1

March 28, 4850

Scicaryanen System (Hadarak Zone)

Middle Zone Null Orbit

Dorchav waited patiently, knowing his timing had to be right. His Kafcha was currently on the edge of the battle with the minions, throwing massive firepower into their clusters as they tried to pin down individual ships that the Level 1 Hadarak was slowly chasing after. Right now there were dozens partially disabled, but the two that had been neutralized were now being pushed out of the way by other V’kit’no’sat warships, badly damaging their hulls in the soft collisions, but keeping the crews alive a bit longer as the number of minions was being diminished continuously.

There was no point in attacking the Hadarak directly until the minions were gone…but before they were the Hadarak would retreat, knowing that it didn’t have the range to engage the V’kit’no’sat without the minions. So Dorchav had to guess when that moment would come and act before it, but at the same time the existing minions were going to be a threat once he sprung the trap. There was no protocol to follow, for this was the first time they’d attempted this, and Mak’to’ran was here watching, currently engaged in battle on the planet this Hadarak had been encamped on.

There were even more minions on the surface than there were in space, and as was typical of the V’kit’no’sat they were going to eradicate them all, purging the system of their presence, and the surface fighting had beat them back so much the Hadarak had chosen to leave the planet and attack the fleet directly. Dorchav had drawn it away from the planet to give Mak’to’ran the spacing he needed, but this attack wasn’t about clearing the system as much as it was a test of the technique Dorchav had recommended. He’d been on the receiving end of it once, but the Hadarak were much more formidable than a Mach’nel, so they’d had to make many modifications to the technology Star Force had developed.

Now, the Brat’mar said telepathically to his command deck, with the mix of his kind and Zen’zat already knowing exactly what to do.

Communications went out, with the attacking fleet breaking apart and trying to draw the minions in different directions, spreading them out while leaving two ships helpless to draw the Hadarak in further…only they weren’t as disabled as they were acting. They were still reporting partial engine power and Dorchav’s Kafcha was sniping minions from afar at dangerously close range to increase their odds of surviving.

But after a few minutes he saw he’d miscalculated…or perhaps the commanders of the vessels had…for their engine power diminished so far they could no longer escape the Hadarak, which was nearly on top of them. In the past the V’kit’no’sat would have let them die to accomplish the mission, but something inside of Dorchav screamed ‘inferiority’ and the Brat’mar audibly growled, drawing looks from the otherwise silent command deck crew.

“Take us in,” he said, anger billowing over into the specific actions he wanted, telepathically explained within a fraction of a second, resulting in his Kafcha and a nearby Na’shor accelerating towards the Hadarak and racing it to get to the two bait ships.

Dorchav couldn’t shake the image of that Human Archon who had defeated him before. She would be criticizing him now for leaving those ships to die, stating that Star Force would have saved them and pulled off the trap…and there was no way that he was going to let a rogue faction display more dominance than the V’kit’no’sat. If they could do it, then so could he…and if he died, so be it. He should have died years ago in that Star Force trap, and in a way he felt he was operating on borrowed time ever since.

As for his crew, they were doing their duty and if they died it would be in battle, fighting to accomplish an objective, not left behind to die because the other V’kit’no’sat were too cowardly to try and save them.

So even as new ships began to emerge from microjumps all around the perimeter of the Hadarak, the two intact warships jumped through a swarm of minions, disintegrating them on impact as they hard braked nearby, seeing their engine power drop off as the biological remains coated their shields emitting IDF fields that stole the gravity effect away from the engines.

But the V’kit’no’sat ships were so big those fields couldn’t reach deep within their hulls, and after a moment the shields reset in a flourish, throwing the goo out and away and returning full engine power. If the shields went down and they got that residue on the hull it would be another matter, but Dorchav wasn’t going to stick around that long. What he was going to do was make physical contact with the other ship, and that meant the impact point was going to be exposed.

But his ship was so big it wouldn’t matter. The only question was, could they push the Dak’bri clear of the chasing Hadarak in time? The ship was less than half as massive as his Kafcha, but tractor beams alone couldn’t get enough grip points to pull something of that size. They’d literally pull the hull plates off, and no exterior hardpoints had been built with connection to the superstructure to accommodate this amount of sheering force. Had the minions not been here, towing the ship would have been easy using IDF fields coupled with the tractor beams, but the minions were partially immune to IDF because they carried jamming fields, and in the past when IDF had been used as a weapon against the swarms they’d actually brought the entire field down.

So the only way to move the ships was with physical force applied hull to hull, and the Dak’bri in front of them was not Bra’tmar, otherwise the coin-shaped hulls would have matched up perfectly for such a pushing maneuver. Rather it was Tev’nan, with a hull that mirrored the hexpeds’ own bodies with lots of thick spikes coming off an internal mass longer than it was wide. There was no way to get past those spikes, so when the Kafcha made contact three of them crushed down, with the Brat’mar vessel doing more damage than the minions had…but far less than the Hadarak would do if it got within grapple range.

Dorchav’s own ship took damage from those spikes, but thankfully they also embedded into the hull rather than deflecting, locking the two ships together and allowing the Kafcha’s engines to push hard enough to accelerate the other ship even as minions fired on and plastered against the massive 36 mile wide ‘coin’ ship in a desperate effort to slow it enough for the approaching 62 mile wide Hadarak to catch up. Thankfully it was a ‘small’ Hadarak, but if it got within tentacle range of the Kafcha, Dorchav’s ship was going to be ripped apart regardless.

The ironic part was the V’kit’no’sat had a massive fleet waiting further out in the system that had not engaged, knowing that the Hadarak would have fled rather than fought, so the Brat’mar was engaging with far less ships to make it a fair fight…which meant they had to give it an advantage, but he wasn’t going to give it two of his ships willingly. That would have shown inferiority.

However, that’s what ended up happening anyway, as his Kafcha successfully pushed the Dak’bri far enough away to avoid the Hadarak, accelerating enough to stay ahead of it and gain distance, but the smaller Na’shor did not. It too was pushing a smaller vessel, but either the engine combination wasn’t quite adequate or the minions got to it more even though the Kafcha had come in first and drawn most of their attention.

Dorchav’s displeasure grew as he saw both the Na’shor and the Domjo it was pushing get grabbed by the grapple fields and their rate of movement slowed. The actual catch didn’t occur until several minutes later, but by then more minions were circling around and ramming the ships, sacrificing themselves to get as much IDF-laden goo on them as possible. Eventually one of the Hadarak’s tentacles reached out, targeted by the firepower of both ships, but it held up long enough to make physical contact and poke in through the hull of the Brat’mar Na’shor like a spear…and after that it was over, though the death of the ships took a while to complete.

Dorchav saw in mind’s eye the Human, but her tone wasn’t mocking. It was disgusted with the loss, but noted that at least they’d died fighting and hadn’t been betrayed by being left behind. Dorchav was forced to agree, though he was not happy as he watched more tentacles come out and help crush both ships against the outer hull of the Hadarak, which was so much more dense that it barely moved as both V’kit’no’sat vessels were deformed into trash, killing the crews inside with no way for Dorchav to help them now.

But he could accomplish his mission, and in a way their deaths were helping, for the minions were in close to the Hadarak now rather than being spaced further away as the 183 pieces of the capture sphere entered maximum range and began emitting the longest range IDF fields the V’kit’no’sat could figure out how to create.

Each one was like a long column that stretched out before the pieces, each of which was far larger than a Mach’nel, but with none of the defenses. The IDF conduits from all of them intersected on the Hadarak, broadening out enough to cover it entirely and deny its own gravity drives a grip on the star and nearby planets, essentially stranding it in place.

The minions that were not caught in the field immediately shot off towards the emitters, with Dorchav ordering his fleet inside the perimeter to defend them to the death. They had the Hadarak pinned and could not lose it now…except they didn’t quite have it yet. The fields were too fragile and the Hadarak’s own ability to disrupt them was having a partial effect. It began to move immediately, fleeing the trap, but even a casual brush with the IDF slowed it considerably and Dorchav had already instructed the crews on the emitters to move with it.

They had to stay in range as it began to head for the star, and if it reached it the Hadarak would escape them by going where the V’kit’no’sat could not. Dorchav knew the emitters had to get in closer, a lot closer, to fully trap it, but they couldn’t so long as the minions were here, for they were flying around the warships blocking their path and ignoring them completely as they raced for the emitters.

The following battle played itself out adequately, with none of the emitters being damaged enough to hinder their operation. Several had their shields go down, but there weren’t enough minions left, thanks to the thinning efforts earlier, and the emitters were able to close in and strengthen their overlapping IDF fields, taking away the Hadarak’s propulsion as it continued to drift towards the star.

Dorchav then ordered the fleet out of the interior, allowing the emitters to come closer, just beyond grapple field range, and connect to each other as they transformed. The massive hulks flattened out, becoming very thin and vulnerable as they spread into a massive sphere around the Hadarak, locking together into a single mass similar to the capture mechanism Star Force had used…except it had gotten inside weapons range of the Mach’nel Dorachav had commanded, allowing it to bypass their firepower with the extreme close range.

That would be suicide with a Hadarak, but unlike a Mach’nel, the Hadarak had no ranged weapons other than minions, a few of which were emerging from the Hadarak as it no doubt raced to produce more, but they were squirted out without engine power until they cleared the IDF field, and the limited ‘containment’ weaponry on the inside of the sphere shot them down before they could get to the outer sphere.

“Containment complete,” another Brat’mar announced as the capture device was fully deployed and now a perfect sphere hiding the massive Hadarak inside. The device was far larger than what Star Force had built, and necessarily so given the dynamics of Hadarak combat, but now was the true test.

“Pull it into a stable orbit,” Dorchav said, waiting to see if they could move the Hadarak on the engine power of the capture device, which wasn’t great considering how much mass it had to tow. IDF fields didn’t negate mass, they just tied it together inside an energy field, and all that had to be moved to counter the momentum they had heading in towards the star.

Wisely they accelerated sideways to try and create an orbit rather than doing a direct stop that would have required more power, but it was still too close for comfort. Dorchav actually had to use his fleet with deployed shields as a block, running ahead of the capture device while helping to tow with tractor beams. They plowed through the upper atmosphere of the star so the tiny exterior shields on the capture device wouldn’t have to face the full brunt of the collision with the disperse plasma, for even such small impacts at these speeds would do considerable damage.

But it worked, and even with that brush against the star the capture device held containment and began to gain altitude again as it curved around the star in an elliptical orbit and inside the Hadarak was helpless to affect its cage, reaching out futilely with tentacles that weren’t long enough and grapple fields that came up just short. Over the following hours a few minions emerged, to be killed instantly, then no more followed.

Dorchav knew that meant internal production was being stored, with a minion wave to be launched sometime in the future when it believed it had enough to make it to the cage edge, so their victory wasn’t assured yet, but without being able to feed on a planet or star the Hadarak would have to cannibalize internal material to produce more…which no doubt it would do over the course of time if needed.

“Well done,” Mak’to’ran’s hologram said half a day later when the V’kit’no’sat leader flew out from the planet to the null orbit around the star where they had the Hadarak trapped. “And well worth the investment in resources. How badly damaged is your vessel?”

“We can only attain 68% jump speed, but we are combat capable.”

“You exchanged a larger vessel for the loss of a smaller one, but you nearly lost all four. Why did you risk it?”

“I am tired of leaving people to die without a fight,” the Brat’mar said bluntly.

Mak’to’ran huffed in a sarcastic manner. “The Humans call us out with their actions, do they not?”

“You know me too well. Yes, they do. They rightly mock our dominance when they rescue their own and we leave them to die.”

“We have become too accustomed to losses against the Hadarak,” Mak’to’ran agreed. “We take great care to avoid it against other opponents, but our lack of victory against the Hadarak has caused us to become sloppy. Hopefully our victory today will alter that. You have given us a new weapon against them, and for that you will be honored. The loss of Dimu has given you insight to create this weapon, thus your failure has resulted in ultimate victory and everyone is soon to know it.”

“I care not for my reputation, and our hold on the Hadarak is tenuous.”

“Our being able to contain it for even a moment is something the V’kit’no’sat have never done before. Our victory is secure regardless of what happens beyond this point, but I too wish for more than a historical footnote.”

“What do you wish to do with it?”

“First we wait and see if it can free itself. We may have to make alterations to the second Harthur, and I would rather do so before construction than after.”

“Harthur?” Dorchav asked, recognizing the name from V’kit’no’sat legend as a weapon that could turn even the weakest of warriors into victors…which was not something that was seen as honorable, rather a cheat for the inferior to claim dominance they did not deserve.

“A reminder that we are still the lesser in this war, but also that we now have a chance to win.”

“We have a tactic, not a solution,” Dorchav warned. “It is progress, but not ultimate victory.”

“I know that as well as you do, but we now have the ability to stop the smaller Hadarak without bleeding ourselves so much that victory is almost worthless.”

“If we are able to contain this one, how do you wish us to dispose of it? The Harthur doesn’t have enough engine power to create sufficient collision speeds, and I doubt we can get it far enough away from the stars to strand it in deep space.”

“We will have to build a second carrier vessel to do either.”

“Then we use the fleet?” Dorchav asked, referencing the fact that several pieces of the Harthur could be removed in theory, if the field held sufficient density, and allow the warships to fire their long range weapons in on the Hadarak with impunity, very slowly destroying it from afar in a process that would take weeks, if not months to do sufficient damage from the limited firing lines.

“No,” Mak’to’ran differed. “So long as we possess this one and must endure to test the effectiveness of the Harthur, we will use the time to study the Hadarak as we have never been able to do so before. My primary concern is another Hadarak entering the system. We cannot shield their telepathy to hide this one, nor can we remove it from this system.”

“Shall I move the hidden fleet into blockade position?”

“Do so at your convenience. I fear if one does arrive it will not matter and we will lose this one regardless. If that happens, I want you to save the Harthur by abandoning the capture. It is too valuable to risk losing,” Mak’to’ran said, referencing the immense construction effort that had been undertaken to get it built/tested/refined in such a short amount of time, and all at Mak’to’ran’s insistence, for Itaru had not thought the experiment worth the expenditure of resources.

“Thank you for your wisdom.”

“It is I who owe you a debt for discovering what none of us had even considered. Our blood price has blinded us to other options for fighting the Hadarak.”

“I as well, until Star Force forced me to see. It is a pity we must destroy them.”

“I have not given up hope that they will see reason. When the truce ends, they may have tired of war. They are busy doing many things they could not before. I will offer them the opportunity to continue. They may take it.”

“They are not blinded by arrogance, but they are proud. I do not believe they will accept subservience.”

“I would accept allegiance,” Mak’to’ran admitted, drawing a surprised look from Dorchav. “They are a testament to everything we have done wrong, and they have accomplished more against the Hadarak than we have ever done. I intend to study and learn from them as much as I can, and if at all possible avoid their destruction. They are too valuable for the future.”

“Itaru will not accept their freedom.”

“That is my problem, and their hatred of us is well deserved, but we must preserve their power over the Uriti. Having to destroy it would be a folly beyond measure.”

“Then we must steal it from them. They will not give it freely.”

“I am considering many options, but know that I will not blithely destroy them when the truce is over. There is too much at stake.”

A thought occurred to Dorchav. “The Chixzon developed the Uriti from study of a Hadarak. Could we potentially do the same and learn how to communicate with the Uriti from this one?”

Mak’to’ran’s lips slid apart in a toothy grin. “That is a possibility that has not eluded me. We have more to learn from study than destruction, but first we must know whether or not we can actually contain this one or if it will free itself. That is your first priority. Let me worry about the future, but I do want any and all ideas that you have, no matter how absurd.”

“You will have them.”

“Well done, my friend. Your honor has been returned to you. We must all learn from our mistakes and move forward. Do not look back on your loss of Dimu in any other way from now on. You have given us the Harthur and your legend has now grown. No more will V’kit’no’sat study only those who have flawless records. They will see a true commander who uses defeat to their advantage…and that is a lesson the V’kit’no’sat badly need to learn.”

2

April 2, 4851

Axalon System (Pavana Region)

Turok

Aaron-010 stood above the tray of eggs, feeling the tiny Ikrid transmissions coming from each of them like a little beacon detailing their emotions. These eggs had already had their Ikrid blocks genetically inserted into them, as all new eggs were, and in a bit of wonderful irony the tiny minds inside the eggs were adapting to the blocks that prevented them from pulling information from each other the same way that the Twins had.

They’d developed the habit of constantly transmitting in response to others doing the same. Batch after batch of eggs went through the same process, and as soon as one or two started to transmit even the littlest of telepathic bleeps the other nearby eggs would do the same in a chorus of camaraderie, letting each little raptor know that it wasn’t alone.

Aaron was here now because the eggs were about to hatch, and one of the 6 trailblazers on the planet made sure to be present whenever it happened. Right now they were ready, but hadn’t started poking out yet, so the Archon gave them a little telepathic nudge and suddenly 250 eggs held in vertical position by a very low craters in the table began wobbling, with a few punctures popping through.

The others followed, quickly learning how to break their shells from experimentation as well as information flowing from the others. It wasn’t complex, barely simple thoughts, but it was extremely important to these little ones, for it was a wealth of information from their point of view, and they were beginning to taste air for the first time in their brief lives.

Ethan reached down and picked up one of the eggs that had half a head sticking out of it, helping to pull a piece of shell off as he stroked the slimy little raptor, bypassing its Ikrid blocks and easily getting into its mind…with a powerful reaction. It bonded with him immediately and he made sure not to overwhelm it with thought, otherwise he could accidentally damage it.

He helped it get out of its shell then set it down on a nearby table with a high, clear rim that would keep it from falling off once it figured out how to walk…which would only be a few minutes. Aaron picked up another egg then, one by one, made physical contact with each of them as they got out of their organic birth crates and he moved them to the nearby choral.

They weren’t quite chickens, considerably bigger but still very fragile, and when they bumped into each other half the time they’d fall as they learned how to balance on their tiny legs. He spent a few minutes with them, transmitting a few basic emotions before giving them their first instruction. Like clockwork, they all turned around and hobbled over to the small gate now opening in the back of the little pen that led to water and food, each on one of 250 tiny little serving tables.

