, before the heavy fighting started. Work in the Frontier Region would have to wait, for the resources being spend there on new projects had all been canceled while existing ones were continued. Those extra resources were being routed into drone and mine production, leaving the trailblazers without a lot to do, fighting wise, at the moment.

Megan found the others in a special facility that had been built for the occasion, giving them their own command center on the planet with personal quarters adjacent to each other. They had the place entirely to themselves, making it feel like they were back in basic training again as soon as Megan walked into the place with her personal duffle slung over her shoulder.

Half of the others were busy training in the Sanctum that had been built into the place, while the others were in a massive planning center with holographic maps floating everywhere with smaller tables with two or three trailblazers each working on this or that.

“You’ve been busy,” Megan commented, dropping her duffle on the ground and walking in amongst the others.

“You’re late,” Jason commented, waving her over to a table where a quartet of 2s were working.

“Sorry,” she said, glancing at the regional map they had before them, but it was focused beyond the Devastation Zone on the anti-spinward side. “Where we at?”

“Planning some surprises,” Paul answered, “but we’re screwed. There are too many ways to get to us and we have no firm border. They can hit where they like, so we’re guessing how they’ll approach. Feel free to chime in.”

“What’s this BS about them not hitting our strongest worlds?”

“We think they’re finally taking us seriously,” Ivan said. “They’re not going to smoke us, they’re going to take our worlds and hold them…”

“Using our own people as shields against Uriti bombardment,” Kip finished.

“Mak’to’ran pretty much said it’s a game,” Jason continued. “If we win, we get to own the Rim while they worry about the Zak’de’ron threat. If we lose, we’re absorbed and they add what strength they can from us.”

“Over my rotting corpse,” Megan declared.

“They’re sending their full strength,” Paul warned. “We’re in a mess here.”

“Then let’s start digging our way out. Show me what you’ve got so far…”

Tranxen flew through the interior of the Zak’de’ron hive, bypassing a few others as they coordinated telepathically so they didn’t run into each other while moving at high speeds, for while they could fly slow they preferred not to, especially when confined to the mobile city and not able to truly stretch their wings in a planetary atmosphere.

Tranxen eventually landed on one of the floating islands connected to the others via long strands that the land dwelling servant races traveled on, but there were few here due to the location. It was Zeno’dor’s personal residence, and only a few highly placed servants were allowed in the spherical construct that Tranxen landed on in an equatorial gap several times his height.

He walked from that large, broad, overhung platform into a series of internal hallways where a few Bo’ja were roaming about and moving out of his way quickly. There were a few other Zak’de’ron here as well, but when he got to Zeno’dor he was alone on an upper terrace laying on an interface pad that allowed him to connect directly to the hive’s information systems without using his telepathy.

“We have recovered the Orange strain,” he reported. “We followed the Knights of Quenar and were able to recover 3 individuals before they were inoculated. They are here now, in stasis.”

“Progress then,” Zeno’dor noted.

“Not enough,” Tranxen warned, curling his tail around his legs as he sat on a nearby cushioned pedestal. “We have two of the eight strains, and every new colony of Protovic that we find has already been inoculated. We were lucky to track them to this one.”

“Luck or not, we now have it, and that is all that matters.”

“I do not believe we will be able to find all the others. Not in time.”

“The Chixzon spread them across the galaxy in such a fashion that they clearly expected to lose most of them. There will be pockets the Knights of Quenar have not found yet. We must identify them first, not rely on following them there.”

“We don’t have the scouts for that. Not unless we have some idea of where to look.”

“No dispersion pattern has yet been identified.”

“Then we must have more help.”

“We cannot. If we give search parameters to our servant races, it will identify them to the V’kit’no’sat or Star Force and their allies. We cannot risk that.”

“Then I fear we will fail to gather all 8 strands. What progress has been made with Bulmuthal?”

“Minimal. It will be centuries before we are able to fully awaken the beast. We need the control mechanism.”

“I do not see how we get it. The Knights of Quenar have had too large a head start on us. All visible populations have been inoculated, and there isn’t a trace of the original coding left. The Star Force Chixzon did his work well.”

“Yet you have a found another. I am not seeking guarantees, Tranxen. I am looking for results. There are others out there, and we must pursue them regardless of the outcome.”

“And we will, but I fear we will not be able to find all 8. At most we will find duplicates. We know where there is a complete set. We may need to claim it.”

“No,” Zeno’dor said firmly. “We cannot. They have hidden Nefron well. The most we could hope for is a tissue sample, but even that is too risky. We must maintain our relationship with Star Force. We risked much with our previous seizure. An assault on their Chixzon would turn them against us.”

“They may soon be destroyed. Are we not going to act before we lose the opportunity?”

“If it comes to that we will, but Nefron’s location is a closely guarded secret. They do not have that information in their pubic databases, nor the secure ones we’ve tapped. We only get location brushes on occasion.”

“Then I fear we are at an impasse.”

“Patience, young one. I understand your eagerness, but such powers that we are contending with are long term affairs. We have time. There is no cause to panic.”

“Every year that passes the Knights of Quenar find and inoculate more Protovic. Time is not on our side in that endeavor. We need more eyes. There are too many systems to search, especially with the majority of them in the Rim where we do not have full charts.”

“Neither do the Knights of Quenar. You have a race to contest. Do so wisely and we may still prevail.”

“As you wish, but I do not see the likelihood of success that you do.”

“We do not require the Chixzon knowledge. It is an asset of great importance, but not a necessity. We will be able to influence the Uriti in time, but the Chixzon control mechanism is greatly preferred. Regardless, we are proceeding even if we cannot ever control the Uriti.”

