Star Force: Baron
Author: Aer-Ki Jyr
Date: 2017-09-19T06:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Archon Lore

1

July 7, 4863

Meinto System (Zadjen Region)

Treneis

Tanni Daegan had never been outside of Protovic territory before. As an administrator he’d been overseeing various logistical duties on three different Protovic worlds within the Star Force empire, but he’d never had cause to leave. Now he had been summoned to Treneis, the current transitory capitol where Director Davis had set up shop and brought a lot of his support team with him. In addition to that, the various vultures from outside Star Force were tagging along with numerous embassies where they hoped to leverage the Director to do this or that.

Daegan’s orders hadn’t specified why he had been sent here, nor to whom he was to report. There was no reassignment order, just a transit one, so he didn’t know if he was going to be briefed on some matter and sent back or if this was a prelude to a reassignment. He was a lower level Administrator who’d only recently risen to a planet-wide position overseeing the Protovic mining division on the planet of Eurothal, and the possibility of him being needed out in the frontier region was foremost in his mind.

Resources out there were in short supply, and hauling out cargos that far was inefficient. Those newly acquired regions needed to support themselves, which meant mining their own raw materials. Perhaps Davis’s team had tagged him for his quick rising through the Protovic administrator ranks and were going to give him something bigger, or perhaps more tenuous to oversee.

But nothing had been said to him about any of that. All he got was a summons to the headquarters facility, and as he stepped off the dropship that had been sent to retrieve him his mind was still calculating possibilities without being able to settle on odds.

“Administrator Daegan?” a waiting Human attendant asked from just beyond the boarding ramp as Tanni came down.

“I am Daegan.”

“Follow me please,” she said, all but spinning on her right heel and walking towards the massive building at which they’d landed on an extended platform.

“May I ask why I have been summoned?”

“You weren’t informed?” she asked over her shoulder.

“I was not.”

“I don’t know the content of the subject matter, but I have been instructed to take you to the Director’s office.”

Tanni raised an eyeridge, for Protovic had no eyebrows or hair of any kind. “Curious.”

“I’m sure you’ll find out shortly. The Director has many daily appointments from people across the empire. We don’t understand why, and have learned not to ask, but he always has a reason.”

“I am sure he does,” Tanni said as the pair walked in silence into and through the building until they came to a lift that brought them up to the center of Davis’s headquarters. They had to pass by a security station with several armored Commandos present, but after that it was just a matter of working through the numerous staff stations until the attendant stopped at the base of a huge stairway.

“Up there,” she pointed.

“Thank you,” Tanni said evenly as he began climbing at a measured pace. He felt the slight tickle of an energy field as he moved partway up, immediately recognizing it as an audio-suppression field that would keep those below from hearing what was going on up top and vice versa. It was a way to maintain an open air architecture without the noise pollution that such open spaces typically suffered from.

When he reached the top of the stairs he wasn’t in an office, rather a huge deck with windows many times higher than his own 6’ 3’’ inch height. Beyond them was blue skies and an even bluer ocean sprinkled with sandy islands and the occasional view of the large, elephant-like Meintre that made up the majority of the planet’s population.

Almost all of the deck was empty with a firm, but mildly deep carpet covering part of the floor. Off to one side was a single desk with a sole person sitting on the far side of it with his back to the massive ocean side windows.

Tanni walked slowly over to the desk and stood at attention before Director Davis, who didn’t seem to notice him as he was busy working through what looked like shipping manifest holograms, though Tanni couldn’t be sure because he was seeing them from the reverse side.

The Human raised a hand and pointed at the empty chair, not looking at the Protovic for another 43 seconds. When he did it was after making a few inputs to the lists and shutting down the holograms entirely, leaving a clear desktop and airspace above it that only added to the spacious design of the Director’s ‘office.’

“You look confused,” Davis said, leaning back in his chair.

“My orders were to come here. They did not specify why.”

“The why is simple. I wanted to speak with you in person and didn’t have the luxury of traveling to Eurothal. The larger Star Force grows, the more I have to do.”

Tanni twitched, sensing an irregularity in his mind. “You are telepathically scanning me.”

“Yes I am.”

“Should I be resisting?”

“Feel free to, if only for the effort. I need answers to questions that words cannot provide.”

Tanni tried to harden his mind against the presence, much as he had done with other Protovic in training, but instead of applying more pressure and breaking his resistance the Director’s touch seemed to slip and pass his pressure by. Tanni reset himself and tried again three times, but he could not pin the Director’s presence in one place and everywhere he tried to resist the opposition fled, heading elsewhere in his mind.

“Your infiltration is elusive,” he finally said, relenting and letting the Director look where he wanted.

“I have Ikrid. It is superior to Protovic telepathy. That, and I’m a couple millennia older than you.”

“I was surprised you wanted to speak to someone as young as I am.”

“I do not care about your age, only your skill. And a Protovic who rises to Administrator level 4 at age 52 indicates either a breakdown in our system or an individual who is learning very fast.”

“And you are checking my memories to determine which is the case,” Tanni said, stating the obvious rather than asking a rhetorical question.

“I’m doing more than that. Have you been monitoring V’kit’no’sat activity?”

“To a point, yes.”

“Your thoughts?”

“They are setting up new colonies just beyond the border of the Devastation Zone. I believe they intend to use those as staging bases when the truce expires and we cannot eliminate them now without jeopardizing the truce. This is a problem.”

“Is it?”

“Their supply chain is critical this far out from their primary systems.”

“Yet we have the Uriti.”

“They obviously see value in it.”

“They are setting the chess board as they like, but it’s not as significant as you suggest. They cannot build up those worlds in a defensive manner because we can smash them with the Uriti rather easily. They are merely staging bases, nothing more. Given the level of carnage that will occur when fighting resumes, they will still be hurting for supplies.”

“Unless they make first strike their only strike.”

“We have ways to slow that down, but I do not believe they will be that stupid. They can’t take all our worlds in such a manner, and they will lose too many ships if they do. The war will be a long, grinding one. Anything else is to our advantage.”

“Why did you allow Earth to be recolonized?” Tanni asked.

“I didn’t.”

“There are people there now, if not a civilian population.”

“It is a battleground, not a colony. It also belongs to us and I wanted it back. I anticipate it will be the first planet assaulted by the V’kit’no’sat. If it is not, then we have a base in their backwater once they assault the border. That’s me setting our chess board as I like.”

“Won’t they be wiped out?”

“We know how to run when needed. We’ve had a lot of practice.”

“I obviously have not. Nor is combat my specialty.”

“Yet you do study it. Why?”

“I do not believe in compartmentalization. All aspects of reality interact, so in order to make the most accurate predictions one must be knowledgeable in all areas.”

“Interesting, for your physical scores are only barely increasing once you made yellow.”

“I study as an observer, not a participant. Yellow was my goal, to set myself above average, but climbing higher is not a priority when my skillset lies elsewhere.”

“Change that. Training only for self-sufficiency is not enough. There are many things that can only be learned from experience. I learned that when I became an Archon. Pursue some aggressive physical training over the coming centuries. It will do you well.”

“Is that an order or a suggestion?”

“Both.”

“Meaning it’s an order that won’t be enforced?”

“I can’t be looking over everyone’s shoulder. I need people who do the right thing because it’s the right thing. Who do the smart thing because it’s smart. If my orders are wise, then that’s enough. There doesn’t need to be any leverage.”

“I will consider it then.”

“A bit of ego there, I think,” Davis said, still looking into his mind.

“Confidence in my skills. Nothing more than that.”

“One mark of a good leader is being aware of how much you do not know. The very young are not aware of enough of the universe to realize what they lack. That too comes with experience.”

“Am I to be demoted?”

Davis shook his head. “No. If that was the case I would have just sent the order. I brought you here because I need confirmation of things I suspect. Good things. Namely your potential. You have a lot to learn, but you are very observant. That can be a weakness if you are always observing, as I noted previously, but for you it is your greatest asset at the moment. Do not draw comfort in that, for one needs to cultivate multiple assets, but it does you credit regardless.”

“If my position is to be maintained, is that not also only worth a remote order?” Tanni asked, fishing for more information that he could not get from the Director’s mind.

Davis knew what he was doing even without being inside the Protovic’s mind, and Tanni knew that as well, so it wasn’t a cloaked comment, rather a polite way of asking a blunt question.

“I don’t care for word games. Bluntness is preferred,” Davis admonished him.

“Am I being reassigned?”

“That’s better. Yes, you are. You’re also a bit of an experiment.”

“Because of my age?”

Davis nodded. “I was your age when I began Star Force, more or less, and I had far less resources to work with than you have on Eurothal. You’ve had the benefit of others’ experience. I had to make up everything as I went along. Still, there are a few similarities, and I view you as an investment for the distant future.”

“Doing what?”

“Figuring things out for yourself. I think you have the potential to become a peer over time. You’ll never match my experience level, but I could use someone who can figure things out without being given hints. You’re not there yet. Not even close. But I think you could be, some day. And above all, the most important aspect of a leader is one who does the right thing because it’s the right thing. Without that, nothing else matters. You are borderline there, seeing logistics as supreme. Rather, logistics are a means to an end, and that end is doing the right thing. Sometimes it’s necessary to destroy your empire in order to remain the good guys. That’s something you are clueless about now.”

“If you destroy your ability to effect events, how can you do the right thing?”

“By preventing yourself from doing the wrong thing and allowing everything you have built up to be misused. Compromise, in this scenario, is failure. The infrastructure might still be intact, but without the purpose behind it there is no reason for it to exist. Your mind is focused on the pieces, not the purpose. And to be fair, you’ve not been exposed to the purpose before. You’ve been managing already established infrastructure. Polished by others before you. You’ve made upgrades, which is why you’ve risen as far and as fast as you have, but you’re still been insulated from the real purpose behind everything.”

“And you’re going to expose me to it now?”

“I am, now that I’ve been inside your head and taken your measure. You are not my peer. Not now. But I sense potential in you. Only time will tell, but leaving you on Eurothal would be a waste of your somewhat unique skills. Therefore you are hereby reassigned.”

“To where?”

“A world that hasn’t been built yet. To a race that is not yet part of Star Force. We will be receiving a number of races into Beacon that come from afar. They have been marked for destruction by the V’kit’no’sat and have been hiding out for longer than I have been alive. They are coming to us now, not all by their own choice, but their current benefactors want them no longer. We will have to incorporate them into Star Force, and while there are a great many stories of us doing similar things with other races, each race is unique. Adaptation, learning, and imagination are required. And above all that, doing the right thing. Many people don’t understand what that means until they come into contact with the wrong thing, and there are many things wrong with the races we are getting.”

“That is the job of a Monarch, not an Administrator.”

“Yes it is,” Davis said amicably, with the reason the Director had brought him here now fully sinking in.

“No one has been made a Monarch prior to 300 years of age.”

“Not until now. As I said, you are an experiment. I could let you gain further experience in other areas, but this kind of adaptation is what I had to go through in the beginning. Throwing you in a bit over your head will be a good test of your ability to learn and adapt. If you fail, Arch Duke Scarven will step in so the race you are assigned does not suffer. They are our mission, and are not expendable for a newb like you to learn on. I am assigning you this because I think that you, like me, are capable of handling it with little to no experience. If I am wrong, you will be swiftly replaced and I will reassign you to a position that is not a startup.”

“But I will remain a Monarch?”

“I do not penalize people for learning slowly. There are many Monarchs that have learned slowly and risen to the level that deserves that rank. You are not there, but if you cannot handle this assignment I will put you somewhere you can learn more slowly while maintaining what others have built and making small improvements where possible. The only reason you would lose your Monarch status is if you do something wrong or prove to be incompetent.”

“What race am I being assigned?”

“Scarven and I have not decided yet, but it will be one with a smaller population. One that can fit on a single world. The larger ones require experienced Monarchs to coordinate across systems. You are not ready for that.”

“What will my greatest challenge be?”

“With new races come expected difficulties, but it is the unexpected ones that require an inventive mind. I do not know all the problems with these races. You will have to find out for yourself. However, this is not an isolated assignment. Feel free to ask me questions. I will not be there in person, and the communications lag is a burden, but I want you to stay in contact. Not so I can micromanage you. If you require that then you are not a Monarch. But we operate as a team, and newbs especially need to have access to other Monarchs to converse with. You have a direct line to me, as of now. Use it and those to the other Monarchs, whether they be in Beacon or elsewhere.”

“And the trailblazers?”

“You have a direct line to them as well, and they’re better troubleshooters than Monarchs. Care to guess why?”

Tanni considered that for a moment, then linked it to one of Davis’s previous statements.

“They are hands on while Monarchs tend to observe and direct from afar?”

“Indeed. Save for me, though you’ll find that Arch Duke Scarven moves around quite a bit. He will go to see things for himself rather than relying on reports. I suggest you ask him about it, for with a new race you will need to see, feel, and probe minds. You cannot put into a report telepathic information. I hope you know this already.”

“I do.”

“You need to do everything first, in person, then let the Administrators copy your successes through redundancy. That means you in the field, not in an office, until you get a handle on who it is you’re annexing into the empire.”

“A significant challenge, to be sure, and one I am willing to undertake.”

“Good. But be warned, you will be in over your head. I’m counting on your learning curve to be as high as mine. If not, you will fail.”

“Then I hope your assessment of my skills is accurate.”

“There’s only one way to find out for sure.”

“Where is this planet?”

“In the Frontier Region. Security will be handled for you, as far as from offworld threats. You will be able to focus on your planet and it alone. Events beyond that are not your responsibility.”

“So there is to be little interstellar trade?”

“None aside from supply shipments coming in initially. You need to get your infrastructure self-sufficient sooner rather than later and you will have a Kiritak colony to work out from. How long it will take your race to be able to support themselves is unknown. Do not expect it within 100 years.”

“Will I have Archons to work with?”

“Yes. Use their skills whenever possible, but the annexation of this race is ultimately your responsibility. The ideas don’t have to come from you, but the results I expect you to deliver in whatever way, shape, or form appropriate.”

“Results you will have.”

Davis extended his pale hand across the desk and shook the glowing one from the Protovic.

“Welcome to the Monarchs, Baron Daegan.”

2

September 17, 4863

Citadel System (Pavana Region)

Spectre 14

Baron Daegan had spent many days with Davis as he schooled the Protovic on this and that during the brief breaks in his schedule. Most of what the Director told him he had never heard before, or was a slightly different take on familiar concepts. All of it was concise and easy to remember, though a few things Daegan did not fully understand. Davis had told him he wouldn’t for some time, but to remember his words for later when he had the prerequisites to process the information.

After his choppy indoctrination into the Monarch ranks, Daegan was sent to the Beacon capitol of Citadel that was one of the largest systems in Star Force. It contained 152 planetoids, all of which were inhabited in some format by over 128 different races. They were not mixed together like Axius was, rather with each having its own little piece of turf, though 3 of the planets here were Axius ones. Arch Duke Scarven was in charge of both the Axius and Beacon factions, though the former was much more powerful than the latter.

Beacon was more a work in progress and, in some cases, a hindrance to Star Force. While Beacon technically counted as a faction, none of the races within it were. A faction had to be capable in all five forms of combat plus have considerable industrial capability. Beacon could supply everything it needed…until recent years. The influx of new races had put it’s ‘faction’ status into doubt, for now other parts of the empire were having to supply it with the necessary raw materials and foodstuffs it required to house the influx of refugee races until they got them producing at sufficient levels.

Axius was a smoothly functioning faction with two millennia of experience, but Davis had mentioned that the Frontier Region Axius worlds were a lot more hazardous. He hadn’t gone into full detail, but there was a problem looming that had caused a rift between those worlds and the rest in Star Force. They were essentially quarantined until they could become civilized enough to interact with the rest and that worried Daegan, for he was going to be given a race with no Star Force experience whatsoever. Not even a prior trade relationship. And he was going to be assigned a world in the Frontier Region.

He’d just gotten to Citadel three days ago and had met with Arch Duke Scarven immediately. They’d discussed which race he was receiving, as if the final decision had not been made yet, but eventually he was given the Hdjkarvenitshevi…whom an Archon had thankfully ordered to be renamed the ‘Tahm.’ Baron had looked it up, for Davis had insisted that many of the names Star Force used were homages to the distant past, or in some cases jokes, and this was no exception. Tahm Kench was a fictitious character from a game that looked remarkably like the Hdjkarvenitshevi, and the shorter name was much easier to pronounce.

