Star Force: Clash of the Demigods (Star Force Universe Book 60)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  He huffed agreeably. Two more trailblazers was a luxury he was glad to have, but in this war it was going to be machinery and manpower that was going to win so long as the Caretakers could not use Essence. If they could, more so than they’d already demonstrated, then things were going to get much, much worse. That said, their position now was decent. They were burrowed in, with few surface facilities left to defend, though they continued to hold numerous Caretaker sites that, oddly, were still taking orders from them and producing equipment and weapons at their request.

  Perhaps the Founders hadn’t anticipated an enemy getting inside and being able to use Essence. The Hadarak certainly didn’t qualify as that, so maybe the Founders had had a little too much confidence in their automated defensive technology. Formidable as it was, it was clearly flawed, for the trailblazers had already fashioned a few Essence weapons at one of those facilities to use in small scale combat. They’d used their own Essence donations to charge one of them and were working on another, but had several already made and empty waiting to be used later if applicable.

  As for the Vargemma, they were sitting this out. Many of their cities were damaged as punishment for their rules violations, but the Caretakers had finally absolved them and returned to normal operations in those areas. Only Star Force now had the death sentence, since the Vargemma who had drawn theirs had been allowed to be killed as their kin stood down and refusing to defend them.

  Star Force would never do that, and Thrawn promised himself he would see this Temple rid of the Vargemma at some point in the future. They didn’t deserve access to the mysteries of Essence if they had no courage to face mere machines in defense of their brothers.

  It was the same apathy the Templar had woven into the Li’vorkrachnika, and it was that apathy the trailblazers had purged from Thrawn and his race when they’d recreated them as Paladin, so Thrawn had a personal calling to destroy any such apathy whenever he ran across it. Unfortunately the galaxy was full of it. Not so much as it once had been before Star Force existed, but the empire he now swore total allegiance to could not do everything, and as every year passed more and more territory was gobbled up by the Hadarak, drawing closer to V’kit’no’sat territory.

  Their frenemies would put up a good fight, Thrawn knew, but without the power of Essence and the Uriti fueling Star Force’s weapons, Ysalamir alone would not be enough to counter the Lurkers. Not in the numbers they needed, for Thrawn suspected, as did the trailblazers, that the worst the Hadarak would throw at them was still yet to come.

  The Temples may hold far more useful technology or knowledge to be employed against the Hadarak, and the Vargemma had the audacity to attack those who were attempting to honor the purpose of the Temples while they sat here and did nothing of consequence while the galaxy burned under the beginning stages of a galactic purge.

  No, the Vargemma had to be evicted from this place, though they had already declined Star Force’s offer to allow them to leave unharmed and the promise not to invade any other Vargemma temples if they would agree to a truce and stop the attacks on Star Force territory.

  Rather than accept, they had doubled down and were now bringing in more ships through the portals to help rebuild and strengthen their city defenses. Their fleet was growing larger too, but they stayed clear of Star Force and its battles with the Caretakers, betting on the latter winning and doing the work for them.

  Thrawn was glad he had gotten in when he did. Sitting outside with more than an hour’s delay on getting information was unacceptable. This is where the fight was, and this was where he needed to be. Between him, the Paladin, and the trailblazers, they’d find a way to win, but for the moment they were very much the resistance with limited naval superiority, for the Caretakers had not tried to attack the Avengers or any ships nearby them.

  They were waiting, he knew, until more units could be produced, then they would attack when they calculated an advantage. These machines were well programmed, but at the end of the day they were just machines and couldn’t improvise beyond what their programmers had already envisioned.

  And if there was one thing he was bred to do, it was improvise.

  There was a way to win here, and either he or the trailblazers were going to find it. Until then he had to build, build fast, and build wide, for no location they had was fortified enough to withstand all attacks. They had to be redundant and mobile, and if they could manage that they would win. He didn’t know how long it would take, or how many battles would have to be fought, but with the trailblazers’ ability to operate the Essence technology inside the Temple the Paladin could now carry this with or without the Avengers, though Thrawn was very glad to have them as a backup…at least while their low Essence reserves lasted. After that they become heavily armed conventional ships.

  The Knights of Quenar were a wild card, and while they only had a few surviving ships, they were spreading themselves out on foot all over the Temple searching for Responders and other locations not previously accessed by the Vargemma as they sought answers and learning from the automated systems. Perhaps they’d find a way to open the portals before the trailblazers did, perhaps they’d be useless. Thrawn didn’t know, but he was fairly sure any chance of them siding with the Vargemma had died when they entered the Temple, though he wasn’t entirely ruling out a backstab. The Li’vorkrachnika had mastered the technique and Thrawn would forever be on watch for one, but right now the KoQ had more to gain from Star Force dominance than they did from whatever scraps the Vargemma were previously going to offer them.

  They were an asset, at least when it came to Essence charging small tools and interfacing with equipment, but they could not win this fight. The Paladin had to, one way or another, for the Empire was counting on them to stop the Vargemma attacks on the Grid Point system and the millions of other facilities spread across the galaxy that were far too numerous to build Avengers to guard each and every one of them.

  The Vargemma had to be taken out or neutralized, which was doable, but first Star Force had to subjugate the Caretakers…and that might very well prove to be the far harder of the two tasks.

  www.aerkijyr.com