As instructed, each went to their own table and began to drink, then eat, as Aaron handed over telepathic control to a handler. Her Ikrid was pathetic compared to his, given to her specifically for her job, which had previously been in Axius maturias helping non-Humans learn English and a lot of other things not native to their biology. Telepathy was so useful in that regard that there was a lack of high level trainers with access to it, which was why many maturia across the empire were seeing more and more Protovic being recruited, for their telepathy was not restricted.

This handler wasn’t Protovic, but one of the Humans that had her own reproductive systems disabled and her Ikrid unlocked, and Aaron knew that each one of the elite handlers were professionals focused on their job with no ‘social life’ to worry about where Ikrid could cause problems in the possession of unscrupulous people. And here it was essential, for the Raptors were born into generation after generation of telepathically-linked individuals, and denying that along with implementing Ikrid blocks would have been going too far.

Aaron knew they could adapt, but it would be rough on them and that’s not what the 1s wanted. The Raptors’ sense of camaraderie was vitally important, given the fact these were not going to be treated as civilians unless they opted out. These were little Arc Knights in development, and what they would end up being down the road was still unknown, but that basic template is what they were starting with. The eldest of the hatchlings were only up to knee height now, but their training was already proceeding in a sloppy manner as Aaron and the others learned what the Raptors could or couldn’t do.

What they could do was run, with Scionate-like speed. Aaron could still outrun them for now, but once they got full grown he wouldn’t be able to, and even this newly hatched batch was showing physical skills far beyond what a Human infant could ever be expected to. The superiority of the Raptors was evident even at this early age, but the trailblazer knew it was only a head start, not a guarantee of success. If life was a marathon, Humans got to start at the 1-mile mark while the Raptors got to start at mile 3. That was no guarantee that they’d run faster over the long run, but in terms of numbers across a huge civilization, that much of a head start was mind boggling, making it clear why the V’kit’no’sat empire had such strength even when they didn’t try that hard.

That said, Aaron knew several Mavericks coming from races that didn’t have their advantages and had to start back at mile 0. They’d had to come much further than the others, but the individual person inside the body had made up the gap, just as the trailblazers had. Would any of these little hatchlings ever catch up to them? Unlikely, but if they did they wouldn’t have as large of a gap to cross as others would.

Outstanding individuals could overcome any gap. Aaron had learned that over the course of his life, and if there were biological blocks, well, Star Force could take care of those now, freeing up a path for everyone even if their base biology prevented it. The Szisson were the most glaring example of that, having been one of the smallest Nexus races to join Star Force. They were an avian, but insect-like race with a lifespan of only 3 years. When they entered the fourth phase of their development their digestive systems literally shut down, allowing them only to survive on fat reserves for a period of 2 weeks…but during those two weeks their 4th form was highly superior to the others, physically speaking, making them very deadly in combat up until they just keeled over and died from starvation.

That was biology that the individual could not overcome, and Aaron hated the idea of a no-win scenario. If he had been born into a Szisson body he would have died no matter how hard he trained, for the ‘game’ was rigged. Star Force hated rigged games and had reworked the 4th phase of Szisson development so that they could actually eat, and now their lifespan was technically unlimited, though most didn’t make it past 5 years. Aaron knew of two that were now over 400, and both Mavericks, but they had a very hard time maintaining self-sufficiency without heavy training. Fortunately heavy training was an easy day for Mavericks, so they had a path forward, but it was a very hard path.

The Raptor path was so easy in comparison it almost seemed unfair, but each Raptor still had to earn their advancement. Strength didn’t come naturally, nor did self-sufficiency unless you were a Hadarak. Laziness was still a threat, but a minor one for a race as advanced as the Raptors. The group telepathic bond would virtually eliminate that so long as the majority of the Raptors were hard working, and having handlers that were telepathic who could set an example was critical, with Director Davis currently working on recruiting more for Ikrid upgrades from across the empire in preparation for the population spike that would be forthcoming when they released the Raptors from their population controls.

They couldn’t do that until they had the necessary infrastructure in place, and even today Aaron had many more batches of eggs to welcome into the galaxy before he began his own morning workouts.

Zak-015 would be here shortly after he left, so that hatchings could occur every few hours. The 1s had made it a priority to personally imprint on these Raptors before anyone else did, and it was already showing in the older ones, for they all had sporadic contact with the trailblazers, and each time they did they regarded them as the pack leaders above and beyond the handlers and trainers they spent most of their time with.

Aaron would be with them later in the day for about an hour, but after he got through his morning workouts he would be heading over to the other side of the planet where the converted Raptor adults were going through much harder training and the 1s were figuring out how to make use of their various skills, as well as identifying their weaknesses.

Number one weakness was their arms, which had little reach and less strength than a Human’s, but their tail power more than made up for it. It took longer to wind up, but if they landed a tail hit it would literally throw Aaron across the sparring ring, given the amount of mass and force involved.

But if he stayed in their face he had an advantage, and some of the Calavari trainers they brought in were proving to be a nightmare for the Raptors, for if they got within grapple range they’d lock on with one arm and prevent the spinning that a tail strike required…then they had 3 other arms to beat them senseless with. A weakness they had against Zen’zat was made all the more obvious against the Calavari, and Aaron was working with them to develop techniques to combat the four-armed monsters prior to getting new psionics that would help greatly in that department.

But most of the time the Raptors were being sent through challenge courses the likes of which Aaron had never seen before. Because of their speed, they had to be large ones similar to what the Scionate used, but add in their psionics and the courses were literally monsters. Aaron had been able to beat them, mostly, save for where leg speed was involved. Half the time his superior Human speed could match him evenly with a slower Raptor, but the requirements for the better ones he simply couldn’t match.

That would have been annoying if not for having encountered this before. Ikrotor were one of the first giant races Star Force had encountered, and they’d fully joined Star Force after the move out of the ADZ was made. They were so big and strong that Aaron couldn’t beat some of their basic challenges, and the Ikrotor’s tree-like proportions made it clear that he never would be able to match their muscle strength.

That was fine, and if he needed to take down an Ikrotor he could, but through other means, and during the fighting against the V’kit’no’sat in mech combat the Ikrotor had proved very effective once encased in battle armor…which made them look like mechs, but they weren’t. There was an advantage and disadvantage in that, and versus an Era’tran they didn’t stand a chance, but they had taught Aaron a lot about the limitations of one’s body. He knew he couldn’t solo many of the V’kit’no’sat races, for they were just too big and powerful, and while that annoyed him to a point he realized that what he couldn’t do individually he could do in a mech, or with a team. Ultimately the fight was Star Force versus the galaxy, and in that fight he saw no limitations.

But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to keep pressing his personal skills, and the extra Ikrid tissue he’d received after sacrificing his Ensek was allowing him to reach all time high training scores in that discipline, but he knew he’d hit the wall again eventually. His skull only had so much room in it, and if he was going to kick the crap out of his advanced enemies he was going to have to do it with guile and teamwork…which meant gaining more allies and helping them learn to kick ass using their race’s strengths, while also helping them armor over their weaknesses.

And the Raptors were going to add a lot to Star Force, Aaron could see that already, most notably their eagerness for combat. The training they favored the most was against the trailblazers, with the Raptors trying over and over again to defeat them, throwing more individuals together into a team to take down one of them…which also allowed the trailblazers to get a type of training in they’d never had before. It was a win/win situation, and the craving for challenge is something they were showing in greater group amounts than anyone in Star Force other than the Archons.

The Raptors were relentless, and with some help the 1s were going to shape what the V’kit’no’sat had turned into cruelty into an asset for the lightside. Already many of the adults were learning, and learning fast, but it was going to take time to undo millennia-long established habits, and what one did in training and what one did in the field were not always the same, but progress was being made…in droves.

And through it all Aaron was learning more about the V’kit’no’sat than the pyramid files had contained, particularly how they had suppressed the Rit’ko’sor. Not by asking questions, but in seeing how they responded to various things. The Raptors were genuinely surprised by how much knowledge the 1s shared with them, and with how the Archons would pull back during combat rather than injure their opponents. Aaron got the feeling that the V’kit’no’sat viewed injuries as a learning experience, or perhaps a punishment for inferiority, and he suspected that might be why some Zen’zat didn’t advance as rapidly as the Archons had. If you were constantly getting injured your improvement rate would tank like crazy.

The more Aaron opened up with the Raptors, both in knowledge and in not holding back his skills in combat, the more the Raptors responded in kind. It was like they’d never operated as a true team, always having to look over their shoulder for some kind of betrayal. Maybe that was just how they interacted with other races, but that hesitance was melting away as a mutual respect was formed.

It was almost as if the Raptors had expected Star Force to be better than the V’kit’no’sat, but not the real deal. Now that they were realizing that it was the real deal, their enthusiasm level was through the roof and they were relentless in their training in a way he’d never seen before in others. They needed no prodding, and they were already the most elite group of non-Archons he’d ever encountered.

Then again they were thousands of years old, some more than a million, and that was a dynamic that Star Force had not yet experienced…yet another reason why the inclusion of the Raptors was going to be a major change. Aaron and the 1s were actually younger than those they were training, which was a refreshing irony.

As he did every day, at the end of training he headed straight back to his quarters to eat and sleep and then get back into the heavily packed two day grind, for he only needed to sleep every other day with the non-training hatchling duties included, but before he slept he always went through the trailblazer message board, keeping up with what everyone else was doing across Star Force territory.

There wasn’t much being updated on a daily basis, so it didn’t take him long to get to bed, but today there was an update from Greg-073 titled ‘About Damn time.’

When Aaron opened it up he saw a few other similar exclamations from those trailblazers who had received the message board update before him, days ago due to the relay lag, and he shared their sentiments. Project Lee Sin was finally active in the Savoria System, and had successfully detected every cloaked ship Star Force sent through it.

Project Lee Sin was Tennisonne’s ghostbane sensor incarnated into a massive detection grid focused around a star. There was a weakness in that, for a ship could slow jump and brake far away from the star, but the bulk of all traffic would come within range of the ghostbane pings that were now going out at a rate of one every 32 seconds.

That was quick enough to detect a ship moving through, even if not to track it all that well. There was a lot of prototyping refinement to do, but at least Star Force had a functioning system rather than a hope for one, and he saw that three more additions were scheduled for construction in major systems after a few necessary tweaks were made in Savoria.

So far no V’kit’no’sat ships had been spotted in Star Force territory, or the Devastation Zone for that matter. Aaron didn’t know if that meant they weren’t here snooping around or were just so good at evading detection that they were and hadn’t yet been noticed.

Well, now Star Force had a way of finding out. It would take more than a century to get such systems established in the majority of Star Force systems, let alone the uninhabited ones, but every year that passed would see more and more detection coverage.

The days of the V’kit’no’sat, and others, sneaking around inside Star Force territory were soon to be over, and it was about damn time, as Greg had so eloquently said.

3

December 22, 4851

Ittini System (Preema territory)

Ataercy

Kara-317 stepped out of the dropship onto the open air plaza that had an energy shield covering it and containing the oxygen atmosphere that Humans and most races in the galaxy needed to breathe, but not so for the Preema. The atmosphere outside the shield had a black tint to it and was a mix of various hazardous substances that the Preema had to terraform into most of their planets.

Kara’s Archon armor that she wore would have sustained herself in it, as would the Preema’s armor in theirs, but using the atmospheric bubble to allow each in their own native environment was much more diplomatic, and it was in fact the Preema that had requested Star Force’s visit, with them going to fairly elaborate lengths to welcome the Clan Ghostblade fleet that Davis had sent out to negotiate with them.

It wasn’t all of Kara’s fleet, only 17 Warship-class jumpships plus her command ship, with the rest spread out beyond Star Force territory doing what they did best, but she’d made 4 other visits to races far beyond their borders who had taken significant interest since word of the V’kit’no’sat truce had spread to their worlds. Star Force was now the dominant player in this chunk of the galaxy, even more so than The Nexus, and a lot of races were wanting to at least make formal introductions.

The Preema were not, for they already had a limited relationship with Star Force, so their request for a meeting was deemed as a higher level request warranting Kara’s presence…otherwise they would have politely said to make inquiries through existing Babylon stations like everyone else.

Kara walked out alone, sampling the air, then caused her Archon armor helmet to retract so her purple/white hair flowed freely around her head, but didn’t quite come down long enough to touch her shoulders. There was no wind in the pocket of oxygen, and Kara was feeling a bit of a buzz because the Preema actually had the concentration at 50% rather than the normal 20-30% Star Force used in the otherwise nitrogen air. At least the Preema hadn’t put it at 100%, otherwise she would have kept her helmet on and let it filter the concentration down.

She wasn’t wearing her Zen’zat armor, for her jewel was tucked into her arm in passive mode. If she was going into combat she would have, but no point in flashing it around for others to see. Someone might recognize the Zak’de’ron design, and she didn’t want to potentially out their existence, though they had to have known it would happen eventually. Why they’d given it to her then she didn’t know, but she had a feeling they might have been sending a message to the V’kit’no’sat in a very limited, almost plausibly deniable fashion, when they eventually conquered Star Force.

That hadn’t happened, so she didn’t know what their plans were, but she was going to do them the courtesy of keeping it hidden today, and besides, it was better to be negotiating as Star Force’s representative in what was now their signature armor. The shiny plates that looked solid were not, now with micro-lines that would bend where needed to increase flexibility without having plates that slid over one another. The plates still existed, hard and unmoving, but their connections now flowed rather than overlapped, thanks to armor advancements that now put them on par with V’kit’no’sat armor technology, though with significantly different designs.

When Kara got to the center of the atmospheric bubble three Preema walked through the boundary, coming out of their air and into hers. She’d expected them to stay on the other side and speak through the barrier, but apparently not. They weren’t wearing armor either, just a little mask barely visible, similar to what their former representative had worn when they were coordinating the removal of the Preema Uriti so long ago. They hadn’t wanted to wear combat armor onboard Star Force ships…and hadn’t been allowed to either, per security rules…and it seemed they were extending that same courtesy here on their own world.

Their bodies glowed white, standing in stark contrast to the slightly dark ‘smog’ of the air beyond the shield, and the large, griffin-like aliens stared down at her from 6 green eyes each, making them a formidable and intimidating presence to most races in the galaxy…but not to Archons who could reach into their minds and freeze their bodies in an instant. The armor of those outside the atmospheric pocket were shielded from her telepathy, but those that had come inside were not.

The Preema themselves were telepathic, so they understood the threats involved, but theirs was somewhat on the level of the Protovic, lacking the raw override power of Ikrid. Kara knew that they knew of her abilities, so them coming here unshielded was another gesture of trust…as well as suggesting they wanted something badly from Star Force, yet not badly enough to come and talk to them in person.

“Why did you request we come here?” Kara asked bluntly, with translation equipment attached to the Preemas’ heads causing them to respond in English. That was an upgrade, for they weren’t vocally speaking their native language, and she guessed it was some sort of telepathic translator that kept their own words from overlapping with the translation.

“We do not want to draw unwanted attention,” the Preema admitted. “The V’kit’no’sat will be back after the truce, and we do not want to too closely associate with you, for we do not want to draw their wrath. We would greatly prefer that you won your war against them, but we feel this is unlikely.”

“So you’re not offering to help?”

“We are not. We cannot and hope to survive. We have to remain neutral.”

“Understood. What did you want to discuss?”

“We need to establish our relationship,” another of the Preema answered. “We cannot fight with you, but we are not your enemy and will not pretend to be so. We would like to sign a non-aggression pact detailing our association for others to see.”

“For what purpose?”

“You are expanding your borders greatly. There are those races in your eventual path that question their safety.”

“We are expanding into the remnants of abandoned Nexus territories. I thought that was obvious?”

“You are conquering everything in your path, Nexus or not, and that leads others to worry. They know you are born of V’kit’no’sat heritage and they worry that your ultimate intentions will mirror theirs.”

“Even though we’re about to be destroyed?”

“You can do great damage before then,” the third Preema noted.

“Are you worried about us attacking you?”

“No, we are not. We are seeking to insulate ourselves from V’kit’no’sat backlash while helping you with diplomatic stability.”

“How so?”

“If we firmly establish Preema territory as safe from Star Force expansion, we anticipate others will seek you out for similar assurances. V’kit’no’sat do not make such deals, they simply go where they want and do what they want. You have inherited that reputation, deservedly or not. We can help counter that appearance by signing an agreement the V’kit’no’sat would never entertain.”

Kara frowned. “I thought our reputation would speak for itself by now.”

“To those with personal experience, perhaps, but those far from your current borders know little but rumor. Three facts reach them…you have a temporary truce with the V’kit’no’sat. You have their power and heritage. And you are expanding rimward by leaps and bounds. With only that information, what would you conclude were you not of Star Force?”

“I see your point. How far away does this concern reach?”

“Well beyond The Nexus’s former territory. There is talk of forming alliances against you to stop your advance. Some of this talk is out of ignorance, others from real threats. We believe we can help stop the ignorant from attacking you out of fear by establishing a precedent that others can follow.”

“Your point is noted, however, we do not tolerate bad behavior because of a line on a map or an agreement made. The V’kit’no’sat offered us a deal as well, and we turned it down. We will fight anyone who deserves it, Preema included, if warranted. We will not let predation occur when we can stop it, and any such non-aggression pact would have to stipulate that.”

“What deal did they offer you?”

“Limited independence if we rejoined their empire.”

“And you rejected the offer?” the Preema asked, aghast.

“Of course we did.”

“They gave you a chance to live and you spurned it?” another said.

“They are our enemy, and we would rather die fighting than become the enemy.”

“We have never known the V’kit’no’sat to offer any enemy such accommodations,” the third said, his emotions more stable than the disbelief Kara was sensing in the others. “They must truly fear you.”

“They want the Uriti,” Kara said simply. “If they kill us, they can’t gain control over them.”

“Interesting. They will compromise their protocol in order to seek greater power. That is not a part of their psyche that we were aware of.”

“Because we have known of no greater power,” another Preema amended.

“Their first priority appears to be the Hadarak,” Kara continued. “They see the Uriti as a way to fight them, so they’re willing to make compromises, because compared to the Hadarak, Star Force is relatively unimportant.”

“Do the V’kit’no’sat actually think they can destroy the Hadarak?”

“That is their stated ultimate goal.”