Right now there 50 Tahm in the system, undergoing testing to determine their biological needs and Daegan had already met with two of them this morning. Of the 50, only 6 had learned to speak English, and programing their native language into translation computers was taking time, so he had to work through those six as translators and even his new Monarch Ikrid upgrade didn’t provide him enough power and skill to be able to figure out what the hell they were saying in their odd mix of blurps, squeals, and rumbles.

Their English accent wasn’t too bad though, and he could understand the 6 of them well enough, though at times he had to use his telepathy to check on a word or two. The Tahm, as they told it, were victims of both the V’kit’no’sat and the Preema…but the latter wasn’t true and the Preema had warned them that the Tahm were incessant liars. That was a problem he was going to have to deal with, among many others, and he could see why the Preema had wanted to get rid of them.

The real question was, why ever take them in to begin with? He hadn’t gotten any information on that from the Preema and so far he couldn’t get anything useful out of the Tahm about it, but one oddity of their race was the fact that they reproduced very slow. One offspring per Tahm, who were asexual, per 64-68 years. Their biology was so lethargic it was surprisingly resilient, giving them very long lifespans even without training. Amongst the Preema they typically ranged from 300-600 years, though they claimed they used to live over 1000 before the Preema poisoned them with toxins that reduced their lifespan.

No such toxins had been found in their bodies thus far, so that was probably another lie.

Within a few days Scarven’s medtechs would figure out what they could and could not eat, and then fashion foodstuffs designed specifically for them…along with a version of ambrosia, though Daegan was not going to give that to them immediately. There was a lot that had to be changed prior to that, and the Baron anticipated quite a lot of resistance.

Add on to that the fact that they were aquatic…or technically amphibious, but they preferred to live under water. They had to breathe air off and on, but had small gills that could temporarily support them for more than an hour. They would eventually have to get to a pocket of air or they’d essentially become drunk from low oxygen levels and the Mastertech that had been assigned to Daegan for this assignment suggested that they could look into a genetic alteration to increase their gill efficiency to eliminate the drunken state and make them fully aquatic.

The Baron had told him to hold off on that for now, but to keep it as a possibility for later. He needed to learn what the Tahm were first, before he decided to make any changes, and getting foodstuffs and basic shelters established for the 128 million Tahm he was getting was his top priority. A Kiritak colony had already been established on a world known as ‘Bench,’ but they were waiting for his design specifications before they started to construct facilities for the incoming amphibians. Right now the Kiritak were busy expanding their own mining and industry infrastructure, but Daegan only had 8 months to prep before the Preema convoys carrying all the Tahm arrived.

He wished Davis had given him some more time to prep, but as he said he was being thrown in head first and had to adapt his way through all this. It was a massive challenge, but not one that Daegan felt was overwhelming. He knew the key was to take it one piece at a time while keeping the overall program in mind…yet without letting the mass of what was ahead crush him. Races didn’t become annexed in a single moment, it was a long transitional process even for the most applicable ones, and a virtually indefinite one for the recalcitrant races.

And with their habitual lying, Daegan had a feeling he had gotten one of the recalcitrants.

“Hello, Tahm 2,” he said as he walked through a door into a very humid chamber that was half deck and half pool with three of the Tahm floating in the water with their wide heads just above the surface. “I have more questions.”

“Ask,” the deep voice said as the deceptively fat Tahm walked up the submerged stairs and stood before him. Tahm 2, for Daegan wasn’t even going to try to pronounce their original names, stood as high as his chest but was three times the Protovic’s width. He was biped, with two flipper-like arms that had fingers build into the webbing that could grasp objects about as well as Daegan could. However, they preferred grabbing a lot of objects with their very sticky tongue and pulling them towards them rather than walking a few extra steps and picking them up…so it wasn’t unusual to see little bits of saliva everywhere.

“Warship construction,” Daegan said, sitting down in a chair after telekinetically brushing off a few droplets of liquid. “How did your ships compare to the V’kit’no’sat…and no embellishing please.”

“I never embellish,” the Tahm lied. “Our ships were formidable, but considerably smaller than theirs. We preferred close combat, and could savage them when we got into range, but they cowardly held back and shot us from afar whenever they could. They could also reproduce much faster than us, so even if we killed 10 of them for every one of us, there was no way we could win the war. We eventually fell to the attrition and were forced to flee.”

“You know this how? I assume you were not there.”

“I was not, but we have extensive records. We will bring them with us. You can view them then.”

“I plan to. You said you prefer close combat, why?”

“It is the only honorable option.”

“I see. How many warships do you possess now?”

“None. The Preema took them from us. All we have are cargo ships.”

“What did you do for the Preema? I doubt they would have taken you in without some form of compensation?”

“They hate the water. They used us as slave labor.”

“To do what, exactly?”

“Fight the monsters in their deep worlds. They hate the water, but they have worlds that are completely covered by it. I think their egos made them. They could not pass over the worlds so they had to own them…but they could not without our help!”

“What did they get from those worlds?”

“Valuable resources from the sea floor…but it was guarded! We had to fight the aquatics down there on a regular basis to get even a small harvest.”

“Harvest of what?”

“Nodules. They are the excrement of some of the monsters, but certain ones contain concentrations of compounds only found in very small amounts in the water. The monsters collect them in their bodies over the years then, every now and then, drop them to the sea floor along with their foul excrement. We had to go down there and find them for the Preema, but we didn’t give them all of them. We hid some for ourselves.”

“Do you know what exactly those compounds are?”

“I can do better than that,” Tahm 2 said, closing his mouth and wiggling in place for a moment. Daegan heard a gurgling sound and suddenly the Tahm’s mouth opened and his tongue unfurled with a golf ball-sized gleaming green orb. His tongue dropped it into his hand, which he then held out to Daegan.

“A gift to our new friends.”

The Baron took it slowly between two fingers as the saliva dripped off it, finding it to be very heavy for its small size.

“You kept this in your stomach the whole time?”

“No. We have internal pouches in our stomach where we can save various things. The Preema never knew.”

“Why didn’t this show up on our scans?”

“Because we passed it back and forth,” Tahm 2 said, causing Daegan’s own stomach to clench up in disgust at the thought. Apparently gut swapping objects didn’t bother the Tahm at all. “We have two more, if you also want them.”

“Are they all the same?”

“No, they’re all different colors. We don’t know exactly what they are, but the Preema wanted them pretty bad.”

“I think I know what this is,” the Baron offered. “It looks like corovon. Pure corovon.”

“And what is that?”

Daegan glanced at him oddly. “You’ve never heard of it? Or just don’t recognize our word?”

Tahm 2 turned and shot his tongue out at a nearby shelf, grabbing a small device and pulling it to him. “I shall check.”

Daegan waited while the Tahm reviewed the English language database the Preema had given them, then after several minutes he flung it aside, clattering on the floor and nearly falling into the water.

“It says it’s a building product, but I have no knowledge of it. How valuable is it?”

“It’s a very strong building product. And quite valuable. Not the rarest of the rare, but close. Normally you don’t see it in its pure form. You have to process enormous amounts of ore to get even a small amount of the raw material. Which is also why this is quite heavy.”

“Pure stuff, huh?” Tahm 2 said, using a colloquialism that suggested he’d studied quite a lot to learn the Star Force language while the others hadn’t bothered to even learn two words. “How much is it worth?”

“This right here could be used to produce decent civilian armor covering half a starship when combined with other materials.”

“How big a starship?”

“Half a mile long.”

“And those cheap bastards never even bothered to share. Just gave us a few worlds and kept us there. We couldn’t trade with nobody, and they made us work collecting these to earn our ‘lease.’ Damn slavery if you ask me.”

“I was told you didn’t want to come to Star Force?”

“In truth I didn’t. Figured whatever you would have us do would be worse.”

“So why give me this?”

“You’re asking what we like to eat. The Preema never did. Gave us ghastly stuff before we were able to make our own.”

“Are you traders?”

“The best there ever were. The V’kit’no’sat envied our corporate empire, which was why they attacked. Couldn’t beat our prices and everyone came to us instead of them.”

“You cheated them, didn’t you?” Daegan guessed.

“Absolutely not! We never traded with them. They wouldn’t allow it. We were beneath their dignity to interact with…except when killing us, that is.”

“How do you remember that much? Is historical study your specialty?”

“We keep detailed records that all little, ah, Tahm are required to watch.”

“Movies?”

“Yes. What you call movies. That’s how we teach them, by example.”

“And who creates these movies?”

“The people who lived in that time.”

“Not after?”

“No, never. We couldn’t be assured of the truth of the matter if the recreations were not made by those who experienced the events.”

“So no real data?”

“Whenever possible, but most important things in life are not recorded…or recorded properly.”

Even without his telepathy Daegan could infer what ‘properly’ meant to the Tahm.

“Thank you, Tahm 2. If this is what I think it is, it’ll help us secure some credits that will go towards your new colony.”

“You’re going to trade it? I thought Star Force didn’t pay for such things?”

“We have a vibrant trade market, or did the Preema not tell you that?”

“So we’re going to be charged for our new colony construction?”

“No. No. Our markets are a luxury. All our important stuff we build for free. But that doesn’t mean I can’t put this on the market and get a little extra, you understand?”

The Tahm smiled wide, with his mouth stretching farther than Daegan’s shoulders. “Oh I understand perfectly. You understand trade like we do.”

“Perhaps not that much, but I learn fast.”

“If you can make a deal on that one, I’ll get the other two to you soon. I don’t have them inside me at the moment. Nor do they,” he said, gesturing with his flipper towards the others in the chamber.

“I’ll keep you updated,” Daegan promised, then turned and walked out while purging the orb of its saliva using his telekinesis and trying to keep it off his fingers. He squeegeed it all off before getting out into the clean hallway, then tossed the orb up in the air once, catching it as it fell and feeling his arm give slightly under its weight. It was damn heavy, and he was all but sure it was pure corovon, but he needed to make sure.

“You are correct,” the Kiritak foreman assigned to his rapidly growing staff said after returning from the research lab. “It is pure corovon.”

“Could it have been stolen from one of our warehouses here?” Daegan wondered, thinking that a small possibility but not wanting to rule it out entirely.

“No. We don’t fashion them into orbs. Wastes too much space. We use cubes.”

“Of course. Did you find any biomatter in this?”

“None other than the Tahm saliva on the surface. The corovon lacing pattern is, well, irregular. A biological source sounds plausible, though I’ve checked our records and we have no knowledge of any race in or outside Star Force that produces corovon pellets.”

“I imagine anyone who does know of such things would want to keep that knowledge to themselves. What can we use this for?”

“You mean in the new colony?”

“Yes.”

“We use corovon in our building construction, but not for the Tahm. Those are weak structures just designed to temporarily hold them and our own buildings are already established. We don’t have any use for it until we start building the Tahm’s permanent structures, then it will be quite useful.”

“And if we trade it away, can we get something of value for the temporary structures?”

“We’re operating off of seed status now, so anything extra would be valuable,” the Kiritak said, meaning that after the initial Kiritak colony was constructed, all future building materials had to be mining, refined, and fabricated on site, for no additional supply convoys would be arriving to supplement them given how small a population the Tahm had.

“How about some additional aquatics craft?”

“Additional? We have none at the moment.”

“Then use this and get whatever you can.”

“Not my area of expertise, but Hohovni should be able to,” he said, referencing another of the few Kiritak that were here to help Daegan with the analysis of the Tahm and plan the construction efforts that would have to begin within a month.

“I’ll get it to her then,” the Baron said, taking it back from the shorter biped.

“You said they have more of them?”

“Not sure if the others are corovon, but they said they were different colors.”

“Not corovon then. It’s always green in pure form.”

“That’s what I thought too. Digestion isn’t going to alter this, is it?”

“I doubt it. That’s about as inert an object as you can get. Bonding it to other subatomic particles requires a massive amount of energy. I doubt a biological could ever produce a fraction of what was required.”

“So how is this formed?”

“Stripping it out from other stuff isn’t that complicated, but when the corovon particles get in close like that it’s hard to pull them apart.”

“Noted.”

“So the Preema really have some biological collectors?”

“I have no idea. The Tahm are not a reliable source of information and this orb was not collected by the one that had it. His memories are not of underwater harvesting, but of diplomatic relations.”

“Interesting regardless.”

“Yes,” Daegan said, holding up and staring at the curious corovon orb. “Yes it is. Quite curious, indeed. Especially since the Preema just kicked out their harvesting crew.”

3

April 7, 4864

Guldef System (Frontier Region)

Bench

Baron Daegan had one month left, more or less, to prepare his world/system that at present only contained one inhabited planet, and that planet had only Kiritak on it plus his staff that contained a mix of Humans, Protovic, Kiritak, and Calavari. None of them were aquatic, which was odd, but the Tahm were so damn slow in the water even he could almost swim as fast. And with aquatic armor that contained squirt jet engines his staff could move around easily enough in the water to keep pace with the lethargic Tahm.

Whether or not that lethargy was biological or cultural was something he was going to have to figure out over the course of time, and building the book on the Star Force Tahm was his sole responsibility. Fortunately most of the structures needed to house the 128 million of the incoming refugees were up and running, with the remainder on schedule for completion within the next week. The Kiritak were as good of builders underwater as they were on land despite the limitations of the environment, and they’d done a damn good job of implementing Daegan’s plans.

The world of Bench was mostly water with some large continents on it. That water was shallow over 93% of the oceans with the remainder being a very deep trench that carved a crescent moon around the northern pole. He planned on making use of it later, but for now he needed to keep the Tahm in the shallows near the shoreline, for the majority of their training was going to be on land.

In fact, the maturias that had already been built but not yet inhabited were completely artificial marshes, and indoor no less. Daegan knew the younglings needed water, but he had a feeling if they didn’t develop their ‘land legs’ enough they’d end up sluggish. They needed to adapt early on, but a ‘dry’ maturia wasn’t going to work well. They were truly amphibians that needed a mix of environments, but putting them in the ocean was a bad idea. He needed to fully control the environment, so he’d simply had the Kiritak build one for him.

Elarioni were still the premier aquatics race within Star Force, but they were not amphibian and could only deal with the Tahm in the water. That made them ill-suited as trainers for this scenario, so the Baron had recruited land races with good aquatics marks…plus the Calavari who had the muscle mass to move the fat Tahm around on land with ease. He’d picked up a vibe that they tended to use their heavy stature as a defense, and in Star Force that would not fly, so he wanted trainers that could make it clear they were not too heavy to throw around the room if need be.

His maturia staff was fully assembled and ready to take in younglings as soon as they were born, including a transitional maturia for those already born but not yet to adulthood…which took about 8 years for the Tahm. They reproduced slow but grew fast, meaning they also ate a lot. Maturia training was probably going to take 25 years, so most of it would be with adults, but the proper maturia programs only accepted infants at birth. Any others had to be in transitional programs.

For the 126 million adults they were getting, they were going to go through indoctrination training without the benefit of indoctrination programs. Daegan had to house all of them without being able to put them individually through an indoctrination program. That was one of the major headaches of the Beacon faction, because he had to deal with an existing civilization and couldn’t individualize them out one by one. The maturias would produce proper Tahm, but the first few ‘batches’ were going to be an experiment in the process with lots of tweaks having to be made as they learned what would and wouldn’t work with this new race.

But the ones that were soon to arrive were not going to fully change, so Daegan had to make use of them in their current state while forcing some changes on them. To help with this he’d had small settlements built rather than large cities, with several extra where he could move individuals around based on their behavior, grouping together those that were compliant and isolating those that were causing trouble…all the while keeping them working to build their new world and reminding them that he was in charge.

Daegan doubted they were going to accept that if he couldn’t offer them an angle, for everything he had learned about them said they were cunning businessmen…with too few ethics. They wanted to make deals, so the dealmaker he was going to have to become. One potential angle he had already thrown out to their representatives in Citadel, who would be arriving along with the main convoy, was the new divide within the empire. The Frontier Region could not trade with the established regions, meaning there was going to be a vacuum of products in the Frontier Region. Those who got their exports flowing fastest would be able to capitalize on that and potentially develop a bit of a monopoly in the absence of the major trading powerhouses.

