by Aer-ki Jyr
“Yes. Same indoctrination program and we’re going to keep looking for more to inoculate anyway. Any that we can bring back, we will. Our population is large enough to absorb them without issue now.”
“Will they do the same?”
Brad considered that. “I’m not sure. Nefron said they didn’t need to, but if there’s a large population of Protovic I don’t see why they wouldn’t convert them all.”
“But will they seek out all the colonies or just leave them be unless they bump into them?”
“You’re thinking that if the Chixzon return, the first we’ll see of them is the Protovic colonies quietly disappearing?”
“Possibly.”
Brad nodded. “Something to look out for, to be sure. I get the feeling they’ll keep a low profile until they’re ready to strike. There could be some records of them out there, and I don’t think they’d risk a backlash they can’t withstand right away.”
“I’m curious as to where these Uriti are.”
“I’m still not sure they’re around. If the V’kit’no’sat never encountered them then…I don’t know. The idea that they could still be sedated after all this time seems farfetched.”
“If Nefron thinks they could be, I’m not going to argue.”
Brad put his hands on his hips in frustration. “That is worrying me. It’s a loose end that doesn’t fit. Plus, where are the races that beat them? There’s no record of any of them in the database. I get the feeling we’re missing a big chunk of the timeline.”
“Maybe we are, but that doesn’t affect the Protovic anymore, does it?”
“You mean our Protovic?”
“Yeah.”
“I suppose not. If you’re asking about any more upgrades the answer is no. Their telekinesis is intriguing, but we can’t copy and paste it anyway. Besides, I don’t want to give them any more powers than they’re going to have, and we don’t know how that will all shake out yet anyway.”
“What about special teams?”
“We still don’t know how many final form Protovic we’re going to get. They may end up being our special teams.”
“Nefron said he could do it, in time.”
“Give them telekinesis?”
“Yes.”
“How much time?”
“He didn’t know. I’m sure he could put it at the top of his priority list.”
“No,” Brad said, shaking his head. “He’s got enough to do right now and we’ve got to get the Protovic established as Blues. Maybe someday down the road we’ll look into that with a program similar to the Arc Commandos, but right now we need to get this faction’s identity fixed. There’s been too many changes happening.”
“Sounds like you’re going to be camping out here forever.”
Brad smiled. “Seems like. Don’t need you anymore…save for some advice time to time, but we can cover that via comms.”
“You kicking me out?”
“No, just giving you permission to leave. The big mystery is solved and we’ve got a plan in place for the Blues. Still a lot of micro tinkering to do, but I can handle that on my own. What’s next on your to-do list?”
“Some Clan work. Need to do a little personal overhaul there myself, then I’m going to the lizard front. Not the core worlds, but either up or down on the galactic plane and pick off a bushel of their smaller systems.”
“Dodging the hard stuff?”
“Making do with less ships than others would so they can be used elsewhere.”
“I hadn’t considered that.”
“I’m not counting on the Preema or even the Voku to get the job done, and we can’t afford to let the lizards spread into new areas while we hit their bigger worlds. We need a sweeping team, and I’m going to volunteer myself to that.”
“Want to take along some Protovic units and get them some experience?”
“Definitely. I’m going to be using Clan Protoss and whatever bits and pieces I can scrape up so I don’t put a dent elsewhere. Gonna hit up some of the wards too.”
“Want a few veteran Beyond units thrown in?”
“If you’ve got some that you’re not planning on using elsewhere, yes. Please.”
“What did you mean about the Voku?”
“Just a gut feeling.”
“About?”
“They serve the Zak’de’ron, so you never know what they’ll do since they’re not making their own decisions.”
“You think they’re going to bail?”
“No. I think this is our war to win, with or without them.”
“Our half anyway.”
“Yeah, I still don’t like that, but it can’t be helped. And we’ve got a whole lot of work just to clean out this side of the line.”
“At least Morgan’s doing a fine job of marking it.”
“That she is…and keeping the systems for herself.”
“Suits her.”
“It does,” Kip said, glancing around the hangar. “Any last bits you want me to help with before I head out?”
“No, dude. You’re free and clear.”
“Alright. In that case I think I’ll head out now. No point in delaying. Keep up the good work.”
“Go kick some lizard ass,” Brad echoed, with both Archons fist bumping as they headed for the hangar exit. When they got there they walked down a bit of hallway side by side then went their separate ways. Kip to his quarters for a quick pack before hopping on a dropship and commandeering a ship in orbit to take him back to the ADZ, while Brad headed back to his oversight duties and the continued building of his Protovic faction.
It would be years more until the first of the Blues reached final form, and once they did he’d have to figure out how to fully integrate them into the already existing culture…not to mention the quitters who left the maturia at various stages. There was a lot of balancing work to be done, as well as the construction of new cities, ships, and programs to bring the Protovic up another notch within the empire. They still had a long way to go, but Brad was proud of them and what they’d accomplished thus far, not to mention their potential going forward.