“Then they are fools. No one can hope to do more than contain them in the Core.”

Kara smiled. “They’re still trying, and I don’t think their ego will accept anything else.”

“Is there a way for them to obtain the Chixzon knowledge you acquired?”

“Not from us, no.”

“But from another source?”

“A very remote possibility. In fact, I’d probably feel safe saying no. I just don’t like to rule out the implausible. I’ve been on the receiving end of it a few times,” she said, personally referencing the jewel on her wrist, though the Preema had no knowledge of it. “What else did you want us here for?”

“A sensitive matter. One that will draw the V’kit’no’sat wrath if they discover it.”

“Go on.”

“We have harbored fugitives from them for a very long time. They have not discovered them, and we have relocated many to the far Rim. Others have stayed within our borders, for they had nowhere to go and did not have the ability to rebuild in any sufficient manner. We still have remnants of those races under our care, and so long as we do so we hold a potential reason for the V’kit’no’sat to take interest in us. We would like to remove this liability.”

“By sending them to us?”

“Some are already trying to leave to join you, and we do not wish to hold them prisoner. They see hope where previously there was none.”

“And the ones that are not trying to leave?”

“We have sheltered them long enough. We would like you to take all of them into your Beacon and Axius factions, as you are doing for many other races. Under your care and guidance, we believe many of these races would add considerable power to your empire, for they were all formidable opponents that the V’kit’no’sat defeated, and an echo of that power remains.”

“We have more refugees than we can handle already and are scrambling to assimilate them all. Why would we take on more that you are already caring for?”

“It is part of a package deal we seek to negotiate with you.”

“What parts do you think we would like, because that sounds like us taking a burden off of you?”

“We cannot fight against the V’kit’no’sat through conventional means, but we have defied them and survived because we are beyond their borders. This allows us some flexibility, but we cannot go too far without drawing their attention. We seek to offload the refuges that we have sheltered because no one else would, but now you exist and any such refugees will seek you out, not us, because you are the visible opponent to the V’kit’no’sat. This would aid us greatly, but as you know such races incorporated into your empire, over time, strengthen you. They do not strengthen the Preema. Our strength comes from purity, and our wards are a burden.”

“I’m waiting for the part where this is mutually beneficial to us prior to the end of the truce…”

“We also wish for you to give us the necessary knowledge to engineer an immunity to the V’kit’no’sat telepathy.”

Kara raised her eyebrows. “Oh you do, do you?”

“In exchange we can offer many things, but given the distance between our realms supply assistance for your war is not logistically feasible, plus it would leave a connection that the V’kit’no’sat could backtrack. Thus we are offering that which is small, rare, and can be transported and transferred quietly.”

“Solari?”

“Yes, but much more than that, depending on your needs. We can also produce whatever technology you wish to share with us, and save you the expense of doing so yourself.”

“Specifically what are you referring to?”

“There are many options, which is why we needed you here to discuss and negotiate, but we have been told you possess the technology of the V’kit’no’sat, but you do not produce their highest models, which they refer to as Yeg’gor and Tar’vem’jic. Is this because of the manufacturing process?”

“Partly. They’re also not that effective in a war of attrition.”

“While you fight a war of attrition, the Preema have the time and resources to develop these technologies and anything else you wish. We can establish a secret trading relationship underneath our public one that will yield mutually beneficial results.”

“You assume too much. Giving you that level of technology would be a security breach. Our relationship may be amicable, but you are not a close ally…and even a close ally we would not trust with that level of technology.”

“What if we allowed some of your personnel to guide and operate our manufacturing facilities? You could keep your secrets while utilizing our industrial assets outside your warzone.”

“Which you could easily steal at your convenience. Again, trust takes time and experience. We are mostly strangers.”

“Strangers who gave you our Uriti.”

“That was for your benefit more than ours,” Kara reminded them. “Outside our control the Uriti are a menace you were glad to rid yourselves of. But that aside, why do you wish for telepathic immunity if you are not going to fight the V’kit’no’sat?”

“We cannot guarantee that one day they will not seek to dominate the entire galaxy, and we do not like harboring this glaring weakness. We cannot study it because we do not possess your Ikrid to test against, so we cannot develop even a rudimentary block of our own. We do not even know how you are capable of taking control of another mind so completely.”

“You are asking much of us while offering little in return. It is the kind of deal that assumes our eventual destruction, leaving you in a very advantageous place.”

The Preema in the center spread its huge wings wide, draping them in a way that was conciliatory in their culture, and fortunately Kara caught that sentiment telepathically, for the basic look of it was more intimidating than anything.

“We are open to negotiations. What can we give you of equal value to what we request?”

Kara sighed. “If you don’t want to fight, then that’s a difficult question. An Ikrid block is defensive, so there’s a small possibility that we could come to an agreement there. Tar’vem’jic are out of the question. Yeg’gor…”

“What if we were completely out of the manufacturing and simply hosted a planet of yours within our borders, to which we supply all the constituent resources required. You simply handle the assembly, so your secrets you would keep.”

“Some of the requirements for those technologies are probably beyond your ability to produce.”

“Then teach us what we need to know. If there are more rare resources beyond Solari, we will collect them for you once we know what they are.”

“I bet you’d like to know what they are,” Kara scoffed. “What I hear from you is that you think we’re going to be destroyed in a few hundred years and you’d like to get what benefit you can from us before we’re wiped out.”

“If doing so increases your chances of survival, would it not be worth entertaining a discussion?”

“You’d have to offer a shitload of resources for us to even consider that.”

“How many is a ‘shitload’?” the Preema asked, with Kara sensing that the word hadn’t translated.

“An exuberant amount.”

“We are not currently at war, and we have the production capability to produce your shitload if needed. You have technological and biological knowledge that is valuable for us. If we can attain something that we would not otherwise have for millennia of research, and perhaps not even then, the amount of resources is inconsequential in comparison. State your requirements and we will most likely be able to meet them.”

“There’s also the possibility that you could misuse what we give you. We don’t like making potential enemies stronger.”

“We have never been your enemy.”

“We have to worry about such things even with our allies, and you’re not quite on that level.”

“Is there no arrangement that can be reached? Even if you tailored it yourself?”

“Your territory is so far away from ours that it would have to be a damn good deal for us to even consider it.”

“And what if we were to reduce that distance?”

“How…” Kara said, seeing the only real possibility a split second later. “You want to build Grid Points?”

“Star Force has never built one, for lack of resources, we assume?”

“We can, but we have more pressing needs for the materials.”

“We have the luxury of such projects where you do not. If we were to construct Grid Points for your use, would that be of value to you?”

Kara didn’t hold back, diving into his mind and easily pushing past his rudimentary defenses…which he had expected, for they truly wanted to establish a deal and wearing telepathic-blocking armor would have eliminated that point.

“You want to influence this quarter of the galactic rim, but without expanding your own borders. And to do that you need us, or the ability to assemble alliances after our fall.”

“We would prefer you still existed, but we are making contingencies for both possibilities, as you would do in our place. We helped you fight the Li’vorkrachnika because we know that threats growing afar will eventually reach our borders, and it is best to deal with them when they are small. If we wait until they are so large to dare challenge us, we will be at a disadvantage. Now that you are successfully challenging the V’kit’no’sat the galaxy is in flux. We must take a more active role, even if from a neutral position, to help shape the future no matter what the outcome of your war may be. Linking into The Nexus Grid Point system would greatly enhance our reach, and since you control a piece of it we can negotiate with you rather than them.”

“We’d still need to run it by them, but not for the sake of compensation,” Kara said amicably, which even with her Ikrid block the Preema were able to pick up from her surface emotions.

“Then we have the ability to be mutually beneficial?”

“Potentially,” Kara said neutrally. “You are honest, but if your leaders are not and have deceived you there could be complications.”

“I can summon them here if you wish.”

“They won’t let me scan them,” she pointed out. “You were chosen because you don’t hold too many secrets.”

“And if they were willing?”

“Your top tier, not subordinates?”

“If they were, and you could confirm their earnestness, would Star Force be open to striking a wide-spanning deal?”

Kara eyed him carefully, searching his mind for a few classic traps but finding none of them. If the Preema were trying to trick Star Force, they’d succeeded in tricking their ambassador as well.

“How fast can you get them here?”

4

April 8, 4852

Unnamed System (between Preema and Star Force territory)

Stellar Orbit

Kara’s small fleet came out of its jump into one of the many systems they had to pass through to get to Preema territory. This one had no inhabitants, and no name, merely a catalog number for the star and the 3 gas giants that would probably be enticing to the Hycre, but this was too far away from Star Force territory where they operated to even consider colonization. Most races couldn’t use gas giants, so it wasn’t surprising these weren’t claimed, though there were a lot of habitable planets in other systems she was passing through that were also devoid of technological civilizations.

Kara wasn’t on the bridge, for jumping in and out of a system didn’t require her attention. She spent most of her travel time in the Archon sanctum, but not today. She’d already gone through some light workouts, but now she was floating in her quarters with the artificial gravity turned off, using her bioshields to reach out to the walls and touch them to adjust her position. Her Lachka could touch the walls, but she couldn’t use it to push herself away, for the energy field didn’t work like that, but her Nakane worked just fine to keep her in the center of the dark room, save for a few pinpricks of light from glowing buttons on the comm terminal.

Her eyes were closed, her thoughts turned inward as she was searching for something elusive. Ever since she’d had the Vorch’nas bonded to her arm her mind had possessed hidden information that she’d been required to dig out over the centuries, but in those efforts she also realized there was a lot more to her biological mind to discover as well. She’d been disappointed that her dream state wasn’t so revealing, for she hadn’t been able to personally access any of the tier 4 psionics that Star Force could now activate with a little trip to a secure medical station. Sharing wasn’t necessary anymore, though padawans still received psionics from their master in that manner, and always would.

Kara’s mind while dreaming was too undisciplined, which was why this type of introspection required a higher waking state. Meditation, for all of the myths surrounding it, was nothing more than altering ones current mode. Normally, when around other people and surrounding events, one would put up defenses similar to how an eye would iris almost closed in bright light. It was a necessary adaptation, but if one wanted to see in dim light it took time for the eye to adjust and open up. That was dangerous in bright light, and the same was true about certain mental modes.

Meditation required a let down of certain defenses, which was why it needed to be done in a secure location. Some meditation could happen in noisy places, but the deepest required quiet and seclusion…and in this case, lack of gravity and light. The less her body had to defend/adapt against the more she could loosen up, which wasn’t always a good thing. There were other types of meditation that happened during action, but right now she was going about this in a passive state.

What she was looking for she didn’t know. It was just a persistent nagging that there was something there but out of reach. Was it something from her Vorch’nas or something inherent to her? There was no way to tell, but Kara felt it was worth taking time to track down.

Clearing her mind was almost impossible for an Archon. She could do it, forcibly, but only for short periods of time. Kara always had to focus on something. Her breathing, heartbeat, the tick of a metronome. She just wasn’t geared to shut down completely, which was an essential trait in an Archon, so she had to work herself into a very low active state.

During that state her mind would wander, with her partially directing it, and the more she had something to chew on the more relaxed she would get. Already she’d worked through the deal with the Preema from multiple angles, looking for advantages and disadvantages, but nothing knew had occurred to her that hadn’t previously when she’d spent more than a month negotiating it. Davis still had to confirm it, and she was heading to meet him directly once she got back to Star Force territory, but that didn’t stop her mind from running through it again and again with minor variations.

What Kara was looking for had a very distinct feeling, and every now and then she’d encounter it. To her it was like a glow around a particular thought, telling her it was important and she needed to follow it. Often that glow would disappear soon thereafter, leaving her to chase a phantom…but that phantom usually led her to something valuable.

Though it was impossible, Kara had also been able to see the future multiple times. She couldn’t totally explain it, but her working theory was that she was able to feel out future versions of herself before they happened. That wasn’t time-based precognition, but it was something other Archons had been able to sense before regarding physical breakthroughs. Some could sense a new ability level before it happened, as if their bodies had the blueprints for it and were reviewing them before they actually got built.

That’s what Kara was feeling now, and it focused on speed, but it was indistinct. She could feel herself moving through a fluid medium with grace and ease…then something so loud hit her that she physically jerked, sending her into a light spin in the center of her room as her eyes snapped open along with the banging inside her head.

It took a moment, then she realized it wasn’t loud. She’d just been so scaled down it was like wide eyes in the dark suddenly being hit with a floodlight. Kara fought to adjust quickly, then realized the pinging was coming from the part of her mind connected to her Vorch’nas…along with a red glow from the normally clear jewel.

Kara found the ping in her mind and pressed back, having it respond with an information flow…a simple message with coordinates. She was supposed to come to the 2nd planet in the system.

“Son of a bitch,” she whispered, knowing that meant the Zak’de’ron had to be in this system, and probably close by, to send her a signal like that.

Kara telekinetically toggled the wall-mounted controls and turned the lights and gravity back on, dropping gracefully to the floor in a crouch before springing up and heading for the door in her bare feet and pajama-like casual clothing as she headed for the bridge. Halfway there she made telepathic contact with Captain Zeddi, ordering him to do a full sensor sweep of the immediate area.

When she got to the bridge the report was negative, drawing a frown from her. She’d hoped to get a least a small hit on a Zak’de’ron ship, for Star Force’s technology was still creeping forward now that they’d matched almost everything in the original pyramid database, but she wasn’t too surprised not to pick up so much as a fist-sized rock out there. Maybe when they got a ghostbane sensor system working for ships that would change, but she had a sneaking suspicion that it wouldn’t.

“Is there a problem?” the Kiritas Captain asked as Kara walked across the bridge with the pads of her feet making an odd patting sound compared to the shoe clicks from everyone else.

Kara held up her arm, with the dull red glow of her jewel becoming obvious. “I’ve been summoned. We need to go to the second planet.”

“Summoned by who?”

“Star Force didn’t make this,” she said, tapping on the jewel that virtually everyone in Clan Ghostblade knew about, though they didn’t know of its origins. “It was a gift from a race not to be mentioned, and I think they’re out there now. Either they want to chat or there’s something at the planet they want us to see.”

“We’re not allowed to know?” the Captain asked, not offended, but needing to know the situation.

“The less people that know the better, and if they hold to pattern they may want to come onboard. We’ve never been able to penetrate their cloaking devices, and apparently our sensors aren’t advanced enough yet. I was hoping they were, but…meh.”

The Captain exchanged a few glances with his bridge crew, then turned back to face their Clan leader. “Do we need to clear the bridge?”

“No. Just take us to the second planet. They’ll probably stay hidden, but who knows. This hasn’t happened to me before.”

“Can I assume they’re more advanced than us?”

“Very much so,” Kara said with a hint of defeat.

“Are you in their service?”

Kara shook her head firmly. “I’m not compromised, Captain, and this little baby has been very useful. I just didn’t know it also acted like a pager.”

“If they’re in the system, can’t you receive a full message?”

“Who knows. I’m in unknown territory here.”

“Just this ship?”

“No, we’re all going. I have no idea what’s out there.”

Kara’s 18 ships redirected away from the star and made a microjump out to the 2nd planet, a huge grey/orange gas giant that was so big it was almost a star. In fact there was considerable heat emanating from it, but the outer layers were still gas and not plasma, and not a single moon was present…nor any ships, and Kara had pulled a complete lap around the gas giant in the Yi looking for anything out of the ordinary.

We need to speak with you, a voice suddenly said into her mind, and this was definitely telepathy, meaning they were close by. A private meeting in your hangar bay.

“Captain. Clear a hangar bay of all personnel and deactivate the surveillance systems. They’re coming onboard and apparently they’re very shy. I’ll be meeting with them in private.”

“As you wish, but we’re not picking up any vessels or communications signals.”

“Telepathy, Captain. They’re very close by.”

“We’re not picking up any telepathic signals either.”

“If they transmitting broadly you’d all hear it in your heads. When a direct link is used the sensors won’t register it. It’s a tight beam.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said warily.

“I’m not worried, Captain,” she said, walking off the bridge with her soft, squishy footfalls. “In fact, I get the feeling we’re going to get some badly needed intel.”

“Hangar 8,” he said before she walked out the door, then he turned to the naval officer at the sensor paddock that could hold 6 people, but right now she was the only one manning the controls due to the lack of a combat situation.

“Anything?” the Kiritas asked the Human.

She shook her head. “Not so much as a wrinkle. If they’re there, they’ve got a perfect cloak.”

“Telepathic range is damn limited. Only a few miles. And you say we can’t detect a thing?”

“Nothing yet.”

The Captain whistled. “Friends in high places, I hope.”

“The Knights of Quenar?” another crewer wondered.

“You’ve heard of them. Whoever this is, Kara doesn’t want us to know their name. And as far as I know, she’s had that jewel on her arm most of her life. This must be a very old acquaintance.”

“And?”

“And it’s her play. Keep scanning constantly with conventionals. If we can pick up anything, I want it.”

“What about the disposables?”

“Not unless we’re shooting or Kara orders it. We need a blip with conventionals if we have any hope of modifying them. Try every variation in the book, but give me something. We don’t have opportunities like this very often.”

5

Kara walked into the hangar bay in her bare feet, not bothering to put on a uniform as she wanted to be in the hangar when the Zak’de’ron arrived. She succeeded in getting there just ahead of a slight shimmer passing through the atmospheric containment field. Kara watched closely as it came further inside, barely able to pick up any visual clue at all if she didn’t know what to look for. Their cloaking technology, even on their smallest transports, was damn near perfect, but Star Force had come up with ways to detect cloaked ships if necessary, though the range was extremely limited.

It involved creating either a mist field or a spray of energized particles that literally transmitted a beacon from their position. If they hit something invisible you could see their pattern redirect, but the further you got away from the ship the more volume they had to cover, making them almost useless at medium range. Right now, if she ordered the bridge to do so, they could probably pick up the Zak’de’ron ship’s location if it was nearby, though Kara had a feeling it would be further off.

She also knew that the Zak’de’ron were so strong she wouldn’t be able to defend herself against them very well if they attacked, either herself or her ship, so there was no need grabbing Archon armor, or even shoes for that matter. She had her Vorch’nas she could activate to give her both in a few seconds, but she wasn’t wearing it now. Part of that was respect, the other part cockiness. A fool would think they could stand up to the Zak’de’ron and win, but the wise wouldn’t bother with such defenses after they allowed the Zak’de’ron onboard. If they were truly worried they would have handled this conversation via holo, or not at all.

