Star Force: Phoenix (Star Force Universe Book 62)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  Cal-com had been told how big the Temples were, but now he was getting a personal feel for it. When his ship entered the conduit ahead of the grav stop, the view of the massive sphere disappeared and the narrow tunnel around the warship felt extremely claustrophobic, but Cal-com knew they had plenty of clearance on either side, given how accurate Star Force’s navigational technology was, in addition to the skill of their pilots.

  He wasn’t commanding this ship, only riding along, and even though he was anticipating the coming view, his breath caught in his throat when the ship exited the far end of the conduit and rose up into the Temple interior.

  Cal-com saw the inside, lit up brightly everywhere by the small artificial star in the center. The land was as flat as flat could be, but far off in the distance he could see it curve upwards ever so slightly…but when he looked above the scattered clouds he could see land where space should have been. So very far away he couldn’t make out land from water, but the grid lines of the massive cities were visible as tiny hairs nearby, though they disappeared the further away you got.

  On the far side of the Temple was a massive white wall, and it was that wall that caught him off guard. In space the emptiness was vast, but here it had definitive boundaries. He used a nearby console on the bridge to do some checking for himself, and confirmed the amount of empty space inside. How anyone could have built something like this, and the power that civilization must have had, boggled his mind. And this wasn’t just one Temple. They had done so 2934 times, at the minimum, and there might be more like Beta out there that hadn’t been discovered by the Vargemma yet.

  Cal-com had thought the Elders were the ultimate power, but being here he realized how wrong he was. The Elders could not do this, even at their height of power in the distant past. Nor did the Elders have Essence powers, as now Cal-com did. Whoever these Founders were, they were a force beyond his new empire, and he hoped they were either friendly, neutral…or long since dead.

  And from what he had learned they did not live in this galaxy. They had built these Temples for the resistance against the Hadarak, who were defeating everyone else across multiple galaxies. Cal-com felt how outclassed he was as his ship tilted over and began skimming the atmosphere as it headed for the nearest portals where other smaller masses of ships were waiting for transit, and beyond them there were large fleets building up that he assumed were new assault forces for Temples that had not yet been invaded.

  And every ship had to be powered by Essence to get from one Temple to another. So much so that no invasion force could ever threaten the Vargemma here…except that Star Force had befriended the Uriti, who due to their Hadarak heritage had the ability to donate their Essence at will while not being able to use it, as far as they knew, for anything else. It was the Uriti that were allowing this invasion to happen, and several of the ships around the nearest portal were Essence tankers bringing in the fuel to power the portals from the outside, but then those ships couldn’t return so long as the grav jump link was taking in ships from the outside.

  But Star Force had plenty of tankers to send, and eventually they’d be given a break to get back out again. Until then they’d camp here, and there was plenty to see.

  Everything was green, but the plants were small and new. These areas had recently been covered in ice, and that ice was now melted and residing in a number of lakes and oceans that evaporated the water up into the clouds and precipitated it back out into the watershed that fed the rivers that went back to the lakes and oceans. When in the air the clouds stayed put in their regions, for the border cities were higher than them, and higher than the atmosphere in most cases, isolating one region from another and allowing for almost all of the Temple Regions to be absolutely frigid.

  That’s why the far side of the Temple looked white. It was a solid sheet of ice that Star Force would not be allowing to melt anytime soon. Give the Temple enough Essence to thaw it all out and it’d devote some of that Essence to raising the external shield…which would block the access of the fleet and truly trap them inside.

  That’s how tenuous Star Force’s access to the Temple network was. Only the limited activity of this Temple was allowing them their invasion corridor. Had it been up and running like the others, then the Temple network would truly have been impregnable against any threat this galaxy could throw at it.

  Which was why Star Force taking possession of it was so critical. The future of the galaxy, and perhaps multiple galaxies, lay in Star Force’s ability to learn from the Temples and assimilate their technology and knowledge. They would not become thralls to the Founders, dead or alive, but like the V’kit’no’sat before them, Star Force would take the advantages offered and explode in growth because of it. It had happened once before. Cal-com had observed it from the outside, and he did not doubt it would happen again, only this time he couldn’t fathom what the outcome would be.

  And he was going to play a key part in it, for the Vargemma couldn’t be removed from the Temple network. The Essence cost of that would far exceed the movement of the fleet. In fact it would dwarf it, so the Vargemma had to stay. Others would have simply killed them and be rid of the threat they posed, and that would be the fastest and far easier way to handle it. The Elders would have done so, but Star Force would not and Cal-com…despite the infinite problems it would pose him in the coming centuries…was proud to be part of an Empire that didn’t seek out the easy solutions. They sought true power…and true power couldn’t be achieved through betrayal. That was something the Elders had never learned, nor perhaps never cared to question.

  What was Star Force? It wasn’t a person, or even a group of people. It was a way of doing things, and that way had to be 100% solid to be effective on planet after planet with people who would never know or meet each other. It had to be solid so someone being born later could study Star Force records, even if the empire was completely destroyed, and rebuild as if nothing had changed.

