by Aer-ki Jyr
Mak’to’ran’s 47 mile long ‘tuning fork’ shaped Kafcha sat along with two others of equal size and design in front of the Ysalamir as it had its ‘claw’ extended and a giant green energy field growing inside it. That field was larger than his Kafcha and getting deeper and deeper green as the minutes passed and the minions splattered onto the V’kit’no’sat ships that were blocking the most obvious lines of attack.
A tier 1 Hadarak, some 122 miles in approximate diameter with three bulges distorting the otherwise spherical shape, was flying towards the Ysalamir as the ship likewise flew backwards, keeping out of range but letting the Hadarak get gradually closer so it didn’t give up the pursuit or surge forward in a ramming jump as the internal engines of the Ysalamir totally shut down to further fuel the weapon charge. Mak’to’ran could have kept them active, but he didn’t want the 7% reduction in power and the V’kit’no’sat ships attached to hull like a carpet of tics would be able to keep the chase in play so long as the Hadarak didn’t do something desperate.
Hadarak rarely made quick jumps other than between systems, but they were still capable of throwing down evasive maneuvers much like a starship…and if they did so at interstellar jump speeds, they could easily ram any ship they wanted that didn’t react instantly to get out of the way. Typically they didn’t need to, for they were always bigger and stronger, but it was still a threat that Mak’to’ran didn’t want to see happen…especially when he was personally sitting between the Ysalamir and the Hadarak with swarms of minions trying to get past the ships now that the massive energy field had formed.
It had gotten the Hadarak’s attention as well, with it no longer trying to grapple and destroy the V’kit’no’sat ships. All the minions had directed towards the Ysalamir, and Mak’to’ran wondered if the Hadarak knew what was coming or if it was just attracted to the energy field for another reason. Regardless, he had to keep the minions off the weapon as much as possible, and in another 37 seconds the Kafcha had to be removed from the firing path.
His ship was coated with IDF goo from the minions, but he still had plenty of gravity drives functioning, as did the other two ships, and when the moment came they moved in conjunction with the rest of the fleet and opened a pathway for the minions to pour down through and get to the weapon without much resistance.
They automatically went into the firing path as the shields on the Ysalamir suddenly dropped…then a carpet-like ribbon of invisible energy leapt out from Ysalamir to Hadarak over a 2700 mile gap, and it vaporized all the minions that touched it, both initially when it hit them and after when those above and below it accidentally flew into the highly energized, yet thin pathway as they rotated in corkscrew formation.
The flat beam burned into the Hadarak’s Yeg’gor armor, with a line suddenly becoming visible, but the damage wasn’t a lot more than traditional weaponry. It was constant though, and the Hadarak didn’t alter course. It kept coming and gradually catching up as the minions poured down the throat of the Ysalamir and even got within the perimeter of the claws just before the weapon finally fired.
The green ball didn’t launch, but rather a tendril of it arced off and down the invisible ribbon, erasing the minions it touched from existence in a chaotic bouncing above and below the ribbon all the way down to the Hadarak. The green arc didn’t stop, but unwound like a string over the next 8 seconds before it was totally expended and the Ysalamir reengaged its shields, trapping a lot of surviving minions inside as point defense weaponry on its hull and from the V’kit’no’sat ships attached began killing them…along with monstrous waves of Zen’zat and I’rar’et space fighters pursuing the minions on the new battlefield totally encased beneath the Ysalamir’s shield perimeter.
Mak’to’ran was confident they would clean out all those that got inside before any significant damage was done, so he didn’t pay attention to that secondary battle as his fleets reformed in the wake of the Ysalamir as it began to accelerate away from the Hadarak…
But what of the Hadarak? There was a huge mushroom cloud of vaporized Yeg’gor, but what was beneath it? Mak’to’ran didn’t get an answer immediately, and before he did the tracking telemetry on the Hadarak changed as it decelerated hard and began to move back towards the star.
When it did the cloud of debris didn’t go with it, and Mak’to’ran got his first good look, both visually and via sensors, at the hole that had suddenly appeared in its body.
It was deep, but not very wide, having punctured some 18 miles down and peeled up layers of still attached tissue that was now flaking out around the wound while large globules of internal mass were oozing out like slow moving blood. Mak’to’ran knew those globules were hard as rock and as they cooled they would solidify further, as would the inside of the wound, but right now it was raw and less dense than Yeg’gor, and Mak’to’ran knew not to waste this opportunity.
He took three quarters of his fleet and pursued the Hadarak while the rest stayed to protect the now depleted Ysalamir. His ships poured all their firepower into the breach, totally ignoring the rest of the Hadarak as the minions reversed course and pursued Mak’to’ran’s ships, trying to buy time for the wounded Hadarak to get away.
The V’kit’no’sat ignored them as much as they could, focusing their firepower into the wound as the Hadarak began to spin to bring the target zone out of firing range, but the V’kit’no’sat ships were so much faster they just flew around to the other side and kept firing…and any ships the minions disabled fell behind rather than into the Hadarak’s grasp, making this about as much of a free shot as Mak’to’ran had ever seen.
