by Aer-ki Jyr
He too was convinced that the mass of the Hadarak could not be destroyed in a single blast, but the difficulty in maintaining weapons contact with a living ship that could move whenever it wished was even more nuanced than Tar’ange had anticipated, with Kirritimin seeming to instinctively know how a Hadarak would react…or more precisely how it could react to the threat of a Ysalamir of any proposed variety. He said the key was not in planning for what you thought an enemy would do, but in covering all options for what they could do so that their intent and mood became irrelevant.
In that respect Tennisonne was right. A single discharge was preferable, but Tar’ange didn’t see how the necessary power could be generated to make it work…plus all the vaporized material would interfere with the discharge gouging deeper into the Hadarak. When the Yeg’gor’s molecular bonds loosened, the material had to expand…and the only way out was through the impact site, thus the material would work against the incoming weaponsfire unless it could be removed first.
“Consider,” Kirritimin said, getting Tar’ange’s attention on a hologram of a Hadarak he was making adjustments to, “that they always move about based on advantage. They are not suicidal, but have calculated methodology. I believe it was programmed into them, for this is not the behavior of a free thinker. They are meant to accomplish a task, but they are also meant to preserve themselves. When one dies, they have multiple methods of alerting others, most notably their death scream. They operate much like the microscopic immune systems of many races, only on a galactic level.”
“That would infer a contagion of some sort,” the Pas’cha added, trying to follow the logic threads that often Kirritimin would spin off too fast for him to keep up with.
“Indeed it would, and Essence would qualify in that regard, but that cannot be their primary purpose. Also note, that the Uriti behave much as the Hadarak do. They consider each other as untouchable. They never fight one another as siblings would. As peers would. Instead they act as a single force, again, much like an immune system. There are those that are outsiders and those that are deemed ‘safe,’ and when one is deemed safe you ignore them. Have you ever known the Hadarak to talk to each other or socialize in any way?”
“Not socialization, but they can communicate telepathically. They have with the Uriti.”
“Correct,” the six-legged beetle said as he showed an image of a reproductive pouch on the side of a Hadarak. “And they spawn asexually within deep gravity wells…and their genetic coding is exactly the same as all others. This is not reproduction, this is replication.”
“Why do they all appear different then?”
“Variations of growth, but all within identical parameters. They can also customize their bodies to the task at hand. Speed is not necessary, so they are slow, but they are getting faster.”
“What do you mean?” Tar’ange asked as a spike of fear shot through him.
“I monitor all data from both Star Force and the V’kit’no’sat on Hadarak encounters. I am curious as to their lack of certain abilities, though their genome…as hard as it is to analyze…suggests they have the capability to do a great deal more. Nefron believes so as well. Based on movement analysis, the Hadarak coming out of the Deep Core, particularly the smaller ones, are showing speed improvements when we force them to flee as fast as possible. This rarely happens, so I have had limited data to work with, but as more comes in I am able to confirm they are adapting to either us or their new mission profile. As they push further out into the galaxy, the distances involved will be to our advantage, not theirs.”
“If we can develop a feasible Ysalamiri then we can isolate and destroy them as they spread out,” Tar’ange said, echoing previous conversations.
“You misunderstand my meaning. The Hadarak can grow their bodies to the task they are assigned. The process is slow, and requires a great deal of new material, but they can cannibalize existing tissue in at least some ways. Unique molecules are required for certain aspects, but I think it is safe to say that the Hadarak we are facing are those adapted for previous conquests.”
It took a moment for Tar’ange to process that, but his heart sank when he used his telepathy to finally pick out where Kirritimin was going with this logic thread.
“They could grow more Yeg’gor layers to counter the Ysalamir…”
“Or develop traditional armor layers mixed in with the Yeg’gor that isn’t susceptible to the weapon’s disruptive function…or they could develop an entirely unseen armor, new or old, or they could just thicken up around the exterior to make themselves harder to kill. Already we have seen some Hadarak configured for minion carrying while others have more tentacles for naval encounters. I am fairly certain we are not dealing with a native spacefaring race, but rather a biologically engineered weapon similar to what immune systems use, except this weapon also contains a person to manage the unforeseen scenarios.”
“Then the greater question is, who built the weapon?” Tar’ange asked ominously.
“No,” Kirritimin said, twitching his spike-like forearms in a negative fashion. “The question is what other weapons do they have waiting in the Core for when a greater threat arises. The Uriti claim the Hadarak know they cannot defeat Essence users, and that they are to fight and alert the others as they die in delaying combat. Alert who? And what would they do that the Hadarak cannot?”
“You are suggesting a sleeping civilization within the Deep Core that the Hadarak are meant to both protect and act as an alarm system for? One that is even more powerful than the Hadarak?”
“Data is too sketchy to confirm, but that is my suspicion. The Ysalamir may trigger an even greater awakening.”
“You wish us to stop?” he asked, half serious.
