Star Force: Instinct (Star Force Universe Book 49)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  Her days were mostly activity now, but not a lot. A few workouts here and there involving running, light hand to hand combat, swimming, flying, and no skill work occurred at random intervals whenever Lara felt her strength return while the rest of the time she was walking…and walking…and walking. Her body now required activity, and she could only sleep for 20-40 minutes after an exhausting workout. After that she had to be busy doing something, even if on a low level, which left her having no need for chairs. Even when she played video games she was standing up.

  And those video games were not leisure activities. Lara had forgotten what a leisure activity was, and these video games were designed to give certain aspects of her brain various types of training that Vortison was using to keep her mental processing power ahead of what her body required. If he let that invert Lara’s body was literally going to fly apart. The problem was the mind needed sleep as much as the body did to recharge and repair, and the changes made to her had it running wildly as well. If she didn’t use it enough she couldn’t sleep, even if she laid down. Her body could rest in that state, somewhat, but not to the level needed. So she had to be physically and mentally tired enough just to dip into a useful sleep state for a few minutes.

  Without a regenerator her sleeplessness would have burnt her up, and Vortison knew that he had to get her stabilized before she could leave the lab permanently. Fortunately Lara wasn’t going anywhere, for the amount of changes her body was going to require had not even begun to reach halfway yet. There were years of constant changes left to go, and Vortison was just as dedicated to this as Lara was, though the more progress she made the more bits and pieces of time off Vortison had. A few hours here and there where he could pursue other work or just take some down time, but he couldn’t take a vacation. He wouldn’t. He didn’t trust his team to be able to keep leveling up Lara in the most efficient way without him, and with everything she was going through he wasn’t going to make it harder on her because he needed a break.

  And he did need one. A big one. The rest of his staff cycled in and out, keeping them fresh, but Vortison was, in his own way, as fatigued as Lara. That wasn’t a fair comparison given when she was going through, but he was feeling the effects of this never ending adjustment, calibration, and study while he was constantly trying to learn things that had never been explored before…at least not as far as V’kit’no’sat and Chixzon knowledge was concerned. What the Zak’de’ron knew and what the Chixzon knew that they didn’t include in Nefron’s memories was a question mark, but without those very beneficial clues here, Vortison was having to trailblaze his own way forward and figure out how Lara’s body was responding to various changes when they didn’t add up.

  A lot of the time he saw it instantly, but others he would get stuck on and would be forced to make alterations just to see what happened. He couldn’t tell Lara to take a week off, so he had to keep modifying her constantly even when he didn’t know what to do next. So a lot of her hardship was him randomly making changes and seeing what happened.

  Every time he figured things out, sometimes enough to write a book on, he had to keep pressing forward with her pace, for her metabolism was not stable yet. It kept wanting to burn her up or self-frag if she went too slow, and every treatment was preceded by a regeneration sequence to essentially reset her body from the damage it was incurring.

  Bottom line was, Lara was doing her part and not causing an overload, but Vortison was constantly trying to keep up with her pace and figure out things as fast as she could adapt to them…and he couldn’t. He feared getting brain fried more than anything, for it meant he would have to make more random changes to Lara, some of which may take her backward, and after all this time, the only thing holding both of them together was Lara’s gradual movement forward.

  Then one day during a nap he woke up to a Raptor snout staring him in his groggy face.

  He recoiled instinctively, not sure what was going on as his mind came back to focus. “Who are you?”

  “Your relief. You are exhausted.”

  Vortison glanced around, seeing no one else in the lab. Normally there should have been a few staff, at least one, in case Lara needed help with something. “Where is everyone else?”

  “On the other side of the wall. You shouldn’t have to ask. You do have Pefbar, correct?”

  Vortison stood up and looked around, trying to figure out what was going on. “Who are you and how did you get in here?”

  “My name is Veer’na, and Director Davis sent me.”

  “Davis?” Vortison asked, recognizing the other name vaguely. “Why?”

  “He has been monitoring your progress beyond the periodic updates. He now has a direct link through encryption code for her status, fed through the relay network constantly. He has also been informed of your refusal to take a break while insisting that your servants do. He knows this is not sustainable.”

  “I’ve been managing all these years,” the master medtech countered. “Why now?”

  “Lara’s rate of advancement has slowed. The alterations are more harmful than beneficial. To be blunt, your team is causing the Archon far more problems than she deserves. So Davis sent me to assist.”

  “Your name is familiar, but I do not know your credentials.”

  “Nor should you. Most of my work was never made public knowledge, even amongst the Rit’ko’sor. And while I now understand how what I did was dishonorable, the knowledge I gained from it remains. Knowledge that the Director wants me to assist you with.”

  “What knowledge?” Vortison asked, his curiosity and need to help Lara overriding his misgivings about this abrupt intrusion.

