by Aer-ki Jyr
But skill was always useful. You just had to find the right places to apply it. The Archons had already developed a crude defensive skill to Essence attacks, so they couldn’t be taken down in a single shot. That, hopefully, would be enough to interact and fight alongside the willing Vargemma, but there was no mistaking of the danger that posed. The Vargemma were superior to Star Force when standing face to face, and that created the greatest challenge of his mission.
How does one annex the superior?
It was a question that Cal-com had spent much time pondering, but in the end the answer was painfully obvious. He had to become the Elder of the Vargemma, but not by sheer force or fear. He had been loyal to the Elders not because he was afraid, but because he believed in their righteousness. A superior enemy could still be fought, so superiority alone was not enough. It was the matter of trust that was required, and for the Vargemma it had to be a matter of the trust of truth.
Cal-com had to lead, not with superior Essence skills, but superior knowledge and wisdom. He had guide the Vargemma into self-improvement. Making them more powerful than they were now, and those that were honorable, or potentially honorable, would form a bond with him as the superior even if they could defeat him in combat.
It wasn’t going to be an identical relationship to the Elders of the Voku, but it was the same fundamentals, or at least the same fundamentals of the illusion the Elders had given them. Cal-com would give no illusions. Everything would be true, and from that trust would be formed as the Vargemma tested and retested, searching for deceptions, and as they failed to find it their trust would grow.
Those Vargemma that were not telepathic would be easy to verify. Those whose minds could not be raided would be more difficult. Their loyalty would have to be judged through actions and inference, for even an allowed mind scan could be problematic if the one doing the scan was not grossly superior to the one opening up, for things could still be hidden or disguised.
Cal-com had asked for, and was granted, an immunity to Ikrid, the same that all Humans possessed. He needed his mind shielded from others or this would not work, for eventually he would have to face some of them in person. Though for now he was the Elder beyond their reach because they were not worthy yet to receive personal instruction.
And their imagination would do more for his reputation than personal interaction, once the results started to flow. By the time the Vargemma recruits got to the level of knowing him personally, their expectations would be so high that they would have done the job of indoctrinating themselves. A small letdown at that point would be acceptable. Any letdown initially would be catastrophic because it would break whatever good will there was at this point.
The Vargemma not knowing the level of Cal-com’s Essence skills was critical, because they would not allow themselves to consider his knowledge or wisdom in a society that valued Essence skills as the ultimate measure of a man.
So Cal-com’s skills would remain a mystery until such a time that the Vargemma advanced enough to value wisdom, trust, and teamwork more than their Essence ratings.
And when they got to that point, they might not be disappointed at all when they met Cal-com, but they would be surprised. For right now the Vargemma assumed Star Force had at least equal Essence skills to their own, if not more. Because, after all, how could one have superior technology and not equal Essence skills?
It was a huge blind spot in their society, and Cal-com was going to make the most of it while it lasted. He didn’t like operating out of an assumption, but an assumption and a lie were not the same thing. Cal-com would not lie to the Vargemma, but if they imagined things the wrong way and those imaginations helped pull them out of the darkside, then he wasn’t going to correct them just yet.
It was a game that he had to play perfectly in order to succeed, but the Elders had taught him by example how it was done. Only this time, at the end of the process, there would not be betrayal. There would be reward. For Star Force needed all the powerful allies they could get, and if some of the Vargemma made it through the gauntlet that Cal-com was creating, they would be rewarded with position, technology, and most importantly, a piece of the grand war consuming the galaxy.
A war that only the worthy could survive.
In fact, he’d put that slogan out in all the proving grounds and it would be etched in Redemption’s corridors wherever appropriate. If these Vargemma actually had a single bone of a warrior in their bodies, that taunt would be enough to drive them forward and up toward the ranks of true warriors far superior to them, regardless of Essence skill.