The minions also had regular weapons, but the damage they were doing to the fleet was so small compared to what the V’kit’no’sat normally endured it was almost laughable…save for those few small ships that were actually being destroyed, but Mak’to’ran would not relent, nor would any of them. They had the Hadarak on the run, with a massive wound, and they needed to add to it as much as they could before it reached the star.
It took two hours for the Hadarak to make it there, and when it did it didn’t slow down, instead smashing into the star with its wound pointed out as the V’kit’no’sat ships had to break off. It wasn’t dead and would gradually recover, but they had done so much damage to it in such a short amount of time it felt like a kill, and not just to Mak’to’ran. Everyone in the fleet was surging with emotions they’d never felt before.
It still wasn’t a kill, but they now had a weapon that could hurt the Hadarak and drive them away from planets…at least for the small ones. That alone could save many lives, and the delay it would take for the Hadarak to heal itself would be just as useful in the war of attrition they were fighting, but as Mak’to’ran looked back to where the Ysalamir was sitting on the holographic map, surrounded by now extremely protective V’kit’no’sat warships, he gave Director Davis a silent thanks for letting them have this moment. The V’kit’no’sat had worked millions of years for this, and it was right for them to have the first kill…even if it wasn’t a true kill.
But they had just killed the Hadarak’s dominance. Now, it would be a fair fight, and in a fair fight the V’kit’no’sat would…
Mak’to’ran couldn’t finish his thought as his head suddenly exploded in pain…and he wasn’t the only one. All across his Kafcha’s command deck the crew was flinching and cringing in pain, which he realized was telepathic. He put up some well-trained blocks, diminishing the intensity, but he was unable to shut it down completely as he glanced at some of the readouts his crew were frantically highlighting for him despite the disruption.
The Hadarak was the source of the telepathic signal, but that wasn’t all. It was transmitting, from inside the star no less, some form of energy similar to a death scream, but far more intense and not conforming to any previously encountered Hadarak behavior.
The ‘scream’ lasted for 7 minutes and 31 seconds before silence resumed, but in that silence was an eerie chill that all on the command deck share
d as they stood there staring at one another.
Their glorious victory had just been sullied by the unknown occurrence, and Mak’to’ran worried this war had just escalated to a new level. They’d proved they could seriously hurt the Hadarak, far beyond anything they had done before, and Mak’to’ran had the sinking feeling this one had just issued a pre-planned call for a different type of warfare to counter the new threat.
10
May 18, 128508
Solar System (Star Force capitol)
Earth
Davis was sitting backwards at his desk, looking out through his panoramic windows at the cityscape of Atlantis below him and the tiny waves on the Pacific Ocean beyond. His office was the highest point in the city, offering him an impressive view of a mostly peaceful world, but he knew that in little corners of it there was death and destruction, same as across the galaxy. Whether it being a shark eating a fish alive or a bird devouring a worm on land, the darkside was everywhere, even here on Earth.
But compared to the rest of the galaxy Earth was quiet, secure, and safe. Davis knew better than that, and sometimes he just had to shut off his vast array of empire-monitoring equipment and sit here, looking out the windows at the planet, and remember all the little people out there lost in the confusion.
He hated not being able to save them all, and he’d tried more ways than anyone knew to figure out a way to do it. He could save the fish from the shark, and save the shark from starvation when it didn’t eat the fish, but that required a great deal of infrastructure and automation. In the Sanctuaries spread around the galaxy the darkside was not so present, but it wasn’t because of choice, and therein lay the problem.
The darkside was coded into the genetic memory of all known lifeforms, most of whom killed each other to eat. With time and training some of that could be undone, with new genetic memory formed. That was what the old term of ‘domesticated’ meant, though the people at the time didn’t truly understand what was happening. All people operated within the boundaries of their genetic instructions, making choices shaped by them, and only a few individuals were intelligent enough to, over time, figure out where those boundaries were and grow beyond them…and it was those people that Davis heavily recruited into the upper Star Force ranks.
Davis was one of them, as were the Archons, but most people were not. They did as they were genetically instructed, more or less, and the ‘peaceful’ nature of Star Force’s Human population was not a result of them being good people, but them having inherited genetic memories that were not inundated by the darkside and, more importantly, growing up in a system and structure that gave them a lightside pattern to mimic.
But such things never lasted without a living, breathing benchmark to follow. One that wouldn’t become corrupt over time. Take a normal person from Star Force and let them chart their own course completely without oversight, and they’d eventually veer from it. There would be a lag effect, but over the course of years Star Force would devolve and the darkside would return with a vengeance. You had to have what amounted to white blood cells inside a society that were incorruptible and functioned to shove the population back on course whenever it began to veer away.
But go beyond Star Force into the oceans around Atlantis and there were no standard bearers. In the wilds, the darkside was often required for survival, and therein lay the trap of existence. People being born into situations where they could not be lightside and survive. Davis had created Star Force, among other reasons, to give new people just beginning their lives a fair shot at being good people and protect them from the ‘spawn camping’ that seemed built into the universe.