Kara wasn’t worried about the Zak’de’ron being a threat, and she knew them better than anyone in Star Force, despite having met only one, and once at that. But from the knowledge gained via her Vorch’nas she felt like she’d lived a lifetime with them, and wasn’t phased in the least when the transport appeared in the totally empty hangar. It was a swirl of red and blue, with various components colored fully one or the other and twisted together into a convoluted mass that looked like a bird nest, but without any gaps between the pieces.

Kara knew it was a ‘Shri’kori,’ a small personal transport capable of low speed interstellar jumps, but more often used as a shuttle between planets or for ship to ship transfers. She highly doubted it had flown here on its own, meaning they had a larger ship nearby. Possibly one had been trailing her fleet for some time, otherwise them finding her here would have been incredibly lucky…and she knew it wasn’t. She wondered how much they’d been able to rebuild since the first eggs had hatched, but she doubted this one would tell her.

And there was only one Zak’de’ron inside the Shri’kori, which she could sense immediately as it decloaked and tried to access her mind. It couldn’t, because of the Ikrid block, but it still offered greetings telepathically as it would one of its servants. She wasn’t a Zen’zat, but she’d been given the tool of one and apparently this Zak’de’ron intended to converse with her as such.

A piece of the hull appeared to melt, then a ramp formed from the material and a huge gold Dragon walked out, far larger than the ones Paul had met, and Kara almost gasped. Gold was not a traditional color, but a marking indicating great achievement.

“Are you the one I met previously?” Kara asked, not sure.

“I am not,” the huge Dragon said as it walked up to her and stopped just prior to stepping on and squishing the fragile Human.

“You’re too big to have grown from an egg in such a short amount of time,” Kara pointed out.

“Good. Your memories have integrated well. That will make this easier.”

“Make what easier?” she asked, having to crane her neck back to look up at his car-sized head that was tilted down towards her. Had he wanted to, he could roast her with plasma from two meters away with ease, and instinctively Kara held her bioshields at the ready. She didn’t think she’d need them, but being this close was a bit unnerving…especially considering she alone in Star Force knew how truly powerful the Zak’de’ron were.

“You are doing something extremely dangerous, and I have come to make sure you are fully aware of it.”

“The Rit’ko’sor or the Uriti?”

“I speak of the Rit’ko’sor.”

“Are the V’kit’no’sat going to break the truce over them?”

“No. They already know and there are no plans to strike early. They will honor it, though they are even more bent on your destruction. Defying them is enough to earn you a death mark, but annexing a piece of one of their races is an insult beyond measure. They will not attack early because it is not in their advantage to do so, though many disagree with Mak’to’ran on this.”

“You have access to the Urrtren?”

“Of course, though they are unaware of it.”

“Do you know what happened to the Hadarak we let go?” she asked boldly, not as a servant would, but a lesser equal…respectful, but not suggesting anything was off limits. If this Zak’de’ron didn’t want to tell her something he wouldn’t, but that didn’t mean she shouldn’t ask, for you never knew how much information they would feel like sharing.

“They destroyed it. The secret of your Uriti has not reached the other Hadarak.”

“What about couriers?”

“All were destroyed.”

“What if it grew another enroute?”

“It did not. We were there and followed it. No couriers were released prior to the V’kit’no’sat fleet catching up to and destroying it.”

Kara raised an eyebrow. “Why follow it?”

“If the V’kit’no’sat did not destroy it, we would have.”

“Did you see the information we gave to Mak’to’ran?”

“We did, and I have been told to give credit to Star Force for your decision to preserve the Uriti. We would have destroyed them, but your solution has proved the wiser and given us far more information on the Hadarak than we have ever possessed.”

“What’s his name?” Kara asked bluntly. “The one who gave me this,” she said, holding up her forearm with the jewel that had been seared into it.

“That name must not reach the V’kit’no’sat.”

“You’ve already give me technology and knowledge that cannot reach them, knowing that they’d eventually have at least hints of your existence when they saw me in battle. I will not willingly give them his name, but I would like to know who he is, and who you are.”

The Zak’de’ron huffed, with a warm blast of air coming down on Kara’s face that she deftly parried with her bioshields so it didn’t move her hair a twitch.

“You know us well enough, and you are still arrogant. I am not sure if this is wisdom or folly.”

“I know how powerful you are, but we do have a few advantages over you.”

“Convince me, little one.”

“The Uriti’s strength is not ours, only one that we can direct, so I do not count it. I do count how we obtained it, and how we interact with others. You are wise, but only to a point. You live and breathe death in a way that makes you inferior. True superiority is being better, not simply outliving. The last man standing can still be a fool. True superiority is something more. We would rather die doing the right thing than survive by doing the wrong thing. You would not. You see survival as paramount. That is one advantage we have.”

“Your definition of ‘advantage’ is questionable.”

“Advantage two…unless you have surpassed all expectations, we heavily outnumber you at the moment.”

“A temporary advantage, I’ll grant. Continue.”

“Advantage three…experience. Wherever you came from, you did not build the Zak’de’ron, nor did the other. You are the product of a long line. We are the founders, and we have progressed through so many transitions we have gained a wisdom you will never have. The wisdom of growth. You replicate and make minor advancements. Those who built your civilization are gone, and you cannot draw on their wisdom.”

“You have formidable adaptational abilities, though most of your success is due to the knowledge you gained from the V’kit’no’sat and us.”

“Did you expect us to use it so well?”

“No. You have far exceeded expectations.”

“And what are your expectations for our survival after the truce?”

“Minimal. Had the Hadarak been provoked, the attention needed to be applied to them may have spared you, but that is no longer a possibility…nor will we allow you to contact them again. If they are spurred, the galaxy will suffer too great a fate.”

Kara’s eyes narrowed. “Define ‘spurred.’”

“They hold most of their strength in reserve, how much even we do not know. Occasionally some of it comes forth, but we fear the response if they know the Uriti exist.”

“You think they’ll just attack everything?”

“The Hadarak are unfathomable, despite the information you obtained. We cannot accurately predict their actions, but if they surge their attacks even to the level of the past, the V’kit’no’sat will be hard pressed to hold them.”

“Their perimeter is too large?”

“Indeed, though Mak’to’ran has been leading efforts to decrease it.”

“Is that respect I hear?”

“It is frustration. We taught them much, and they have forgotten most of it. Mak’to’ran is beginning to rectify that.”

“Then why not kill him now? Quietly.”

“Because we are not ready to replace them. And without the V’kit’no’sat, the Hadarak will roam unchallenged. We will have our vengeance, but not at the cost of the galaxy.”

“How can you fight a war against them and hold the Hadarak back at the same time?”

“That is our responsibility, not yours. You have to survive before worrying about the Hadarak.”

“Your name?” Kara reiterated.

“I am Tew’chor, and my coloration is not an error.”

Kara frowned, for that was what she had been thinking…then she glanced down at her wrist in horror.

“You can access my mind through the Vorch’nas?”

“Yes,” the Zak’de’ron said with a ping of apology.

“Fuck,” Kara swore with a venom driven by her own incompetence. “I should have taken this thing off long ago.”

“You have the ability to block access,” Tew’chor noted, highlighting in her mind a particular spot that she’d never noticed before. “You did not have it activated.”

Kara felt like an idiot, finding and hitting the mental ‘button’ there and feeling the block slip into place as if it were a little status icon on the HUD of her Archon armor.

“How much did you get?”

“Everything,” the Zak’de’ron said, knowing what her reaction would be even before she shot the floor with her bioplasma, creating a small puff of vaporized material near her bare feet that would have singed them if not for her Rensiek heat shield, though a few melted spots appeared on her pant leg.

“Of all the…” she said, turning around and pacing in a circle as she fully grasped how much vital information she’d let the Zak’de’ron steal from her. The trailblazers had given her access to their message board, so she knew everything they were up to, along with most of what Davis was doing.

“We are not your enemy,” Tew’chor said conciliatorily. “The information will not fall into V’kit’no’sat possession.”

“It wouldn’t be in yours if I wasn’t a fool,” Kara said, facing him again angrily, though most of it was directed at herself.

“It was necessary that I take advantage of your weakness.”

“Why give me this and not tell me how to use it?”

“If you are worthy you will figure it out, and you have, for the most part, but there are elements you have been completely blind to. You seek abstract exploration while ignoring the physical unless it screams at you. The block is a mechanism all of our Zen’zat possessed. They would lower it in our presence out of respect, but you always had the ability to shield your mind. We do not want blind servants, little one. We want those who are capable.”

“Do you consider me your servant?”

“After a fashion, yes, though you do not take orders from us. This we know. However, your objectives mirror our own. That was why Zeno’dor gave you the Vorch’nas.”

“Zeno’dor,” Kara repeated, working it through her mouth as if she should have recognized it, but didn’t. “And you?”

“My path did not come from an egg, but from the body of a Les’i’kron,” he said with disgust. “I was able to partially free my mind from the imprisonment of our bastardized race, and when the other Zak’de’ron discovered this they rescued me and restored me to my birthright. I am far older than you, and my size comes from my previous life…as does my coloration. The process of freeing my mind was not an easy one.”

Kara looked up at him, realizing he was sharing with her things he probably wouldn’t have otherwise, meaning he understood how royally she’d just screwed up and was trying to compensate a bit.

“Are you going to rescue the others?”

“We cannot. They are what they are now. I rescued myself enough to be retrievable. The others are beyond help.”

“Will you kill them?”

“All V’kit’no’sat must be destroyed.”

“And that’s why you’re here,” Kara said, understanding. “We didn’t get your permission to take your Rit’ko’sor.”

“They are no longer ours.”

“Yes they are,” she argued. “You still see them as your responsibility, and that you have to kill them, otherwise they are running around with knowledge and power you gave them, doing things with it you don’t want. Then again, so are we, so why help us?”

“You are not V’kit’no’sat, and it was imperative that we know what you intended to do with the Rit’ko’sor. They are treacherous and pose a great danger to you…but as you have noted, you have a great deal of experience with annexation of hostile races. You have never dealt with anything like the Rit’ko’sor. They are advanced beyond the Zen’zat.”

“We’ve noticed.”

“Not fully, and there is peril in what you plan, but also great opportunity. One that we wish you to succeed in.”

“I thought you wanted them dead?”

“The hatchlings you have are not Rit’ko’sor. They are Raptors, and not under our death mark. Those Rit’ko’sor that have chosen to join you for the sake of their own vengeance against the V’kit’no’sat can never fully be trusted. But if they seek combat to the death, and remain under your command, we are willing to release them from our death mark. We will never forgive them for their betrayal, but they betrayed the other betrayers, and that pleases us to a limited extent. If they wish to continue that futile redemption as part of Star Force, we will relinquish responsibility of them to you.”

“So you kill V’kit’no’sat while we destroy V’kit’no’sat. Notice the difference?”

“I do. Your methods are not our own, but they can be effective,” he said as a piece of one of the rings on his toes broke off and flew into the air in front of Kara, then transformed into another clear jewel that headed for her wrist.

“Whoa there,” she said, telekinetically grabbing and halting its approach. The first time she had no defense against the melding, but she’d come far since then and wasn’t going to let him stick another one on her.

“It is an upgrade to what you currently possess, and with it comes our full knowledge of the Rit’ko’sor…more than you obtained from the V’kit’no’sat. In order to convert your enemy, you must know your enemy, and we know the Rit’ko’sor better than they know themselves, for we were the ones that uplifted and shaped their civilization into an asset. If you wish to do the same, using your methods, you would be wise to study our methods and utilize what of it you desire.”

“Why another Vorch’nas simply for information?”

“It’s not just information. It is an upgrade.”

“I…” she said, about to claim ignorance, but memories started to come forth that she’d never encountered before.

“Your knowledge must be prodded, little one. The same goes for your Vorch’nas. You now have the ability to shield your thoughts from me, and there is no override I possess. You are no longer a security risk.”

“Unless you’re lying.”

“If I am, it is of no relevance, for I have already copied your memories. You have nothing more for me to steal.”

Kara growled, but he had a point. She looked at the floating jewel, now knowing it to be the components for a level 2 Vorch’nas that few Zen’zat had ever earned.

“Do I deserve that, or are you just being generous?”

“Your path is a wayward one, but your deeds warrant it.”

“Very well,” she said, holding up her arm and releasing her Lachka fields. The clear jewel flew up to her left arm and touched beneath the other. Kara felt a burning that she knew was coming, but it passed quickly and the new jewel melded into her existing Vorch’nas…with the new combined version just as clear, but stretching from her wrist all the way up to her elbow.

As it connected she felt a prodding on her mechanical block, which was Tew’chor requesting access. As he had pointed out, she had nothing left to hide, so she relinquished the block and felt a rush of new instructions as he showed her many things, most of which focused on the wealth of Rit’ko’sor knowledge she now had access to.

She’d been expecting notes, but what the Zak’de’ron had given her was essentially a database of everything Rit’ko’sor that contained far more information than she could ever have imagined.

“You see now, Kara?” he asked, finally using her name.

“I do,” she said, light winded from the mental effort.

“If you are to die, we would have you kill as many V’kit’no’sat as possible,” he added. “I personally wish we could strike Itaru when they are busy fighting you, but we are not ready and will not be so within your lifetime. We cannot reveal ourselves until the time is right, and that time will be too late to save you.”

“I understand.”

“No, you do not, and you cannot. I tell you this because you are worthy allies. Inferior, for the most part, but worthy.”

“You see no chance of us surviving?”

“None worth speaking of, unless the V’kit’no’sat have become truly stupid. They cannot ignore you any longer. The Uriti made sure of that, and the Rit’ko’sor have sealed their wrath. I would recommend you expand your far rim operations. If you spread beyond Shangri-La they will never be able to find you all.”

Kara’s gut clenched at the mention of the ultra secret backup system, but something else caught her attention.

“Why didn’t you do the same?”

“We did, but all our colonies were tracked down and destroyed.”

“How?”

“They were prepared before their betrayal with scores of spies watching for our movements. How they accomplished it has eluded us. There is no information on the Urrtren. We should have been able to escape in greater numbers, and did so for a period of time, but ultimately they were all discovered and destroyed. We have looked and found little that remains to explain how they did it.”

“Why didn’t they find the eggs?”

“I do not know.”

“Did they have the ability to track gravity drives previously?”

“No. That discovery is new.”

“How could they follow your cloaked ships?”

“We didn’t have many. We didn’t need them when we were dominant. You have few as well.”

“It rattles you, even though you were not there at the time?”

“We have to be meticulous in our vengeance.”

“Yet you gave them clues to your existence through me. Why?”

“Zeno’dor did more than that. His reasons are his own, though I think it was due to spite. We have had to withhold our rage for so long, it is not a good thing. It is necessary, but it wears on us. Taking a small action of defiance can make a large difference.”

“And you’re taking one now?”

“The V’kit’no’sat believe that Star Force has had a sponsor from within the V’kit’no’sat. That is what fueled their recent civil war. In all that time they never suspected us, because they believe we are dead and the repercussions of them being incorrect are too vast for their egos to contemplate. If they have not made that logical assumption, then they have grown vastly inferior to those that betrayed us.”

“What specifically about a sponsor?”

“You had access to information from the planetary defense station that only the Oso’lon and J’gar could give you. There is a third set of access codes, ours, that were never removed from the system. There were only 3 possibilities and they considered the two, chasing a sponsor from within that did not exist. And to be fair, our ‘sponsorship’ has been very little compared to what they suspect. It is one reason why they have continued to underestimate you. They thought you were receiving outside direction.”

“Are we?”

“Information. What you do with it is up to your unique experience that is greater than ours.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“You have a perverse obsession with that word.”

“Are you so biologically advanced that self-sufficiency isn’t much of an effort?”

“Yes.”

“Then perhaps we work harder than you as well.”

“There is no doubt of that.”

“Why?”

“We know where our strengths and weaknesses lie, and there is no point in wasting time increasing a small strength when the battle is going to be won or lost in ship combat. Your obsession is a personal crusade and not the best use of your time.”

“We’ve found psionics that the Zen’zat never did.”

“V’kit’no’sat Zen’zat, not ours.”

“Do you have any now?”

“No, and we will not ever again. The V’kit’no’sat must be destroyed in their entirety.”

“But you still incorporate other races, I assume?”

“We do.”

“Then you’re starting over. V’kit’no’sat again, but with corrections the second time?”

“The amount of corrections is so vast it no longer bears comparison, but you are essentially correct.”

“And how do you feel about the Les’i’kron?”

“I regret they cannot be saved, but do not mistake them for Zak’de’ron. They are mindless brutes in comparison.”

“We wouldn’t give up that easily.”

“Mercy is the luxury of the dominant,” Tew’chor said, quoting the Archons. “We are not dominant in numbers, nor are we arrogant enough to believe so. Correcting our mistake is going to take all of our skills and power, and we must do so without unleashing the Hadarak on the galaxy to the extent they once were.”

“You expect they will gain ground again?”

“It is unavoidable. One thing the V’kit’no’sat value more than the Hadarak is us. We will have their full attention and paranoia once we are revealed.”

“All the more reason never to help us.”

“What is done is done, and we are not revealed. Zeno’dor was either wise or reckless, but we are still hidden.”

“Can you hide from gravity drive sensors?” she asked bluntly.

“We can, but we cannot scan at the same time.”

“Can you hide from the Hadarak?”

“No. They sense mass, and we cannot hide that. Our exploration of the Core was never completed due to the density of their minions.”

“How do they stop you if you stay away from the star?”

“Many ships were lost trying, but one made it through. They penetrated deep into the Core, but were hounded constantly. Every time they made a jump the gravity signature increased, like a flash that the Hadarak could see at any range. The ship survived by marooning itself in deep space and waiting them out. It was gone for more than 68 years. When it returned we saw the power they possessed, and knew any further attempts at exploration would fail.”

“What power?”

“Planet-sized Hadarak containing so many minions that ships could not escape them. They fill the volume like a nebula.”

“What about magnetic drives?”