Star Force had built a Rim-spanning empire because they were superior, even when they were not the more powerful. And in time they would surpass the Vargemma in Essence skills. Cal-com was sure of that. So there was no grand deception involved here. Just a little whistling through the graveyard while the Archons did what they always did and assimilated the knowledge and training opportunities of the Temple. In the end their power would outstrip the Vargemma. Until then, the Vargemma had newb training to concern themselves with rather than trying to measure up against their new masters.
And at the end of the day, Essence power or not, the Star Force fleet hovering over the Temple could destroy everyone on the surface at will. That was a power the Vargemma would not be forgetting, and as Paul was fond of saying, ‘Naval beats everything.’
And here, Star Force had the naval supremacy locked down hard.
The Essence skills would follow in due time. Until then, he wouldn’t burden the Vargemma with knowledge that was going to interfere with their reclamation training. And judging by the first wave of recruits, their focus was entirely on out performing each other. And that internecine would do well to wash away the Vargemma culture as Cal-com offered them a few new avenues at a time to travel down. Eventually they’d forget what it even meant to be Vargemma, and when that happened the real transformation would be begin.
He still needed a name for them after that happened, but hadn’t come up with anything yet. When the time came he’d have something appropriate, and that wasn’t going to be anytime soon.
But every mile that Redemption’s central pyramidal tower rose, it was a reminder that there was no going back, and that each day that passed meant progress, no matter how small in the light of how far they had to go. And right now that was an infinitely large distance given how decrepit the Vargemma had become.
10
January 12, 128558
System 491102 (Hadarak Warzone)
2nd planet
The V’kit’no’sat fleet was getting worn down. There were three races in this combined fleet, with ships from the Era’tran, Lir’nen, and Oso’lon working together to kill a total of 6 Hadarak over the previous years and untold numbers of minions in their patrol zone. The addition of the Legion Ysalamir had been a game changer, allowing most of the warships to survive combat with the Hadarak…but not undamaged.
Every fight tore chunks out of the V’kit’no’sat’s huge ships, and eventually Buru, the Era’tran task force commander, had to send them back home for repairs without replacements coming. He had orders to pursue and destroy Hadarak until he deemed his fleet too small to effectively engage, at which point they’d either be sent to join another force or split up to reinforce multiple ones. The only ships he was getting reimbursed with were more Ysalamir, and those were the most critical of them.
But Buru knew he was nearing a tipping point, and when two Hadarak entered his patrol region together he knew he couldn’t take down both, so he’d tried to bait their minions away to whittle them down before engaging. That had only been moderately successful, as if they’d anticipated the tactic and just chose to ignore his trailing ships after a while.
Even then he’d waited, pursuing them through three more systems and sniping at what he could, knowing there was no one nearby to call for assistance. Still, he sent a courier so Itaru would know where these Tier 1 and Tier 2 Hadarak were, hoping someone might deem the
pair worth some reinforcements.
But unless that happened they were Buru’s problem, and in this system they’d finally come across inhabitation that Star Force hadn’t managed to clear out yet. They didn’t even have any ships insystem due to the fact that they were overloaded with people to rescue across the outer Core and had to pick and choose who to remove before the Hadarak massacred them.
The two planets here didn’t stand a chance, but there was a silver lining. The Hadarak split up and sent one to each, giving Buru his opportunity to take down one of them. He’d chosen the 2nd planet to make his stand at, and as the tier 1 Hadarak attempted to land on the planet most of the minions from the Tier 2 were sent to assist.
The Era’tran felt that was an attempt to draw them to assault the Tier 2, and with its greater mass it would be harder to kill. Buru didn’t have the ships to take it down on his own, he needed Legion to do it, and he wasn’t sure he had enough to kill the Tier 2. The Tier 1 he could, but now he had to fight through far more minions than normal…and that’s what he had just done.