  There was no cheating. No backstabbing. And no killing because someone was in the way. The Vargemma were going to be a major nuisance, but Star Force would contain them and see who amongst the varied races could be salvaged. And perhaps, in that, Star Force would gain more power, but that wasn’t the reason for keeping them alive. It was because simply killing the Vargemma to be rid of them would be wrong.

  When one conquered another, the victor became responsible for the loser. That was the way of conquest, and if you couldn’t bear the responsibility then you shouldn’t be fighting in more than self-defense in the first place. Conquest was an art that few ever mastered, but Star Force was one who had wrote a very extensive book on it. And many of the most powerful races within Star Force had once been conquered and absorbed, by various means, and that is how it was meant to happen.

  An empire that simply slaughtered all opponents was, among other things, a pathetic disappointment.

  There were no people here in Beta, other than what Star Force had brought in or grown here, in the case of the Paladin. But Cal-com wasn’t staying, and his ship went straight to the head of the line at the nearest portal as the convoy that was going through stopped short. They’d learned that you could send hundreds of ships through in quick order if you denoted them as a convoy and gave the necessary Essence for them all up front, but otherwise you would have to feed the portal the necessary Essence and select the destination for each ship, which was done now for his.

  The shimmering effect over the portal returned, and his warship moved down into the surface, seeming to go below ground, then something snapped and all external cameras went dark. No one on the ship could see anything, except for Cal-com. He had just enough skill to enhance his vision to see the Essence realm engulfing the ship, and the majesty of it floored him. From the giant flowers shooting ships off with regularity to the root-like lines that crisscrossed the entire sphere like a giant bird’s nest, he realized that the visible technology of the Temple was only one level of the Founders’ power…and this was the other.
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  Before his Essence-enhanced vision was always very hard to use, but here it was easy. He was actually in the Essence realm, so there was nothing else to interfere with it. He sat on the bridge as everyone else looked at blank screens as the portal system carried the ship helplessly to its next target…which would be a relay point. No one else saw it, but a giant flower caught them on the other end, then they were moved around to another before being shot off again. Eventually they came to their final destination and the ship snapped back into reality, with the interior of Kappa Temple being visible.

  Cal-com was ready for it this time, but there was no ice here…at least where it wasn’t wanted. The entire interior of the sphere was a mix of green and blue with little specs of ice…and a mass of battlemap signals from the occupation fleet that was equally spread around the Temple’s surface, with only a few signals in the center hollow.

  “Welcome to the war,” the Bsidd captain told him as they got a slew of updates on the current situation. “Your orders have you transiting to a command ship. We’ll have you there in about 19 hours.”

  “Is there fighting here?” Cal-com asked.

  “Nothing from the Caretakers, if that’s what you mean,” the Captain said, checking again. “And it looks like the Vargemma are staying quiet…for now.”

  “Then why do you call it a war?”

  “The surface isn’t secured. We only own the sky. I have a feeling they will not give it up peaceably. Others have suggested this Temple is a ticking time bomb and will blow like the others have, forcing us to fight the Caretakers as well.”

  “Something is different here, or that would have already taken place,” Cal-com said, looking out at the god-like technology of the Temple, where he and his Star Force brothers would be living indefinitely. This was now home, for better or worse, and Paul was right. There was so much here he could never explore it all…not to mention this Temple was more than twice as big as Beta and sitting inside an even larger nebula that would sustain it with all the energy it needed for billions of years to come.

  And all of it was now under Cal-com’s stewardship.

  Including the 219,388,291,392,022 hostile Vargemma inhabiting the surface, which he was here to annex into the empire.

  Cal-com brushed the wide shoulder plates that denoted him as the newly minted rank of ‘Reclaimer,’ a title that he was going to have to earn immediately. For not only were the Vargemma hostile, they were also hostages of the Caretakers, who could kill them at will if their programming decided it was necessary.

  The Voku eyed the battlemap and highlighted the location of all the Olopars…which he could not attack or disable without precipitating that war.

  This was by far the most challenging assignment he’d ever been trusted with, and though he didn’t know how exactly to bring the Vargemma into the fold, he did not doubt that he would find a way. Paul trusted him to do so, and Cal-com trusted in his own skills enough to confirm that. If there was a way, he would find it. If there was not, he would make one. Failure was not an option, and Cal-com would not have been sent here if it was…

  5

  March 30, 128555

  Nephestus System (Repository System, Terraxia Kingdom)

  Ittalika

  Kara-317 had reported back through the expanded relay network as soon as she could, but without transmitting the bulk of her data. The news that Earth had been decimated and Star Force was pulled out of offensive operations against the Hadarak so they could fight a war with these Vargemma was not what she had been expecting when she returned from her scouting mission. But as soon as word could reach back to her across the galaxy, she had a very encrypted message ordering her to a system on the Star Force side of the Hula Hoop…which she also learned was partially shut down due to damage.

  Once she arrived in that system she got a hand delivered message ordering her to come to the Repository. Kara had abandoned her scout ship, parting ways with her loyal diminutive crew, and took a series of ships out that were unremarkable, thus hiding her transit to the system where Davis had been hiding out since he barely survived the destruction of Earth.