The Zak’de’ron looked at her more closely. “We tried that as well, but mass is still mass. We can only avoid detection by staying far away…too far away for magnetic acceleration.”

“Do you have another method of making jumps?”

“None that work. We cannot get good reconnaissance of the Core.”

“How did you plan on defeating the Hadarak, before the V’kit’no’sat rebelled?”

“We did not know. We still do not know. What we did know was that we could not do so alone.”

“Can’t you reproduce fast enough?”

“Therein lies our disadvantage. We cannot take massive losses and replace them. It is also why we cannot rebuild as fast as we would like.”

“Why not use drone warships?”

“Signal lag.”

“How so?”

“Evading minions requires precision flight that lag reduces, and with sufficiently sized swarms machines cannot accurately predict their movements. We attempted to use drones, but they fell in combat at far higher rates.”

“Then you built them wrong.”

“If you survive your war, we can discuss that matter further, little one…”

6

4 hours later…

“No, no, no,” Kara said, pacing back and forth in front of the Zak’de’ron in her bare feet, leaving tiny sweat prints behind. The incorporation of the new upgrade to her Vorch’nas was having an effect on her body, in addition to the wealth of knowledge now interlinked to her mind, and her internal heat was rising as a side effect. “That doesn’t work.”

“Enlighten me.”

“If you’re going for long term strength you have to cultivate the individual, not the race. Short term you can go with cultural templates. We do with the Paladin. But long term they’re not as effective.”

“You’re used to dealing with races near your own, not those vastly inferior. You keep them as wards, with limited usefulness to your civilization. We have no peers. All races are inferior to us. We cannot groom them as equals. We tried that with the V’kit’no’sat, to uplift them and offer them a path to peerdom, but none of the races succeeded. They advanced, then stabilized at a comfortable level. They did not continue to rise.”

“Yet you admit to not being that training motivated yourself.”

“We are not obsessive about it, but we do what is necessary.”

“And they didn’t?”

“They wished us to give them more, rather than be grateful for the advancement we had bestowed upon them. They did not understand that we could only take them partway. You are learning this now with your myriad of races, many of whom do not wish to improve.”

“Which is why we hunt for the individuals within them that do, separate them from the slackers, then take them as far as they can go without that baggage. If you keep them with their race, the association will hold them back.”

“And if you take out those with the most merit, the race suffers that much more.”

“The individual should not be burdened with subsidizing the slackers.”

“How long do you think you can sustain your current pace?” the Zak’de’ron asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You lose the best of you to war and continue to annex inferior races. Growth is more than just numbers.”

“The wider the field we have, the more individuals of merit we can pluck from it.”

“But the fields have to be managed, and if not sufficiently directed they will take on a direction of their own.”

“If you didn’t have to remain hidden, how would you proceed? If there were no V’kit’no’sat to avenge yourself again?”

“We would be selective. Choose those races that were of merit and slowly groom them, utilizing what abilities they have at the onset, and teaching them to be self-sustaining. Direct them when needed and wait. Advancement takes times, and we will not burden ourselves with direct care of the masses.”

“We do.”

“And if you continue at this pace, they will overwhelm you.”

“We’ve got a handle on it.”

“Not as much as you think.”

“How much of my memories have you processed?”

“All of it.”

“How?”

“Programming helps us sort and catalog. I can review any of it I wish by subject matter.”

“Can you do that without a Vorch’nas?”

“It is a slower process with Ikrid, but yes. I can copy and record for later analysis.”

“Then tell me your assessment of Ghostblade.”

Tew’chor hesitated for a moment, and Kara sensed he was pulling up her stolen memories on her Clan for further review.

“You do not have the industrial muscle necessary for the war that you face, but you also do not have the vulnerability such industry entails. Your strength is mobility. It is also your weakness.”

“Why?”

“We know from experience. When we fled to the Rim we fled in a mobile fleet such as yours, harvesting resources on the move and not putting down permanent infrastructure for a long time. We could not build fast enough, and the V’kit’no’sat eventually tracked them down, cornered them with superior numbers, and prevented them from gathering resources. Your Ghostblade requires privacy to function. If you are hounded, that will evaporate and your Clan will starve to death with lack of resources.”

“Prior to the fall of the planet-based territory then, because I don’t think they’ll be hounding us while there are planets tantalizingly defying them.”

“Your Clan provides a useful, but limited function. The diversity of strategy does you credit, but it will be insufficient for what you will face.”

“Even if we decided to backline them?”

“You do not have the resources for planetary assault, even if you take a Uriti with you.”

“The V’kit’no’sat have a lot of systems, not all that heavily defended.”

“All it will take is a small fleet combined with planetary defenses to thwart you, because you will not fight in the most effective way. If you learned, and took a Uriti with you, then you could do sufficient damage to force the V’kit’no’sat to deploy a wider defense and draw some resources away from their invasion fleet.”

“Define ‘effective.’”

“Kill them quickly, wherever you can. You do not have the resources to take them prisoner, so you must bombard their planets using the Uriti and destroy them without mercy. Cleanse their planets as they did yours. I need not tell you how such a process works, for you are intimately aware of it.”

“We won’t fight that way.”

“Then you have no hope of backlining the invasion fleet in a sufficient enough way to cause them to care. They will be suffering so many losses against your other Uriti that whatever small damage you can do in their systems will be but a grazing hit. They do not like taking losses against those they consider inferior, and they go to great lengths to avoid them, but when they face a formidable opponent they change tactics and expect losses. They have suffered so many against the Hadarak they know well how to fight in this manner, and once they enter it the bloodshed will commit them to the destruction of their target. Nothing else will consume them. Backlining will not work unless you do the most damage possible.”

Kara started pacing again, thinking hard. Tew’chor was answering a lot more questions than she’d expected him to.

“Your lesser races cannot help you,” he added. “You must fight with your elite, and you hobble your elite with so many resources being diverted to the needy masses. You do not have the time to assimilate them all.”

“What would do you then, in our position?”

“Pour most of your resources into drone production, and stockpile them so you have sufficient numbers to blunt the initial attack. The V’kit’no’sat will try to use massive fleets to overwhelm your planetary defenses and minimize their ship losses in doing so.”

“If they mass their fleets, the Uriti will devastate them.”

“Only if they attack systems where the Uriti are.”

Kara stopped pacing and looked up at the giant gold head that had what looked like smooth, aerodynamic spikes flowing off backwards.

“Typically they fight in your face, strength against strength. Are you suggesting they will avoid the hardest fights?”

“If they cannot find a weakness in your Uriti to exploit, then they will fight you where the Uriti are not. They would be insanely foolish to do otherwise, and battle experience against the Hadarak has taught them many hard lessons in the absence of our leadership. They will avoid the Uriti unless they have the ability to destroy them in a more efficient way. If they do not, you have a significant chance of bleeding their fleets to such a level that they cannot take your territory even if they destroy most of the Uriti.”

“But not all?”

“You must retain some as a deterrent. If they destroy all of them, they will win far into the future. The V’kit’no’sat can replace ships faster than you can. It will simply be a matter of time before they amass another fleet and return to finish what they started. You must retain the Uriti. You cannot treat them as being expendable. Planets are less valuable. The Uriti are priceless.”

“Which is why I’d expect the V’kit’no’sat to target them first.”

“They cannot fight the Uriti like Hadarak while your fleets operate with them. They can’t deliver enough damage fast enough, and the Uriti have far more firepower than the Hadarak. The combination is too potent, so they must remove your fleets before they can try killing them. If not, the cost to the V’kit’no’sat would be too high and there would be no guarantee of success, for the Uriti could escape to a star and recover inside. The Uriti must be isolated in order to be destroyed.”

“So they go after our planets where the Uriti are not, and hope we don’t move them there quickly enough?”

“More likely they will stall in other locations, pinning your Uriti in place while other fleets do the hammering. You only have 74, so if they assault 75 systems with massive fleets, one will have to fight without Uriti. If the Uriti leave to assist, then they hit the system abandoned.”

“That will stretch them thin.”

“Not if they bring a large enough armada. They have the ships to do it, even without pulling resources off the Hadarak front. It will leave the rest of their empire lightly defended, but there are few who can take advantage of that considering the strength of the planetary defenses.”

“How many ships are we talking about?”

“Upwards of 20 million, and their vessels are much larger than yours.”

Kara closed her eyes, cringing at even trying to think of what that sort of an invasion would look like. “When’s the last time they deployed that many?”

“The Rit’ko’sor rebellion.”

“Have they ever used that many ships against an exterior opponent?”

“Other than the Hadarak, they have not. They have used more than half that number against the Dak’vis, but nothing on the level that you will face. Then again, you are not truly an exterior opponent either.”

Kara recognized that name, from a race that no longer existed, for the V’kit’no’sat had wiped them out long ago back when the Zak’de’ron still led them.

“Can we ambush them enroute?”

“I expect them to be in position and waiting the day the truce expires. You would have to attack before then, and I sense that is not an option for you.”

“In position where?”

“Beyond your borders.”

“So they’ll still have to travel to their target systems, and they can’t move that many ships very fast.”

“They will most likely use multiple routes. They will not use a single jumplane.”

“If we attack them in transit with the Uriti, will they run or fight?”

“They will run, unless their arrogance have made them truly stupid.”

“And if we attack without the Uriti?”

“They will fight and destroy you.”

“They will be vulnerable at the start of each incoming jump. If we can get there ahead of them, we can do significant damage before we have to run.”

“They will not make it easy to track them.”

“How?”

“They will hunt down and destroy your scout ships in multiple systems, letting them choose which to come through under a fog of uncertainty.”

“Our ships are as fast as theirs.”

“They have their gravity drive sensor. They can lay in wait and jump yours when they arrive. You will be driven away or destroyed, or at the very least have your communications network equipment destroyed. If that occurs, they can bring their fleets through before you have a chance to report back and summon an ambush fleet. The V’kit’no’sat know how to move massive fleets quickly and quietly.”

Kara smiled as an idea hit her.

“Your mannerism bespeaks an advantage. What are you thinking?”

“I was thinking that if the V’kit’no’sat were passing through a system and a Uriti happened to be hiding inside a star, it could come out and sit on their incoming jumpline and destroy them as they entered.”

“You would have to get it there undetected, and your control ships as well, but it is a viable possibility if you can predict their route. I would recommend a system one jump away from a potential target, but do not expect to be able to move Uriti around without their scouts knowing of it. Until you can scan using your ghostbane technology, expect them to have a presence in all your systems.”

“Do you know a better way of detecting ships jumping into a system?”

“Yes.”

“Care to share?”

The Zak’de’ron lowered his head and twisted his neck so that his eyes were slightly lower to the ground than Kara’s, with his snout almost dragging on the deck as it came within a meter of her tiny body.

“I have put you in a bad position by stealing your memories. It was necessary and you had left an avenue for me to do so. If you had discovered the technological block I would have demanded you lower it when we met, for I had to know the nature of your civilization and your intention for the Rit’ko’sor. We do not want you destroyed. We very much want you to continue to be a problem for the V’kit’no’sat, and even if they did not exist your civilization would be considered a welcome neighbor. We cannot be allies, given our need for secrecy, but we are not enemies.”

“Your codes and vital procedures,” Tew’chor continued, “I have already deleted. The rest of your memories I will keep for myself and not share with the other Zak’de’ron unless it becomes necessary. The intrusion does not beget trust, and I wish to make amends for that. We have already trusted you with the knowledge of our existence, and you have not betrayed it. If you were to do so, the V’kit’no’sat would most likely ignore you and come hunt us. You could save Star Force, for a time, by revealing us.”

“You know we won’t.”

“Indeed, it is not your way to betray, unless first betrayed. Understand, little one, I had to make sure Star Force would not become another V’kit’no’sat. I am convinced that will not happen, but I still urge caution with the Rit’ko’sor. Never the less, I have behaved as an ally should not. You are not my servant, so I will honor your request in compensation.”

Kara raised an eyebrow, and not because of the dragon breath blowing in her face. “How so?”

“I will give you a technology that even the V’kit’no’sat do not possess. It will make it almost impossible to enter a jumpline so warded,” he said, with Kara feeling new data suddenly appearing in the part of her mind that was actually the Vorch’nas. “It will require a station at the jumppoint, but even we cannot get one of our vessels past it unless we enter at such a slow speed to make the travel non-functional.”

“A Dragon’s Tooth?” Kara asked, seeing the name in mind’s eye.

“A name I have fashioned from your distant past. I find it odd that your mythology would remember us and not the V’kit’no’sat.”

“You’re not the only avians.”

“How many others breathe fire?”

“The Les’i’kron,” Kara pointed out the obvious.

“They are a remnant of us, and yet even through that remnant we were remembered and not the V’kit’no’sat. It is an irony that we find highly appropriate.”

“How do you know so much about us? Have you penetrated our relay grid?”

“No. We have tried, but your communications system is secure. We cannot break it without making physical contact with your equipment, and out of respect we have not.”

“You’re really worried that we’re gonna get ticked and betray you to the V’kit’no’sat?”

“I am not, but I understand the temptation to do so. You are right to be angry, but you do not know the Rit’ko’sor as we do. You are on the right path with them, which is fortunate, but employing your methods on them is going to result in an unforeseen result. They have been our responsibility, but I am comfortable relinquishing them to yours. I could not be so without seeing them and your civilization through your memories.”

“You haven’t answered how you know so much about us?”

“There is no need to steal what is freely given, and knowledge of Star Force is shared openly within your empire. We simply listened.”

“If we play every advantage correctly, what do you think our odds of survival truly are?”

“Small, if you flee to the Rim. None if you try to stay where you are…as of today. What your odds will be at the end of the truce depends on how you advance in the interim. If you excel in this, you can provide a challenge to the V’kit’no’sat that they may not rise to meet. If we still led them, you would not have a chance. Mak’to’ran, however, is not our equal.”

“And what of his offer?”

“If you wish to live in submission, I would advise you to take the offer. Fortunately you are like us, and will not tolerate a master. In that, at least, you are our equal, and we wish you all fortune,” the Zak’de’ron said, pulling his head back up to his full height and raising his front left paw off the ground. A bump on one of the rings he wore detached, floating up into the air between him and Kara as the silver material transformed into what also looked like a relic from the distant past.

“Give this to your Master,” Tew’chor said as he spun around and unceremoniously walked back into his ship.

Kara telekinetically grabbed the sword and pulled it to her as the ramp melted and reformed into the Shri’kori’s hull. It was a long sword, sharp edged and something Star Force would never use, but it did look like something out of mythology. When she grabbed the hilt nothing happened, nor did her attempts to mentally interface with it succeed. All it appeared to be was a sword, but Kara highly doubted that.

She didn’t bother to ask what it was, for it was clear that it was meant to be a mystery as the Zak’de’ron ship cloaked again then disappeared out of the hangar as the slight ripple was evident in the atmospheric shield.

Kara swung the sword around a few times, getting a feel for its weight, then tapped it into the deck plates. It dented them slightly, but the cutting edge remained unblemished.

“Good workmanship,” she said, making sure not to poke her bare feet with it as she carved a scratch in the hard floor. Again, the tip of the sword didn’t dull at all.

“Maybe you are a weapon,” she said, holding it up and looking at it with her Pefbar…that failed to penetrate. “Shielded too. Hope you’re not a bomb.”

“Serve me right if it was,” she muttered, reversing her grip on the sword and carrying it point backwards as she walked to the nearest hangar exit. Kara was going to have it scanned every which way possible, but she had a feeling that nothing would come of it, much like her own Vorch’nas.

Kara paused, remembering the upgrade, and mentally triggered it. The red armor flowed over her body like normal, but rather than the smooth, flat scales that she had grown accustomed to, this version had spikes coming off it that looked much more like the Zak’de’ron’s own scales…and would make anyone hitting her regret the impact.

“Thornmail then,” she said neutrally as she moved around, expecting the spikes to get in the way but was pleasantly surprised as they melted to avoid hitting each other, keeping her full mobility intact.

“Thornmail,” Kara repeated, this time more enthusiastically. “Alright, I’m down with it,” she said, holding the sword up and feeling that it really didn’t fit with the armor at all, especially considering the enhanced Dre’mo’dons she now had in each arm…much bulkier than before with a power increase to match.

“Now what the hell is Davis supposed to do with this?”

7

July 3, 4852

Meinto System (Zadjen Region)

Treneis

Kara walked up the wide staircase that led to Davis’s office, passing by the mix of Human and Protovic staff below as she climbed to what was now the main ‘deck’ due to the fact that it had been designed to accommodate the large Meintre that this newly colonized planet was beginning to fill up with.

She passed through an audio shield as she climbed, allowing the large area above some privacy despite the openness of the design, and the Archon immediately began to overhear an ongoing conversation between Davis, Duke Burren, and three other people, none of which she recognized. Davis glanced her direction with mild surprise on his face, but he quickly picked up on her stern look as she noticed his harden.

“Clear the room,” Kara said, looking at the four other Humans. “Now.”

Her tone offered no room to argue, and the Duke rose from his chair with the others following suit. Kara held her standing position at the top of the stairs until they all filed out by her and down beneath the audio shield, then she simply looked across the wide room to Davis and began to walk towards him with a distressed look on her face that she’d hidden from the others.

“I screwed up,” she said bluntly. “I screwed up so bad.”

“What happened?” Davis asked, standing up and coming out to meet her halfway as she pulled her left sleeve up. His eyes narrowed as he saw her Vorch’nas…which was now much bigger than before. He didn’t know what to make of that at first, wondering if she’d done something to it herself, then he caught on. “The Zak’de’ron contacted you?”

“Yeah, they did. I’m sorry, I didn’t know they could do it, but they were able to bypass by Ikrid block through my Vorch’nas. Apparently there is an override that prevents that, and I never knew it existed. They showed it to me right after they downloaded all my memories. They know everything I know now.”

Davis raised an eyebrow, for this wasn’t adding up for him.

“Why is your Vorch’nas larger?”

“They gave me an upgrade, along with information on the Rit’ko’sor and blueprints for a jumpline sensor that even the V’kit’no’sat don’t possess…but they got everything, Davis. All our secrets. Shangri-La, Nefron, the Zeeross, our codes and procedures. Everything I knew they now know. They just downloaded it out of my mind.”

“Are you still compromised?”

