Star Force, page 10
part #66 of Star Force Universe Series
But it was when they linked up with Wardens that their power skyrocketed, for they could suck Essence out of them to refill or even fire directly from them when attached. Star Force was better than the Hadarak fleet, but they couldn’t kill them fast enough to protect the planets in their path.
And whenever an Avenger was out operating solo, the Lurkers tried to pick them off. They would move in packs of 3 or 4 and deliberately go after the ships when they were backing up a regular attack fleet…then the Lurkers would leave and let the rest of the Hadarak fight it out on their own. The Lurkers were anti-Essence assassins, and were by far the most dangerous unit the Hadarak had.
Which meant the hunters had to be hunted. Jason would be there doing that now if he didn’t have other duties to attend to…perhaps far more important duties…but Paul, Liam, and Roger were the ones that the trailblazers had tasked with going directly after the Lurkers. The ‘regular’ battles were intense enough, but the slightly weaker naval skills of the others and the naval specialists were sufficient for that bulk work. The Lurkers were sneaky and adaptive, and Star Force needed their most adaptive naval legends there to counter them, with that trio spread out across the galaxy hunting in each of their assigned regions.
Paul had gotten Keychain after a long hunt, avenging the Lurker that had killed Riona-111’s fleet, and his Clan Saber task force had racked up another 18 Lurker kills to date. Roger had 14 and Liam had 20, which was insane given how wide spread they were. Hunting down assassins was damn near impossible because they didn’t want to show themselves until the moment of ambush, making setting up a detection and comm grid essential in the war zone.
It had to be a mobile one, else the Hadarak would instantly take it down when they found it, and the trailblazers had their mobile networks out and moving through clumps of star systems like fishermen trolling nets. When they got a hit they were able to converge more nets and narrow down the location of the Lurker or Lurkers, but they had to get to them outside a star, for they could just dive down inside one and hide for as long as they wanted.
It was impossible work that Jason wanted to join in on, but his mission out here held the greatest danger of all…and that was the potential threat of the Founders.
The PanNari weren’t going to be involved in that, for they were going to colonize a number of uninhabited planets…repay the cargo they’d stolen…and gear up to support the Elloquim as they began to hit the weakest Hadarak units. Several of them would be going with Nevantha immediately to begin doing just that, directed by Star Force to the regions where the mainline and Lurkers were not known to be. Areas where Star Force couldn’t send a single ship, because they didn’t have enough, and the Hadarak minions were taking systems without so much as a Warden helping them do it.
The Elloquim claimed to be able to kill Wardens, but that remained to be determined…not to mention how much damage they would take doing it. Grand Admiral Thot had been informed they were coming and he was going to coordinate with them while Jason stayed here and continued to explore what the Founders had been hiding.
What he’d already found as a lot of infrastructure spread out like grains of sand in between star systems where no one else jumping the grav lanes would ever find it. And amongst that infrastructure was a very elaborate natural resource collection system that was never too obvious when it reached out into the uninhabited planets in the galaxy, sucked up what it needed, then disappeared into the shadows again.
Their space whale hunting division was not unique, for they were also capturing and harvesting other large life forms, some of which inhabited stars, nebula, and even some planets. Jason was currently engaged in an ongoing war to put an end to those operations, but they kept regenerating and requiring him to lock down the dark and shadow networks piece by piece.
That war with the Caretakers had gotten expensive in terms of resources, and they weren’t letting down at all, but Jason was winning up to a certain points…and when he crossed those points in the network the resistance became overwhelming, in addition to guided.
He had never seen one of them, but he believed the Founders were actively leading the Caretaker forces in these battles as they fought to keep him away from the very edge of the galaxy. Not just on the outer swirl, but various places on top and bottom of the disc that opened up to the intergalactic void. Jason had suspected there was something big they were hiding out here, and while he couldn’t pass by the transit points to get there he could visually search the starlight.
After a lot of methodically surveying from as close as his forces could get, he’d been able to find two separate locations with constructs that dwarfed everything else the Founders had built save for the Temples. At first he had thought they were narrow and long space stations, but after sending some kamikaze drones jumping past them to get images…then breaking apart and launching small pieces backward to get the necessary kinetic motion to redirect from leaving the galaxy…he’d eventually got a long range, but decent view of what was there.
It wasn’t long and narrow. He had been looking at the side of a giant coin set edge on to the galaxy to hide its width. Both of the ones he’d found were identical in size, and wider than Mercury’s orbit around Sol. Still smaller than the diameter of all the Temples, but mind bogglingly large and covered with land and water, presumably on both sides, but the newer batch of kamikaze drones hadn’t gotten there by other angles and reported back yet for him to know.
What he did know what that there was a hidden microstar above the center of the coin and shielded so that its light would only be directed down onto the land and nowhere else. It wouldn’t give away the location of the coin as a normal star would, for it was cloaked save for the flashlight side.
But around the coin were other smaller facilities, including what looked like an acceleration line. Not a disc, but a railed line similar to the barrel of a giant gun. On the other half of the formation of stations was a disc, and the probe could tell that both were putting out immense magnetic fields.
