Star Force: Phoenix (Star Force Universe Book 62)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  They were hard to kill, but not in a war against Essence users. If isolated, a Warden Hadarak could be killed quickly by several Olopar working together. Whatever Essence used would be worth it, for that amount could be replaced infinitely quicker than a new Hadarak grown to that size and experience level. So the Vargemma planned to go for the Wardens to the exclusion of all else and drain the Hadarak of their ability to recharge their Essence weapons.

  The Temples were pretty much safe from the minions, and the Vargemma didn’t really care how much of the galaxy burned during the war as long as their own Essence production was secure. The reason they hadn’t attacked the Hadarak yet was due to their orders to stay put until a Founder arrived, in addition to the estimated number of Hadarak and the amount of Essence it would take to kill them.

  They didn’t assume they’d all be isolated, and when in groups or with the mainline units the combat would become far more costly. Cal-com actually got some Temple data from the Vargemma that Star Force couldn’t access yet on its own, and it confirmed much of what Kara’s report detailed…with one major exception.

  The Vargemma probably didn’t know that Star Force didn’t know what was in the center of the galaxy, and they’d slipped up by revealing the method of transit between galaxies when they noted that the Hadarak could bring in an unlimited number of reinforcements, meaning the Vargemma could only assault the Core if and when they had massed so many that they could overrun it quickly and get to the Galactic Tethers.

  Apparently there were a number of supermassive gravitational bodies in the very center of the galaxy, each orbiting around the other in a blender far more rapidly compared to the movement of the stars around the galaxy. Those Tethers were shining with gravity enough to be visible from another galaxy if you looked in the right direction and modulated the gravity correctly to differentiate from the rest of the cluttered Core. Somehow the Spice Lords were able to alter the black holes to produce gravity on a particular frequency, and that would then stand out like a beacon across the polar gaps to other galaxies.

  But there was the catch. You couldn’t jump any direction you wanted. Only in a cone up and down, meaning any galaxies sideways of the Milky Way were not accessible via direct jumps. You’d have to travel to another galaxy then bounce off it to get to your destination, meaning the inter-galactic jump map was a lot more limited than you’d think at first glance.

  The Vargemma did not have access to that, or at least claimed they didn’t. Cal-com didn’t think they were lying, but the point was that those Tethers, when held by the Spice Lords, were conduits for reinforcements that did not require Essence use. If the Vargemma could get there and set up ambushes as they arrived, then they could mount an effective defense of the galaxy…but they were far too weak to accomplish that now. The Hadarak had too many defenses in between them and the Tethers, and without a Founder they didn’t stand a chance of finding a way to get there before a rush of extra-galactic Hadarak arrived to reinforce the position.

  So getting to the Tethers was the endgame for the Vargemma, but it was such a distant objective that most in their civilization didn’t regard it as plausible. The return of the Founders was equally distant, for they believed that they would not return until the Vargemma got close to having enough strength to reach the Tethers…which as far as most Vargemma considered was never…or at least not within their lifetimes.

  Which was odd, for very few died here. They had obtained self-sufficiency long ago, so it had to be a mental limitation on their part. Cal-com wouldn’t have blinked at waiting that long with a fixed objective in place. He would have focused his efforts on strengthening to in order to bring the Founders back, because he could control that part. It was the endless wait that he could not handle without a task, but here the Vargemma had one, so what was the problem?

  The answer was exceedingly simple. The Vargemma had not chosen this quest. They had been born into it, like the Voku had, but they had nothing to do here but train. They got no payoff in the interim. Just a promise so far off it was intangible. And because of that their minds focused on whatever else was at hand…and the only thing available was their internal issues. Race versus race, or even those within the individual races.

  Give commoners nothing to fight and they would fight each other. With no sense of honor or loyalty it always happened, except with the very mundane races. And those did not make good fighters. Furthermore, the weapons here were not earned. They were their own bodies, and they increased in power just by making donations, so even the lazy obtained rank without having to distinguish themselves.

  Cal-com had to earn his way to becoming Dafchor, but what did the Vargemma have to earn? Everything was taken care of here. They had to do nothing to survive other than donate Essence. Stagnation was a much more potent enemy to them than the Hadarak, who they had never encountered before, and it was twisting them into the darkness.

  And therein was how Cal-com was going to pursue the annexation of the Vargemma, or at least part of them. Those that didn’t want to join would be kept here, as Essence farmers, with nothing really changing other than their ability to step out into the galaxy and cause havoc.

  For the others…if they wanted something to fight, then Cal-com would give it to them. He would become their Elder, a role he knew well from the receiving end, but he would not make false promises. He would not use the Vargemma. He would be what the Elders should have been to the Voku and never truly were. They had come so close, but in the end all their good deeds were but a means to turning the Voku into an empire of breeders to create Bo’ja. And those Bo’ja pawns were never meant to return home.