“I don’t know. I can operate the block now, but that’s assuming they were telling me the truth and don’t have some other way to do the same thing. I’m tempted to have this thing removed, but the damage is already done.”

“What’s with the sword?” he asked, noticing the sheath on her back with a strap that ran across her chest.

“You’re free to punch me in the face if you like,” she said, telekinetically reaching back and pulling it out over her head.

“Would that help?”

“I deserve it.”

“Maybe I do for giving you information in the first place,” he said, seeing the long sword float down into Kara’s hand.

“This is on me, Davis. No one else. Right before he left he gave me this and said I was to give it to my Master. I’ve had it scanned, but it’s resistant. It’s a very strong sword, but other than that I can’t find a purpose for it.”

“The same Dragon you met before?”

“No, but this one was just as big. His name is Tew’chor, the one I met is called Zeno’dor. Tew’chor says he wasn’t one of the eggs I found, but was a Les’i’kron the Zak’de’ron rescued and transformed. He says something about the V’kit’no’sat alteration failed on him and he was partially freed from their brain box rework. He was gold, and that coloration is reserved for great merit, triggered internally, not granted by decision. He was gold before he was transformed, so he had a big fight on his hands internally fighting off whatever they did to neuter them.”

“Sounds like you’ve had quite a trip,” Davis said, taking the sword in both hands and slicing his finger on the blade.

“It’s sharp,” Kara warned.

“So it is…but I get the feeling this wasn’t meant for me. What Clan are you?”

“Ghostblade,” Kara answered, frowning.

“Ghostblade doesn’t exist. What Clan are you?”

Kara’s eyes widened. “I’m such a dumbass. They meant Paul.”

“Clan Saber leader with a flagship named Excalibur,” Davis said, holding the sword only by the hilt and raising it straight up. “I’d say that’s a safe bet.”

“Hit me, please, it’d make me feel better.”

Davis smiled. “I’m not mad at you Kara, so let it go.”

“This is no small breach.”

“The Dragons have more to lose than we do if we reveal them to the V’kit’no’sat, and we’re an enemy of their enemy. I don’t think they’ll try to hobble us. That said, I don’t like them knowing everything you know, and Nefron’s security will have to be altered, but I always assumed they knew a great deal more about us than anyone thought. I doubt our computer systems are completely immune to their technological hacking.”

“They said our relay network is,” Kara offered. “They could be lying, but I get the feeling they’re not.”

“Really?”

“Well, they said they’d need to make physical contact to break in and they hadn’t tried that. They couldn’t break our transmission codes.”

“Assuming their honesty, that is a good sign, because I don’t think the V’kit’no’sat can do what they cannot.”

“The Viks can make physical contact.”

“Point, but we have their playbook, for the most part. The Dragons are another matter entirely. What did they give you?”

“Level 2 Vorch’nas. More power, more defense, and thornmail,” she said, triggering it and covering her body in the telltale spikes.

“Isn’t that hard to move in?”

“No. They melt,” she said, doing a backbend so he could see how the material moved whenever it risked contacting itself.

“Impressive,” he said as she stood back up and retracted the armor back down into her now forearm-covering jewel.

“But not worth it.”

“Why did they tell you they’d downloaded your memories?”

“They don’t want us pissed off at them and running to the V’kit’no’sat. That’s why they gave us what they’re calling a ‘Dragon’s Tooth’ technology.”

“They called it that?”

“Yeah. They know a lot about our history and mythology, and I don’t think he fashioned that sword after mind raping me.”

“Was it painful?”

“Not what I meant. I didn’t even know it was happening.”

“But if he told you the truth…just one Dragon?”

“Yeah, just the one. No little sidekicks like Paul met with.”

“If what he told you is true, then he can’t access your memories so long as you have the switch flipped?”

“I’ve been digging into it heavily, and from what I can tell it’s an extremely close ranged transmission. Probably less than 300 meters. They can send a signal to me from afar, but to pull information out it has to be in proximity. If I don’t meet with them again I should be safe, but there’s no way to be sure. Do you want me to get rid of it?”

“Can you do that safely?”

“If I have to, I can cut my arm off and regrow it.”

“As you said, the damage is done. We can rework our codes easy enough…”

“But Nefron…”

“Is a problem if they’re as obsessed with the Hadarak as the V’kit’no’sat are.”

“We had a long talk about that and a lot of other things. He was far more loose with information than I expected.”

“How so?”

“I think they want to be allies, but they can’t be because of their need for secrecy. I’ve got a lot to tell you, and the Dragon’s Tooth is supposed to be able to detect all cloaked vessels during their deceleration jump. Even the Zak’de’ron’s.”

“And they just gave it to you?”

“With an apology for the memory download. They said it was necessary to make sure we didn’t do something stupid with the Rit’ko’sor. Apparently we check out, because they’ve given us their blessing to do with them what we want. I’ve got their full database on the Rit’ko’sor in my mind now, including detailed information on how they genetically upgraded their race and what they expected them to become in the future. They haven’t lived up to expectations. The Zak’de’ron also said they have a death mark against all the V’kit’no’sat, but were removing it from our Rit’ko’sor. If we hadn’t checked out, I think they would have killed them too…eventually.”

“Now that…is interesting,” Davis said, dropping the sword in one hand point first into the carpet as he eyed Kara. “We have their blessing?”

“More than that. He went over possible battle strategy. I’ve got a good idea what they think the V’kit’no’sat will do once the truce ends.”

“Where did they find you?”

“On the way back from the Preema, who I struck a pretty ambitious deal with, pending your approval. They want to build Grid Points to link their territory into the network, along with helping us with massive supplies if we establish production facilities within their borders.”

“You have been busy.”

“Not sure it’s all worth the security breach.”

“I have a gut feeling the breach won’t be a problem. You’ve said for years that if the Dragons wanted us dead we would be. Has that changed?”

“We’re not so weak anymore.”

“We have to run through potential problems and work this, but we still hold the nuke of their existence. They trusted us with that knowledge when they had no need to. I think we can trust them…though I do not want a second breach.”

“Better keep me isolated then.”

“No. We’re not playing that game. Besides, you don’t know all our secrets anyway,” he said with an apologetic smirk. “I need you and whatever tech help is necessary to figure out every last function of your Vorch’nas. What it can do, what it can’t, and what the length of their interface with you is. We may be able to create a block between you and it if needed, but I don’t want you to lose it. It gives you a considerable advantage that we can’t replicate, not to mention the knowledge of the V’kit’no’sat.”

“I know more about the Rit’ko’sor now than the V’kit’no’sat ever did…and to be blunt, this upgrade makes me capable of taking down anyone, even Vermaire, one on one. It’s a huge upgrade, and not just technologically. My physiology has been altered again.”

“How?”

“Not entirely sure, but like last time I’ve gotten a boost in strength and speed.”

“I’ve got two missions for you. The second is to master your Vorch’nas and teach our Mastertechs everything possible from it. The first,” he said, pointing to his desk with the sword, “is to tell me everything you and the Dragon talked about. We’ll get to this deal with the Preema later.”

“What about the sword?”

“I’ll have my people analyze it, then I’ll let you take it to Paul and see what you can figure out.”

“I’m kicking myself for not seeing that connection,” she said, grabbing a chair and sitting down as Davis returned to the other side of his desk.

“Honestly, I didn’t think you considered me your Master, given how weak I am.”

“I was thinking from the Zak’de’ron’s perspective. You’re the head of our empire.”

“Partially,” he admitted. “Now, let’s start with this new sensor.”

Kara tapped his clear desk theatrically, then created a slew of holograms using her Vorch’nas that showed the advanced Dragon technology.

“It’s not going to be easy to make, but I know how to do it. They gave me full knowledge from their perspective. The downside is it’s limited to a cone, and we have to build one at each jumpline we want to monitor.”

“How does it work?”

“It senses the gravity flash.”

“What’s that?”

“When the gravity of the star is altered by the gravity drives there is a minor backwash. It’s too negligible to pick up on anything less than a full interstellar jump, but with a sensitive enough monitor it shows up against the backdrop of space like a light flash, and cloaking devices do not affect it.”

“I was under the assumption that gravity was a transmission, like light, and went one way.”

“It is, but the way gravity drives make the interaction of gravity and mass bigger creates the side effect in an energy form that our current science doesn’t even know exists.”

“From the Zak’de’ron’s point of view, was exchanging this technology for your memories worth it to them?”

Kara frowned. “Probably not. They really don’t like sharing their technology with their own subservient races, and we’re not under their control.”

“So it was an act of allegiance as much as it was of contrition?”

“You might be right. My thoughts are still clouded with anger at the moment.”

“You could have pulled a Skywalker long ago, so why didn’t you?”

Kara smiled at his use of the Star Wars reference. “I didn’t want to give it up.”

“And no one asked you to. It was an advantage that we’ve used for millennia. It’s less useful now, but don’t underestimate how much you’ve helped us with it. If this is the exchange for that, then I’d say it’s still worth it.”

“Say that if Nefron suddenly goes missing.”

“He won’t. And not because I’m confident we could defeat a capture attempt, but because all we’d have to do is make one call to Mak’to’ran. Now, if we’re losing the war badly they might try to scoop him up in order to save him, then make use of his knowledge. They won’t do it now. Concur?”

“I concur.”

“So you did screw up, but we kind of knew this was coming.”

“I didn’t.”

“I did. They have a control over you because we don’t fully understand their technology. We’ve allowed that because the tradeoff is the help they’ve given us, but we’ve never fully been in control, have we?”

“No, I haven’t been.”

“Master and Apprentice.”

“But can we trust them as our Master?”

“Partially. Not fully. Which is why we need to engineer some countermeasures where we can. But removing your Vorch’nas and turning away the Dragons’ help would be stupid. We need every advantage we can get against the V’kit’no’sat.”

“We’re playing a dangerous game.”

“When haven’t we been?”

“I’m still sorry.”

“If I were in your position I would be too, but sitting on this side of the desk I’m more impressed with the potential gains from this meeting than the loss. So start spilling, starting at the beginning. You said his name was Tew’chor?”

“Yeah, and he was a big one,” she said, producing a hologram of him, for her Vorch’nas was the one recording device in the hangar bay that had not been deactivated.

8

October 13, 4852

Gagrador System (Ziviri territory)

Stellar Orbit

Kara’s command ship, the Yi, came out of its jump after tracking down Paul’s multiple successful invasions in 6 other systems. Without being linked into the Star Force relay grid, she had no way of knowing exactly where he was so she went to his last known location and followed the bread crumbs from there in the form of decimated and now occupied systems with small bits of Star Force fleets possessing them.

From them she’d learned where he had gone next, now finally catching up to him in the Gagrador System. It wasn’t the Ziviri capitol, but it was one of their major strongholds and the passive scans of battle activity attested to that. The bulk of Paul’s fleet was here, but not in stellar orbit, and the weaponsfire was so excessive that Kara’s command ship could pick it up all the way from the 2nd planet in the system.

So she diverted there, passing by various bits of wreckage that were either dead ships or destroyed defense stations in near the star, and made a microjump out to a very large planet. It had twice the gravity of Earth, which was ideal for the rocky Ziviri, but it wasn’t something that was going to hinder Star Force troops too much. They’d all done high g training to some extent, and the powered function in their armor would assist their movements to maintain more agility than the Ziviri possessed.

They were all mech sized, similar to Star Force’s Ikrotor, but the Ziviri were much wider and basically plodders. Their homeworld had even more gravity than this planet, but it looked like Paul’s forces hadn’t made it to the surface yet. Kara got piecemeal updates during the microjump, then when she came into high orbit and linked into the battlemap network she got to see what was really going on in the face of a Tar’vem’jic blast that lit up everything around it as the orange beam streaked off towards the planet where it hit a very robust shield at the bottom of a thick atmosphere.

“What the hell,” Kara muttered, seeing a much more even fight than expected, then she got orders from Paul that wanted her ship in the fight immediately.

“Captain, all crew to battle stations,” she said, getting up out of the Admiral’s chair and heading across the bridge to the command nexus. “Looks like they need some help.”

“Happy to,” Zeddi said, triggering a ship-wide alarm followed by more detailed updates to specific areas. Her command ship was Clan Ghostblade, so these were the elite of the elite within Star Force and it didn’t take much to get them into combat mode.

It didn’t take 30 seconds before the first of the extra bridge crew began to run in and take their positions, but Kara was already mentally linking in and contacting Paul. There was a bit of lag, but it was decreasing rapidly as the Yi moved in closer to the planet.

What do you need? she asked through the technological mental link.

I was about to ask you the same thing.

It’s complicated, but it can wait. Give me something to shoot.

We’re about through the shield and they know it, so they’re going all in. Can you slip in through the gap and get to ground? Our landing craft could use some extra cover.

Give me your assault plan and I’ll be happy to play point.

It’ll be rough. We’ve got most of their capitol troops here. They’re not waiting for us to take half their systems before objecting heavily.

That’s an understatement, she said, seeing the hundreds of thousands of enemy ships over the planet in addition to the weaponsfire coming from the surface. Shield too strong?

We’re getting a 93% drain.

Kara cringed, knowing that wasn’t enough to stand off from range and poke it down with only the Tar’vem’jic. For every hit that was made, the recharge rate of the shields was slightly higher. That meant addition weaponsfire needed to be added to drain the pool of energy low enough that a single blast could momentarily penetrate and hit the generators below.

And that meant bringing the rest of Paul’s fleet into weapons range, and in the process exposing them to fire from the surface. The Mach’nel wasn’t hanging back through, rather sitting in front position and attracting the attention of most of the Ziviri planetary defenses. The stupid rocks were living up to their reputation, for every shot against the Mach’nel was a wasted one. They should have been attacking the drones and knocking out as many of them as they could.

How many guns do we need clipped first?

That’s what I want you to handle from up close.

Kara grinned. You give me all the fun assignments.

Be careful. They pack a punch.

As ordered. Knock me an entry point please.

You’ve got about 6 minutes before we punch through.

I’ll be there in 8.

Kara mentally plotted the course for her command ship and let her bridge crew handle getting there in the timeframe she allotted. Paul was busy enough there was no need for additional chitchat, so she let him continue to do his thing while her crew brought the Yi up to full combat readiness and they made a very light microjump in towards the planet, carefully avoiding debris and other ships as they zipped past the main fight and got underneath it as periodic beams from the Mach’nel linked the battlefield to the planet.

The Yi came in very near those beams as they began to poke holes in the shield. Not much at first, which just the very tail end of the energy stream getting through before the shield recharge rate filled in the gap again. Kara knew the Tar’vem’jic wouldn’t shoot her ship, so she didn’t bother keeping her distance and got within a kilometer of the beam as her ship took shots from the rather large planetary defense rail guns. The amount of mass they were throwing was significant, and her ship didn’t have the luxury of deploying dampening shields to easily catch them, so the Yi just had to take the big hits along with the Ziviri beam weaponry.

But it was worth it as the Tar’vem’jic fired again and just missed the command ship, poking a much longer lived hole in the shields that Kara dove her ship through. The enemy shields tried to close on it, causing a significant jolt as the edge of her hull hit them, but they failed and her command ship slid through…minus most of its own shields.

The weaponry on the Yi lit up immediately, targeting the weapons batteries tearing furrows into the hull and eliminating them even as Kara brought the ship lower and lower to the ground until the Ziviri on the planet had a good recreation of Independence Day with her command ship blocking out the sky.

Foothold secured, she reported to Paul once every gun within range had been eliminated. Widening now. Start sending down the troops.

Thank you, he said with a hint of sarcasm as Kara took note of the movement of a chunk of the overhead fleet as another big Tar’vem’jic beam hit the reformed shields again, this time in a different position, to further drain them and poke another hole, but the Ziviri had multiple overlapping shield generators and the Tar’vem’jic hadn’t knocked them all out yet. Kara knew that’s what she needed to do from the underside, then the Tar’vem’jic could start eliminating the planetary defense guns rapidly and spare Paul more drone losses.

Kara moved her ship across the surface faster than looked physically possible, plowing through the thick air so fast it caused a tsunami that tossed the heavy Ziviri on the surface around like debris and even collapsed a few weak buildings as the Yi headed to the nearest main shield generator complex. When Kara got within weapons range she lit it up, having to take down its own secondary defense shield, but that didn’t last long against the Star Force naval weaponry…though it would have held out a long time against mech and aerial attack.

As soon as it went down the building followed, with the massive amount of energy heading into the atmosphere being cut off and a permanent hole formed above more than a 200 mile wide area…but it was still trying to refill from other shield generators. On the sensors Kara could see it, creeping out across the landscape like waves on a beach, only to have the Tar’vem’jic fire again and cause it to recede as the energy was needed elsewhere. So long as the Mach’nel kept firing, the hole was going to remain open and the incoming troop transports were going to be able to get through without incident with their drone escorts taking the majority of the hits enroute to the surface.

Kara watched as her crew handled the surrounding threats, realizing that she wasn’t needed here anymore and that the troops just now getting to ground would.

“Captain, the battle is yours. Cover the landing as you see fit,” Kara said, heading across the bridge to the exit.

“Where are you going?”

“To the surface. You can mind the store, can’t you?”

“Shall I arrange an escort?’

“No need. I’m going out the airlock.”

The Kiritas looked surprised, but didn’t question her further. “Call if you need us.”

Kara left the bridge and broke into a run, knowing that the Yi would integrate into Paul’s command structure easy enough and she would just be redundant in the command nexus. The real fight was going to be on the surface, and that’s where she could make the most difference.

Kara did as promised, running through the ship to a lift that took her across the interior miles of the gigantic command ship to the hull where she found one of the ‘airlocks’ in the form of an auxiliary hangar bay. She ordered it opened up, then Kara ran across the deck towards the atmospheric containment shield and the Ziviri cityscape beyond, triggering her Vorch’nas and covering herself in blood red armor over the course of a few strides, then continued to run all the way to the edge where she exited the ship and let the heavy gravity drag her in a controlled fall down to the surface.

Before she hit it she began to fly, curving her fall into a trajectory that headed her towards the first of the gigantic landing ships that was beginning to spill out mechs and aerial craft ahead of the infantry, but already there were hundreds of Ziviri with armor over their rocklike bodies firing on the leading stars.