  “During our rebellion against the V’kit’no’sat, we attacked them in many ways. Some of which were dishonorable, but we felt we could not hold back. We must hit them in every way possible, and we did so. Including the use of genetic weaponry.”

  Vortison’s eyes grew dark. “How so?”

  “We have been engineered to resist disease and create a very robust healing effect, even without a regenerator, Sesspik, or Haemra. You do not have this, for even with the advancements made in Zen’zat, your race was never at our level because you were not allowed to reproduce. All Zen’zat were made from the same template, and while that template was occasionally updated, there was no natural growth. In order to overcome our natural healing, we had to develop robust genetic weapons. Adaptive ones that would counteract, at least through a few permutations, exterior healing effects and immunities the V’kit’no’sat would create. I too have had to explore into the unknown depths of biology, whereas most V’kit’no’sat merely learn what others before have provided them.”

  “What kind of weapons?”

  “Death, confusion, slowness, overdrive,” he emphasized. “Something that you are continually fighting now, correct?”

  “I am fighting to stabilize it, not stop it. We want the overdrive to normalize.”

  “It never will. You must make it oscillate.”

  “Why wasn’t I informed of you coming here?”

  “There was no point in throwing an untouchable variable into your present confusion. Now that I am here, you can address it. It would have been a distraction had my arrival been announced. I informed your servants while you slept. I did not want to wake you when you desperately needed sleep, but now I do because of a blip in Lara’s status.”

  “What blip?” Vortison said, racing past the Raptor to get at his equipment. He scanned the very familiar displays and tapped into the telepathic interlink for additional data, seeing nothing out of the ‘normal’ in the chaos that had become familiar, though never repeating. “She’s within predicted levels.”

  “Her cellular cohesion has slipped. It is a precursor to dispersion when an overdrive ramps up.”

  “She’s not in overload and knows how to avoid it. If it gets bad enough she’ll come straight here and I’ll reset her.”

  “Wasteful. You need to alter the cellular membrane to create a
lateral drift conduit. For that you will require Niterium.”

  “Niterium?” Vortison asked, knowing it was a rare beta isotope of Sodium, meaning it had corovon added to the nucleus in addition to neutrons.

  “For the localized magnetic field. It will create a conduit that will resist expulsion while facilitating sliding. I had to create Niterium-eating microbes to counteract the defense mechanism the V’kit’no’sat created to counteract my overdrive weapons.”

  “I’ve seen no research on that.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t. The V’kit’no’sat ego is quite large. They did not want to admit that we could hurt them so badly, so they hid the attacks under various guises as they fought to counter them. With us simultaneously assaulting worlds through conventional means, the naval bombardments firmly held the empire’s attention.”

  “You have access to secret medical files?”

  “In my mind only. And the clues hidden within their, and our, genetic codes. The Rit’ko’sor did not hold to genetic medical attacks, so our small group operated in secret. I am the only one to survive, and I have 1.3 million years of experience to offer, though to be blunt, the majority of that experience comes from the war when we were pressed to go beyond V’kit’no’sat medical knowledge, and part of how we did so was to examine what remained of the Zak’de’ron weapons they used against us during the V’kit’no’sat rebellion. Not much remained, but there was enough to get us started.”

  “They fought with genetic weapons?”

  “They fought with everything they had. For those of us who were there to witness it, it was terrifying. They were far stronger than we assumed, some of which were in the most devious of ways, but we had numbers and enough strength to defeat them with an unending wave of our own blood. I was one of the few who survived a genetic attack, and it was from the remains in my own body that I started part of our research.”

  “Why have I not been told any of this?”

  “Because I have not discussed it with anyone other than Davis, and until recently I had never gone into the details. The more I learned of how Star Force operates, the more I learned that death is preferable to dishonor, and that what I had done, while right in wanting to strike back, was wrong in the method chosen. I had decided to keep my knowledge buried, for I would not be using it again to create such weapons, but the Director’s wisdom showed me another path. I can use what I wrongly gained to help shield Star Force against the Chixzon when they return. I have been working with Nefron for some time now, though no one knows it. Davis decided your project now has need of my shameful knowledge. And you are in need of a peer that can allow you to periodically rest and reset your mind. You do Lara little good without inspiration, for inspiration is the key to probing the unknown.”

  “I’m not abandoning her, but if you can help nudge me forward I welcome your help. Lara’s persistence is staggering, but I am not assuming it is eternal. She is past the worst of it, but she is not near the level she needs to be to finish the transformation…and there is no going back.”

  “There is no going back for any of us. Life is always forward, even if we turn around and head the opposite way, for we approach the same location from a different angle. Repetitiveness can only be accomplished when one individual treads another’s former path.”

  “The blip you mentioned. Can you correct for it now?”

  “We did not target Zen’zat genetics, for some of them remained loyal to us during the war. But customizing it to your cells should not be complicated.”

  “Alright, let’s get to work on it and anything else that jumps out at you. A fresh set of eyes is what I need right now.”