  Cal-com would never use the Vargemma as disposable troops, or treat them with dishonor, no matter what they’d done in the past. He would become what they needed. What the Voku had needed. And when the time came he would support the loyal ones…but they had a long journey to travel before then. They must earn their place, and he would give them the opportunity...but no more. They must choose this path. He would not waste his time on the unwilling.

  If the Vargemma wanted to get to the Tethers and win this galaxy away from the Hadarak, then Cal-com would set them a path to achieving it. One with many visible stepping stones that they could feel, taste, and ascend on. Training was useful, but it was no replacement for real experience and accomplishments. The Vargemma needed a war to fight…and as it was, the Hadarak were providing them with one to join in on. Cal-com just had to figure out how to incorporate them without giving Star Force’s enemy a chance to stab them in the back.

  And the Elders had inadvertently trained him to do exactly that.

  It was an irony that kept Cal-com smirking continually as he began to see the Vargemma responding to his orders and demands in a very familiar manner. He had been the Elders’ servant and pawn, but they had accidentally turned him into something far greater.

  And that was why he, and he alone had the power to bring the Vargemma into the Empire.

  It was going to take time. Millennia for sure. But he had the patience necessary, and he knew exactly where to begin…

  8

  November 2, 128555

  Bantha 1 System

  High Orbit

  Captain Alvarez sat on the bridge of the Iron Rise 7, a Mk. 487 Warship-class Star Force military vessel that was currently hiding in the large asteroid field that ringed the recently mapped star system in the unexplored frontier of the galaxy around Beta Temple. The Iron Rise 7 was the only Star Force ship here, in an otherwise empty system. There were 3 planets, all uninhabited, and the asteroid field was so far away from the star that it was hard to get to since there was such little gravity out here to decelerate on. One had to use the star to pull against, and the further away you got the less gravitational force there was.

  Hard to get to and impossible were very different things, and if you were patient enough you could limp out here on even half decent gravity drives, yet patient Alvarez had to be. He was waiting as numerous se
nsors spread out across this section of the asteroid belt were feeding information back to his ship that floated along with them, though was far too large to actually be concealed behind any of the half mile wide rocks.

  The Captain had the ship on passive sensors only, so the beams wouldn’t give away their location. The sensor field was his eyes in and around the area where there were more than 60,000 of the space whales that Jason-025 had found. He’d returned several here that had been rescued, but without being able to shut down the very large Caretaker hunting operations this herd was still vulnerable to predation, thus the trailblazers had assigned a single warship to wait and guard them.

  The space whales looked like rocks themselves, and moved extremely slow. Alvarez thought that was probably because they were conserving energy, but this far out and the gravity being as weak as it was, they didn’t have much maneuvering capability even if they put their full effort into it, making them easy prey for the hunters.

  Of those hunters, three had already been here and scared off by the Star Force warship. The Captain had tried to destroy them, but they spooked easily, which was why his ship was using passive sensors only. He was hoping to lure them in close enough to be able to intercept and destroy the automated hunting ship and take away one more of the Caretaker assets spread across an as of yet undetermined hunting area.

  Space whales from some other areas had been brought here too, with this being the main dumping ground for the rescues. The herd here didn’t seem to mind, especially after the first few returned and explained the situation to the others. The Star Force warship was now seen as a friend and the space whales didn’t try to maneuver away from it, or around it. They treated it like one of their own and passed by lazily as they moved from one rock to another.

  Many were seen free floating, while others were essentially docked to rocks as they glued them to their bodies and sucked resources out of them. They didn’t use any mooring beams or energy fields, just a tactile lock that ground the rocks against their outer hulls as a variety of acidic compounds was used to very slowly break down the outer layer of the rocks.

  The free floating ones were not just waiting their turns, but rather sunbathing in the very limited light making its way this far out…but what there was they would eagerly absorb like a plant and use it to alter interior molecular compounds, recreating the acids that had been used and warming themselves enough to grow quite toasty inside their hardened carapaces. Though ‘warm’ for a space whale was still below the freezing point of water. They could operate in the cold of space and in near the star if they wished, but initial study said they couldn’t stay near the star indefinitely. Overheating was an issue for them, so they preferred these far reaching feeding grounds away from the intense heat and traffic flowing through low stellar orbit.

  Shy they were, which was why few people knew of their existence. Their numbers had also been severely diminished by the Caretaker hunting. The space whales didn’t keep count of each other, but they knew their herd was much smaller than it once was, and the strange ships kept returning sporadically to take away some of them. They couldn’t do anything to stop it, and couldn’t outrun it, so they just witnessed a few taken now and then, helpless to do anything about it.

  “Point Arrow reports activity,” one of the bridge crew reported on the Mainline all-Human ship.

  Alvarez glanced up. Point arrow was the jumpline out to the tiny gravity well that the Caretakers used to enter this system. Apparently the location of the herds rarely moved, so most of the interfaces had been located off the same systems. Star Force had 47 points mapped as of last count, but getting to them was very hard. Even detecting the gravity wells was impossible for most races, but the Caretakers used them to move around slowly and jump back into the known galaxy when needed.