He’d often wondered why that was so, but it came down to the fact that the darkside was often the easier way of accomplishing something, even when your conscience warned you not to.
But there was the flipside to the universe. As far as he could tell, all living beings had a conscience. Genetic memory often overrode it, as did learned behavior, and you had people thinking they were doing the right thing even though they weren’t, and yet still the conscience was there nagging at them that something wasn’t right.
Davis had seem many people switch from darkside to light if just given the slightest opportunity, or even the slightest bit of knowledge that had evaded them. Give them the option to go lightside and many would, but not all. And without Star Force providing real foodstuffs to everyone, and most had to go darkside or starve to death.
With the war for galactic survival against the Hadarak continuing to ramp up, he doubted few would care to worry about the critters in the wild that everyone overlooked. The oceans were fly over territory for the most part, and even the submerged cities didn’t pay much attention to what was around them. Same thing on the land and the vast tracks of forest where critters were eating other critters to survive. The larger ones Davis had made arrangements for, so they’d have food drops here and there available so they didn’t have to kill others to survive.
And some didn’t, given that food supply, but others still did, and therein lay the insulting truth of the universe.
People would do whatever they were able to do, and without a handler watching over them they would descend into darkness with the strongest predators reigning supreme until they died of internal infestations resulting, ironically, from them killing and eating others. The darkside came at a price, more often than not, but where one generation died out another was born to replace them. It was as if the universe didn’t want anyone to live long enough to realize the trap of it all, and Star Force’s highest purpose, though one not often stated, was to defy that trap to the empire’s dying breath.
But the more Davis learned, the more he realized the mysteries of the universe were still over his head. Nature wasn’t ‘simple’ at all, but getting more and more complex as Davis aged and accumulated more information and knowledge, with Essence being a good example, but there was a great deal more going on that the Director was only now beginning to sniff at.
The Hadarak were not just giant space monsters bent on galactic destruction. What they actually were he couldn’t put his finger on, but he suspected that answer lay in the Deep Core where his scout ships could not go. And even now he was chewing on another thread, with 19 different stargate locations mapped, fortunately without losing anyone as he had nearly lost Arren. After that near death experience, the rest of his scouts began probing the locations they tracked down with companion drone ships…many of which were also shot, and some destroyed, but no personnel were lost and no pursuit followed.
That meant Davis now had 19 different points on the map indicating the doorway to a region of the galaxy that was still beyond view in the void between stars and apparently cloaked, for long range scans of the area were coming up with nothing.
Yet that still told Davis something. These ‘others’ were living in places the Hadarak couldn’t conceivably go, nor could their minions. These civilizations, or whatever they were, appeared to be tailored around the threat of the Hadarak, even all the way out here in the Rim where the Hadarak had not gone before…at least not in the recorded histories he’d been able to amass. Perhaps one day in the far, far past they had, yet the lack of threat of detection and their insistence on remaining beyond their reach suggested a deep fear of them.
What was really going on in the galaxy? And were Star Force and the V’kit’no’sat getting caught in the middle of an even larger conflict? Did the ‘others’ not fight the Hadarak because they knew something Davis didn’t, or were they just cowards? Were they not as technologically advanced? Were they not as numerous as Davis guessed?
He wanted information on them, but he wasn’t going to mess with any of their stargate locations other than to scan them and make a brief attempt at communications, none of which had been returned with anything other than weaponsfire. Vochem had been correct when he said they did not want to have any contact with Star Force, and when he’d warned that they were hostile. Had the Hadarak war not been ongoing he w
ould have probed these locations more deeply, but for now he was just going to locate as many as possible and leave the ‘others’ be for the foreseeable future.
Davis didn’t trust that they wouldn’t strike for some or any reason, but so long as they were staying hidden he’d let them hide there. The galaxy was so large and his forces so spread out he didn’t need another war right now, but the ‘others’ were going to have to be dealt with at some point. They were not going to be allowed to remain an unknown, and if one or more of them were responsible for the Essence-draining attacks that Ariel had stumbled upon, then that behavior could not stand.
But that’s what you got when no one was watching over them. People would do whatever they could do, even the most horrific things, as they ignored their consciences and encouraged or forced others to do the same. The darkside could not abide the lightside, for the mere presence of the lightside caused their consciences to ping louder, and when one went to the darkside they instinctively needed everyone else to as well for those who still cared about silencing their conscience. Then there were some so far gone that they just ignored it completely.
Davis wanted to think that all people, if not pulled one way or another, were inherently good…but that wasn’t true, for a good person actively sought out the right thing to do. Most people were neutrals that went whatever way the wind blew, and had the galaxy been full of beleaguered good people to be freed from the trap of their birth, then that would have been a winnable fight for Davis.
But there were too few truly good people, and most of those he saved would turn to the darkside again if not watched closely. If given their freedom to do whatever they wanted, they would behave much differently, and not for the better. Some people just needed to try new things to figure them out, and a bout of total freedom was good for them…but many people only ‘behaved’ themselves because there was the threat of a security officer coming and dealing with them if they didn’t.