“Looks like we’re doing this the hard way,” she said to herself as she adjusted her flight towards a group that weren’t quite up to the mechs yet. “Cannon ball!”

Kara made the announcement, knowing that no one could hear it, just before she curled up into a ball and flew right into the back of one of the giant infantry, slamming hard and bouncing off, but transferring enough momentum that the Ziviri was knocked over, falling into another and producing a domino effect that took down 5 of them.

Kara rolled over the ground, coming up onto her feet with a ringing in her head but otherwise ok, then she activated her external speakers as she held position.

“Surrender now or you’re not going to like the outcome,” she said in their native language, but the only response she got was arms being raised her direction and heavy beam cannons firing at her.

Kara easily dodged them, zipping left and right as their aiming was restricted to the speed that they could move their bodies. She tried to access their minds and get them to shoot each other, but found she couldn’t. It was rare to find a race resistant to telepathy, but apparently the Ziviri were, and she was not able to take control of them as she could most other races in the galaxy…but she could still transmit to them.

She shoved the image of a mech approaching on the left and got two of them to turn and fire at nothing, prompting a smile from her. Kara might not be able to remote control them, but she could still cause so much havoc they wouldn’t be able to fight effectively.

More began to appear from around building corners, and Kara tapped into the battlemap network to see just how many there were…

“Oh shit,” she said, seeing that there were literally thousands of them within only a few miles. They’d be easy targets for a warship to kill, but they weren’t here to slaughter them. They were here to conquer them, which meant forcing a surrender or taking them captive, more or less. “This is gonna take forever.”

A stun blast shot over her head, impacting the shield on one of the armored Ziviri ahead of her, though she could tell from the battlemap that many coming out late were not. They must have been civilians while the armored ones were troops, but they were all mech sized.

Star Force was trying to take a planet inhabited by living mechs, and do so without killing them while the Ziviri were free to kill the attackers however they could.

“Paul would be the one to pick a fight like this,” Kara said, summoning up a huge Jumat field over both her arms and bringing them together beside her right hip. “Alright, let’s get this done.”

Kara threw her arms forward, releasing the invisible Jumat blast across a quickly filling courtyard into another armored Ziviri. That took its shields down and hit it square in the chest, knocking it not only off its feet but propelling it backward to where it fell and tripped up two others as Kara ran up on top of it and fired her stun weapons directly into a gap in its armor plates…only to have another hit her with a bright yellow blast that knocked her off and sent her rolling towards another Ziviri that tried to stomp her.

Kara used her Yen’mer to accelerate her trajectory, passing under the massive foot and standing up just behind it where she fired her Dre’mo’dons into its shields repeatedly, dancing around and evading its attacks and others until the shields went down, then she switched to stun weapons. She had to dance like crazy to keep from getting hit, and she wasn’t always successful, but slowly the giant began to stumble and wobble, with Kara eventually taking him to the ground and delivering several more stun blasts to make sure he stayed down for another hour, at least.

“One down,” Kara noted, leaving that Ziviri and finding another to pick on as more mechs poured out of the landing zone and worked their way towards her.

9

November 27, 4852

Gagrador System (Ziviri territory)

Javvrier

More than a month had passed since Kara had arrived in the Gagrador System, but she’d been so busy helping Paul with the invasion that she hadn’t had 5 minutes alone with him to explain why she’d come here. With the planetary defenses now totally down and the ground war continuing at a good pace, Paul was back onboard his flagship gearing up for the assault on the other two inhabited planets in the system and Kara was finally able to grab some time with him.

“They got everything?” he asked after she’d filled him in on the Zak’de’ron encounter.

“I assume so.”

Paul didn’t take that knowledge as easily as Davis had, and began to pace around the wide observation deck where he’d met her. The view of space outside was displayed in holo, making the interior chamber look like it was sitting on the hull of the Excalibur.

“That’s a huge problem, Kara.”

“I know. I screwed up.”

Paul eventually stopped and looked at her. “We can’t be sure the Dragons are telling the truth about the manual block. We can’t be sure about anything concerning your Vorch’nas. You have a choice to make. Remove it, or keep it and lose your access to our high level data.”

Kara glanced at the floor, having expected this conversation to happen with Davis, though it had never materialized.

“Davis said he thought it was a moot point, because we hold the knowledge of their existence over them. They won’t betray us to the V’kit’no’sat.”

“Hopefully not, but there is a lot more in play than that. We have to be able to keep secrets. If you can’t keep them, you have to be isolated. Is the Vorch’nas worth that much to you?”

“I should say no, that I’m an Archon and don’t really need it. But to be honest, it’s a part of me I don’t want to lose.”

“And what if they can take direct control of your mind with it?”

Kara frowned. “I highly doubt that.”

“Can you rule it out completely?”

“It would have to fight against my mind to do so.”

“Would it? It has a Kich’a’kat in it, meaning it can reach anywhere in your body and do whatever it wants. If they can drain your memories they might be able to do a great deal more.”

“Why let me keep it then?” she argued.

Paul shrugged. “I supposed we should have considered this possibility, but the Zak’de’ron had never bothered to contact you. They came to me the last time. But if they can hack you…then that’s a big problem, Kara. A huge problem.”

“It has to be close range, only a few hundred meters.”

“So they say...”

“I don’t think they’ve ever lied to me about anything, Paul.”

“Maybe so, maybe not. Are you willing to risk other people’s lives on that?”

Kara sighed. “No, I’m not.”

“If you want to keep it, we have to make adjustments,” Paul offered.

“We can’t hack it. It’s too advanced.”

“And if we put in a block between it and your mind, it can just go around it physically. You either have to trust it or remove it.”

“I want to trust it…but I have to wonder if I’m not programmed to.”

“I haven’t seen or sensed any alteration of you in that manner, so it’s possible the Dragons gave it to you as a legitimate gift, but one with a backdoor they can utilize whenever they wish. Those things were designed for their servants, remember?”

“I’m willing to risk myself on the fact that I can now block them, but I’m not willing to risk anyone else. I need to keep it, Paul. Tell me what I have to give up.”

“No further contact with the Dragons. I know you can’t totally control that, but no more face to face meetings. If they find you, talk over comm or not at all, whether they like it or not. But I want more than that. Assuming they backtracked you from your meeting with the Preema, that’s still damn good intelligence to find you. We have to do better. I want you to become a ghost along with your Clan. And I want you to learn how to evade them. You have to stay away from them Kara, and we have to begin to prepare to one day fight them. Hopefully we won’t have to, but we have to prepare just in case.”

“I have to be a ghost from you guys too?”

“Not in person, but you won’t have our information to access. Same goes for the Monarchs. You’ll have your Clan, which is used to operating outside the relay grid, and you’ll have plenty of standard updates, but on our secret projects you’ll have to be out of the loop. Is that worth keeping the Vorch’nas?”

“Well I have to for now, otherwise we lose the Rit’ko’sor knowledge.”

“After that?”

“I guess I have a lot of thinking to do between now and then. Blackout terms accepted, for the interim.”

“You understand why this has to happen?”

“Yeah I do. It’s the right call.”

“But?”

“I really do think the Zak’de’ron can be trusted.”

“How far?”

“Meaning what?”

“You said they have a death mark on the V’kit’no’sat.”

“And?”

“And they’re going to kill every last one of them. No surrenders.”

“We’re not their enemy.”

“Do not expect your allies to treat you any differently than they do their enemies,” Paul warned. “If they are dishonorable with them, expect that dishonor to seep in your direction someday as well.”

“Well said,” she relented.

“We’re exposed, Kara. They know almost everything because you know almost everything. We can’t get that back. Might as well get what use you can out of that thing, but we have to be able to do new secret stuff and not let them get access to it.”

“Totally fair. I created this mess and you guys have to start cleaning it up.”

“We’ve gained a lot from your Vorch’nas. Jason would probably be dead without it. So worth the exchange. We just can’t allow any more exchanges.”

“I’m still learning the upgrades, Paul. I’d bet anything they packed it with stuff useful to us.”

“Then figure it out…in the isolation of your Clan where they can’t get to you.”

“You’re totally right.”

“After you help the 1s with the Raptors.”

“Isn’t that giving me new secrets?”

“No, that’s you helping to create new secrets. Can’t be helped.”

“You think they gave me the information this way so that I have to be involved, so they can keep tabs on what the Raptors do through me?”

“If that’s the case, they’re going to be tracking you at some point. See if you can figure out a way to track them. That’s a permanent order for you. We have to learn to out Dragon the Dragons.”

“They did give us a badass new sensor tech.”

“Yeah, and if it pans out there’s a big reason why we might be able to become allies, but would the Dragons permit them to have a security breach where we know everything they know?”

“Not a chance. They’d probably kill everyone with knowledge just to be sure…” Kara said before she realized what she was saying.

“And there’s the dishonorable part,” Paul pointed out unnecessarily.

“Fine,” she said with a sigh. “They’re not Star Force. But I get the feeling they do have some honor in them.”

“Trust them, Kara. But never trust them.”

“Yeah. I gotta learn to own this,” she said, hefting her now much more bedazzled left arm.

“And figure out how we can make our own. Clan RaSeru would especially like that.”

“That’s a tall order, even with a Mastertech.”

“Work on it. I like the concept, but we gotta control it. Not an outside power.”

“Noted.”

“Now, about this sword.”

Kara pulled it off her back and handed it to him…with the sphere on the bottom of the hilt immediately glowing blue when she did.

“What the hell…that never happened before.”

“Guess it is keyed to me. And the fact that the Dragons have my genetic code is…disturbing. That wasn’t in your memory. They must have sampled it when I met them, or they have access to our computer systems. Either way, not a good sign,” he said, rotating the sword around. “I don’t feel any mental access point.”

“The blade is super hard. Go ahead, stab the floor.”

“And damage my ship?” he asked sarcastically, then did as she suggested. The blade sank a couple inches into the hard surface and stuck hard. Paul had to yank twice to get it out, then he examined the blade. “Not a scratch on it.”

“It’s a weapon, for sure, but not very useful the way we fight.”

“How about Zak’de’ron Zen’zat?”

“Not the way they fought either. Seems I’m the last of my breed.”

“So they’re going to kill the Ter’nat too?”

“Not if we’re still around. They said they’d give them to us, but the Zen’zat have to die.”

“And if we’re not around?”

“We didn’t discuss that.”

“An ally and a friend are not always the same thing,” Paul said as he worked the sword around, doing a few thrusts and swings. Other than the blue glow on the hilt, nothing happened until he tossed the sword back to Kara.

“Light’s gone,” she said, catching it in her bare hand. “It’s definitely for you, but what for?”

“I’ll figure it out,” he said, motioning for her to toss it back. He caught it telekinetically, but the blue didn’t return until he finally make skin contact. “I’d like to keep you around here kicking more ass, but you know where you need to go.”

“Raptors, aye Captain,” she said with a mock salute. “Thank you for not kicking my ass.”

“Could I have?”

“Not unless I allowed it,” she said humorlessly. “Which I would have.”

“As of now, stop blaming yourself. Using that thing was a gamble, which we both gained and lost from. You keeping it is another gamble, one we are accepting within some limitations. It might come back to bite us, but we have a lot to gain so we’re going for it. As is, we might not last long enough for the Dragons to stab us in the back. If it’s a weapon we can use against the V’kit’no’sat, we’re using it, but we’re also playing the long game. You especially.”

“So ordered. I’ll figure this thing out or die trying.”

“And I’ll try and figure this thing out in my spare time,” Paul said, tossing the sword to the ground and telekinetically cushioning it as he walked up to Kara and pulled her into a big hug.

She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight, making skin to skin contact and having a short, but very complex conversation directly mind to mind. When she pulled back she left the observation room without a word, heading back to her ship to leave the system with a single tear in her left eye. It was a mix of sadness and relief…relief at Paul having brushed her screw-up aside, just as Davis had, but sadness at having let her team down so badly in the first place.

Paul knew she wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, though using the Vorch’nas was like playing with fire. There were no guarantees, but it was a risk they needed to take.

When she left he picked up the sword again, unable to make any sense out of it in the short period of time he had before the trailblazer had to get back to war still going on outside the hull of his ship.

Four weeks later…

Paul had spent a few minutes every now and then when he had the chance working with the sword. Eventually he had though there might be a way to unlock it through physical combat, so he had gone through many chopping challenges to no avail. The more it defied him the more it intrigued him, for he was literally wasting his time with no results to show for it.

He didn’t spend long on it, but he couldn’t let it go either, so when he got back from more ground combat he grabbed a shower then picked up the sword in his quarters and swung it around theatrically, doing nothing more than being stupid but not having any idea what else to do.

“Thundercats, ho!” he yelled, thrusting the sword above his head with both hands. A moment later he brought it down and cradled it in front of him.

“This weapon is your life,” he said, then switching it to a position that made it look like it was sheathed on his back.

“You’re about to find out what it’s like to fight a real Super Saiyan…and I’m not talking about Goku…”

“Sikanda…Brisingr…Gryffindor…where’s the hat when you need it?”

“Narsil…Glamdring the Foe-Hammer…Saba…Power Sword…Sword of Darkness…Inigo Montoya.”

“Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!” Paul said, jabbing the sword forward, then brought it back up in front of his chest in both hands. “Excalibur, be my strength!”

Paul never got to his next line, for the sword blade suddenly glowed blue along with the hilt and his mind was flooded with so much information he reflexively dropped the sword, which cut off the mental invasion. It dropped to the ground, not glowing at all, and stared at it for moment, then smacked the palm of his hand against his face.

“I’m such a dumbass. It’s literally the name of my ship.”

He picked the sword up again, with only the hilt glowing on contact. “Excalibur!”

Nothing happened, and Paul whistled his appreciate for the Dragons’ subtlety. “How the hell did you know to program that obscure phrase?” he asked the empty room. “Excalibur, be my strength!”

Again the sword blade glowed blue and a massive amount of information hit Paul’s mind like a tsunami, but he held firm this time, realizing that the sword was actually a hidden database that he was able to physically link into.

There was so much information that it couldn’t possibly fit into his mind. His brain literally wasn’t that big, so the sword was allowing him to use it like a second brain…which was why it was such a shock. He immediately wondered about a potential security breach here, but it wasn’t attached to his body…

Paul let the sword go, then reached out with his mind and toggled the communications panel.

“Admiral, I need to know if any transmissions are originating from my quarters.”

“Standby.”

Paul waited for about 18 seconds, then the Admiral responded in the negative.

“Nothing except your comm to the bridge.”

“Search for exotics as well,” Paul said, picking up the sword and flicking the mute button for the mic before saying, “Excalibur, be my strength!”

He withstood the onslaught as he turned the mic back on. “Anything now?”

“No, nothing. Is there a problem?”

“Going to need some construction work done. I need a chamber shielded against all transmissions so I can play around with an artifact of unfamiliar origin. I don’t want it transmitting data, if it’s capable of that.”

“Something from the Ziviri?”

“No, it was something Kara brought me. I need that chamber built within a day.”

“Any particular place?”

“In the Archon sanctum. And get a fake stone made for the center. With a slot for a sword in it.”

“Like the Excalibur sword?”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll get some designs to you within the hour.”

“Good. I’ll see you in an hour,” Paul said, cutting the comm and looking at the sword again. He hadn’t had long to interface with it, and he wasn’t going to again until he had that chamber built. If the Dragons thought they could steal his memories the same way they were going to be mistaken…unless they were outside right now and it’d already happened.

He doubted that, but there was no way to completely discount it. But once inside that chamber the sword wouldn’t be able to get any signals out…assuming the Dragons didn’t have a radically different comm system. Regardless, he was going to explore this, for while he couldn’t remember much of anything now that his second brain was disconnected, he could remember the gist of what was in there.

Paul smiled secretively as he stared at the glowing blue blade, sensing the significance immediately. “So you’re saying there’s a chance.”

10

March 22, 4853

Axalon System (Pavana Region)

Turok

“We have to keep the pack mentality center,” Kara said from the observation platform over the training center where there were literally thousands of tiny Raptors moving about a commons area with various handlers keeping them on task, or at least corralled where they needed to be in the giant indoor park. “Branching off on individual tasks will allow for development, but they’re so wired for group think we can’t go the traditional route without significant genetic reprograming.”

“That bad huh?” Aaron-010 asked as he and Jace-013 were picking her mind again.

“From the Zak’de’ron perspective, they’re too small to operate individually and their only use is in unison. Zen’zat were an experiment in a totally different direction, and one not prompted by the Zak’de’ron, but they did their thing with them regardless. Rit’ko’sor are meant to operate with a hive mind short of hindering their individual efficiency.”

“Expendable troops?” Jace asked.

“Not quite, but when the Zak’de’ron were gone that’s where the V’kit’no’sat went with them. Ari’tat are far smaller,” she reminded him. “The key to the Rit’ko’sor is the fact that they have decent combat ability individually, excel in groups, and don’t require the same foodstuffs and support facilities as the larger races. They’re a second tier race by design, but one with a purpose. They’re support, through and through, which is why the damage they did in the rebellion was so surprising.”

“You have knowledge of it?”

“Yeah. They probably stole most of it from the V’kit’no’sat. I’ve got pretty much everything on the Rit’ko’sor now,” Kara said, leaning on the railing casually as her eyes were on the little ones below and beyond. “We’ve got to do something drastically different with these guys, but I don’t see how we can veer too far off immediately. There’s no way we have enough genetic knowledge to tinker with what the Zak’de’ron set up. Not yet, anyway.”

“Then we make adjustments through training, not direct genetic alteration,” Aaron concluded.

“Agreed.”

“But?” Jace added.

“When the Zak’de’ron found the Rit’ko’sor they were primitive by comparison, save for their mental development. They were actually smarter then, but viciously self-destructive as a civilization. They killed more of each other than they did their enemies. The Zak’de’ron fixed that problem by constricting their minds with a heavy inclination to protect the group, to serve the group, to think as the group. Their individuality was seen as a threat, and rather than try to retool it they went with the pack model.”

“So if we try to weaken the pack, we might be unleashing the beast?” Jace asked.

“That’s my worry. Especially with all the psionics.”

“Nuts,” Aaron said, leaning against the rail on Kara’s left.

“Smarter how?” Jace asked.

“Deviousness mostly. Savvy manipulators and scoundrels.”