“No, I wish us to be ready with multiple weapons and contingencies. The Ysalamir is key to defeating the Hadarak, but Essence appears to be the highest level weaponry known to date, and there is very little of it I know about. Even the Archons admit the secret races in the galaxy are rumored to be far more knowledgeable of it than Star Force is, and the V’kit’no’sat have no one that can use it, correct?”
“As far as I know. Do you have a suggestion to make?”
“If the Ysalamir can defeat the Hadarak, and the Hadarak fear Essence use, then it is possible those that created the Hadarak…and gave them the ability to sense an Essence rush…have Essence themselves and use the Hadarak to fight the lesser opponents.”
“And we have no defense against an enemy that employs Essence as a weapon?”
“If Essence can ignore matter then it can bypass Hadarak armor and strike at their brain directly. The same goes for our armor and shields. I am not comfortable provoking such an enemy without possessing at least a limited defense against their unknown weaponry. For if no other reason, than to protect the Ysalamir if we are able to create them, for they will be few in number and must be guarded by massive warfleets at all times.”
“I see. Have you discussed this with Director Davis?”
“He has said Essence research continues, but no such defenses have been discovered. However, there is a slight possibility that has occurred to me only this morning.”
“Go on.”
“I am told the Knights of Quenar possess the ability to use Essence to bypass walls and transport individuals encased in Essence from point to point. If a lingering encasement could somehow be crafted, then it is theoretically possible for us to get an object past the Hadarak armor and directly into their brain tissue.”
“Why have I not heard of this before?”
“Star Force does not know the technique, and it also requires a beacon on either end of the conduit to pass the passengers back and forth, but I am told that if the individual being passed does not maintain the Essence field, they will revert back into the void of space or within solid matter, to their deaths. Star Force does not employ suicide attackers, but I am forced to acknowledge that such a method could be used to bypass the Hadarak’s armor entirely and del
iver a death blow in a single attack.”
Tar’ange was floored, and it took him several seconds to process what was being said before he responded.
“Must there be an individual passed?”
“I am told so, but if a lingering field could be established that would dissipate at a predictable interval, then I believe it could be avoided. So few are our Essence wielders that it would be unwise to sacrifice them for a single Hadarak kill regardless. We must have weapons that can achieve results without inflicting attrition on our forces, or we will lose the eventual battle no matter how effective our weapons become.”
“And if Essence wielders were less rare?”
“Then the Hadarak would be destroyed by those who chose to die in such a manner.”
“Perhaps that is what they fear from Essence?” Tar’ange said, his mind working fast. “I truly wish I understood this Essence so that we could incorporate it into the Ysalamir…”
“You have an insight?” Kirritimin asked.
“In your research, which do you believe is the higher priority for the Hadarak? Self-preservation or destruction of Essence wielders?”
“Uncertain when they expect death in combat against Essence wielders. It could override their self-preservation priority or it might not. What are you thinking?”
“That if we have an Essence wielder onboard a Ysalamir and get them to draw the Hadarak to us, that could prevent them from escaping when we begin to damage them.”
“Easy enough to test when the time comes, but when we maintain distance and the Hadarak sees it cannot catch the Ysalamir, it may then give up regardless and flee.”
“If we can move the Ysalamir that fast. Defending against a microjump is going to be tricky if we cannot disable the Hadarak first.”
“Agreed. Which is why Belo’chat’s Legion project holds promise.”
“Only if we can recharge them fast enough. They have too much time to build up Yeg’gor before they leave the Deep Core. Randomly shooting it and hoping to win through attrition still seems desperate and wasteful to me.”
“Many say that about any combat with the Hadarak. We are forced to take advantages wherever they may occur, and however slight they may be.”
“And you’re suggesting that even if we managed to find a way to win this war, it could just be a precursor for our destruction at the hands of the creators of the Hadarak?”
“That is what I am beginning to fear more and more as I study them. We are encroaching on matters beyond our scope of understanding. We have no idea what is in the Deep Core. We cannot even get a scout there to look. And here we are attempting to defeat the Hadarak without even understanding where they come from.”
“What else can we do?” Tar’ange asked.
“The Li’vorkrachnika did not win many of the battles they fought because they were stronger or more numerous. They used my intellect and the copies of it to fight superior opponents and discover a way of beating them. To do that they studied them intensely. We have more knowledge now of the Hadarak thanks to the relationship with the Uriti, but there is still too much we do not know. I need more data to work with, and I do not know how to get it. Our efforts here may only hasten our demise if we cannot know who our true enemy is.”
“You also worry about the unseen races with Essence capability?”
“Lesser so, but yes. They may know who the Hadarak really are, but I am told they have no wish to communicate with us and would be hostile should we try to force such communication. I feel we are missing something critical, Tar’ange, and while we desperately need the Ysalamiri, I cannot help but fear we are ignoring the larger danger lurking beyond our vision…”
8
May 18, 128501
Kanethrol System (Novatis Kingdom)
High Orbit
Arren-5377 had been waiting in his cloaked scout ship for 9 days before the sensor grid in the uninhabited system pinged a contact that his ship’s passive sensors did not. It wasn’t much reflectivity, but the advanced Star Force sensor buoys spread around the system had been specifically designed to probe for hidden ships and this wasn’t the first time there had been activity noted in Kanethrol.