“I still do not understand why we cannot alter the Uriti.”

“Nor do I, but there is a mechanism in place to restore any altered genetic coding. With the Chixzon knowledge we may be able to bypass it.”

“Why did we not have any knowledge of this threat from the distant past? The coding is too advanced to have been done by anything less than a peer.”

“Our superior, in fact…at least in this small regard. We still have little knowledge of the far Rim, and what we have now we did not have previously. I am not surprised we did not encounter them, for they did not contest the Hadarak. They chose to avoid them.”

“And conscript their strength. Even we cannot do that.”

“Not yet,” Zeno’dor added, though the young Zak’de’ron was not incorrect. “We will have to if we are ever able to conquer the inner Core. Which makes your search all the more important.”

“Are you hoping the V’kit’no’sat will acquire the knowledge during their invasion?”

“I doubt we would be so fortunate, but it is possible.”

“Why will you not try and steal it from them? I do not understand your reasoning.”

“When they discovered me they did not understand what we were. I could have killed them then, but did not. They revived me, and in some small way I owe them a debt for that. I made a miscalculation and the uninhabited planet we were on did not remain uninhabited. Foes built directly above us, and they would not have spared me had they found us first. Star Force did, and I have been able to maneuver them into a useful tool against the V’kit’no’sat.”

“You think they can prevail against them?”

“No, they are about to die. Had they not used the Uriti they would have persisted, but they grew too bold. They will wound the V’kit’no’sat so badly that the cracks in their alliance will widen. We will not be ready to destroy them, but it will delay their growth and reconciliation around the Harthur that Mak’to’ran has created. We cannot let them become a united force. We must preserve the cracks until we are ready to pounce. Then we will break them apart and turn their strength against each other, but when we do we must be able to step into the void and corral the Hadarak, and our servant races are far from ready.”

“Star Force is. Why not annex them?”

“I had hoped to, in some fashion, but they pushed too hard. The V’kit’no’sat will not let them continue to exist. They have sealed their fate.”

“All the more reason not to let the Chixzon’s secrets die with them.”

“You underestimate their security. Such a thing is not as simple as you think. They are on the level of the V’kit’no’sat now, and we do not have full access to their version of an Urrtren. We must be coy, else we tip our hand.”

“I fear an opportunity missed, in light of my inability to procure the necessary strands.”

“If one presents itself, I promise we will not miss it.”

“That is enough for me,” Tranxen said deferently. “Do you think Star Force will honor their agreement with the Era’tran faction and not strike their worlds with the Uriti?”

“Of course. They will only fight defensively. Vengeance would require others to hurt the V’kit’no’sat, but Star Force’s survival is dependent on holding their own territory. That is where they will place their full effort. Assaulting a handful of systems, even if they completely destroyed them, is irrelevant in the long term. They will not act emotionally. They will be savvy and stay out of V’kit’no’sat territory, seeking to claim the Rim for themselves. They do not realize it is a ploy to keep the V’kit’no’sat unified, for there is no chance for their survival other than to flee.”

“Will they?”

“Some will to their deep Rim worlds, but only after they fail to defend their territory. They will not run out of fear, only as a last resort.”

“Should we help them do so?”

“No. If they lose what they currently hold, they will not be a power worth our interest out on the Rim…though if it comes to that, we will try to pluck what secrets we can from the survivors. Even if they rebuilt out there, they cannot do so to sufficient strength to threaten the V’kit’no’sat before we are capable of doing so ourselves. Their usefulness will be coming to an end when the invasion conquers and absorbs their strength.”

“What will the V’kit’no’sat gain from them?”

“I am unsure,” Zeno’dor admitted. “But it will not be much. Star Force’s alliance of races will not accept V’kit’no’sat rule as easily as they assume…and what little strength the Humans have drawn from them will disappear. The V’kit’no’sat do not understand this, so they will gain nothing of equal value to what they will lose…unless they are fortunate enough to recover the Chixzon data.”

“Or our existence?”

“We have looked for any trace of it in their civilization, and they have hidden it beyond our view. The V’kit’no’sat will not find it, and if they do, we can use it to further destabilize them.”

“Was that your intention all along?”

“It was a possibility I considered, though I am pleased it has not come to pass. Though wild, Star Force is loyal to their allies. Unfortunately we will not be able to fight simultaneously with them. I would much prefer if we could.”

“Why? Other than their obvious strength with the Uriti?”

“It would be a fitting demise for the V’kit’no’sat…and they are already expressing interest in fighting the Hadarak, though in their own way. It is a threat far from their borders, yet they respond to it for what it is. I wish we could save them, but we cannot. A lost opportunity that will not hinder us.”

“Did you truly come that close to dying?”

“I did. Stasis left me so weak even a small force could have killed me, and had I not been properly revived, I doubt I could have even attacked before I was overcome.”

“Where did you err?”

“I did not erect perimeter sensors. I assumed such things would be more of a detriment than an asset, but I assumed wrong.”

“And that still pains you?”

“That I was so reckless? Yes it does. I was entrusted with our legacy and I nearly blundered it. I will not make the same mistake again, and moving to seize Nefron would be such a mistake. Unless he makes himself vulnerable, we will not attempt to retrieve him or a genetic sample.”

“Understood.”

“Keep searching for the strains. They are our best chance of obtaining a complete set of Chixzon knowledge. I would also like to meet this enemy face to face, and Nefron is no longer fully Chixzon.”

“Do you believe they will resurface on their own?”

“After we obtain a complete set, we will assist the Knights of Quenar in making sure that they do not.”

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