  “And when you become comfortable with my skills, you will then take some time away to get your mojo back.”

  “Not yet,” Vortison cautioned. “But if you’re right, I will eventually. So show me where I’ve gone wrong so far.”

  “You have not. It is a matter of seeing your way ahead. Even your mistakes provide data that further illuminates the state of the Zen’zat body, and are thus useful. I have studied them in depth during my trip here, but I did not have your research notes. When is she due for another adjustment?”

  Vortison glanced at the nearest clock. “Six hours.”

  “Go. Shower. Then return. We will have enough time.”

  “Shower?” Vortison asked, sniffing his left arm.

  “You reek. A sign you spend too much time here trying to solve problems overthinking. Inspiration cannot be forced. I insist.”

  Vortison wiped a bit of drool off his face as he took stock of his present condition, which required his mind to come back from theoretical mode.

  “No. I need to get a brief run in first. Then I’ll shower. When I’m gone, start putting together the cellular membrane alteration. I want it as complete as possible for my review.”

  “A proper delegation. Go now. I am fresh.”

  “Thank you,” Vortison said, suddenly feeling a large weight lift off him and realizing just how much pressure he’d been under. “But next time, don’t wake me up with your dino breath in my face,” he said as he walked off

  “There is no need to be insulting…” Veer’na mildly objected, for the notion of brainless ‘dinosaurs’ had not sat well with the Raptors once they started digging into Star Force historical records. “Ter’nat.”

  7

  When Vortison had sent out his call for all the Master Medtechs, Marco Borelli had responded with the others and they all traveled to Vis to study this new discovery…which left every one of them stumped. No one could find any cause for it, nor was it stable. Sometimes Lara would read normally, other times she would exceed what was thought to be her physical capabilities with regard to the psionics. Her musculature was in such a state of disrepair that testing it at a high level was impossible, and it had been deemed necessary to figure out what was going on…thus the others had left, finding nothing they could do here, but Borelli had stayed.

  He didn’t bother Vortison, for the other Human had far too much on his plate to deal with. Instead, he worked in parallel from another medbay trying to piece together what was happening with Lara. He could monitor her biomed stats from her eyepiece the same as Vortison, as well as the more direct measures from the array of equipment in the lab when they were in use. He had the same data, just not the ability to experiment with Lara herself, and he should have been able to find some correlation, but so far he couldn’t predict her future states at all.

  What was happening to her was inexplicable…yet it was there. That meant his understanding of science was wrong, and that was fascinating to him. For if he had something wrong, when he got it right it could open up a vast array of new technologies or lead to additional discoveries like a domino wave. The trick was figuring out what was wrong, and in this case it was a simple fact of her psionic tissue producing more effect than they biomechanically could.

  So he’d been hammering research into the tissue structure to determine if they’d been wrong about its potential output. Again and again he was coming up with the same answers, making him wonder if he was stuck in a rut and just not seeing the error, or if he was being confronted with the fact that there was no error and this effect was external to the tissue. He couldn’t align any of the changes to molecular or energy changes in her body or around it, and the more he studied the more it appeared that there was an external energy source.

  But it was more than that, for her Pefbar fields were extending beyond her controlling function. Typically there was a power curve that diminished with range, meaning one could see further with more power, but to a point. You couldn’t just double up distance with power, and the ranges that, say, an Era’tran could see were greater than a Human simply because of the larger tissue size and raw power behind it. Lara wasn’t up to Era’tran range, but she was seeing farther than even Aaron had managed. Same too with the larger Arc Knights who had more tissue.

  Her Pefbar fields were holding together at range more
than her power allowed. It was as if she was using a different type of power with different rules, but he couldn’t detect it. He could see the extended range, so something was happening, but not what was causing it.

  If this was a Core-related phenomenon then he had to find a way to measure it…and in order to measure an invisible force he had to measure something it moved. He could do that now, but since it was piggybacking on other things Morelli couldn’t get a clear reading. This was a very sneaky phenomenon, and it dawned on him that the Chixzon may have never been able to figure it out for just this reason. So how was Star Force going to?

  If and when Lara stabilized he was going to ask her to help him probe this further, but as long as these anomalies were actively occurring he wasn’t going to waste them. Especially if he might hit on something that could assist Vortison in his work. What Lara was going through was extreme, and he didn’t feel like letting this wait until later.

  But the question still remained, how was he going to tackle this? If he couldn’t directly measure it he had to find a way around the problem, and so far this mystery still had him thoroughly stumped.

  “How many more planetoids do you intend to destroy?” the Knight of Quenar asked Davis across a table with a few hand-picked ambassadors from the Rim Consortium who were both influential and reasonable, for the Director wasn’t going to waste his limited time on people’s temper tantrums.

  “As many as needed. We’re taking possession of lizard territory, so what we do with it is our prerogative.”