Bench was a long way from that, but the potential was there and the Tahm had responded much better to the offer of greatness than being told to just sit and reproduce as refugees. It was odd, because they were so lethargic, yet give them an objective they liked and suddenly there was an uncharacteristic enthusiasm there. Whether that turned into actual work or was just talk was unknown, but it was clear everything was going to come to a head when the convoy arrived. How well this was going to work he didn’t know, but he was sure that he was going to have to adjust on the fly, which was the reason why Davis had put him here.

He just hoped he’d designed the infrastructure in a way that was advantageous for him to hold sufficient leverage. There was only going to be one arrival, and if he botched it he wasn’t going to get a second chance for a first impression…and he was pretty sure that the Tahm were heavily influence by reputation. Daegan had to create a powerful and fair one, but as always with liars there were no rules, so he expected there to be some trouble, though he had no idea how much was actually coming his way.

5 months later…

“Get back in line!” the Calavari trainer yelled, with his voice being processed through a headpiece into the Tahm’s native language with a slight delay, but it wasn’t that delay that was causing the Tahm to stray out of position.

“My feet hurt,” he complained, still shuffling off to the side where he defiantly sat down on a low bench…which for the Tahm was little more than a bump on the ground due to their very short legs.

“A lot more than that is going to hurt if I have to hurl you into the chute,” the Calavari warned. “Move into position yourself or I’m moving you.”

“My feet hurt,” the Tahm reiterated, unbudging as two more Tahm waddled over and sat down, echoing similar difficulties that prevented them from walking a few more meters to the entrance of the waterslide where they would be moving on their butts, not their feet, so the complaint was painfully invalid, which only further infuriated the Calavari.

“That’s it. Everyone else stay put. You’re going next,” the trainer said, pointing his lower left arm with a thick finger on the end towards the short, pudgy alien.

“I am not,” he said as the huge Calavari walked over to him and reached down, grabbing him by both the arms and the legs, one Calavari hand on each, and picked him up by them. The Tahm screamed, burped, and made all other kinds of sounds in protest, but he was essentially a dead weight and couldn’t do anything other than use his tongue…which he did, smacking the Calavari in the face with it.

The trainer didn’t budge, carrying him over to the surging waters in the little oval pond that flowed down a chute. He didn’t put the Tahm into the pond, but rather swung him clear over it and sent him down the waterslide head first, then turned and pointed at the other two sitting.

“On your feet now, or you’re going the same way!”

One of them did stand up and got back into line, but the other didn’t. When the Calavari began to walk over to him the Tahm got up and began to run away with surprising speed, but a few long strides by the Calavari caught up to him and soon he was baggage as well…but being carried face down so his tongue couldn’t be used against the trainer.

He got tossed face down into the chute and disappeared as the flowing water and gravity pulled the obstinate alien out of view and into the challenge course that they did not like being put through…for if they stopped midway they’d get shot by drones, meaning they had to keep moving to the finish and couldn’t sit down in protest like so many of them had done over recent months.

The new challenge course had been a modification made on the Baron’s order, and it was working, because they really didn’t want to go into the thing again…which was why more of this style were being constructed, with the trainers offering many little advice wrinkles to the designs, finding ways to irritate and motivate the Tahm who did not want to be here, did not want to be part of Star Force, and certainly did not want to be made to train.

But they were going to learn, the easy way or the hard way, and aside from a small group of individuals who had been separated from the others and allowed to go through normal training, the rest were being thrown through these ‘gauntlet’ challenges, and it looked like this was the only way for the adult population to learn anything, for they were stubborn as hell.

Fortunately this Calavari and the others knew how to deal with stubborn, and it almost always began and ended with muscle. Which they had plenty of.

The Protovic trainers were taking a different approach, using their telepathy to trick the Tahm into doing things and calling out their lies and punishing them for them. And via punishment, it was usually another run through a gauntlet course. The only other thing they hated worse was being denied their choice of food, but the Baron had already decreed that wasn’t to be touched, for it would be a legitimate complaint and he didn’t want to give them any. So they got to eat all the food they wanted, and Star Force had designed a lot of new things specifically for them, then they were required to put that food to work in training…and so far none had gone on a hunger strike in protest, and the Calavari didn’t think any of them ever would.

“Alright, let’s keep this moving. Next,” he said when the countdown timer expired, allowing those ahead of them long enough for the system to shift from one chute to another so they didn’t end up going to the same location. This gauntlet trial was randomized between groups and individuals, and whenever they went down it they never knew what they were going to have to face, for there were 183 different scenarios.

And the recovery wards for those that got shot were always busy, with their stunned bodies being hauled there and revived inside a small box that they had to then sit out a penalty time in. That was actually preferable to some of them, until they realized that they were missing a meal because of it.

For those that didn’t care, the stun shots had been dosed up with pain inducers so they now literally stung on impact…and after. When destunned, the stinging didn’t go away, so they now sat in their little boxes in mild pain. Nothing major, but enough to be an annoyance.

The Tahm that were in the ‘good’ group didn’t have those modifications, but it was necessary for the rest because they would literally just sit down on the ground in protest and do nothing. So now, they could sit in their little box and feel tiny stings as long as they did, and they hated it. The completion rate of the gauntlet challenges had initially been 1.4%. Now it was up to 58%, proving that the Tahm weren’t incapable, just unmotivated.

“Next! Move along. You’re gonna get used to this sooner or later. Might as well make it sooner for your sake,” he said as one of the Tahm slid over the edge and sat down in the pool, then pulled himself forward into the heaviest current with his flippers, not giving the Calavari cause to do any ‘motivating’ and sent himself down the chute on his own muscle.

“I hate you,” another Tahm said, but still in line. It was a female, which was only noticeable by the head shape. Otherwise they all looked identical. They actually reproduced using their tongues, so there was no visible genitalia to differentiate them with, and none of them were wearing clothes. There was no point indoors, and outdoors it would require temperatures outside the comfortable range.

Calavari did wear clothes, because they did have exterior genitalia, but the Tahm were a race that didn’t and their grey/green blubbery bodies all looked alike, but the trainers were able to tell most of them apart by now, and this one was Amber-16.

“If you didn’t, I wouldn’t be doing my job you lazy ass. Get in there before I have to use my foot again.”

Amber-16 reflexively rubbed her round backside, remembering the last time she’d refused right on the edge of the pool and had been kicked in face first. That memory was enough to get her grudgingly to step in on her own, swearing a long string of vitriol that the computer translation couldn’t articulate.

Whenever he got that the Calavari took it as a sign of success, and a few seconds later Amber-16 was sliding down the chute and turning to the left out of view, reducing the number of Tahm up top that he had to make sure got started.

“Next!”

Baron Daegan walked out on the deck, tasting the warm, humid air of the planet as he came to the rail and leaned on it, looking over the edge at the gigantic drop-off that gave an awe inspiring view of the coastline and the hundreds of dome-shaped buildings below. Each of those had a water tunnel inside that led to the ocean and little infrastructure on the outside, for this planet suffered from severe hurricanes on a regular basis. One was brewing even now on the horizon, but it wouldn’t be here for another day. Those inside the domes wouldn’t even notice it, and go deep enough in the ocean and you could ride it out with ease.

As it was, most Tahm were not even permitted in the ocean, for some had tried to skip workouts by hiding out there. They eventually came back when they got hungry, but a few had tried killing local sea creatures to eat so they could stay out there indefinitely. Daegan had shut that down as soon as he heard about it, and those that had were now sitting in the few prisons he’d had constructed. They probably liked not having to do workouts, but they had zero connection to the other Tahm. As social of creatures as they were, he figured that isolation would be punishment enough to keep them from repeating their bad behavior when they were let out after their 3 month sentences expired.

This entire mission was one headache after another, but there were a few bright spots. The maturias were doing adequately well, despite their youth, and the ‘good group’ of adults was actually making considerable progress. It was the percentage that was so alarming. Almost all of the adults were basically baggage, and Daegan wasn’t going to be able to get anything even resembling a work crew suitable to replace the Kirtiak within decades. They’d have to stay and keep underwriting these lazy, egotistical liars…so the idea of planetary self-sufficiency was a far-fetched notion at this point without the Kiritak.

Their reproduction rates were also dropping drastically, for they didn’t like the idea of handing over their younglings to Star Force. That meant it was going to take forever to replace the adults. At least he had a workable population in the maturias to repopulate with over time if the adults stopped reproducing altogether, but it seemed like everything positive he tried to do, the Tahm found a way to block or at least slow him down.

And what he was doing was for their benefit, which made this situation all the more infuriating.

Davis was right about this being totally different than Administrator work. Daegan had always found little bits of inefficiency in the Protovic ranks, but they were literally perfect compared to the Tahm. How people could be this stupid he couldn’t fathom, but he was learning quickly and now had a great deal more respect for Davis if this was the type of environment he had had to build Star Force within in the very beginning. Daegan at least had an empire to pattern off of and pull personnel from. Building it from scratch…now that was a challenge he did not know how Davis had ever accomplished.

He’d said that Daegan would be thrown in over his head, and now he knew what the Director had meant. His Archon assistance had laid out the path that had to be taken, knuckles first, with the Tahm, but there wasn’t much they could do that the trainers could not, so they were being wasted here, training in their sanctums until something arose that needed their attention.

Daegan knew this was just going to take time. A lot of time. Grinding time, small victory by small victory whenever and wherever he could find them. That was something a Monarch had to do, and would be a waste of the Archons’ skills. At least they could train and tune all this out, but Daegan was the one that had to be waist deep in it, and was having to earn his Monarch rank from day one, for these Tahm were all but totally intractable.

But then again, if it wasn’t hard it wouldn’t be a challenge. And a challenge for a Monarch that the Director thought might mirror his own potential. In that case, Daegan might actually be getting off a bit easy. And that thought thoroughly scared him.

4

April 19, 4864

Kollop System (Frontier Region)

Nexus Station

David-441 stepped off the Star Force dropship onto the foreign hangar deck that had a myriad of The Nexus races inhabiting one of the last intact refuges in the spinward, or ‘west,’ side of what had once been The Nexus territory. This system didn’t even have an inhabited planet in it, just this 340 mile wide space station that was still active as a hub of commerce. Star Force had a sizeable presence on it and was using it as a staging base for their emergency efforts in the region, with David just having returned from fighting in two different star systems.

It was a mess out here, and the only reason why this station hadn’t been packed up and moved was The Nexus didn’t have enough super-huge ships to do the moving, nor did they have enough small ones to network together to transport the valuable pieces of their infrastructure elsewhere. Already 8 Grid Points had been relocated, stranding the local inhabitants as the more powerful races tried to reform their existing territory into a new, stronger network, but that meant hemorrhaging the lesser races that were in the wrong geographical regions.

And they were hated for it, but when you were pulling out and running away from regions you never intended to inhabit again you really didn’t care what those that were being left behind thought of you. In the case of this station, situated well out from the star between the first and second gas giants in the system, it had become the defacto property of the lesser Nexus races that were trying to hold on to any shred of a link to the stronger races. A shaky trade route to the Anshala Grid Point still existed, and it was the last lifeline for the region that saw everyone with the ability to flee traveling down it in hope of finding someone elsewhere in The Nexus to take them in.

David knew many were getting bottled up elsewhere, not permitted from going into certain areas where the Sety and others did not want them. The mismanagement of The Nexus had been having horrific consequences for centuries, but it was only getting worse with time and there was too much territory for Star Force to annex. They were taking on as much as they could and sending teams like the one David was currently on out beyond the annexed area to try and stabilize what they could, hoping to buy time for races that might be able to survive until Star Force expanded out to them.

But already there more races than David could count who were imploding. They didn’t even need anyone to invade them, for without the economic ties of The Nexus that they’d foolishly relied upon their infrastructure was failing. Their factories grinding to a halt now that the specialists they usually hired to fix such things were long gone. Their food supply then suffered from the lack of machinery and trade that had been used to bolster it in the past.

Entire planets were starving to death, some as bad as the Kiritas had been when Star Force first met them. Some even worse. David had seen a few planets firsthand that they’d gotten to too late, and more than 99% of the population was now dead with the few survivors having gone cannibal. More often than not Star Force would drop some supplies and leave them be, for they didn’t have the resources out here to take prisoners. Right now it was helping those who wanted to help themselves, without the luxury of forcing those who did not into sustainable frameworks.

Outside the station David was on were two Star Force warships…the one he’d come in on and another that was just about ready to leave on another mission. They always kept one here, but only one, and so far that had been enough to dissuade the predatory races, pirates, and other groups out there taking advantage of the chaos from hitting this system. There was a small fleet of local warships, but none as powerful as a Star Force model, and the locals had begged Star Force to establish a permanent presence here in order to try and keep this tiny link to The Nexus intact.

It made sense for Star Force to do that rather than try and establish a colony of their own this far out, so they’d claimed a small section of the station for themselves and set up shop. Now David and others were going out on missions using this station as a central hub to stockpile supplies and switch out personnel. As for David he needed a rest, having suffered an arm injury over a week ago that the regenerator had sucked the life out of him to repair.

But he’d been exhausted before that, and not just physically. The sight of so many people suffering and dying wore on a person, so when his warship needed to return for fuel he went with it rather than staying behind and trying to pick a few small fights that would amount to little in the grand scheme of things.

He had to recharge himself, otherwise the carnage would overwhelm him and cause greater problems later. Unfortunately that meant leaving some present fights hanging in order to insure he was fit to fight others down the road.

When he got back to the station he headed straight for his temporary quarters there and crashed, but not to sleep. He disconnected himself from the region, the people on the station, and everything else. Mentally he had to get away from it all, so he retreated to his little quiet room and dove into the communications link Star Force maintained with the station. The relay network didn’t reach out here, but message packets were carried by ships and dealing with events back in the ‘homeland’ was a good way to get his mind off the sludgefest around him.

He hadn’t checked in for months, and there many updates that he was curious in monitoring, but there were a handful specifically for him and they were all related to the Preema. Since he’d been the one to transfer over the Preema races to Beacon he’d been monitoring their progress and running an investigation into what exactly the Preema had been doing with them. Virtually no one had any information on the Preema from the inside, for they kept very closed borders, but Star Force had plenty of witnesses now and sorting out some kind of story from them was in the works.

The Monarchs overseeing these races were gathering as much information as they could and syphoning it off to him to try and put all the pieces together, and with this latest batch of information some of his earlier speculations had been proven wrong, but he thought he was finally getting a handle on the Preema’s motivations.

Fear is what motivated them. That was becoming more and more clear, yet they didn’t panic. Most of the fearful did, but these Preema were cold and calculating, working ten steps ahead to avoid problems before they happened, and they saw the V’kit’no’sat as a gigantic problem, for they had nearly expanded out into Preema territory before the Rit’ko’sor rebellion. David thought they feared a conflict and conquest of their territory by the V’kit’no’sat more than anything…but it was their territory that he thought they valued more than their lives.

If you were faced with an opponent you could not beat, then the only logical course was to run. The Preema were not running. Rather, they were treating this like having to weather a storm. They kept everyone out of their little corner of the galaxy and didn’t interfere with others unless they absolutely had to. David got the feeling they hoped to ride out a V’kit’no’sat expansion by playing dead and not picking a fight, but by having enough strength to defend themselves if needed.

But they needed to know their enemy, and the fleeing races that had been marked for death by the V’kit’no’sat were assets, for if they weren’t why would the V’kit’no’sat bother with them? They’d gotten a handle on the fact that the V’kit’no’sat ran rough shot over the inner half of the galaxy without owning most of those systems. So they tolerated a lot while picking others for eradication…and the Preema wanted to know why and how they could keep themselves on the ‘ignore’ list.

That was David’s feel for it, but he’d misjudged them when he thought of them as cowering. They were playing a very long term game, and in the long run the only way to be safe from the V’kit’no’sat was to destroy them. The Preema could not do that themselves, but they could help others take them down while sitting quietly in their own systems.

Star Force had known for a long time that the Preema had diplomatic connections to a great many races and that they wanted greater links to what was left of The Nexus…especially now that it had collapsed, but they were not willing to expand their territory beyond their borders. David had initially thought this was out of fear of drawing attention, but now he knew he had been wrong.

Information from the races that had lived and worked with the Preema was now indicating that they had not been good hosts, but not out of malice. They had to keep them quiet, but they were also not helping them in order to be generous. Everything they did had to have some gain for the Preema, so them putting these races to work for them in various ways in addition to the information they could provide made sense…as did turning them over to Star Force now that they’d plucked all the information from them that they could.