As for the Chixzon and their programming, soon it would be erased from all the Protovic on Nym, and then the ones in Axius and everywhere else in the ADZ, including the independent Protovic whom Brad had already been in communication with. From here on out things should settle down and normalcy resume…at least as much normalcy as there was when building an empire within an empire, to which Brad was going to need to add another system soon.
Details, details, and training in between. That was his path for now and he was comfortable with it. He was going to miss having Kip around, but that’s the way the trailblazers operated…going where they were needed and often on a moment’s notice. He’d get back to doing that one day in the distant future, but for now this was where he was needed. So this was where he was going to stay.
10
July 19, 3096
Ittaru System (Shanplenix territory)
Plentrin
Kara fell into the upper atmosphere of the planet like a bullet, further braking against the planet’s gravity and slowing constantly after having spent more than an hour drifting through space at high speed after being shot off from the Ghostblade Ma’kri that had quietly snuck her into the system. The Shanplenix’s technology was considerably advanced, but there were no sensor systems in the outer half of the system where the Ma’kri had entered. After that it was just a matter of staying away from the inhabited planets and keeping the cloaking shields running, turning the ship into a giant black spot save for a few tiny exceptions where sensors were located.
The ship had gotten Kara as close as it dared, then accelerated for a short stint to give her the propulsion she needed. The honorary trailblazer had flown out of the hangar bay and into the black with the ship decelerating and retreating behind her while she drifted in shadow mode down to the spec of a planet far ahead.
Now that she was here, she was having a hard
time bleeding off all the speed with her limited gravity drive, but the calculations were easy enough to make and she knew that she’d get her descent under control within the next 23 seconds, though her friction in the atmosphere was leaving a tiny visible streak. She didn’t care about that or she’d have approached slower, knowing that the Shanplenix weren’t going to be able to track her once she got to ground anyway. They might think she was just a falling rock from orbit or ignore the anomaly altogether. That didn’t matter, nor would it hinder her mission.
As the turbulence abated the view of the varied world became clear in the cloudless skies. The portion that she was descending towards was a barren savannah that separated four large cities, but nothing the size that Star Force typically built. The Shanplenix kept theirs limited and dotted across the planet giving Kara plenty of wilderness regions to come down in, with the Archon eventually choosing a basin that was covered in high grasses that hid her sensor-stealthed black silhouette when she finally touched down…and sank well below head height until her feet finally hit dirt.
Glancing up, she realized that the grass was at least 4 meters high and barely thicker than a straw. The planet’s lower gravity may have factored into that, but she’d never seen any varieties this tall before.
Using her Pefbar and armor sensors she got a feeling for what was immediately around her then scanned the sky, looking for pursuit. After she was satisfied that there was none she took flight again, rising up just above the top of the grass that was swaying in the wind then began skimming it as she headed towards the nearest settlements outside the cities. It took her more than two hours to get to the first native on the planet, seeing an isolated outpost on a hillside.
Deeming it too small she flew by it and continued on until she got to a decently sized village. Approaching quietly she settled back down into the grasses and went in on foot, sliding into the clear cut perimeter and daylight behind several buildings and out of sight of the hundreds of people she sensed on the other side. Moving as a shadow in daylight wasn’t exactly stealthy, but with her able to feel where everyone was she could evade and play whatever tricks were needed to avoid detection.
She isolated one of the yellow-skinned Protovic and took control of her body, walking her around a corner and right to Kara. The shadow disappeared revealing a red armored monster that peeled back it skin to reveal the supply pack that held the numerous doses of the virus Star Force had prepared. Kara pulled out one vile and loaded up the handheld injector, finding a patch of soft glowing skin between the exoskeletal patches on her arm and quickly administering her first inoculation on this planet.
With her mental remote control still working, she spun the Protovic around and returned her to the original course she’d been walking before releasing her hold on her mind. The Protovic stumbled a bit, shaking her head and wondering why she’d blanked for a moment, but was otherwise unaware that anything had happened.
Kara repeated the process with a few dozen more people in this village, knowing the virus would spread quickly to the others but wanting to make sure it had a good hold on this group in order to start the planetary spread. From there Kara flew into the nearest primary city and inoculated a few more, then hit up several more positions in this section of the planet, exhausting her supply before she finally flew back up to orbit, summoning as much speed as she could once beyond the atmosphere, then waiting out the long coast until she got far enough away for the Ma’kri to risk coming in to pick her up.
Deciding to take a nap with her proximity sensors on, Kara just floated on her ballistic course out from the planet hoping that the virus was as impressive as she’d been told. A single inoculation should have been enough to start the spread across the planet, though it had to be from person to person, at relatively close range. Once inoculated, the dormant coding that would change an individual from a Protovic into a Chixzon would be isolated and deleted from the genome thanks to a combination of techniques from the V’kit’no’sat and the considerable knowledge that Nefron had contributed.
There shouldn’t be any visible effects of the virus and it should go unnoticed while being ever present, infecting more Protovic years from now when these crossed their paths. In theory, a single inoculation could spread through all 3 Shanplenix systems given enough mixed travel, but Star Force wasn’t playing those odds. Kara was going to visit each planet they possessed and spread a bag full of goodies out amongst them to get the ball rolling quickly.