The Tier 2 had gone to the 3rd planet and basically left its kin to die. That was very unusual behavior, and Buru was cursing himself for buying it. His fleet had just taken heavy damage from the combined minion forces to get the Ysalamir into position to do damage to the Tier 1, but those attacks had to be in sequence in order to blow a large enough hole down into the Hadarak…and when they began to do so, getting three in a row, the Hadarak turned itself over and buried the damage section in the safety of the planet.
That made Buru have to assault multiple spots on the Hadarak before it could not hide them all. The number of Legion he had was diminishing quickly, but he still felt he had enough to finish the job. The Tier 2 must have also felt so, because it leapt up from the other planet and came back to help its kin before it could fully be destroyed.
The Tier 2 landed directly on top of the Tier 1, pressing it down into the planet and sat on top of it, essentially laughing at the stupid V’kit’no’sat that had just been baited into shredding their own fleet to get their shot at the Tier 1. Many ships had been destroyed, but almost all had significant damage. Buru couldn’t assault the Tier 2 with anything other than a few long ranged weapons, which he was currently doing, but they were barely scratching the surface of the Tier 2, now that the last few Legion had been used to poke a hole in it…and that hole had rotated around below ground and out of sight.
The flipside was both Hadarak were out of minions, and it would take days minimum, if not weeks, to regrow a significant amount inside their internal hangars. If they released them a few at a time they would easily get shot down by the beat up fleet. Buru still had plenty of weapons left to do that, so he was getting free shots at the Hadarak in the foreseeable future, but it wasn’t going to be enough to dig deep enough to threaten this one…and he couldn’t get a shot at the buried one.
But as long as he could get free damage in he wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity, so he kept his busted up fleet in orbit over the planet and pummeling the lump on the planet’s surface with every weapon that could strike outside of grapple field and tentacle range.
As this deadly rain fell and created some dust clouds over the Hadarak, another ship entered the system. It was of moderate size, but not a V’kit’no’sat design. It wasn’t Star Force or Zak’de’ron either, and Buru could not match it to anything in the database. It was a simple sphere, which was a common starship shape, but the finer details of movement speed, energy emissions, etc did not match up, so they had an unknown entity in play.
Buru sent skirmishers out to confront it, and they got a message back in the V’kit’no’sat language stating that his ships needed to stop firing so he could engage the Hadarak.
No identity was given, and even as the V’kit’no’sat ships questioned it further the 12 mile wide ship cracked in two, with a null field hiding whatever was inside, but out of that dark gap between the two halves shot out a mile long mass that sent a shiver down Buru’s spine.
He recognized the shape, for it was a familiar one. An elongated central body, four short legs, decent length tail, folded up wings, and a snake-like neck and head, all wrapped in body armor that gleamed in the reflected sunlight from patches of white and silver in an art-like pattern. It was the body shape of a Zak’de’ron, but it was far larger than any of them had ever grown. Was this really one of them, or a ship designed to mimic their shape?
The comm was silent as the unidentified contact moved towards the planet, and at the last moment Buru ordered the bombardment to stop and his fleet to retreat ever so slightly higher up from the planet…then inexplicably a patch of the Tier 2 began to explode in a geyser of small shrapnel from an attack that the V’kit’no’sat fleet could not detect.
The Hadarak immediately began to lift off, but the massive Zak’de’ron slammed into it like an Ari’tat jumping on the back of an Oso’lon…and somehow the Ari’tat won out. As big as the Zak’de’ron was, it was tiny compared to the Hadarak, and yet it forced it back down over the planet enough that the Tier 1 could not escape from beneath…which it was desperately trying to do, and even now was digging sideways with its tentacles and pushing with its grav drives to try and get clear.
The Zak’de’ron latched onto the Tier 2, which should have been a death sentence. Buru could see the grapple fields wrapping around it as a slow tentacle bent over and smacked the head of the dragon…but just before it made contact the tentacle tip disintegrated and became another debris cloud racing out into the planet’s atmosphere as well as pumping up well above it towards the V’kit’no’sat ships.