They’d imposed population restrictions on several of the races, and when some of them violated those numbers they had not responded by killing the excess as the V’kit’no’sat would have, but they had tightened their grip on their wards even further, which was why there was considerable animosity towards them. These races wanted to grow and the Preema did not want them to expand to other systems, hence there was an underlying problem that could only be solved by getting them out of Preema territory.

But there was more than that going on, a great deal more, David thought, that he was just beginning to piece together. The small orbs the Tahm had brought with them, despite their penchant for lying, were evidence of resource gathering. Given the numbers of Preema, why would they even bother having these races work for them? The number of resources had to be so small to not be worth it on a grand scale, but the nature of the gathering is what piqued David’s interest. For it wasn’t just the Tahm that were collecting orbs and other organic droppings.

There were now 5 different stories of races being used to collect organic discharge that was extremely valuable. Too many to be coincidence, and David now guessed that the Preema had been cultivating lesser races, perhaps even genetically altering them, to act as gradual resource collectors and refineries. The Tahm had been gathering on the ocean floor, as had the Itiumu, but the other three had been collecting on land from either roaming herds of hexpeds the size of dropships or stealing the inner lining of insect dwellings that were unusually plentiful in valuable raw materials that didn’t make for such great building materials.

It all looked to David like the Preema had put together a primitive slave empire where they let races free roam unwittingly doing their bidding…and if other races stumbled across these uninhabited planets within the Preema domain, they’d interfere with their network and might even realize the natural resources available and try to steal them.

So the Preema keeping people out made more sense now, but it was also this reluctance to do the work themselves that told David something about the Preema. They liked to sit back and direct rather than do the work, and that was an important datapoint. They wanted to be the puppet masters, not the battlefield masters that the V’kit’no’sat were, and their growing relationship with Star Force allowed them many more options without having to leave their own territory in any meaningful way.

David had seen the plans for the Grid Point bridge they’d agreed to build, including with branches into areas Star Force wanted. The Preema would build them, but after that he expected them to sit back and let others operate the locations, swelling the economic presence and reshaping the geography around those locations. The Preema would gain great wealth from this over the course of time, but it was a huge up front expenditure that even Star Force would have trouble accomplishing if it had the luxury of attempting a project of this size.

And that made David wonder how large the Preema stockpiles of resources were. He got the feeling that they just collected and stored the bioharvest until they needed it, and if that was the case they could be sitting on vast amounts of wealth the likes of which David couldn’t even imagine. Yet another reason not to let anyone snoop around to see how wealthy you were, lest they might try and take it from you.

David also felt the Preema had tried taking in these races as an experiment and got burnt from it. He didn’t expect them to offer such assistance again now that they’d gotten rid of their burden, and the worlds those races had previously been inhabiting were now empty and offering more space for whatever the Preema wished.

Then there was also the matter of the Ikrid blocks they’d negotiated for. He got the feeling those were not meant to fight the V’kit’no’sat, but to deal with other telepathic races. It also suggested they had secrets to keep more than battlefield considerations in mind, which made David wonder what else they were hiding inside their territory. The races that were now in Beacon had only seen small parts of it, forbidden to travel elsewhere, and the Preema’s prudence in fighting the lizards to keep them from getting to their borders was now in retrospect making greater sense.

They did not want anyone or anything encroaching on their territory, and David felt it was not a territorial ego that was driving them, but rather a host of secrets they couldn’t afford to let be known to the galaxy. So they were hiding in plain sight, playing a guiding hand in regional events while staying on their perch unless absolutely necessary. The lizards had apparently scared them enough to get them to come out, but as of now they were tucked in there nicely and not bothering anyone, having relinquished all the temporary worlds they’d assumed control of during the war.

The Preema were a greater mystery than he could figure out at present, and trying to analyze every bit of intel the Monarchs were giving him from the newest Beacon races was a suitable distraction for the Archon while he hid out on The Nexus station and rested his mind from the horrors taking place in this part of the galaxy.

5

March 3, 4865

Axalon System (Pavana Region)

Turok

Sara-012 sprinted across an open field, staying ahead of the young Raptors that were now full grown but still not quite capable of keeping up with her. That would change with time and training, but the fact that they could almost run as fast as her was both disturbing and exhilarating for a biped. Scionate had always been faster than Humans, but they were quadrupeds and had the advantage of huge stride length. Raptors had more than Humans, but they were still biped too and had the same disadvantage, yet the genetic superiority of their now very refined design was damn impressive to see.

All of these adults were new Raptors, not converts, so they were still learning about everything. If one of the adults that had not been born into Star Force were out here they’d run Sara down with ease, but right now she was still queen of the castle…or field in this case.

The objective was simple, keep away from them and avoid contact. It was a giant game of tag with the Raptors learning to work together to track down a target. The pack mentality was still very present in them despite their new Ikrid blocks, and Sara needed to teach them to think when in a group rather than just pattern off the others…and in typical Archon fashion, that meant beating it into them through physical force or repetitive failure, the latter of which was appropriate in this case, for they weren’t landing a nose on her.

That’s all it would take to end this game with a win for them, but Sara had such endurance now that they weren’t going to be able to wear her out. The reverse was true, knowing that they had about 22-26 minutes at this pace before they tanked. This was the 54th time they’d run this game, and they still could not touch her…despite her not using her psionics to evade. This was pure running and agility, with Humans having an advantage in the latter. Raptors could move fast, but turning on a dime with their leg structure and tails was not easy.

They were still good movers, but they were better when operating off a straight line. A Human could spin in place with ease because of their vertical back, but the horizontal back of the Raptors meant a lot of momentum had to be redirected in both head and tail, and it was something that Sara was using to her advantage whenever one of the Raptors got close, as she did now with one coming in from her left while the others were trailing a few dozen meters behind her.

They wanted her to go right, trying to herd her into a better position to surround her and she knew it, which was why she turned hard left and faked with her head. The Raptor thought she was pulling a U-turn, but a heavy foot plant launched her to the right at the last moment and the Raptor flew past her left shoulder, futilely reaching out a tiny hand that missed by a meter.

Sara continued her right turn until she got back on her original course, but by then the other Raptors were only 4 meters back. She could see them with her Pefbar, so there was no need to turn around, but she had an urge to telekinetically trip them up and make them faceplant, for they were running so hard they were having trouble staying on their feet every time they hit a little divot in the grass-covered ground. They were trying too hard, but her showing them that now in that fashion would be cheating so she resisted the impulse and eased up just enough to keep them close.

The trailblazer was getting tired now, but they were literally falling apart. The only chance they had was the other group that had broken off and gone far ahead several minutes earlier. They were better rested and slowly drawing their lines in around her at a range of more than half a mile. If she kept running straight she would be near them very soon, and she knew she could get past them without too much trouble. That would effectively end this attempt, because the Raptors would be too tired to mount any more credible attempts, so she threw them a bone.

Sara picked up speed, gaining a few meters on those behind her before turning right and running in a circle, dragging those behind her in a line like ducks as they just couldn’t make the catch. As she did the larger circle came in closer and closer, until all 40 of them were within a quarter of a mile. At that point Sara couldn’t cut them any more breaks and went evasive, plowing a line in the grass and leaving a dirt streak as her foot braked hard, then she redirected at an angle back past her trailing Raptors. Without that angle they would have got her, but she stayed just out of reach going almost the opposite way, causing the Raptors to try and follow at the same speed…which they couldn’t.

Half of them tried the same skid stop and couldn’t handle it. Most Humans couldn’t either, but Sara was very good at it now after centuries of experience. She almost laughed as half of the Raptors rolled heads over tails as they lost control, but she was breathing too hard to waste the air. The others abandoned their hard breaking and instead ran through long, out of the way loops as the outer ring was now collapsing on her.

Sara slowed down and dodged left and right, no longer running as much as evading. The Raptors, also breathing heavily, slowed as well and pooled up with the Archon moving from point to point and not giving them a fixed location to surround. With a series of fakes and quick redirects, she continually frustrated the Raptors as they came within inches of touching her but the slippery Human just moved too damn fast. Their bodies weren’t built for this type of close-in movement, and even with 40 of them they couldn’t cut off enough escape routes, for she wouldn’t stay in the same place for more than a few seconds.

That evasion game went on for several minutes, with Sara working up a furious sweat and getting the type of high level workout that only advanced drones could provide…except that Raptors were not predictable programs, forcing her to adapt and getting, frankly, a better workout for her than through artificial means. She was doing this for their benefit, but the trailblazer was also benefiting as well.

Then something happened she didn’t expect. Two of the Raptors collided with one another, but rather than falling and tangling, they bounced off each other and redirected…with one of them coming towards Sara’s path.

She had to drop and roll to avoid getting touched, and as soon as she hit the ground she knew she was screwed. The delay it took her to get to her feet had 6 of them close in on her, with her evading them but getting too surrounded. There were too many bodies closing in and too few escape routes, with her finally resorting to jumping as high as she could without using her Yenmer, but she did use her Yetu, for that only briefly enhanced muscle movement, launching her into a ‘Jedi jump’ up and over the back of one Raptor.

It tried to hit her foot with its head but missed, though while in midair she couldn’t redirect, making her landing predictable. Another Yetu burst leapt her over the diving Raptor that nearly hit her feet, but when she reached the apex of her jump another Raptor came flying at her from the right. It didn’t have Yetu, nor did it need it, for they could jump just fine on their powerful legs.

Sara contorted midair, missing a collision with its head, but one of the tiny arms reached out and slapped her on the butt no less, before she hit the ground and rolled to a stop.

The other Raptors knew instantly when it happened, for they were always telepathically talking to each other and had figured out a way to do it in a widespread sense without allowing her to eavesdrop. They all came to a stop, some heaving with the heavy effort and one that actually hurled after rolling over on the ground.

Sara cringed, seeing the puke and knowing the taste of it from her own past experience.

“You alright?”

“No,” the Raptor said in obvious discomfort, “but I’ll live.”

“Been there,” she offered, while sensing the wave of pleasure spreading through the group at their success. It had taken 54 tries, but they’d finally succeeded. “Did you two mean to run into each other or was that an accident?”

“Accident,” one of them admitted, “but it worked in our advantage.”

“Yeah it did. I didn’t expect the deflection and that screwed me over. Nice work using it to make yourselves unpredictable. You finally got me.”

“We’re supposed to be faster,” another pointed out. “And all we managed was a single touch.”

“You’re barely out of the egg, youngling,” she said, using the Star Force version rather than the ‘hatchling’ the V’kit’no’sat used. Both were correct for egg layers, but the trailblazers had gotten used to using ‘youngling’ for everyone. “I wasn’t even half this fast when I began. Training will make you far better, and you’re just getting started.”

“Will it make us switch directions fast like you?” another asked.

“You’ll get a lot better at it, but your tails are a problem. Good for straight running, not for redirects. All our bodies have advantages and disadvantages. You’ll learn to minimize yours, but it will take time…and by time I mean centuries, if not millennia. You’ve got a long way to go, but you’re making good progress. Focus on maintaining that trend and the years will pass on their own.”

“What now?”

“You’re not ready for me at full strength, but we’re getting there.”

“You mean you were running slower than you could?”

“No, I mean I’m not using all my psionics. I’ve got a lot that can disrupt you so you can’t coordinate and hit me. So far I’ve just been using my muscles.”

“How so?”

“Alright, one more lesson for today. You earned it with that touch. Spread out about 20 meters around me in a circle. I’ll hold still in the center, then try and touch me. You won’t be able to.”

The Raptors did as said, then waited until she gave them the telepathic go signal. They all moved as one, but didn’t get more than a step or two before they started falling to the ground twitching as she created a huge Fornax field around her. Whenever they hit it they lost most of their body control and she kept reducing its radius. They’d get up and try again, only to the hit the field and go down. She let them get within 10 meters then sent a Saven blast out that operated like an Ikrid flash bomb. They were so distorted some of them actually turned around and walked backwards, while those that staggered closer to her got hit with a Jumat blast and knocked away.

When the Saven blast wore off they came at her again, relentless as always, then all of them froze in place as she released her Ubven, dropping a telekinetic field over the entire area that she did not have to control. It was a field saturation and she could leave if she wanted, but they’d be locked there for a couple of minutes no matter how hard they tried to push free. They could wiggle around a bit as they destroyed the field, but they were stuck and totally vulnerable as Sara was able to walk forward melting the field in her path with the second component of her Ubven that was an alteration of her Rentar, but far more potent because it was geared to her own field.

If the Raptors had Rentar they could have moved with some limited resistance, but they didn’t have that psionic, so they were stuck and totally vulnerable, which is why Ubven was the scariest of the tier 3 psionics, or perhaps even the scariest of them all.

“You can’t move. You’re encased in a very thick Lachka field. It’s my psionic called Ubven, and it’s a single discharge. I’m recharging now, but won’t be able to do this again for some time. Note how vulnerable you are. This is why we wear armor with psionic countermeasures, otherwise you’d be getting shot and killed right now if this was during a battle. Over time you will earn additional psionics, but before you get them you must master your bodies as they are now. We do not give psionics to those who do not earn them. They are not a cover for a weak body. They are not a cover for a weak mind. They are an enhancement for the strong, so get strong and we’ll give you the tools to fight against those with powers like this. Otherwise, you’re just target practice.”

Sara theatrically snapped her fingers and triggered the entire field to melt instantly, dropping some of the Raptors to the ground who were off balance and not expecting to be unstuck.

“Lesson over. Good work today. Now go get some food and a nap, then get back to your daily workouts. Training is about working over and over and over and liking it. If you don’t like it yet, keep doing it anyway. It’s the only way you’re going to advance. You’ve got a lot of advantages with the way your bodies are built, a lot more than most races in Star Force, but they’re not enough to beat highly trained individuals in ‘lesser races.’ I can’t outrun a trained Raptor, yet I can outrun all of you…for now. Star Force operates as a team, but each piece of that team needs to be as strong as possible. That’s how you contribute. Make yourself stronger and the team becomes stronger. That’s how we win. That’s how we survive.”

Sara looked around at all the long faces. Their eyes were intensely focused on her, and she knew they were drinking in every word she said, for these sessions with Archons, let alone the 1s that were in charge of the Raptor faction, were exceedingly rare. All of these Raptors had to compete and beat out their kin in order to get in this training group, so they weren’t going to waste a moment of it.

“We are at war with the V’kit’no’sat, and while that war is temporarily on pause it will resume. Others will fight it, not you. You are not ready yet, but if we can survive long enough your skills will be added to ours. You are our hope for long term survival, so your mission now is not to get ready to fight. Your mission is to improve and keep on improving. If the V’kit’no’sat land on this planet, you’re already as good as dead, so do not concern yourselves with what you would do in that situation. We all make the best of whatever is presented to us, and if the situation is unwinnable then we go down fighting with honor. The V’kit’no’sat are our enemy for a reason. They are not honorable and do terrible things. If you face one of those terrible things, it is something you will have to figure out in the moment, so don’t waste time now on it.”

“I do not say this to scare you. I tell you this so you can focus on your objective. You have to improve until you get to the point where you can help us fight. You’re not there. You’re not even close. So if the war resumed today, you would keep training while I go and fight. Because I would be fighting to buy you time to get stronger. Your part in the war will take place in the distant future. Right now, your only job is to learn your bodies, learn your minds, and advance. Keep advancing. Keep moving forward. The responsibility for the empire is mine, not yours, but if you can improve enough then we will share that burden together.”

“I need as many allies as I can get, and the Raptors are going to become a powerful faction…but a faction is not built quickly. We will buy you time. That is our job. Yours is to grow. Improve. Learn. And the only way you can do that is to train, train, and never stop training. Save for food. So go get some…and run in, slowly. No need to waste another few minutes,” she said, pointing for the distant bunker that led to an underground facility on the otherwise all natural landscape.

“By your will, Archon,” one of them said as they turned and slowly ran off, pulling together into a loose, two-wide column as they headed across the grassy field. It was a saying that had come from somewhere, and she suspected it was one of the other Archons. Not the 1s or any other trailblazer, but one of the lower level ones. Regardless, the Raptors had picked it up and adopted it as their way of offering respect rather than just saying ‘yes.’