  There was only one route from the nearest shadow network node to this system, so Alvarez knew where they would be coming in, approximately, for they could decelerate anywhere on the approach line. However, since the herd wasn’t moving around much, he had deduced the approximate spot and adjusted the recon probes after each of the previous 3 times, leaving him with very good eyes on the region of the jumpline where the hunters were coming in.

  The probes were detecting the ship on approach before it even stopped, for it was coming so slowly. The low mass of the shadow network didn’t allow for quick travel, but the hunters could move faster on it than Star Force could, which made trying to go out there and track them down impossible. They’d run before Star Force could get close, but out here in the system the odds were even as far as speed went.

  “Keep us silent,” he reminded the crew as he stood up and walked two steps to the edge of the main holographic map that showed a dot approaching the perimeter of the system. The feeds they were getting from the probes were tight beam, meaning that you couldn’t detect them unless you were standing in their path, making them invisible to the approaching ship.

  Waiting was all that was required now, and he really wanted to get this one. The machines were very skittish. They weren’t here to fight or make friends, and if even a single ship was in the area they would back off and wait to come back later. They did not want the galaxy knowing about them, so his warship had to play dead and just become another floating rock out here. Had there been a living crew onboard they would have figured out what his ship was, but either these hunter ships weren’t communicating with each other or the programming was centered on detected activity…and right now the Iron Rise 7 was showing none.

  Which was yet another reason not to have windows on a starship.

  He’d been leery about being able to intercept the hunters without having at least a null field cloaking device, but these stupid machines kept coming back oblivious to what happened before, and he thought this time…

  “Redirecting towards the herd. Same path as before.”

  Alvarez nodded. The ship had slowed suddenly, using the much higher gravity from the star, then had made an abrupt left turn and was cutting across the outer circle of the asteroid field to get to the part that held the space whales. It wasn’t much of a cut, but enough to keep it clear of the debris and allow it to accelerate.

  He could wait until it got here. The space whales wouldn’t be in jeopardy when it would spook so easily, but he hadn’t wanted it to arrive, see the silhouette of the warship, then leave immediately…which was why he was with the herd far away from Arrow Point. But his drones were not.

  The Captain waited until the hunter had gotten a few minutes away from the incoming jumpline…which was where the hunter had to go to run back into the shadow network…then he finally gave the order.

  “Light ‘em up,” he said, with his crew responding instantly with drone control signals shooting out of the warship and being received by the distant bricks that were floating amongst the asteroids.

  There was a bit of lag involved, but the automated chase protocols onboard the drones were a match for the automated evasion programming in the hunter, and as soon as the drones began hard accelerating out of the asteroids towards the general area around the hunter, it responded as well…veering off and taking an unpredictable path that would always lead back to the jumpline for the shadow network.

  Knowing this Alvarez had programmed the drones to sheepdog the hunter rather than just trailing it. As his warship powered up and left the location of the herd the signal lag began to decrease, and after a while his drone control pilots had enough ping with the drones to begin flying them manually in a giant net around the hunter as it raced from point to point trying to shake free of pursuit, but Star Force’s engine technology was on par with its own so it didn’t have an easy escape.

  Alvarez didn’t have an easy catch either, but patience was the name of the game and he kept moving his drones around in such a way to keep a number of them between the hunter and its escape jumpline as the net gradually closed in around it.

  “Shit,” someone said as the Captain saw the hunter abandon its atte
mpts to get back to the shadow network from this system and make a microjump directly towards the star.

  “Must be back up programming,” he said, mentally steering the attack vectors into chase formations that wouldn’t just go to one point, but in a wide cone around where the hunter was heading. “He’s on our turf now and we’re not letting him go. Task two drones to stay with the herd. If this guy jumps to another system, we’re following.”

  The Iron Rise 7 accelerated into a microjump of its own, pulling heavily on the nearby star and shooting off towards it with the fleet of drones doing likewise though thousands of miles apart from one another. Some of them moved faster than the hunter, and in response it sped up as well in a game of acceleration that neither side truly won before they all had to slam on the brakes in order to avoid running into the outer atmosphere of the star.

  The warship came in last, with the drones acting like bees chasing after the hunter. Alvarez kept several on the shadow network jumpline so the hunter couldn’t circle back that way, and it didn’t try. It got to an outgoing jumpline for a nearby system and disappeared in a streak of acceleration.

  “Recover drones then follow,” he ordered, wanting to see how fast that ship was moving. It took a moment for the computer to make the calculations, then he whistled appreciatively. “Damn that’s fast.”

  “We can match it, Cap,” the helmsman said.

  “Do better. I want a mid jump catch.”

  That raised eyebrows around the bridge, but no one offered any lip. They all knew that meant accelerating too fast for the destination star to stop them. If they caught up to the ship and destroyed it, then they’d have the chance to run their engines high long before the destination system came within effective range and bleed off a little speed. If that wasn’t enough they’d have to move laterally and try to slingshot around the star and slow down on the far side. But regardless, if they could catch the hunter mid jump, neither one of them could maneuver as they passed by.