  When she landed in the hangar Davis was there to meet her, and she wrapped him up in a firm hug.

  “I’m glad they didn’t get you,” she said, with her Vorch’nas brushing against the back of his neck.

  “I owe the Knights of Quenar for that. How bad was it?”

  “I had some help,” Kara admitted as she released him, but only to arms’ length as she still held onto his elbows. “A Zak’de’ron tagged along in his own ship, but it turned out to be helpful in the end.”

  “They knew?”

  Kara nodded. “Yeah. Their intelligence gathering is still top notch. We got into a few fights, and his ship was much better equipped than mine. We couldn’t go all the way, but we learned a lot. As I said in my message, we’re screwed if we try to fight our way in there.”

  “First things, first. This Zak’de’ron…”

  “His name is Pol’ake, and he was interested in gathering intel. We both got what we wanted, and not enough. It is thick in there. Mindlessly thick. It makes our systems look empty.”

  “Thick with ships?” Davis asked as he stood in the hangar, with neither of them moving to leave.

  “No, not ships. Something new. It’s like a tree they build in space, infesting it as if it were dirt. The major jumplanes are clear, but the rest is obscured with infrastructure that is grown. That’s the best I can explain it. We couldn’t get close enough to sample an intact one. And it’s in every system once you get far enough in. Every damn one. No gravity well is left uninfested.”

  “New Hadarak forms?”

  “Oh yeah. And they’ve got some fast ones. They’re pretty much homing missiles. If we hadn’t kept our distance they would have caught us. You can’t go anywhere near the stars, and even a cloaking device didn’t work in some areas. These structures can use Essence to see…and to grapple with anything that comes close. It might be some form of automated defenses, or it might be the living components of what we came to call the ‘nest.’ There are a lot of different forms, but they’re thick enough around the stars to dim the light coming out of them. I don’t know where they get the mass. It adds up to millions of planets worth.”

  “And you can’t get very close to the pieces of this nest without them intercepting you?”

  “Either with units or an Essence grip. I felt it hit the ship once, very wispy like. Not enough to stop us, but I knew if we got any closer that power level would increase. And the range they were doing it at meant they were really pumping out the power. It was beyond Tar’vem’jic range, so they must have a huge store of Essence in the nests.”

  “So we can’t attack them without taking damage?”

  “I think they could wipe out our entire fleet in moments if we came within range. I’ve been reading up on the Vargemma and the Temples. Maybe they have some weapons that can out distance them, but we’ve got nothing to work with aside from throwing rocks at them, which they can probably catch or deflect. Maybe eat. Running them out of Essence is the only play we’ve got, if they’ve got the kind of Essence weaponry the Lurkers have.”

  “What do they have that can come out to us?”

  “A lot. I don’t think the nests can move, but there’s a lot of critters in and around them, and most are defensive. I think it’s their equivalent of a moat. We got through it, but only because someone else had torn a chunk out of it.”

  “You said there was another player in the Core.”

  “We were able to pick up some survivors and analyze damaged ships. If they hadn’t been fighting we never would have got anything from the Hadarak. The minions don’t know much, but they had some information for us. It’s the others that knew more. Particularly a comms nexus that was barely alive. It had a cluster hive in it…the Hadarak further in are either tanky defense units or clusters of different tissues that are individually born, but they are designed to work togeth
er. The comms nexus uses Essence to send signals from one system to another, connecting the nests, and a few pieces of one were still alive and unable to defend against Ikrid. We learned a whole lot.”

  “What’s the worst of it?” Davis asked.

  “They sent the gardeners against us.”

  Davis frowned, then took her meaning as she simply nodded. “We don’t have a chance against their mainline?”

  “Not if we go in there. The larger jump distances out here are to our advantage, but if they come they will run over anything we’ve got.”

  “We’ve got Avengers now.”

  “I saw that. Unless you can field a fleet of a million of them, don’t get cocky.”

  “Their ships can all use Essence?”

  “I don’t think so, but they don’t have to. They’ve got a lot of other ways to fight, including a virus-sized version that will infect and grow inside an enemy until it reaches enough mass to take control of the body. And it grows fast.”

  “Did you…”

  “No. But we saw it in action. The Core is not all Hadarak territory. There’s active fighting there. I think what’s out on the Rim doesn’t concern them. We’re just weeds that need to be chopped off every now and then.”

  “How many other civilizations did you find?”

  “One big one and four smaller ones. All are biological.”

  “Really?” Davis said, knowing that virtually all the races encountered in the galaxy thus far were only spacefaring where technology was used. Being able to fly through the stars on your own biology was extremely rare. “Pictures?”

  “Yeah, I’ll get to that,” she said gravely. “But you need to hear this first. Most of our intel is from telepathy, from both the Hadarak and the big race that we named the Ikeo. Their own name is basically ‘us’ and Ikeo is the shortened version of it. They’re essentially a bee hive, and the flowers they feed on are black holes. They can see inside them using a type of Essence vision, and that’s brought them into direct conflict with the Hadarak, who live exclusively in black holes. And when I say Hadarak I mean their leaders. They’re native to them, and they cannot exist outside of them.”