Sara blew out a long breath, still feeling the effects of her own workout. She let the Raptors disappear over a small rise before she used her Yenmer and took to the sky, then flew high above them, watching the 2x20 column meander over the terrain until they got back to their bunker, then she accelerated and flew off towards the nearest city where her skeet was parked. She’d flown it here from the main Archon training sanctum that was some 1200 miles away. With the skeet she’d be back there inside half an hour for some additional workouts, then she’d head over to one of the maturias where hatching eggs were kept. She still welcomed as many of them into the universe as she could, but with population levels rising fast it just wasn’t possible for her and the other 1s to meet and greet all of them.

She regretted that, but it was a sign of how fast this faction was growing…and that wasn’t even counting the converted Raptors. Their civilization was being kept somewhat separate, and they were making such huge progress it was surprising all of the 1s. So much so Sara wondered what the V’kit’no’sat had been thinking holding them back as much as they had…and now that Star Force was finally allowing them to live up to their potential, they’d gained their loyalty in a way the V’kit’no’sat never had…as well as adding fuel to their fires of revenge. The more they grew here, the more they hated the V’kit’no’sat for keeping them ignorant and suppressed for so long. Even in their freedom they still only knew the V’kit’no’sat ways, and that now obvious fact combined with the volume of knowledge Star Force was freely sharing made their hate of the V’kit’no’sat even more potent.

It was having the same effect on Sara. As powerful and galaxy spanning as the V’kit’no’sat were, they were screwing over people for no real gain. If someone hurt someone else for a reason, that was unacceptable. If they did it just to do it, then that was even worse.

And it looked like they had kept the Rit’ko’sor under their foot. Why Sara didn’t know, but it was clear that these newly converted Raptors were far more powerful than their Rit’ko’sor kin once they learned how to work together as a true team and stop distrusting and backstabbing each other.

Yeah, Sara had yet one more reason to hate the V’kit’no’sat…and one more advantage for Star Force to wield against them. They’d once looked unbeatable, now they were looking flawed and vulnerable, and the difference wasn’t in them, but rather in Sara and Star Force. They’d grown so wise and experienced that they had a new point of view now.

If they could survive the super war that was coming, they were going to become the IlClan of empires and show the V’kit’no’sat what ‘dominance’ truly was…and it wasn’t stabbing your competition in the back at every turn possible.

6

December 23, 4869

Anxzor System (Ziviri Region)

Bujom

Paul had been engaged in heavy combat against the Ziviri for 27 years, moving through their 1,389 systems at a pace of one every month or two. He’d chosen their toughest systems first, hitting them hard and fast with a group of other high level Archons assisting him led by Riona-111. Sometimes they’d be in the same system, other times he had them moving against others. He saved the toughest assignments for himself, which usually also included Riona, for she was commanding the Raptor Mach’nel that had been sent out to him.

And Paul was immensely grateful for it. It was saving him so many drones, including a few lives, for this war wasn’t a simple one. The Ziviri were not Star Force’s equal, but they were a worthy opponent and were managing to kill some of his people. Archons, Commandos, aerial pilots and mechwarriors. There hadn’t been any aquatics losses to date, but that was because the Ziviri had little in the way of a water navy. That said, Paul still had aquatics units on many worlds taking advantage of that fact and using the oceans as a point of strength to combat the long ground wars that were taking place after Paul moved on with his naval fleet.

He would stick around long enough to batter the enemy with orbital bombardment and then did some ground fighting of his own, hopping into a mech or occasionally going hand to hand. He didn’t want to leave any system with there still being doubt who was in control, but fully taking possession of the Ziviri and their worlds took years, even if it was just tracking down rebels running loose in the wilds.

Most of the Ziviri population was being captured and contained, meaning Paul had an army of support personnel following in the wake of the invasions, but despite what others might have thought this was not a safe operation. He hated losing any people, but this really was a war and Star Force personnel were dying. To date he had lost 1,209, and hopefully that number would not increase any further, but there was no way to know for sure. Some of those losses had been ambush attacks on ‘pacified’ worlds were Paul wasn’t, but those losses still ground on him.

This was the cost of people not doing their job in the distant past. Threats like the Ziviri should never have been allowed to gain this much strength in the shadow of what The Nexus had been. He could understand the Ziviri rising to power in a relatively unoccupied section of the galaxy, but it happening under The Nexus’s umbrella was just infuriating. All of the people he had lost dealing with this problem would have been alive if The Nexus had done their job, but they hadn’t, and he was having to clean it up.

It wasn’t fair. The people dying didn’t deserve it, but this is the way the galaxy worked. There was no such thing as a ‘safe’ place to be, even within the heart of Star Force territory. As James T. Kirk had once said, ‘Risk is our business,’ and truer words had never been spoken. Paul and the others went where the trouble was, and sometimes despite their best efforts some of them still died. And after all the deaths at the hands of the V’kit’no’sat Paul had not become numb to it, thankfully, but losing people in his command was always harder than seeing reports of others dying elsewhere. That was because he was responsible for the battle plans, and in a war like this, he chose when and where to attack.

He wasn’t picking fights with too few units, but he also didn’t have the luxury of coming in with overwhelming force. If he did, the number of systems he could assault would be limited and he didn’t have the time to go slow. So he had to send enough forces without overdoing it, and he was constantly reassessing his choices. If he had sent a few more would that person have died?

It was something that haunted him constantly, but he also acknowledged that there were many things he could not control. He didn’t accept that, but he did acknowledge it.

Even now, with the last battle having been fought and won, he was thinking back and trying to find ways to improve. Not because he could change the past, but if he could find better ways to do things, let alone mistakes he could correct, he could avoid losing more people in the future. Paul wasn’t kicking himself like he used to, for he no longer doubted his own motivations, but he knew the fate of so many others were dependent on him and that he needed to be at the top of his game constantly while always reaching to new heights.

Without him and the others in Star Force, he could easily see how the galaxy would fall apart. They were holding so much together it looked easy to outsiders. Star Force was the rock that so many depended upon that they just took it for granted…until you came out here and saw what non-Star Force territory was like. But even then people didn’t see the full truth.

Paul and the other trailblazers and elite Archons were the ones who had to make this all work. And without them…Paul didn’t even want to think about how bad it could get, for everything that he had encountered so far, he knew it could get worse. Far worse. As bad as the collapse of The Nexus was, and how angry he was at them dropping the ball, if they hadn’t been here at all, this section of the Rim would have been a very different place. They weren’t good guys, but they had been keeping a lot of bad ones in check for a long time. They were just no longer able, or perhaps willing, to continue in that regard and all the threats they had suppressed but not eliminated were now rearing their ugly heads.

The Ziviri were one of them, but Star Force had just solved that problem at the cost of lives and a hell of a lot of equipment. This planet was the last to fall, but in truth Paul would have been at this for another 20 years if he hadn’t hit the hardest ones first, for in the last 6 years most of the remaining little ones had decided to surrender rather than fight. Bujom was one of the few that chose otherwise, but they didn’t have much to stop Star Force. The fighting here had lasted only 18 hours, but there was mop up work left that Paul was helping with personally.

He was flying around the planet looking for pockets of resistance in his personal skeet, then going to ground and hand to hand trying to keep another person from dying. Right now he was perched atop one of the Ziviri buildings that looked like fins or knife blades sticking up from the surface in menacing fashion. It was totally undamaged, as most of the buildings were, and from here Paul could get a good view of the surrounding city as he monitored the battlemap for activity while his skeet was parked 20 meters behind him.

There was nothing to do at the moment, so he just sat on the edge with his armored legs dangling over and monitored the feeds while letting his mind drift. His problems weren’t over yet, for he had captured 87% of the Ziviri population across their entire empire. He didn’t have to do that. He could have killed those that fought him, but there were always people that got born into a race or empire that they did not like and they were forced to go along with a lot of crap because of it. Those people he needed to rescue, not kill, so using stun weapons and just bagging everyone was the best way to do it.

However, that meant he now had a very hostile captive population that had to be babysat and Paul wasn’t going to stick around here forever to do it. Duke Yani was expected to arrive within the year to take command of the restructuring efforts whenever Paul chose to left, but he knew he was going to have to stay around and troubleshoot along with the Duke. Ziviri territory was beyond the Star Force Frontier Region, and as such everyone here was stuck in the middle of nowhere and somewhat vulnerable to an attack by someone other than the Ziviri. Paul couldn’t take his fleets elsewhere, for they needed to roam this region as a deterrent and put down anyone who tried to take advantage of the lack of system defenses.

On top of that Star Force had to feed everyone, utilizing Ziviri production initially then replacing it with their own facilities as soon as possible. Paul had both Kiritak and Bsidd workers spreading like wildfire across the new Ziviri Region, but they had to train their own people as they expanded, so most of the workers Paul was getting were not local born but shipped in from Star Force territory. Even Paladin could not reproduce fast enough for the needs here, so this post war annexation was drawing down a lot of resources and experienced personnel, but it had to be done.

There were so many Ziviri, estimated at 9 trillion survivors, that Star Force had to come in and take control of it now, not grow into it over time. And the longer the conversion took the more the highly experienced personnel would be tied up in babysitting operations. Star Force only had so long before the V’kit’no’sat truce expired, and by then the Ziviri had to be fully capable of supporting themselves, if not exporting. They couldn’t be allowed to be sucking resources from the rest of Star Force by then, but there was a long, long way to go to get to that point.

Right now there were constant convoys running all the way out here and back delivering personnel, cargo, and raw materials that couldn’t yet be harvested on site. The might of the empire was now supporting the Ziviri, and Duke Yani and Paul had a significant problem on their hands…for the maturia system was not going to work here.

Ziviri were basically rock monsters, and they reproduced by mitosis. Previously Paul had thought that was impossible for a person, and it turns out he was right. When the Ziviri split in two the person in the body stayed in half of it and a new person was born into the other…with all the memories of the original. They had the same mind structure, same body, same everything except a different Core, and that made them look identical. Detailed study had been able to determine a slight variance, allowing Paul to see who was the original and who was new, but they both behaved the same.

That meant there were no younglings to confiscate and raise in a maturia. That also meant all the bad habits the Ziviri had would be passed on to their duplicate, for there really were no younglings. Adults reproduced other adults, though half the size. Both would have to eat a lot to regain their original mass, but there was no maturation process in the Ziviri, so Paul was going to have to do something different.

And he wasn’t waiting for the Duke to get here to start. He’d been confronting this ever since the first system had fallen, for when they’d taken possession of that population they’d first discovered that there were no younglings in the population. What he had learned since then was that there was another way for the Ziviri to reproduce, which involved spawning a tiny new one with no memories, but they had to choose to do that and they never did unless they were too small to do the regular split. Ziviri were asexual, so there was no driving force to reproduce other than growing to such a size that they became too large to move around adequately.

They couldn’t stop their growth rate, so the only way to diminish their size was to reproduce. Eat less and the population rate diminished. Eat more and they grew so damn fast that they could double their adult population in remarkably little time, all of which would have cloned memories of the originals. That wasn’t exactly the same as experience, but it was so close the difference almost wasn’t worth mentioning.

So the only way Paul had been able to set up maturias was when the Ziviri cooperated and spawned a tiny new version with no memories…and most of the conquered Ziviri hated Star Force, so they weren’t helping them.

That meant Paul had a tiny, tiny, tiny little piece of the Ziviri that was now learning the Star Force ways and beginning to reproduce on their own and copy the Star Force ways when they split, but 99.999997% of the population refused to reproduce the way Star Force wanted and with the new ‘clones’ having the memories of the originals, teaching them new things was extremely difficult.

The flip side was, if they ever did convert, they’d be like the Paladin starting off with genetic memory…only they’d be adults. They couldn’t reproduce as fast as Paladin, for it was a split rather than growing separate individuals in artificial pods, but it meant that certain bloodlines would all essentially be the same person from a memory sense. Individual experiences would alter it over time, but this bonding factor kept the Ziviri extremely unified and the only reason a lot of them had bothered to surrender was the fact that Star Force had kept their communication network intact so they could see how badly their other systems were getting their ass kicked.

They’d surrendered knowing that their worlds would take unnecessary damage, so they’d decided to spare themselves that and resist in non-military ways. They were being very stubborn, and that was something that Paul and Yani were going to have to deal with.

That was why Paul wasn’t going to be leaving anytime soon, but he had already sent Rioni and the Mach’nel back. It was no longer needed here, but there were plenty of other warfronts where it could be put to use punching through planetary shields. In fact most of the elite Archons were already on their way out, leaving Paul as the sole badass remaining, and not for his combat skills. What was required now was empire building, or empire wrangling in this case. He wasn’t sure what the final solution was going to be, but the existing population wasn’t going to die out over time if they failed to reach self-sufficiency.

That meant he had to find a solution, otherwise this problem would persist forever.

7

April 6, 4870

Maokai 19 System (Protovic territory)

Lighthouse 4

Kena Verris was Human in a system of Protovic, one of a handful of elite wranglers who had been given both Ikrid and Lachka/Pefbar in order to do her job. Normally those psionics were not available to citizens, but her work in the Sanctuaries required it. The telepathy of the Protovic was the number one reason why they had been tasked with the care of 68% of the Sanctuaries within the empire, but there were some tasks they just couldn’t handle without having the ability to take control of the minds of those under their care.

She could do that, as well as push and pull things with her mind. That was very helpful when dealing with less advanced races and allowed her to avoid most injuries. Kena had devoted her life to working this little, often overlooked corner of Star Force, and had been rewarded with the trust that came with the bestowing of such psionics on a citizen.

1,289 years old next month, Kena had worked in many different systems as Star Force evacuated the ADZ. She was in her final year of the maturia when the V’kit’no’sat returned, never having known what Star Force civilian life was like before that time, but during the evacuation more than just Humans, Protovic, Calavari, and the other advanced races were saved. Those that could not talk or defend themselves also were, at least as much as Star Force could manage. Little critters like insects that free roamed Earth’s atmosphere had been left behind, but anything of decent size that could be saved had been saved.

And not just from Earth, which was Kena’s homeworld. Races from all across Star Force territory had been rescued and moved, most of which had already been in Sanctuaries prior to the invasion. On the less inhabited worlds there were more free roamers, and she’d helped capture and move them, which was not an easy process in some cases, especially for the aquatics.

They’d been bounced from Sanctuary to Sanctuary as Star Force lost territory, with new ones having to be built further and further rimward. This one was located in the Lachre Region and far from the V’kit’no’sat warfront, but not so far from the myriad of other smaller wars being fought on the rim. With each decade that passed that fighting got further and further away, with them now being in a mostly civilized area.

But one couldn’t rest on the defense of others, so there was one world in this system, named Tatania, that was a full Protovic colony. The other 8, labeled ‘lighthouse’ as all Sanctuary worlds within Protovic care were called, each had a Protovic city or small continent colonized, but the vast majority of those worlds were housed by Sanctuary races with armies of wranglers taking care of them because they could not take care of themselves…at least not in any civilized way.

And the newest addition to their ranks where the Nioti, a small hexped race that stood about shoulder height to Kena. They’d been rescued from being the food source of another race that Star Force had just annexed called the Hanisva, but unlike the Hanisva the Nioti could not talk and had been kept in pens their entire short lives until they were eaten. It was horrific, but at least those that had been saved would not meet that fate.

Kena was on her way to them now, in a grassland area that was still partially under construction. All Sanctuary habitats, referred to as ‘paddocks,’ were indoors. There the wranglers could design the living environments however they liked with optional outdoor parks to be made use of whenever appropriate, however the indoor facilities often were constructed as parks, meaning there were grasslands inside the buildings on the grasslands, but there were too many Nioti, some of which were still being transported to them from the Preema, who apparently wanted to rid all their worlds of the Hanisva’s foodstuffs, for they’d had to colonize several with the race just to provide adequate amounts to the huge furry avians.

The entire situation made Kena’s stomach turn, but at least she didn’t have to deal with those bastards out there. The Archons thankfully handled that, but she did have to deal with the aftereffects, and the Nioti were in bad shape. Even those that she’d been working with for more than a decade were slow to change, with their constant fearful and stagnant existence being encoded into their behavioral genetics. Such things didn’t change rapidly, so she had to work with each individual to get them into a better state, and when they reproduced little of that change went to the offspring.