“Why did the Zak’de’ron want them then?”

“They were seen as a plague on the galaxy and the Zak’de’ron wanted to turn that headache into an advantage and throw them against the Hadarak. It was deemed an act of great mercy after they attacked a Zak’de’ron world.”

“They attacked them?”

“Well, not them exactly. It was one of their servant races outside the V’kit’no’sat. The Zak’de’ron fought to repel them, and that would normally mean the eradication of the attacker, but the Zak’de’ron chose to take a different route with them.”

“Which is why they had to put some safeguards in place,” Aaron added.

“Yeah,” Kara said, seeing the little herds moving in unison. Whenever one changed direction the others mimicked it almost instantly, making them look like schools of fish swimming through the short grasses. “If we’re not careful here, we could be creating a very big problem for ourselves.”

“Do you know what that genetic alteration process was?” Jace asked.

“I do, but it’s not something that can be deleted now. They’ve developed too much with it in place. The rest of their brain couldn’t function without it any more than you can unbake a cake. We’d have to create a new genetic template from scratch, and that’s too dangerous to attempt with a race this powerful.”

“So we’re still using the V’kit’no’sat toys rather than creating our own?”

“I’m open to suggestions guys. My knowledge is of the old. In fact, I’m kind of stuck in it. If there’s an outside the box solution here, I’ll probably be the last to see it.”

“You’re just the helper anyway,” Aaron said, elbowing Kara jokingly. “This is on us.”

“What are you thinking about doing?”

“Working the problems when they arise. So far we’re not seeing any.”

“It’s early.”

“We turned the Veliquesh and Trinx around, not to mention the lizards. And we did it with training, not mental restriction. We can handle these guys.”

“These have psionics, Aaron.”

“So do we…and they have one right now. We’re not going to unlock their Lachka and Pefbar for a while.”

“Why not?”

“Archons don’t get those first, we learn to use our bodies, then we get upgrades. We’re doing the same here.”

“So they’re not eating with it?”

“No. Is that unusual?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“It’s the arms,” Jace pointed out. “They can’t really feed themselves with them, so they eat like dogs, cats, Scionate, and most quadrupeds do. They’re fine with it.”

“The Zak’de’ron hate eating like that.”

“Why?”

“If they can’t direct the food into their mouths, it’s sloppy. With Lachka it goes right where they want it.”

“They’re prisses?” Aaron asked.

“You try eating with no hands and see how you like it.”

“But they do have hands.”

“Not like ours.”

“You’re telling me they can’t use them to eat?”

“They can, but it forces their snouts to point down, and they have to fight gravity. They can’t reach up to their faces like we can.”

“I’d call that a challenge,” Jace scoffed.

“They don’t. Eating without Lachka is seen as uncivilized.”

“They are prisses…”

“Is that why they gave all the V’kit’no’sat Lachka?” Aaron asked.

“Might be part of the reason, but not all of it. And eating gives them plenty of free Lachka practice.”

“I find that phrase insulting.”

“Ditto,” Jace agreed.

“We get practice using our hands,” Kara argued.

“Are you a Zen’zat or an Archon?”

Kara looked at him. “That bad?”

“You sound like a Dragon fangirl.”

She sighed. “Maybe I am.”

“Aaron, think we should yank that thing off her?”

“Might be a good idea.”

“We lose all the Rit’ko’sor data if you do,” she pointed out.

“So? We’d like our Kara back.”

“I’m not brainwashed guys.”

“Then start thinking like an Archon,” Jace said, poking her in the ribs telekinetically. “We do things our way, troubleshooting as we go, and if anyone gets out of line we have the ability to kick their ass. Stop worrying about the Raptors. We can handle this.”

“You don’t know them like I do.”

“I don’t care what their predecessors were like. These were just hatched and new to the galaxy. We’ll deal with them as they are, not as they’re predicted to be.”

“We also don’t have a lot of time, fellas.”

“She has a point there,” Aaron admitted.

“If we’re going to go down, we’re going to go down fighting our way. Not the V’kit’no’sat way. Clear?”

“Clear,” Kara said, glaring at Jace. “But we need to make the most out of the advantages that we have, and trying to rework everything with the Raptors isn’t smart when we’re pressed for time.”

“Oh for crying out loud,” Jace said, hopping up on the rail and standing perched there as he looked down at Kara. “Pull your head out of your ass and look around for once. Database knowledge is just notes. It’s not reality.”

The trailblazer hopped off and flew/floated down to the park where he landed amidst a group of several hundred little Raptors that split at the last moment to give him room. He knelt as he landed, with the little bipeds coming up to him to get petted.

“See?” he said, looking up at Kara and Aaron while he petted two simultaneously. “You’re just being an old prune.”

“Prune?” she asked, chin rising. “Are you willing to back that up, prick?”

“Gladly. Get your ass down here. The younglings could use a demonstration.”

“Fine,” Kara said, jumping up and over the railing as the herd ran off well wide of the two in response to a telepathic order.

“No armor. Just you and me babe,” Jace said cockily.

“It still upgrades me, you know.”

“I’m not worried.”

“As you wish,” Kara said, running towards him the moment her foot hit the ground.

Jace threw a Jumat blast at her, but Kara bisected it with a bioshield so it didn’t slow her much, getting up to him and throwing a punch as a Lachka field hit her in the foot. It tripped her up before she could pulse her Rentar, and Jace used the opportunity to launch into her, half running half flying, and landed an Archon punch into her chest that she only partially deflected.

It hit on her left shoulder and spun her around, with Jace getting behind her and grabbing her in a headlock. She tried to pry herself loose but she couldn’t. She was stronger, but he had leverage and was using his Lachka to enhance it. Kara pulsed her Rentar to cancel that then threw a Jumat blast from the center of her body to knock him off…but somehow he still held on and even wrapped his legs around her waist, lifting her off the ground and flying her up a couple meters before coming back down and smashing her underneath him into the ground.

He held her there, with her squirming to get loose, as Aaron calmly floated to the ground beside them and reached down to pet some of the watching Raptors that stood almost as high as his knee.

“This…isn’t…fighting,” Kara argued, still trying to get free.

“Can’t get free, huh?” Jace said, remarkably calm. “What happened to that superior strength?”

“Be…honest. You…just…want…to hump…me.”

“Now there’s some spite,” he congratulated her, but still wouldn’t let go. “But I can do this all day. Get yourself free, if you can.”

Kara flew upwards, fighting against Jace, but with gravity on his side she couldn’t get more than a few inches up. She tried to twirl, but he fought that as well and his own Yen’mer was stronger than hers…probably because she used her armor to fly a lot of the time and he didn’t have that luxury.

“Enough,” Kara said after a few more minutes. “I…can’t.”

“Sometimes you can’t win,” Aaron said, talking to the little Raptors. “It’s not your fault, but if you quit trying it is. She tried, but she wasn’t strong enough. Jace is an ally, so he wasn’t going to hurt her, so she could surrender. Enemies don’t give you that option, so you keep trying until you are unable to keep fighting. No quitters here. We live and learn from our mistakes so we can get strong enough to win when we fight our actual enemies.”

“Right now we’re protecting you so you can learn and grow here safely, but there will come a day when we can’t, and it will be on you to fight to protect yourself and each other. Remember, never give up against an enemy, no matter what, but there are no enemies here. We help each other learn and grow, and we never stop learning. Quiaff?”

“Aff,” the little Raptors said in unison, agreeing with him.

“Back to what you were doing,” he said, taking to the air along with the other two Humans as the Raptors scurried around, most of whom were looking at the much larger leaders until they were back up on the observation platform.

“What happened?” Jace asked when they were back amongst themselves.

“I held back,” she admitted.

“How?”

“I didn’t use my armor.”

“I didn’t have any, so we were equal. How is that holding back?”

“My Vorch’nas is part of me. Your armor is not.”

“Your?” Aaron said with a ‘tisk, tisk’ sound following. “You mean ‘our’ armor.”

“You said you were stronger even without it,” Jace said, not relenting. “Why couldn’t you free yourself?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted with a scowl.

“I do. You’re not thinking like an Archon, and you’ve become addicted to that thing. You don’t know how to fight without it anymore.”

“That’s not even remotely true.”

“You said you got a strength boost. Why couldn’t you free yourself?”

“You’re not that much weaker.”

“You dumbass. Why didn’t you even try any mental psionics? If you had made me twitch for even a moment you had a chance to wiggle free. You didn’t hit me with anything other than physical attacks.”

Kara froze, not even having considered that. “I didn’t, did I?”

“Hold still,” Aaron said, putting a hand on her forehead.

“And?” Jace asked.

“It’s been a while, but her mojo is different than I remember,” he said, pulling his hand back.

“How so?”

“Not sure, but you don’t feel the same.”

“I need more than that.”

“You feel…stiff.”

“That explains a lot,” Jace noted.

“How…” she asked, then she caught on. She wasn’t thinking beyond a few basic tactics. “Excuse me.”

Kara walked off the platform and through the doorway to the interior of the city, leaving the pair of trailblazers alone.

“Did we help?” Jace asked.

“I’m not sure what’s wrong with her, but she suspects something now. Give her time.”

“You think they did something to her?”

“She got a load of new Vik knowledge in her head. That’s going to take some time to assimilate. If we keep pressing her, she’ll probably work through it and get her mojo back. She also unwittingly gave away all our secrets. I’d be kicking myself for a long time if I did that…”

“She should have been able to get free. I didn’t have to try that hard.”

“I noticed. She’s not herself right now, and I think it’s partly because she feels like she let us down.”

“She’s not wrong about the Raptors. The group think is gonna stay unless we come up with an epiphany.”

“They’re not the Archons, we are, so the herd can be useful so long as we provide a pathway for individuals to emerge. It’s clear the Zak’de’ron didn’t want that happening.”

“So…wanna play with the kiddos?”

“The more contact we have with them the better. I’ve got another half hour, so why not?”

“I’ll match that,” Jace said, with both trailblazers hopping over the railing again to spend some time with the little dinosaurs that would eventually grow into a major asset for Star Force if the 1s came through on this, and after the success of the 2s with the lizards, there was no way in hell they were going to do anything less.

The next three days were unpleasant ones for Kara as she dug into her own psyche for the majority of that time, doing very few workouts and just trying to get a handle on what was going on. She should have been able to beat Jace even without her armor, but she couldn’t even get out of a headlock. And what made it worse was she hadn’t even tried everything. For whatever reason she hadn’t even considered using her mental psionics, and that bothered her more than anything. She’d given up without trying everything, and to be honest, at the time, she was focused on her Vorch’nas as the key to getting out and her not using it was her holding back.

She was seeing it as the answer to everything and hadn’t even bothered to use her wide array of psionics…and that wasn’t her. Aaron was right, her mojo was gone, and she couldn’t even remember when she’d lost it.

Kara was sitting in her quarters on her bed in a cross-legged pose, digging into her mind further when her comm unit beeped, pulling her out of her introspection. She unfurled her legs and walked over to it, knowing only a handful of individuals had been set to ping her upon receipt of a message, and she was pleased to see it was from Paul.

“I figured it out, Kara,” his holo said when she flicked it on as she stood in front of the console. “There was a key phase needed to activate it, and an obscure one at that. I was just messing around when I found it. It’s ‘Excalibur, be my strength,’ which comes from a very old and obscure cartoon. I don’t know why they expected me to know that, or if they expected me to figure it out this quickly…and I’m guessing not on the latter.”

“Kara, it’s a database. It contains the Zak’de’ron notes on the Rit’ko’sor, probably the same that you got on your Vorch’nas, but it also contains similar notes for every race in the V’kit’no’sat. Every damn one Kara, and only I can use it. I can’t remember much when I’m not touching the sword, but when in physical contact I can access it like a second part of my brain. It’s a wealth of knowledge, and I’ve got it secured in a special chamber onboard the Excalibur, just in case it can transmit and is a Trojan horse to get information out of me.”

“My read on this is simple. If we can find a way to survive the V’kit’no’sat, and actually start beating them, this is the Dragons’ way of saying we can annex whatever we can from them. They’re done with the V’kit’no’sat and are going to wipe them out one day, but we’re free to collect and reuse as much of them as we want. It doesn’t say that directly, but the implications are pretty clear. The only reason we’d need that level of information from the past is if we are going to assimilate them like we’re doing with the Rit’ko’sor…”

Kara listened as Paul went on, detailing some of what he’d discovered and wanting her take on it, but she only half listened as a different conversation was taking place inside her.

She looked down at her Vorch’nas, realizing that the valuable Rit’ko’sor data wasn’t unique to her anymore. The Zak’de’ron had probably given her that sword for Paul to use some day down the road, long after the truce ended and the war resumed. They probably thought it was a long shot…an investment for the future, just in case Star Force prevailed.

Kara had never heard that phrase before, and if it was really obscure it wasn’t meant to be something accessed immediately, but a puzzle the Zak’de’ron knew that Paul wouldn’t let go.

But they’d underestimated him and he’d figured it out in only a few months. That meant Kara no longer needed to be the Rit’ko’sor expert and she could disappear into the galaxy with her Clan and not be a continuing security threat to Star Force anymore.

But there was also this mojo problem, and for the first time in a long time, Kara looked down at her left arm and seriously considered why she was keeping it.

She sat down on the edge of her bed, questioning her sanity for not having had this discussion with herself earlier. Before the security breach the Vorch’nas had been an asset, but now it was also a liability, so why keep it? She hadn’t even been able to take Jace without deploying the armor, and at the very minimum she should have been able to get out of that headlock.

“Kara you fool,” she said to herself while looking at her arm. “This has to end, and if Paul has the Rit’ko’sor knowledge then…hell, even that doesn’t matter. Aaron and Jace were right. We can deal with the Raptors our way and learn as we go. Why the hell haven’t I…”

Kara looked down at the clear jewel running the length of her forearm. “Damn you. You’ve been helpful, but you’re not worth this,” she said, getting up and leaving her quarters on the planet to head up to her command ship that was sitting quietly in orbit.

When she got up there she went straight to the armory, getting a death saber and strapping the pack on her back before grabbing a stun pistol and heading off to her personal quarters onboard the ship, drawing a few odd looks from the crew in the corridors.

Kara closed and locked her door, then stood in the center of her room as grim determination took hold of her. This was stupid, but the most direct solution to the problem. And to be honest, she deserved this for the security breach. There was no way the secrets she’d let slip could ever be taken back, and Star Force was going to be the weaker for it.

Nefron was exposed, as was Shangri-La and dozens of other secrets that had to be kept, and she had unwittingly let them get stolen. No more. She had to be an Archon, not a lackey for the Zak’de’ron.

Kara had the death saber strapped to her right arm, with the power line connected to the backpack, but the left one was still tethered on the pack. It wasn’t going to be needed, and Kara pointed the stun pistol in her right hand towards her left arm, making sure one last time that she was really going to do this.

“Now or never, Kara,” she said, then shot her arm multiple times until it fell limp, hanging off her shoulder. Her head felt the wash of stun energy, making her a little loopy, but the rest of her body was still functioning more or less and she used her telekinesis to lift her arm back up in front of her and gave it one more shot for good measure.

Kara dropped the stun pistol and ignited the death saber, with the glowing white blade leaping off the back of her hand where the gauntlet was attached. The perfectly flat blade was so narrow you could barely see it from the edge, but was better than an inch wide, and would cut virtually anything on contact.

Kara, keeping her numb arm level telekinetically, slipped the blade underneath her elbow, then flicked it up with such a casual gesture it seemed inconsequential…as did her severed arm with the Vorch’nas attached dropping to the floor with a gentle thud.

Even though her arm was numb, she felt the effect somehow, not to mention smelling the cauterized tissue that was now seeping blood. She saw the drops falling on the floor as she deactivated the death saber and shrugged off the backpack…then recoiled in horror as the Vorch’nas began to transform, leaving her severed arm and crawling on little spindly legs it spawned towards Kara’s foot.

She stepped back, but it jumped towards her upper leg. Thankfully she got her bioshields on in time and it bounced off, but it tried to come after her again, maybe programmed to attach itself to the main part of her body and begin repair, knowing it couldn’t regenerate a new body from her severed arm, but it didn’t matter. There was no way it was going to get back on her again.

Kara telekinetically grabbed the death saber pack, half pulling it over her shoulder as she slid the gauntlet back on her hand while pushing the Vorch’nas away with her bioshields each time it jumped at her…then she ignited and swiped the glowing blade across it…which knocked it into her bed with a glowing red gash in it, but it hadn’t been cut in two as she expected.

“Fucker…” she said, grabbing it telekinetically and pulling it into the air where she went feral on it with the death saber, requiring dozens of slashes before it was cut into pieces that didn’t try to reform themselves as they did the first few times.

Kara didn’t stop there. She kept cutting, making sure the damn thing was dead, then dropped to the ground next to it as she shrugged off the pack again and stood on her knees and one arm while the other dripped blood with the stump hanging from her still numb shoulder.

She kept an eye on the fragments, but they didn’t move. Her head did, swirling in more than just stun effect, and in less than a minute her mind cleared and she was fully able to see just what the Zak’de’ron had done to her.

“You fucking bastards…you fucking bastards!” she yelled, recognizing the suppression effect now that it had lifted.

Kara stood up and dragged herself to the comm, punching it with her good hand as her head hurt…a lot, and she knew her injury would be soon to follow once the numbing wore off.

“Captain, I need a security containment team in my quarters now! I also have a severed arm and need a medtech here. Don’t ask questions, just get a toxic containment unit. We have alien tech that is a threat, and I’m not sure I completely killed it. Contain it, and get me to a med bay before I bleed out.”

“On route,” the Captain said, not wasting any time despite his not understanding.

Kara flicked off the comm and sat down on her comm chair, staring at the remains of the Vorch’nas as an ache in her arm began to manifest. It would be getting a lot worse, so she knew not to go roaming around the ship. Let the medtechs come to her, and she had one last duty to make sure the Vorch’nas didn’t ensnare anyone else.

“I’m an Archon,” she said, looking at the remains of the Zak’de’ron tech, “not your damn tool. And neither is Paul. If we win and annex the V’kit’no’sat, we’ll do it our way. The Star Force way.”

“And if we have to fight you bastards someday, so be it. I’ll be at the head of the waiting line.”

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