“Pull back triple distance,” he ordered the fleet, with all the ships moving in sync to get away from the fight.
The few minions the Hadarak had stored up shot out from orifices on their surface and looped around to attack the Zak’de’ron, but a lightning-like discharge chained up the stream, killing most of them in a single shot. Meanwhile the Zak’de’ron was holding on tight as the Tier 2 convulsed beneath it, trying to get free but was being held in check somehow.
That didn’t last more than a few minutes, then all the tentacles on the Hadarak stopped moving and the Tier 2 dropped back down to the planet just as the Tier 1 had almost dug its way out. It got pancaked again, and the Zak’de’ron flew up above the side of the now dead one, waiting for the smaller Warden to come out.
Buru couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and after the Zak’de’ron latched onto and somehow killed the other one, it flew up to his fleet but stopped well short and hovered in place with its wings stretched out wide as if it was surfing on air currents that did not exist.
This time the comm didn’t activate, but rather a telepathic presence entered the mind of every V’kit’no’sat in the fleet, freezing the crews in place save for the Zen’zat. Even Buru’s strong mind couldn’t fully keep out the Zak’de’ron, and he felt it was all he could do just to keep breathing.
How much time passed he didn’t know, but eventually the pressure relented as the presence remained. Then came his telepathic voice, which sounded eerily wrong and unlike anything the Era’tran had ever experienced before.
Be still, I am not your enemy, nor am I a Zak’de’ron. I care not for your petty squabbles. You are engaging the terror of the galaxies and are woefully unprepared for the fight before you. I credit you for the kills you have made and your ingenuity of weaponry. Most never discover how to create Yeg’gor penetrating devices and waste blood and vessel on nearly worthless attacks, as you once did. I am pleased you have ascended beyond that, but it is not enough. You cannot defeat the Hadarak. What you find deeper in the Core will be your doom.
Contact your leaders. I will inform them of the knowledge they lack. Enemies of the Hadarak must be preserved if at all possible, and while you cannot defeat them I can help you survive this purge. I still cannot determine why it began, but the escalation is because of this Ysalamir technology you and your Rimward cousins have created. The mo
re you press the Hadarak the harder they will respond. The key to survive is not in direct combat, but in harassment, distraction, and feigned impudence. You will not be able to protect your territory, and if you wish to survive you must have a plan in your fall so that you may rise again. I can assist you, but I cannot fight the war for you. If I had the power to do so I would have killed the Hadarak long ago, for they are my enemy as well.
I wait and watch until a power sufficient to challenge them arises, and you are not that power. It grinds your ego to consider that truth, but you must face it…else you fall into dust and ashes like so many others before you. The war against the Hadarak is a long game, and you must learn to play it. Take these two Hadarak kills as proof of my wisdom and power, for I know words alone will not sway you.
Take me to Mak’to’ran or bring him to me, and I will teach the V’kit’no’sat that which you need to know about our common enemy, the voice said as Buru’s mind returned to his full control.
“What race are you?” he asked via comm.
I once was Zak’de’ron, long, long ago, the voice said in his mind, though gently so, then I was chosen out of my race because of the potential my master saw in me. From that point on I ceased to be Zak’de’ron and became something much greater. My master’s race comes from another galaxy, and they are the primary enemy of the Hadarak. I have been assigned to wait here and watch for those worthy of assistance, and to try to preserve them long enough that they may amount to something more. Your ability to kill Hadarak has gained my attention, and I have come to you in order to help you survive.
I can sense your suspicion and hatred of my former race, and I do not fault you so. They are much of what you believe them to be, and they are not worth my time. They waste blood and vessel as many others do. They cannot fight the Hadarak, only prolong their ultimate deaths. You have shown ingenuity where they have not. I have nothing to do with them and want nothing. I have ascended far beyond those petty barbarians. I forsook them the moment my master summoned me from their collective stupidity, and I have never regretted that decision, though I understand your suspicion. Treachery is their way, and you have suffered for it.