Right now the Nioti were separated into different paddocks, males in one and females in another, in order to control the population levels. That was standard practice for all bi-gender races in the Sanctuaries, with them allowing limited reproduction where needed. Because most of the races in the Sanctuaries could not maintain self-sufficiency their populations would eventually die out, the wranglers were not supposed to let that happen, but it did allow them to turn such a large population like the Nioti into a small one down the road. They didn’t want that to happen, for they tried to keep them all alive as long as possible, but they knew it was going to happen so they used it to their logistical advantage.

There were small pockets of races across this planet and the other 7 in this system, plus there were many other Maokai systems that also held Sanctuary races, staffed primarily by Protovic that could read and interact with the minds of races that could not talk. That made such a huge advantage that no Human was allowed to work the Sanctuaries without having at least telepathy. Communication was essential if they were going to help these individuals improve, let alone help their races ascend.

When Kena arrived at the Nioti paddock she wasn’t alone, for Trigger was with her. He was a member of one of the oldest Sanctuary races, but one not quite ready for ward status. Trigger already was, as an individual, which was why Kena used him as an assistant. He was a Kayna, which was an alteration of an older term that had similar pronunciation…Canine, otherwise known as a ‘dog.’ Wranglers, including a number of Archons, had been working with them for over a millennia telepathically and had established their own language, but they couldn’t quite pronounce English words. A slight genetic alteration to their vocal chords had solved that problem, so now, as odd as it might have sounded to the people of Earth when she was born, Kena was now partnered with a talking dog.

Most of the time she just read his mind and communicated with him telepathically, but if he wanted to get her attention he would speak. Most of the time he was silent, save when around other Kayna. They were not telepathic, so they had to talk to each other the old fashioned way, but when he was with Keena he was always trotting near her legs and ready to act as needed, and he’d been a great help with the Nioti thus far.

Part of that was because they were afraid of him. That fear was so ingrained in them that he didn’t have to do anything but walk in their direction and they’d flinch. They’d eventually gotten used to him, but when he barked the fear returned and that made him a very effective herder when they took the Nioti out of their holding pens for the most basic workouts they could manage…that being a cross country trek.

The Nioti that had been here the longest had an extensive routine established, but these newer ones were having trouble adjusting to doing anything more than standing in place. Their bodies had adjusted to that over the years, and just walking across the grasslands was traumatic to them.

Traumatic, but they were thrilled about it. Getting out and moving was so foreign to them it was difficult, but she could feel the exhilaration every time they left their confines…which were not so confining now. In fact, the internal facilities, even the temporary ones, were so big compared to what they’d been ‘stored’ in before that they had been congregating in various corners and packing themselves in so tight they were about touching each other.

It was a sad sight to see, and with each group that made progress other wranglers would take them from there, leaving Kena with working with the ones that needed the most help, so this nightmare didn’t end so long as more Nioti were being brought in. She’d been told another 5-8 years of this before they got them all into Star Force Sanctuaries, and they had enough room here that they’d be taking them in right up to the end. Other Sanctuaries were basically full up, but this one was a newer one with plenty of open land space available for conversion.

Right now that land space was being used for these cross country treks, moving them from one holding facility to another. Kena didn’t want them getting used to a single location and grasping onto it. She wanted them to free their minds and roam, both physically and mentally, which at this point took some prodding.

Kena met up with a lot of lower level wranglers, all Protovic, two of which mounted speeder bikes and would follow from above and able to move around quickly while the rest of the wranglers walked. But first they needed to get the 4500 Nioti out of their pens, so Kena called out to them telepathically. She didn’t force them to move, as she could have, for there were too many to move like that, and when she released one it often just circled back to the others.

“Trigger, get them moving,” she said aloud. “Vari, the door.”

The Protovic she named jogged over to the release panel and a huge door three times as wide as high slowly rose up revealing the natural sunlight beyond that was mimicked by the overhead lights inside, but the smell of the natural landscape rushed in to replace the sterile air inside the Nioti living space that was a series of grassy paths and padded sleeping areas.

“Moving,” Trigger said in an accent that was gruff and huffy, but clear enough to be understood. He took off running into the midst of the Nioti and disappeared between the legs as they scattered to get away from him…then a few moments later the main group began to move towards the doorway and away from the Kayna that was running around and barking on the far side.

The wranglers used their telepathy to help guide those heading their way on out into the grasslands when they flinched and tried to recoil. That kept the leading edge moving, and the others followed as Trigger kept those in the rear motivated. He had to move around to the various nooks in the wide facility, making sure to get every one of the Nioti moving, for some were hiding in corners or still laying down and sleeping. He rounded them all up, then was the last one out the door as the Protovic lowered it again.

Another group of Nioti would be coming here later, with this group being rotated to another facility some 27 miles away. It would take them four days to get there, and they’d be camping outdoors on the way with foodstuffs already laid out at the waypoints.

Well done, Kena congratulated Trigger privately. Keep an eye on the west edge. I don’t want them getting too close to the river. They don’t know not to drink it.

I keep them away, he thought, knowing that she was listening to his mind, as he darted off to the left and shooed a few meandering off back into line with just his presence, knowing to save his barks for those that didn’t take the hint the first time.

Later that day they arrived at the first waypoint where there were a few Star Force tents set up for the wranglers to sleep in along with crates of supplies that included force field fencing. Kena laid out the basic perimeter that she wanted and the Protovic went out and put the pole-like pylons down into the soft ground. When activated they produced a semi-invisible barrier that would stop the Nioti from moving through it or anything else from coming in.

All the wranglers wore a bracelet on their right forearm that allowed them to walk through the barrier, and Trigger had one that he wore as a collar that functioned the same way. They also contained an emergency personal shield generator should they experience trouble with the Nioti or any of the other sanctuary races.

Tired from the ‘long’ 7 mile walk, the Nioti laid down immediately upon stopping with only a few curious stragglers attempting to wonder off. Keena saw that as a good sign, but she couldn’t let them get separated so she had Trigger nudge them back towards the group until the fencing was set up. After that the wranglers broke out the foodstuffs and water, with the smell of it prompting the Nioti up off the ground without any direction. They gulped down the water through their short, flexible snouts then ate with a ravenous appetite.

Their metabolism was very misaligned for activity, so even short, easy walks put them into a state of fuel emergency. The more of these walks they endured the more they would adapt, but it was a long process that these Nioti were just starting. This was their 8th cross country trek, but she could still feel their fear of the surroundings and the lack of food and water. They’d been given so much previously, in order to make them as fat as possible, that they would gorge themselves if allowed to. That meant the wranglers had to lay out the foodstuffs in specific patterns that had a certain amount for each, and when they ate it they were moved into a subsection of the shield fencing so they couldn’t eat twice.

There was a lot of pushing and bumping going on, as expected, with Kena using her Ikrid override a few times to knock down the worst of it, but once they all had a full meal and were sent back into the sleeping area, the Nioti went back to their sedate habits and laid down…with most immediately going to sleep, fatigued as they were from the day of walking.

Kena stayed and watched them for a while with Trigger beside her as some of the Protovic got to sleep. They’d take shifts over the night, so someone was watching over the Nioti constantly, but it didn’t take more than an hour before one of the Nioti got up and walked over to Kena…shying a bit as Trigger looked at him from the ground where he was laying, but the Nioti was brave enough to creep forward and laid down a meter away from her chair.

It looked up at her and Kena connected to its mind, having a very basic conversation…not in words, but in thoughts and feelings and memories. This one had spoken to her before, and it wanted to again, with her recognizing it as one of the few Nioti that were truly different from the others. It wasn’t genetic, or cultural, but the person that was in this Nioti body was a curious one. Curious people, of any race, wanted to explore and learn, and this Nioti was no different.

We’ve got another one for the prime herd, she told Trigger. He can’t be held back here.

We move him now?

No, we’ll finish this hike then I’ll have him moved. He likes it out here.

Rain comes.

Kena’s eyes looked up to the horizon then she spun her head a quarter turn until she could see the storm clouds on the horizon as the sun was setting a little further to the north.

You’re right. I’ll turn the shield on.

Kena mentally interfaced with her bracelet and linked to the large object in the center of the sleeping area. It held some water troughs so the Nioti could get a drink over the night if they needed, but the bulk of the thing was a large shield generator that activated on Kena’s command. It stretched up some 30 meters then spread out like a giant umbrella coming down all the way to the shield fence and melding with it, making an invisible tent that would cover both the Nioti and the wrangler’s tents.

By the time the rain started to reach the camp area and impact the energy shield with tiny little ‘bleep’ sounds, one of the Protovic wranglers walked up behind Kena and Trigger, glowing brightly in the dark as his skin made her a living glowlamp that had prompted the original Protovic to never having created the Star Force equivalent of a flashlight.

“Get some sleep,” he said, putting a hand on Keena’s shoulder.

“You’re early.”

“I didn’t get to run today, so I’m not very tired. You awake Trigger?”

“I am.”

“You staying out here or going with her?”

“Do you need me?”

“I think they’re just going to sleep, so go ahead and get in tents. You’ve done the most running of any of us. Rest up.”

“Ok,” he said, standing up and trotting off to the tents and nosing the ‘open’ button so the door slid to the left and let him inside.

Keen stood up and stretched. “Thanks. He doesn’t want to admit it, but he’s tired and tries not to fall asleep out here.”

“He had to run down a lot more strays than usual. Some of the Nioti are breaking out of their shell.”

“It still takes too damn long,” she said irritably.

“What’s wrong?”

“The Preema are stalling us. They don’t want to devote the necessary ships to get the Nioti all here in a hurry, so they’re making multiple trips. That means more like these are still stuck in fake food pens.”

“Are they still being killed?”

“We have no way of knowing, but we’re told no. I still hate that we’re working with people that would do this.”

“If we weren’t, we never would have rescued these Nioti. The Preema might have just killed them if they no longer served a purpose.”

“A race that powerful doesn’t need to resort to barbarism. There’s no excuse for that.”

“I didn’t mean to suggest there was, but this is nothing new.”

Kena sighed. “It feels like we make no progress. I know that’s not true, but when we keep getting new ones in we have to start all over again. It’s disheartening.”

“Do you need a break?”

“No. I just don’t like it, and we’re scheduled to get a lot more new races from the Rim.”

“Isn’t that why the Sanctuaries exist?”

“I prefer to solve problems, not perpetually babysit them.”

“We are. Trigger is living proof of that.”

“It took them so long to get to even this level, I…” she said, stopping suddenly.

“What?”

“Maybe I do need a break.”

“You can start by getting some sleep.”

Keena cracked a tired smile. “Point,” she admitted, then turned and walked over to the tents.

She went inside the same one Trigger was in and grabbed a sleeping sleeve, laying it out next to his own heated bed circle and sliding inside. She was still frustrated, but seeing the Kayna there was a reminder of what the Sanctuaries were all about. She just wished it didn’t take them such a long time to get them to this point.

Though compared to ‘natural’ advancement, they were still moving at lightspeed.

8

January 29, 4877

Titagra System (Paladin Zone)

4th planet

Megan-026 wasn’t doing much fighting, unlike her fellow trailblazers. In fact she wasn’t doing any at all in recent years. Rather she was the spider at the center of the growing Paladin web while Supreme Viceroy Thrawn was roaming their now vast territory dealing with problems that arose. Right now they had no control over that territory, with just a sprinkling of systems here and there, but they were establishing a logistical chain and growing their new colonies at a rapid pace, though there was no way to fast track infrastructure growth to the level they truly needed.

Megan had taken part in a few military operations soon after arriving out here to knock down some of the biggest bad guys…or at least to give them a bloody nose and deter them from excessive predation, but the Paladin were not in a position yet to lock down the region they’d been assigned and Megan was playing the part of master organizer from a system at the approximate center of the Paladin Zone.

Communication relays were extending out from the Titagra System and courier ships were filling in the gaps elsewhere, leaving a lot of lag and fog of war to deal with, but that was why Thrawn was out roaming. Having them both in the same place would have been a waste, and the same went for the other Viceroys she’d brought with her. They weren’t quite as good as Thrawn, but they were close and the former lizard Masterminds especially were quite good at work like this, so she was coordinating while watching the star map grow constantly.

But there was so much territory in their zone, with so many native races and native threats, that if they started to try and police it they’d wipe out their own forces in the effort. It was annoying, but they had to turtle up and build for several decades, for the supply convoys running nonstop out through the frontier region could only supply them with a trickle of the resources they needed. It was enough to get them up and running comfortably, but only if they weren’t engaged in active fighting that would add an attrition factor to their growth.

Bottom line was they had to build just about everything they needed out here, which was what Megan was focused on. The Paladin were tasked with establishing and defending the ‘western’ wall, which was on the spinward side of the galactic swirl. Beyond it was the Chamra, which were friendly, and a lot of other non-Nexus races. Megan was essentially assuming their old western border and then some, blocking off access to the cesspool that The Nexus’s territory had become while helping the few remaining shreds of The Nexus races that were in her assigned region.

That help had come far too late, and aside from three tiny clumps of systems that had weathered the storm with better than 50% losses, all the rest were slivers of population that had mostly degenerated into chaos and savagery. Some individuals had been plucked out of those areas and given refuge with the Paladin, but their planets were essentially lost and Megan didn’t have the resources to spend on saving what was left when there were intact planets out there that were in more need.

She hated sitting by and doing basically nothing, but the Paladin had to snowball to truly be effective, so she plucked a few remaining allies out of the fire while waiting to do more as the Paladin worlds were under a furious construction schedule.

Megan had small fleets backing up those three clusters of systems that held what had been minor members of The Nexus that had been abandoned early on. They were the Deok, Srct, and Banniwom, and they were just trying to hold on to what they had left. The Paladin military umbrella was invaluable to them, but they also were having trouble with internal production and undergoing rampant rationing to try and keep everyone alive, for these worlds were mostly overcrowded because of the evacuation of other worlds that had previously fallen.

Megan had communication relays out to the Deok and Banniwom, with two more links needed to get to the Srct, and she was remotely helping them restructure using nothing more than her wisdom. She didn’t have supplies to spare and they actually had enough already, they were just misusing them. She was helping to alleviate that problem, for all three races were eager to join Star Force and obeyed any requests she made of them.

She was glad she’d been able to incorporate them, but they weren’t going to be an asset in the region anytime soon. Just another salvage mission and a living testament to the failure of The Nexus.

Now Megan was assuming their responsibilities and the task that they had abandoned on herself and the Paladin. She had to succeed where they had failed, and not biting off more than she could chew was the key. Megan wanted to be fighting nonstop, but building is what was going to save the most people…though that meant a lot had to be lost right now. She hated that, but in a bad situation she had to play it the best way possible, and when you couldn’t save everyone, you had to make choices. Everyone she took under her wing she had to protect, for unlike The Nexus, Megan wasn’t going to abandon anyone.

That meant picking and choosing who to bring in and who not, and fortunately most worlds in the Paladin Zone didn’t even know Star Force was out here yet. That was a blessing for her sanity, for if she’d been getting requests for assistance nonstop and had to keep turning people down it would have driven her crazy.

So right now the Paladin were secretly building in uninhabited systems save for a handful here and there with low populations that Megan and Thrawn had chosen to take mercy on and annex immediately, turning their worlds into Paladin ones and keeping the survivors around, although dispossessing them, with a steady food supply and housing. That might seem a cheap price to pay for a planet, but to those who were starving and roaming devastated worlds trying to stay alive another day, it was unmitigated salvation.

Those small populations were now little more than hitchhikers on the Paladin train that was constructing cities at a rapid pace. Orbital defenses was nil right now, with Megan having to rely on the Paladin fleet for security, but if she chose to build anti-orbital batteries and planetary shields up front, that could cost her the more badly needed mines and shipyards. Even as the snowball rolled, she still didn’t have enough for every task and choices had to be made. The trailblazer was willing to gamble on the Paladin fleet being able to protect the growing worlds, so she’d put aside the hard defenses for construction much further into the future, and so far she hadn’t had reason to regret that choice.

But the threats were definitely out here, and more so beyond the old Nexus border. They hadn’t taken notice of Star Force yet, which was another reason why the Paladin were keeping a low profile, at least as far as Star Force norms went, and Megan was immensely grateful for the tireless work ethic of the Paladin. No other race in Star Force could have been building this fast, as far as startups went, and the number of Paladin requesting to be transferred back to Star Force territory so they could enter Axius and the civilian sector were 3 to date. Three Paladin out of some 19 trillion she had under her command out here.