One other addition to the virus’s attack and destroy code alterations was the poison upgrade within the yellow genome. These Protovic hadn’t developed it yet, and better that they don’t going forward. Should the virus find its way to one that already had, then it was programmed not to undo that upgrade and just delete the primary coding. With the hidden imperative to assemble present in all the Protovic it was possible that these would be seeking out others later on and would spread the virus to them, further inoculating more and having a chain effect going forward. That was the hope anyway, though Kara and others were going to be visiting every known Protovic colony that Star Force had located to date, with her taking all the difficult ones.
They weren’t going to tell anyone about this, let alone ask their permission. No, they were going to quietly nip this in the bud in this region of the galaxy and potentially see it spread beyond over the course of time. The Chixzon had put down Protovic colonies all the way around the galactic rim, most of which were beyond Star Force’s ability to reach or even detect, and Nefron hadn’t been given knowledge of their initial placements since his transformation had made their existence superfluous…had it fully worked. His ability to overcome it was due, in hindsight, to the isolation of a piece of his mind. Without that he and the others had declared, without exception, that any Protovic transformed into a Chixzon would be beyond their help.
They were a threat that couldn’t be reasoned with, for according to Nefron they did not care about anyone beyond their own race and their ‘allies’ were merely tools for them to utilize. They did hold to their word, mostly, but if they had to go back on it they would, just not for trivial things. The transformation coding was so heavy and well crafted that there was no way Nefron could have worked his way clear of it without the little bit of his mind that had been preserved, and even then it had taken him 2 years with a lot of trailblazer handholding.
Given the importance of making sure the Chixzon did not return, Kara had volunteered to go on as many of these quiet inoculation missions as needed. This was one threat they could stop before it happened, at least here, and the virus gave them the possibility of doing so far beyond their borders if/when the other Protovic did begin to assemble on their own merits, so there was a tiny chance that they could end up inoculating the entire galaxy…though no one actually expected that to happen.
When Kara had drifted far enough her proximity sensors woke her to the sight of the Ma’kri rushing in towards her. Its bay door wasn’t visible, nor was most of the ship aside from a small marker that allowed her to pick it up. Seeing it she was able to get the dimensions of the ship, and vice versa, allowing it to come get her without running into the tiny spec that was the Archon. Still a shadow but for her own marker, the Ma’kri saw it fly around to the back side of the ship where the hangar bay was open and exposed, yet facing away from the distant planet where no one else could see inside.
Kara flew through the atmospheric containment field and landed into a jog that took her across the deck as her armor retracted, revealing her casual uniform beneath and the clear jewel on her left wrist where the red scales had retreated into. She kept jogging out of the hangar and into the ship’s corridors, headed to the nearest restroom to relieve her full bladder before hitting the sanctum and getting some training in before heading to the second planet on her mission list.
Paul stood onboard the starport in Venus orbit, looking over the entire Solar System from the command nexus there as he watched the fleets assemble. Gone were the old drones,
now replaced with new models that had Dre’mo’dons from destroyers on up. The cutters, corvettes, and frigates had a new weapon system known as a Bri’mart. It wasn’t something the V’kit’no’sat used, but was something that was built from knowledge in the database. One of the races they had conquered had developed it and it along with the rest of their culture and technology had been thoroughly cataloged before, during, and after their destruction, then relegated to the mass of data the V’kit’no’sat kept around in case it might ever be of use in the future.
The Bri’mart were going to be very useful for Star Force, because they were a low powered system that operated like a shotgun. Not useful at all against advanced shields or armor, but very good at chewing apart lesser tech. These weren’t to be standard weapons for Star Force, but dedicated solely to the lizard war…at least until they could find a way to further shrink their Dre’mo’don designs.
Gone were the maulers and even the Ta’lin’yi. Sammy anti-missile functions were likewise history, replaced by baby Keema batteries that also doubled as long range weapon systems. There were no rail guns or missiles, just a streamlined duality meant for a single purpose…destroying lizard cruisers as fast as the enemy could throw them at you.
In addition to the standard drones there were specialties…shield ships, dedicated missile boats, IDF traps, etc, but this was the first time they were going to reveal their new tech to the lizards. They’d been producing the old models while slowly ramping up production on the new ones and building up their numbers here in Sol, along with the production of upgraded warships, the newest Mk. 78s, and even a handful of brand new command ships, though a lot of others were being brought in to augment this invasion fleet.
Ever since Star Force had cut apart the lizard empire the enemy had been conserving its resources. They still fought and resisted the Star Force advance, but not in the numbers that they could have. Scouting missions had revealed that they were pooling their cruiser fleets at their core worlds in an attempt at a last stand, or maybe a counterattack. With the new Dre’mo’don-equipped drones it wasn’t going to matter, so long as Star Force built enough of them and they didn’t get ambushed with unbelievable numbers…which Paul expected them to.