The problem was, nobody could ever find anything here. Davis had been adamant about getting intelligence on the nameless races that the Knights of Quenar had mentioned, and whom Davis had fleeting contact with over the years in the form of unidentified ships popping up in random places and disappearing again…and one of those places was Kanethrol.
So Arren and other Neo-level Archons not engaged in the Hadarak campaign had been sent out to see what they could track down, and finally Arren had got one. He followed it out through the detection grid in low orbit, then lost the signal and had to guess where it was going. His gut told him far out in the system, so he had taken a chance and just drifted all the way out to high orbit, and now it had just paid off.
His passive sensors couldn’t pick anything up, and he couldn’t use the active ones while cloaked, but he felt an Essence rush at a distance, and thankfully the detection range for such an oddity in the universe was quite large. It felt like someone was shining a flashlight his way, and he marked the exact trajectory it was on…then did so again 20 seconds later, letting the computer triangular an approximate position based on the two faintly different sight lines.
It looked to be about 472,000 miles away and lasted another minute before it split in two with a very faint second ‘flashlight’ zipping away from the first. The second one either shut down or went beyond his range to detect it, but the original one persisted for another 18 minutes before it disappeared.
That was exactly what Arren had been looking for, based on the KoQ’s description of how the ‘stargate’ effect worked. That was Star Force’s official term for it now, and it was damn impressive. There had to be a lot of people in there to generate that much Essence rush, or perhaps one large or very skilled individual. Either way, what they were doing was far beyond Arren’s capabilities, and far beyond those of Star Force’s best. They didn’t even know how to do a stargate effect, though there was a permanent research team working on it with no results yet.
Arren didn’t think they’d get it anytime soon, because it was said that the passenger had to be able to hold an Essence field of some sort around them. If they couldn’t do that then they couldn’t practice passing the volleyball back and forth, so Arren didn’t know how they’d make a breakthrough, but if it could be done without a teacher they’d figure it out sooner or later, though his credits were on later. Much later.
Where the second Essence signal had gone he didn’t know, but he tried to approximate its path and generated a cone of possibility. He didn’t know how fast they went, or if their speed was ascending or constant, but at least he had a general idea of where one of their hidden worlds/outposts was…and a possible location of either a ship or station that had sent the passengers on their way. He was guessing at station, and kept creeping his ship in closer but getting nothing on his passive sensors.
He didn’t want to risk running into it, so he was straining his telepathy as much as he could, listening for even the faintest signal without actually transmitting himself. His Pefbar was useless, for it didn’t extend beyond the hull of his ship, and he couldn’t reach out with his Ikrid to actively search for others nearby without alerting them to his presence…assuming they were also telepathic…and even if they weren’t, if he used his Essence to extend his telepathic range they would pick it up.
But he wasn’t here to come up empty handed, so after several hours of getting nothing he finally dropped the cloak and activated the ship’s full array of very loud and very advanced sensors, immediately getting a faint echo of an object 12 miles wide and 18 high, set about 220 miles away.
That meant he was practically on top of it, navally speaking, but he didn’t move his ship. He held position and acted like he wasn’t picking up anything, going on a gut feeling that these guys weren’t going to take being foun
d very well.
And he was right.
A blue beam shot out from the cloaked station and hit his ship’s shields, which he had raised to full and angled towards the station with an 80/20 bias, but it wasn’t enough to protect the small ship. The beam depleted the shields after two seconds, then the last bit of it cored through the armor plating and took out two of the ship’s 6 gravity drives along with the tiny workout room.
Arren reacted instantly, shooting the ship off through an emergency microjump at slow speed due to the distance from the star and the lesser intensity of the gravity out here on the edge of the system. He kept his sensors on, and was grateful to see that the object didn’t pursue…at least until it got out of range and disappeared again.
Arren was the only person onboard the scout ship, which was only 258 meters long. He activated his armor, causing the gauntlets on his arms to melt and spread the nanotechnology across his entire body, encasing him in blue/orange armor that indicated he was a ‘mature’ Archon of Goku level and kept him safe from decompression as he left the small bridge and went aft to inspect the damage as his ship coasted towards the star and him hoping the remaining gravity drives wouldn’t fail and plunge him into the burning inferno.
He got through two doors before the third was locked due to decompression on the other side. He used his bioshields and put a seal over the door, then overrode the lock and opened it, walking through into the void of space with about 20% of the walls missing.
He closed the door and let go of the bioshield, finding that the artificial gravity was still working, and walked out to where he could look at the stars through the hole in the armor…and down further into the ship where one of the wrecked gravity drives was melted into little globs of material that had solidified on the walls or imbedded into the plates. Some had blasted all the way through into another compartment where the second disabled gravity drive was, but the main hole was bored directly into the workout room, destroying just about every bit of equipment in it…or causing it to be blown out into space through the 4 meter wide gap.