That was damn impressive, and with that 19 trillion number growing quickly with new generations being ‘born’ into adulthood immediately and put to work within a few days’ time, she had the workforce she needed, but one that was also very dangerous. The idea of the Paladin going for maximum population was actually scary, for they could swarm over the galaxy if properly organized. Why Star Force hadn’t used them in that fashion was an ongoing debate topic in the civilian media, but the answer was pathetically simple…they weren’t going to grow them faster than they could produce new Archons to oversee them.

For the biggest asset of the Paladin was also their biggest problem. It was their genetic memory. They were very regimented and disciplined, which helped loads in an operation like this, but it also meant they were less likely to figure out the difference between right and wrong when it didn’t align with a code of conduct. The Paladin, even with all the Star Force memories woven into them, could go off the rails without the proper leadership, so without Archons to guide them, Paladin reproducing at maximum capacity was a dangerous thing.

But these were dangerous times, and Davis had unleashed them out here with only Megan to oversee them. She was confident that her presence would be enough over the long term, but if any Paladin was left to their own solutions she expected they would end up becoming brutal, for failure was not in their genetic vocabulary. Archons offered solutions the Paladin would not think up on their own, and no matter how many contingencies they wove into their genetic code, the galaxy would always throw them something new. That’s why the Paladin needed Archons, and right now Megan and Davis needed the Paladin to explode their population and do what they did best.

Megan had confidence in Thrawn, but that was due to his person experience, not his memories. Memories were useful, but they didn’t hold a candle to actual experience. The transformation Thrawn had gone through made him solid, and the same could be said of the other former Masterminds who had to learn what it meant to be Star Force rather than just inheriting that knowledge. They weren’t as good as Thrawn, but they were reliable and damn efficient. Problem was she didn’t have enough of them and she had no other Archons or Mavericks to help her.

So it was just Megan and the old school Masterminds running this quickly growing empire within an empire, and for construction matters that was fine. When the heavy combat came, she was going to have to be on the battlefield making the quick calls. Same with Thrawn and the other elite Viceroys. That meant a limited number of operations that could be conducted simultaneously. At least until the newer Viceroys picked up enough experience of their own.

It was going to be a challenge Megan had never faced before, fighting with green troops that had the memories of veterans. That gave a mirage of competence that evaporated when they had to deal with new things, and Megan wasn’t making that rookie mistake. Paladin needed experience same as everyone else, but when they didn’t get it they were vastly superior to other races.

Hopefully this operation wouldn’t devolve to that level, but one thing was for sure. Paladin didn’t surrender, and Paladin didn’t back down. Punch them in the face and they went for your throat. That was their natural instinct, and the alterations in their genetic memory hadn’t changed it. They weren’t vicious or violent in an aggressive way, but they did respond to attacks in that fashion.

Megan didn’t fear them. In fact she rather liked them. And as a warrior, Megan was more comfortable working with aggressive races than meek ones, for she was insanely aggressive when she chose to be and the Paladin couldn’t hold a candle to her in berserker mode.

But that was because she didn’t lose her mind when angry, she became focused. Most aggressive races were the opposite, and she could train individuals how to focus a lot easier than to teach a meek person to be aggressive. So she was happy with the Paladin and their potential while recognizing the inherent dangers if she wasn’t here to keep them on track.

And the more experience in the field they had, the more solid they would become and the more new memories could be isolated and incorporated into future generations.

Megan leaned back in her elegant command chair, in which she sat far too much. Before her were a wide array of holograms and a telepathic interface that she switched between with such ease that she didn’t even register the difference anymore. There were so many new colonies that needed planning, and she wasn’t going to let the Paladin design most of them. Even small tweaks here and there could have an effect on the snowball that was forming, and she was trying to squeeze out as much productivity as she could.

And in truth she wasn’t going building by building except for the very small startups. Instead she was doing zoning and allowing the local Viceroys to fill them in, saving her the effort while allowing her to put her personal touch on all the construction taking place. Eventually there would be too many worlds for that, for the plans for expansion in the territory she had been assigned were insane. Originally they had planned to take only uninhabited planets, but the devastation she was seeing out here had changed that.

Now she was planning on taking control of many that were dying. She wasn’t going to negotiate or even ask their permission. They were failing and most had lost more than 90% of their population. Megan was going to sweep up and save what was left, but she was also going to claim those more valuable worlds for the Paladin. If she didn’t they’d die out anyway, or mostly, and a handful of primitive survivors weren’t going to lay claim to a planet. Not in her book anyway.

But before she could start doing that she needed the foodstuffs and other supplies necessary to inundate these worlds, and her production was still a far cry from what it needed to be. Right now it was tied up with the population surge, for feeding the trillions of Paladin came first, and the more she had birthed the more supplies they would need.

But once Megan got ahead on the production curve she was going to start grabbing up the most valuable planets that didn’t have a functional civilization on them. When that happened the partial anonymity the Paladin had would disappear and the threats in the region would start taking shots at her forces, if only to feel them out. Her naval commanders were already spoiling for a fight, but the numbers weren’t to her liking yet. She knew a massive fight was coming from a lot of smaller threats, but Megan was not going to go into it half prepared with her forces spread across such a large region.

When the appropriate time came she was going to drop the hammer so hard no one would challenge her a decade later. But in that decade, all hell was going to break loose.

And that’s when the big players would take notice. There were four just beyond her new borders, beyond what had been The Nexus. How they would respond she did not know, but if they chose to get militarily involved this was going to get nasty.

That was why she was biding her time now and focusing on growth. Megan and Thrawn were not going to get reinforcements from the rest of Star Force. They had to grow whatever forces they needed out here, and it was critically important they didn’t move too fast.

But standing by and building while other people were in need was not something Megan would ever be comfortable with. It had to be done in order to save the most people down the road, but it was disgusting to see the updated scouting reports of the Paladin who were cataloging every world within their zone. They weren’t even close to finished yet, there were that many systems out here, estimated to be approximately 3.5 million in number, and with each new batch sent to her for review, she saw planet after planet that was wrecked or dying. They had become so dependent on The Nexus that its absence, even in small ways, had wrecked large tracts of this entire region.

But not all of it. Some systems had not interacted with The Nexus and some of them were still intact. Others had fallen when the predations had increased after The Nexus patrol fleets had disappeared. All in all there were pieces of civilization out there, though in some cases that term was stretched to its limits, but more often than not there was devastation where there had once been civilization.

It was too late for many worlds, but once Megan got the Paladin up to sufficient strength she was going to start saving what she could. Until then, she had to make do with the few exceptions the trailblazer had allowed and remind herself that without her and the Paladin they too would be lost. So she wasn’t being totally apathetic. She was sitting by, helping a few, but that was only a fraction of the many that needed help.

She hated this part of her mission. She hated this part of being an Archon. But someone had to face the ugliness of the galaxy in order to clean it up, and that was a duty she wasn’t going to shirk, no matter how distasteful it was.

9

June 11, 4878

Unnamed System

Stellar Orbit

The V’kit’no’sat scout ship exited one of thousands of jumps it had been making searching beyond the frontier looking for the Knights of Quenar, but it wasn’t alone. There were 6 Les’i’kron ships working together and arriving in sequence, so if the first vessel was destroyed it could warn the others and the possibility of at least one of them surviving and reporting back what they found would be worth the effort. Otherwise, sending a single scout out to look for advanced hostiles would more than likely just mean the death of the scout.

Normally the V’kit’no’sat did not operate in such a fashion, but the heavy ass kicking they’d gotten when they lost the Uriti had made them rethink their standard protocols. They needed to find the Knights of Quenar worlds, and if they did they didn’t expect to leave peaceably with that knowledge.

The V’kit’no’sat had been doing more than just looking. They’d been inquiring of their many contacts for word of the KoQ, and what they’d found was shocking. Many people knew of and feared the KoQ, but they were not a traditional empire. They were ghosts, moving about where and when they wanted, but no one knew where they came from. There would have been no information about them at all except that they kept in contact with the rest of the galaxy, ostensibly to look for information on the Uriti.

But at the same time they also operated as a police force for the region where the scout ships were now searching, knocking down threats in an area that the V’kit’no’sat were able to outline thanks to the stories of the locals. Where in those 300,000 star systems were they? Well, it was just a matter of looking through them all, assuming their facilities weren’t well hidden.

Sending 6 ships per scout group also allowed them to search systems 6 times as fast, but today that was not going to be necessary.

When the first Ti’mat exited its jump it didn’t last 30 seconds before cloaked vessels appeared around it and opened fire. Thankfully it wasn’t a smaller Kaeper, otherwise it would have been destroyed immediately, but the Ti’mat was able to hold up long enough to send a signal back up the jumpline warning the others before it was quickly cut to shreds by the swarming KoQ vessels.

The next Ti’mat in altered its jumpline, curving into a skid around the side of the star with the others doing likewise but not following the same exact path. One of them was destroyed when it happened to run through an asteroid field, but the other four survived long enough to get down to reasonable speed where their sensors would function and allowed them to avoid obstacles. They had their cloaking devices running, but soon two of them were intercepted and a running battle begun, with them sending out messages to the others across the system.

The last two dropped their cloaks, realizing they were useless, and engaged active scans as they flew evasive courses towards other jumppoints. As they did so they picked up passive scans of the nearest planets…where they saw a massive civilization utilizing Knights of Quenar technology. The worlds were so packed with it they had no natural landscapes, just seas of various shades of black glinting in the sunlight.

The Les’i’kron weren’t going to stay around and look, for they needed to get the location information back to the fleet, and the two intact ships did make it to jumppoints and left the system at partial power, for they didn’t have enough time to fully recharge their jump capacitors. One of the two under attack also made it out, but with damage, and all three flew at reduced speed to different systems…where the KoQ were waiting for them when they emerged.

Two of them were destroyed on entry, but the third never arrived. It was the damaged one, but it hadn’t malfunctioned and hit the star. Rather it had altered its slow course slightly so that it slingshotted around the star without slowing down. That didn’t allow much of a course correction, so the choice of destination stars further on was limited and the ability to accurately pull off such a maneuver was questionable, but it was a navigational trick the V’kit’no’sat had learned well navigating the core of the galaxy where jumplines were so short and the constant stopping hindered travel.

The Knights of Quenar had no such use for it out in the more sparse Rim, and they hadn’t expected the tactic. So the damaged Ti’mat coasted on for just under two weeks before it came close enough to a gravity well to stick a landing. It did not arrive on a direct jumpline, so it had to brake hard, pushing it sideways as it did so, then it pulled on the gravity of the star as it passed in order to latch on and swing around it until they finally came to a relative stop out in middle orbit.

Thankfully they hadn’t collided with anything, but they arrived in a system without the Knights of Quenar, though it was not uninhabited. There were three planets with a primitive race the Les’i’kron could not identify, but it didn’t matter. They weren’t going to stick around long enough for them to report to the KoQ where they were, but the ship was damaged and their speed was limited due to the destruction of one of their gravity drives. The rest had been repaired during the coast phase of their jump, but there wasn’t enough spare parts onboard to replace the one that had been 85% destroyed.

But V’kit’no’sat ships had multiple gravity drives, meaning the loss of one only slowed the ship by a fraction. It did not stop it, and the Ti’mat continued to bounce from system to system until it got back to the rendezvous point where the scout ships had been refueling. There was a large V’kit’no’sat fleet of cargo ships and warships, which the Ti’mat immediately transmitted its information to, warning them that if they were followed they may come under attack.

The V’kit’no’sat fleet immediately sent out courier ships to rally the kill fleet that was waiting on the V’kit’no’sat border while the rendezvous point held position so they wouldn’t abandon the other scouts who would not have enough fuel to get back to V’kit’no’sat territory if they left.

By the time the kill fleet arrived 4 months later no KoQ ships had shown themselves, with the long train of warships from virtually all the races in the V’kit’no’sat passing through with the leading elements jumping out before the bulk of the convoy even arrived in the system. The train of ships made their way all the way out to the target system but did not arrive in it. Rather they spread out around to the neighboring systems with a countdown clock, timing their final jumps so they all arrived in the target system simultaneously, coming in on multiple jumplines.

The leading elements were Kafcha, the largest ships the V’kit’no’sat had, so they could weather the initial attacks of ambushing ships, soaking up the damage and sparing those coming in behind them, but to their surprise no attack came. They entered the system from all directions unmolested and dispersed scout ships throughout the system to get a good feel for the battleground only to discover that the KoQ were gone.

There were no ships here, not that they could always detect them if they were, but none were visible and the planets that had been identified by the original Ti’mat showed no presence of any habitation…but they did show the scar marks of its removal. All of the planets were scraped clean of buildings, leaving the bedrock showing their footprints and the signs of mechanical removal.

It was all gone. To where the V’kit’no’sat had no idea, but the Knights of Quenar had just picked up and moved planets’ worth of infrastructure. Not even the V’kit’no’sat could do that, and it left the kill fleet with no target to hit and fruitless searches of the planets for anything useful…other than the debris of the V’kit’no’sat scout ships that had been left drifting in space where they had been destroyed.

“Moved?” Mak’to’ran asked Hamob, whose ship had come out to the Hadarak Zone to find him and was communicating via hologram. “Explain.”

“Their planetary structures were removed, leaving only sculpted bedrock behind. There was no debris to be found. Either they build their structures with the ability to fly, or they somehow removed them all and transported them outside the system before our fleet arrived.”

“All of it?” Mak’to’ran asked, having seen the initial scouting report months ago.

“All of it,” Hamob confirmed. “We are dealing with a very formidable opponent.”

“Yet one who runs,” Mak’to’ran said disapprovingly.

“They cannot match our might if they are forced to suffer attrition. Their evasion bespeaks wisdom rather than bravado.”

“Yet we still do not know how many they are.”

“I would suspect far less than us, but the problem remains. Itaru has no target, save for those that are already visible.”

“The truce will not be breached,” Mak’to’ran said firmly.

“Itaru may strike despite your order. You need to return. I cannot hold them back.”

The Era’tran growled. “My time is best spent here, making Hadarak kills. Are they so incompetent that I have to oversee them constantly?”

“They seek blood and dominance. They have no blood, and their dominance is challenged. It is not a matter of incompetence.”

“It is,” Mak’to’ran differed. “And I do not refer to the inability to locate the Knights of Quenar. Dominance requires patience at times, and this is one of them. If they cannot produce that patience, then they are incompetent.”

“That is something they need to hear from you.”

“Will that be enough?” Mak’to’ran asked, suspecting the answer.

“Perhaps not, but I know that my influence is not enough. There is already a call for volunteers for the first invasion wave against Star Force.”

Mak’to’ran flared his claws and raked the glowing talons through a nearby console in frustration, cutting it as easily as a lightsaber would.

“A useful application,” Hamob quipped.

“Have they learned nothing?”

“Their leader is absent. They forget the lessons learned in recent history.”

“The arrogant have resurged?”

“No. This is mere frustration. There is an enemy that they are not allowed to strike. This does not sit well with them.”

“Or you?”

“I am weighing the costs of multiple options.”

“The truce was agreed to. We will not renege.”

“Star Force was foolish to agree without leverage.”

“Are we to become liars?”

“Many already are,” Hamob said honestly. “The arrogant were not our only problem.”

“Do we have this problem with the Era’tran?”

“No. I have made sure of that. They are loyal to the mission, and to you. The problem is the other races, most notably the Oso’lon, but even the J’gar are wavering in light of our inability to find the Knights of Quenar.”

“May I travel on your vessel? I do not want to diminish the capabilities of this fleet.”

“Of course.”

“Then we will leave immediately.”

It took nearly 4 months to reach Itaru, for the Hadarak were sitting on the best routes through the Core and the V’kit’no’sat had to take the long way around through very short jumps, even considering the curved routes they availed themselves of when appropriate. When they arrived they came into a dense star system that had been fully repaired since the recent civil war, with a defense fleet larger than any elsewhere in the empire by a factor of 20.

It was overkill as far as he was concerned, but there was still a lot of distrust between the races and none of them wanted to be caught in a bad position here should another civil war break out. The losses from the recent one were still felt in terms of personnel, for a lot of the very old V’kit’no’sat had been lost. Some of those were beneficial losses, for most of the arrogant had been purged, but there was still a skills gap that left Itaru less the jewel it had once been, and it seemed those that lived here were trying to compensate with more ships.