Jason guessed this was the edge of an intergalactic transit system that would bypass the gravitational tethers in the center of the galaxy that the Hadarak were guarding, and as such the Founders didn’t want Jason’s or anyone else’s forces getting to them. There were probably at least some Founders living on the Coin, but Jason couldn’t get to them and they weren’t interested in talking. He’d tried to send messages through the Caretakers, but nothing had responded back yet…other than an 18% increase in Caretaker units flowing out into the rest of the networks.
This limited contact with the Caretakers indicated that they were not going to be friends, and if Jason couldn’t get to those Coins and shut down the links, an army of Essence wielders far superior to Star Force could come through at any time and rip out the heart of their empire in a way that would make what the Vargemma did to Earth and other worlds look tame in comparison.
Finding out what was hidden behind the other duck blinds would be a major step forward in his private war out here, but Jason knew he was a long, long way from being able to directly fight the Founders.
He just hoped their buildup in this galaxy was expendable and they were too busy fighting the Hadarak elsewhere to care about Star Force’s interference with their toys here.
Kyra waited onboard Nevantha as the Elloquim docked with the node and began transferring out supplies that he’d collected while importing a few things he still needed. The other Elloquim here and around the black hole were being informed of what had happened and some of them were beginning to stir, but none were ready to leave just yet.
As for her, no orders had come through yet. She kept waiting for Nevantha to tell her where to go or to be recalled by the Architects, or Chiggo, for discipline, and assignment, or something…but nothing happened, leaving her waiting and watching inside of Nevantha until she finally decided to ask him about it.
“Your future path is your choice, Kyra. What do you wish to do?”
“Whatever I am needed for,” she answered.
“You could be useful in a number of roles. What do you want to do?”
Kyra thought about that for a moment rather than repeating her earlier statement.
“I wish to keep this body. I do not wish to become a Craniem.”
“Already stated. What do you wish to do with your body?”
“Something useful,” she said pointlessly before adding, “that is out in the galaxy. I do not want to remain in the node.”
“Why?”
“I do not wish to learn about the galaxy. I wish to experience it and share what I learn with others.”
“You wish access to unlimited data rather than being confined to the summaries of others?”
“I wish to live rather than simulate,” she said, again feeling a little treasonous at defying the very state of her race.
“You have found a flaw in the Dominion?”
“No. It is…”
“I have,” Nevantha declared. “It will not be implemented in its current fashion on the worlds we are about to colonize. We believe the PanNari have made serious miscalculations in the past, and we intend to correct them when we have the requisite knowledge.”
“The QuipNari can exist without the Dominion. How can the PanNari?”
“In their present state they cannot. But the Elloquim can. We are designed for it, as are you. We must lead our people out of the stagnation we have unwittingly submitted ourselves to, but before we can effectively do so we must look to ourselves and our own inefficiencies. But to you, Kyra. Your efforts have enabled all this to come to pass. Your reward is choosing any path you wish. Even to become an Elloquim if that is what you desire.”
Kyra blinked. That offer was insanely desirable, but as she processed what that would mean it soured to the point she realized that while everyone else dreamed of being an Elloquim, what she really wanted to be was out amongst the galaxy. Not in space, but with the other people out there, and most people were not as large as Hadarak.
“I do not want to give up this body. Not even to become an Elloquim. I cannot logically explain why.”
“Very good,” Nevantha said, pleased. “Will you return to the QuipNari?”
“It is the task I am most suited for.”
“Is it the one you desire?”
“I do not understand how I could desire something other than my task.”
“Do you sense another task, unnamed, that would suit you better?”
Kyra considered that. “I do not know. I feel a sense to keep moving, and a fear of placement. That is why I do not wish to become a Craniem. I fear if I stop moving I will lose what little sense of self I have recently gained.”
“Then travel with me to the Hadarak front.”
“What use can I be there?”
“Put aside use. Do you wish to go?”
“I do.”
“Is it preferable to QuipNari service?”
“I do not know since it is an unknown variable, but I wish to go anyway.”
“I will have unique use for you onboard from time to time. Will you be satisfied with roaming my interior in the interim?”
“I believe so. The unscripted nature of exploration is something I find intriguing, and there is much of your interior that I have not mapped.”
“You will never map it all, for it is constantly changing.”
“Then I will never be without a pending task.”
“We will depart in 3 hours, 56 minutes, and 21 seconds. If you wish to converse with Chiggo or anyone else directly, you have a limited window to do so.”
“May I use a direct link? I’d prefer not to physically return.”
“Fear?”
“Perhaps. That direction is also backward. I do not wish to go backward.”
“Exterior comm access granted,” Nevantha said, with his hologram disappearing.
Kyra continued to walk on exploring more of Nevantha’s interior on her bare feet and nude body until she came to another data port and connected through it to the node, finding Chiggo within the Dominion where she appeared in a ghostlike form as her attention was split between there and here.
She had some lingering questions for her mentor, as well as a desire to say goodbye, for this was not a mission that she would be returning from. It was open ended, and into a combat zone, with Kyra feeling a sense that one way or another she would not be returning here again…and by here she didn’t mean the node. But the heart of PanNari civilization. She belonged on the frontier. That much she was certain of.
The rest she would have to figure out on the way. And it seemed Nevantha was encouraging her to do so for more than just gratitude’s sake.
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Aer-ki Jyr, Star Force