Mak’to’ran went straight to the Elder Conclave and interrupted their ongoing proceedings as he angrily assumed the center pedestal and took control of the massive indoor chamber that held representatives from all the races in the empire.

“I will say this plainly, so even the dimwitted amongst you can understand. The truce will not be violated. We gave our word. We will honor our word. Any race that violates it will have to deal with me and the Era’tran. If you wish to start another civil war, then by all means attack Star Force before the truce expires. I will guarantee you get one, for I will cull any race that violates the agreement that the empire has made.”

The vocal response was muted compared to the telepathic crescendo that followed, but Mak’to’ran responded to it with his own emotions, letting them feel just how angry he was.

“I do not belong here. I belong fighting the Hadarak, yet it seems I cannot rely on you to do anything of merit. We have made a deal. It must be honored. Yet here I am, coming to Itaru to stop you from launching an invasion against my orders. Your incompetence disgusts me. For the first time in our history we have an effective weapon against the Hadarak, and you quibble about inconsequential matters. Star Force is not a threat to us. They wish to be left alone. We only suffer losses when we attack them, and we do so because they do not have our permission to exist.”

“I will not waste resources on them while we are fighting the Hadarak. I will not waste resources destroying them when they hold a vital key to our war against the Hadarak. Their Uriti are a threat to us, but even more so to the Hadarak. I have struck a deal with them once, I plan to do so again before the end of the truce. If they refuse, then they will be destroyed. But the knowledge they contain is too valuable to just throw away due to ego. The Knights of Quenar attacked us, and if we can identify their location we will avenge our losses, but Star Force did not attack us. Their allies did.”

“I have a good measure of how they think, and they are defensive. They hate us, but that hate does not manifest itself the same way ours does. They know they cannot defeat us, but they also know that if we fight them we do so on their worlds where they have the advantage. They will hurt us badly, and if we need to suffer that damage in order to achieve our goals, then so be it. But if it is not necessary, I will not allow you to waste our resources and lives to satiate your desire for false dominance.”

“I say false because we are not dominant. The Knights of Quenar are our equal, if not our superior, in skill and technology. We are superior in might, and the fact that they handed us such an egregious loss rankles you. I, on the other hand, respond by adapting to the threat rather than throwing a tantrum. And even if we did destroy Star Force, we still would not have destroyed the Knights of Quenar. They will still elude us. Destroying them is a priority for us, but it pales in comparison to the Hadarak. And if I can coopt Star Force into helping us destroy them, then I will take that route regardless of how much it offends your false sense of dominance. If we were dominant, Star Force never would have survived to this point.”

“You know this to be true, and now you want to rewrite history and throw away invaluable tools. The Chixzon were able to alter a captured Hadarak into a weapon of their own. Star Force has knowledge of the Chixzon, from sources we are not aware of. If we destroy Star Force we destroy that knowledge, for they will take it to their graves with them. I can promise you that, for spite is a trait we both share.”

“We have been fighting the Hadarak for millions of years, yet you only think of this century. My mind is far into the future, and Star Force is an asset that I must bring into the fold. How I will do that is not certain yet, but I will not waste the opportunity because you are shortsighted. If you wish to attack Star Force before the truce expires, you will have to fight me as well, for I will not tolerate this disobedience…even from the Oso’lon,” he said, looking directly at the long necks.

“I lead the V’kit’no’sat, not the Elder Council. If anyone wishes to change that, step forward now and face me.”

Mak’to’ran let that invitation hang in the air for minutes that felt like hours, and while there was a lot of bickering and complaining going on, no one, not even the Oso’lon, wanted to directly challenge him.

“Then this matter is settled. We honor the truce. If I cannot find a way to utilize Star Force prior to that, we destroy them when it expires. As for the Knights of Quenar, we will have to deal with them in another manner…”

10

February 3, 4882

Alamo System (Uriti Preserve)

Warden 8 Station

Riley-038 was training onboard his command ship when the priority summons from the Knights of Quenar came in. Normally he was not to be disturbed for diplomatic inquiries, but the KoQ didn’t mess around like the other races did and the fact that they were citing this as high priority was enough for his ship’s captain to interrupt the trailblazer during a swimming workout.

Riley had left immediately, heading over to the diplomatic station that had a special chamber where he could securely meet face to face with the KoQ without putting their facilities at risk. The technological capabilities of their ally were still not fully known, so it was standard protocol never to let them onboard except for a handful of special cargo bays such as this one.

There was a large force field separating him from the sole KoQ who stood waiting, with the Human’s hair still mildly wet and his clothing casual. No armor or weapons, but the KoQ knew that Archons had biological ones similar to what they possessed, and while cautious of each other neither really regarded their counterpart as a threat…not here at least.

“What is it?” Riley asked, stopping a meter from the invisible barrier denoted by a small ridge in the floor.

“A grave problem,” Ulusal said, one of the few KoQ that Riley had gotten to know by name. “We located another Uriti, but the V’kit’no’sat got to it before we did.”

Riley’s neutral expression depressed into a scowl. “They have one? Sedated or awake?”

“They kept it sedated, and we believe they were studying it. We attacked and took it from them.”

Riley whistled. “Oh, that is a problem.”

“This is not recent history. It occurred 24 of your years ago. If they saw our actions as a violation of your truce, they would have acted by now.”

The trailblazer frowned. “24 years? Why have you not brought the Uriti to us yet?”

“Because we no longer possess it. Our fleet that took it from the V’kit’no’sat reported via courier of the events that took place, but the fleet then disappeared and we had no knowledge of where they were or what happened to them until recently. A single survivor in a slow emergency ship eventually made his way back to us. It was not the V’kit’no’sat that destroyed them, as we had assumed, for they have come after us in our own territory as punishment for our boldness. We were attacked by an unknown race whose technology is the equal of our own. They were waiting in ambush along our convoy route, and none of our ships survived the attack or were allowed to flee.”

“How did your messenger survive?”

“Within the star where they dumped our ship debris. They did not know our emergency ship could survive within it. He played dead then limped his way across the stars to one of our remote operating bases with the sensor data that this race, I suspect, wanted to make sure did not survive. They now have the Uriti, sedated, for after the V’kit’no’sat awakened it in response to our assault we were able to resedate it, and the ambush occurred too quickly for us to release it again.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Riley said, slowing him down with a raised hand. “The Uriti was woken…wait, which one was it?”

“Bulmuthal.”

“The original?”

“Yes, and it was truly massive.”

“And the V’kit’no’sat woke it up in order to deny it to you?”

“They did. After we drove them out of the system so they could not interfere, we resedated it.”

“I thought you couldn’t do that without massive sacrifice.”

“There was a sacrifice, but not as massive as in past history. We have developed better methods of sedation, which we are not prepared to share.”

“Exactly how big of a fleet did you send?”

“Large enough.”

“And you can detect cloaked V’kit’no’sat ships?” Riley deduced, otherwise they could not ensure they were not still around to ‘interfere.’

“We can. They were not present when we resedated it. They do not know what happened to it. They only found an empty system when we left. The race that stole it from us used cloaking devices that we could not penetrate. This allowed them to ambush us quite effectively.”

“And you don’t know who it was?”

“We do not.”

“And they took the Uriti while still sedate?”

“We assume so. We have no data on a release, and our carrier vessel was absent when the survivor emerged from the star. We assume they seized it.”

“Show me this race.”

The Knight produced a hologram of the battle records, and despite his lack of familiarity with Humans he didn’t miss the facial flinch Riley made when he saw the ‘nest-like’ ships.

“You have encountered this race before?”

Riley stared directly into the dog-like face of the KoQ, his gaze imparting lethal intent. “Who else have you shown this to?”

“You are the first beyond the Knights of Quenar.”

“Make sure I am the last. This information cannot reach the public or the V’kit’no’sat. This race values their anonymity above all else. They will kill you if even a hint of it comes to their attention, and their spies are everywhere.”

“Who are they?”

“Someone I’m not supposed to tell you about,” Riley answered honestly. “I’m going to have to scrub the recordings of this conversation from the station computer, just in case they have a means of accessing it and seeing those holograms. I recommend you not keep them widely available to your own people. If they destroy a ship with that knowledge onboard and recover it, bad things will happen.”

“Bad things have already happened. Who is this race?”

“You are familiar with the Chixzon?”

“Of course.”

“They are their equivalent from the inner half of the galaxy, also thought to be dead, but not. They are rebuilding in secret, and the fact that they emerged to attack you and steal the Uriti changes a great many things…all for the worse.”

“We have not been able to find the Uriti. The lead they had is too great, and we have not been able to find any trace of this race, not even a rumor, though our efforts are only beginning. Tell us what you know, for we are already involved.”

Riley closed his eyes, telepathically interfacing with the station’s computer via a nodule in the ceiling and shutting down the active surveillance in the chamber. He also contacted the station security forces and ordered them to scrub the existing records for him, as well as telling them that the new blackout was intended and not a security breach.

When he opened his eyes he looked directly into the Knight’s pair, telepathically sharing with him images of what the Dragons looked like, along with images of their ships, confirming that they were the same. He couldn’t penetrate the Knight’s mind, but he could still transmit to him like anyone else.

“They are called the Zak’de’ron, and you must never let that word be spoken. They created the V’kit’no’sat, then were betrayed by them about a million years ago. They were always superior and uplifted the many races that are now V’kit’no’sat, but they didn’t share everything with them. The V’kit’no’sat believe they were destroyed, but a single Zak’de’ron survived and has been rebuilding their ranks for the past 2 millennia. They have told us they are not yet ready to assist us against the V’kit’no’sat, but their attack on you suggests they may be stronger than they have admitted.”

“You are their ally?”

“They wish us to believe so, but in truth we are not after a…recent incident that they are not aware of. They seek dominance, like the V’kit’no’sat, but they prefer to coopt many other races, and did so even before they created the V’kit’no’sat. They are very good friends so long as you do what they want, and the fact that they stole a Uriti from you that they knew was going to us sends a very clear message that they are not our allies. If they thought they’d killed you all, then they wanted to keep this knowledge from reaching us. Do you understand why you cannot allow them to learn of this?”

“You wish them to continue to believe you are working with them. What have you done for them, exactly?”

“We accidentally stumbled upon their sole survivor in stasis. We didn’t kill him, so he was grateful. We’ve had a few conversations over the years and they’ve shared some information, but that’s it. They want to remain dead to the galaxy, which is why their attack on you is surprising.”

“You say their power rivals the Chixzon?”

“Hard to compare without firm details, but yes, I believe so.”

“And yet they were defeated by the V’kit’no’sat.”

“They were ambushed by them. They trusted and were betrayed. I do not think they could have rebuilt so much in such a short period of time…unless they lied to us, which is possible.”

“Do they possess the knowledge of the Chixzon that you do?”

Riley bit his lip as he considered that, thinking of Kara’s memory theft. “We can’t rule it out entirely.”

“So they may be able to command it to do their bidding?”

“I hope not, but this doesn’t make sense. Something else is in play here.”

“We are still looking for the other Uriti, as I assume the V’kit’no’sat are. If we do recover another, we risk running into another ambush. Can you tell us anything about their technology?”

“Unfortunately not much. They’ve been able to sneak up on us without us detecting them. Gravity detection will give them away, so they can’t sneak up on the Hadarak or Uriti, but again that’s us taking their word for it. We’ve had almost no interaction with them. However, anything the V’kit’no’sat know, assume they know it. They’ve got hacks into their communication grid. If you find another Uriti that the V’kit’no’sat do not know about, you might be able to get it back to us before they realize it.”

“They have shared this knowledge with you?”

“Yeah, they did, while apologizing for not being able to militarily assist us when the truce ends. I think they’re going to let us and the V’kit’no’sat blast each other’s brains out, then hit them afterward. Supposedly they’re not rebuilt enough for that yet, but them taking you guys out may suggest otherwise. This is bad no matter how you look at it, and it will only get worse if they know we know, which is why you have to hide this information and that of your survivor. Bury it deep. Very deep.”

“We rarely share anything with outsiders. You are an exception because of your ability to control the Uriti, but these revelations disturb us greatly.”

“How many ships did you lose?”

“It will not affect our overall military ability by a significant factor,” Ulusal said, not giving any information that Star Force could use to size up their true strength. “It would have been wise of you to warn us of this threat.”

“I thought they were hiding out, not making clandestine raids…and for the record, we don’t fully trust you either. And if we weren’t helpful to your agenda, you’d probably be attacking us, so let’s not pretend we’re close friends.”

“We have no quarrel with you now, nor would we ever so long as you don’t misuse the Uriti. We have trusted you greatly by bestowing them into your care.”

“Because we are the only ones that can control them.”

“That may no longer be the case,” he pointed out. “But we are allies, though you do not approve of all of our methods.”

“That disapproval could lead to war, you know. We don’t tolerate bad guys, and if we knew more about what you actually did, you might fall into that category.”

“Your methods are effective, but you do not go far enough in some circumstances. That is why we know you will never be an enemy…and why we will never tell you everything that we do.”

“And that is why we will never be full allies.”

“So long as the mission is accomplished, that is acceptable to us.”

“And what mission is that? The destruction of the Uriti?”

“That would be one solution, but not the best one. After all the destruction they have ravaged on the galaxy, compensation is a fitting turn of fate. Under your care, they are accomplishing that. And because of your squeamishness, we know you will not go too far with them.”

“And you need to realize that you are in the wrong. Life is not so cheap as you make it, though I can understand how people can lose their way in the face of such carnage. You, however, have no excuse because you didn’t live through it, or are you far older than I assume?”

“I did not, but my people did, and we remember. This conversation is pointless, for we will never operate on the same protocols. We do have a new threat to face, and one who now possesses a Uriti and potentially the ability to use it.”

“If they do, it will not be soon. Hiding a Uriti strike is not easy, and I doubt they are ready to hit the V’kit’no’sat yet.”

“If that is their true agenda.”

“It is. We know enough of their history to be sure of that. There is pure hatred there.”

“Or would they use the V’kit’no’sat to their advantage?” Ulusal wondered. “If they are manipulators, it could be more advantageous than fighting a war with them.”

“The V’kit’no’sat despise and fear them. I do not think they could openly interact with them. The result would be catastrophic and the V’kit’no’sat would hunt them to extinction…again.”

“You obviously place some trust in us, or you would not be giving us this information.”

“I fear you accidentally revealing what you already have without understanding the repercussions that could come of it.”

“We will maintain the secrecy and continue our search for the remaining Uriti. These Zak’de’ron will not ambush us again so easily.”

“Do you have any leads?”

“A few, but nothing confirmed as of yet. And now we must also race the V’kit’no’sat, and perhaps these Zak’de’ron as well. It is possible they have more than one at this point.”

Riley cringed. “Damn, that’s not a pleasant thought. Maybe this is turning into a race for control.”

“It has been for some time now. We were just not aware of this other player. Lesser races are also looking, and we have claimed what they previously found.”

Riley glared at him, but Ulusal did not care.

“Our methods. Our results. We do not need your permission.”

“If we were in a position to do something about it we would, but you’re operating outside our territory. Do not misconstrue that as tolerance.”

“Noted.”

“What kind of losses have you suffered to the V’kit’no’sat?”

“None. They seek combat, we deny it to them.”

“They have not found any of your worlds?”

“They have. We abandoned them prior to their arrival, thus denying them combat.”

“That’s still a loss then.”

“You misunderstand. We moved our infrastructure off those worlds along with our population. We lost nothing.”

Riley raised an eyebrow. “Oh really? Your infrastructure is mobile?”

“It is not,” Ulusal said, but that was all the information that Riley was going to get out of him on that front, though they continued to discuss the V’kit’no’sat and Zak’de’ron, along with the Knights of Quenar’s continuing efforts to find Protovic and inoculate them against become Chixzon someday.

After their clandestine conversation concluded Riley left the Preserve and headed directly to the Meinto System so he could inform Davis personally. This information was too sensitive to go through the comm grid, and the Director responded far worse to the information than the KoQ had.

It took Davis 3 months working with Riley and a few other trailblazers he summoned from nearby locations to come up with a course of action, then he sent a message through the now extended comm grid all the way to Earth where Morgan was stationed, telling her to arrange a meeting with the V’kit’no’sat, and Mak’to’ran in particular, citing they had matters concerning the Hadarak to discuss.

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