Star Force: Return to Earth

by Aer-ki Jyr

  Whether it was the one it wanted or not, the minion arrived at its jumppoint and began to decelerate to align with the precise jumpline out, with Paul wondering how accurate their interstellar navigation was when a much larger ship appeared out of nowhere nearby it.

  It was decloaking, but it wasn’t the KoQ vessel that Paul hoped it would be. Rather it was a V’kit’no’sat ship, and from the size and shape the ship’s computer tagged it as an I’rar’et Dak’bri-class battlecruiser larger than his own command ship, and as he watched there were tiny objects being launched from it at high speed, moving out to intercept the minion.

  The courier immediately altered course, abandoning the jumppoint and heading in towards the star, but the little objects were not to be denied…with Paul seeing once they got closer that they were not ships, but rather I’rar’et in their K’lak’tal combat suits. They were free flying through space in order to outmaneuver the slippery little minion that outmassed them greatly, stinging it continuously until it also began to slow. After that point it was just a matter of time before they finally killed it.

  When Paul got closer he received a comm prompt from the ship, with a hologram of what used to be called a Pterodactyl appearing before him sitting on a perch with its wings spread wide in an agitated stance.

  “Remain here,” it ordered. “We will track down and destroy the other. You must not travel without your fleet.”

  “That courier must be destroyed,” Paul insisted. “If it gets through you can expect a wellspring of Hadarak coming out from the Core.”

  “What has transpired?”

  “The Hadarak have put a death mark on the Uriti,” Paul said, using a term the V’kit’no’sat were well accustomed to. “And they’re now more interested in destroying them than they are you. I think they’re taking the Uriti’s existence as a personal insult.”

  “Mak’to’ran will want all data.”

  “He will get it.”

  “Deal with the Hadarak. We will kill the courier,” the I’rar’et said with finality, then both he and the ship disappeared as it recloaked and hopefully came through on its promise to pursue the minion…but Paul wasn’t worried. The V’kit’no’sat didn’t take the Hadarak lightly, so he didn’t expect…

  It was a great distance away by this point, but the part of Paul’s mind that was tracking the other minion saw a second ship decloak a short distance behind it, closing fast with a speed not even the Excalibur could have matched. It’s hull was even more sensor resistant than the I’rar’et ship, but the limited image he was getting back showed a cascade of sparks out of the blackness of space, then a ship almost equally as black was there, with tiny strips of light accentuating its shape.

  Paul recognized it as one of the KoQ ship varieties, and by the speed it was traveling it was going to get to the minion before it could escape…meaning the V’kit’no’sat pursuit wasn’t going to be necessary.

  Paul watched until the courier destruction was complete and the unannounced ship disappeared, wondering if the V’kit’no’sat knew they were here or not. Either way they did not contact Paul again, with both cloaked vessels having disappeared from system view, making it look like it was just Star Force, the Uriti, and the Hadarak in an otherwise empty system.

  “Problem solved,” he told Hera, who was still on another deck as he remained in the command nexus. “It’s nice to have somewhat psychotic friends.”

  “Are you talking about the Knights of Quenar or the V’kit’no’sat?”

  “Yes,” he said simply as they altered course and headed to the location where all 5 Uriti were now camped. “Looks like you were right. The Hadarak is going for a snack.”

  “It’ll take a while,” she said as it began a slow descent down towards the surface of the innermost planet in the system…one that had a nice thick atmosphere but was nothing other than rock beneath. “We’ve got some time to think about this.”

  “Seems we have two choices. Let the Hadarak go and suffer the wrath of them all, or kill this one and hope the others don’t wise up to it.”

  “You’re worried about their death scream?”

  “It’s data transmission. It can’t be much, but they can send limited messages that way.”

  “Only if someone is in the nearby systems a few years from now to receive the message. We could arrange that they be clear.”

  “If we have to,” Paul said noncommittally. “We didn’t come here to kill Hadarak.”

  “I don’t think we have a choice.”

  “Fill me in some more then. What is this purging?”

  “It’s their purpose for existing. They’re looking for threats, which the V’kit’no’sat are, so they pay attention to them. It jives with what we’ve learned about the Uriti. They don’t take notice of anything unless it affects them, and we had assumed they were kind of apathetic because of their size, but I think they’re lacking something that the Hadarak have and it just left them kind of blah. If it wasn’t for the Chixzon communication protocols engineered into them I don’t think we’d ever have gotten their attention.”

  “Specify this purpose.”

  “I can’t. It’s just a feeling and a lot of Uriti context I can’t put into words and you wouldn’t get even if I shared it with you. Some of this may be intuition on my part, but I get the feeling that they have a unified purpose that drives their very being. They’re looking for something, not just waiting for it to come to them. And it’s a fight, not a friendly or a possession. They’re looking for stuff to destroy. They are literally destroyers. That is their purpose.”

  “Did Bahamut bring up the V’kit’no’sat?”

  “Yes he did. He asked them what the V’kit’no’sat had done to them, and the Hadarak referred to them as ‘resistance’. Not as if they were a person, but a nuisance they weren’t allowed to take seriously.”

  “Allowed?”

  “It’s their hive mind. It sets a lot of rules for their behavior. This Hadarak actually apologized to Bahamut before he attacked him, saying that it wasn’t Bahamut’s fault for being born as he was, but that he had to be destroyed. Minions even in his form could not exist outside the…for lack of a better word, the ‘collective.’ That’s not totally accurate, but there’s a lot of new stuff I just got blasted through that doesn’t have vocabulary to match.”

  “Apologize why?”

  “In some way it recognized him as family, maybe only in a minion sense, but it was a ‘you’re defective’ reason for destruction rather than ‘you’re an outsider’ justification. They consider every star and planet their property, with the little beings vermin too small to worry about eradicating. They just step on us when we get in the way. The V’kit’no’sat do more than get in the way, but rather than seeing them as a worthy enemy it’s more like a failure on behalf of the Hadarak who died to them. They’re killing V’kit’no’sat because of the threat, but they’re basically using the combat as training as well. They could squash them if they wanted to, for most of their population is still in the Deep Core and the V’kit’no’sat are not sufficient reason to bring them out.”

  “Are the Uriti?”

  “That’s what I’m worried about. I think this Hadarak has to die or we could be seeing a plague unleashed on the galaxy. I know you don’t like that, and neither do I, but he’s already declared us as needing to be squashed along with the Uriti, so…”

  “We have time,” Paul said firmly. “We came here to talk, and so long as he doesn’t send out any more couriers, we’re going to talk some more. Explain to the Uriti that I need to talk to the Hadarak through them in order to figure this out. We’ll stay at range so no combat occurs, but…”

  “It won’t talk to you, I’m sure of that.”

  “Then I can feed questions through the Uriti, unless the Hadarak clams up. I need this link, Hera, and you said Bahamut was looking for answers. Convince him that I can help.”

  “No promises, but I’ll try...”

  9

 
; June 26, 4834

  Itium System (Hadarak Zone)

  1st planet

  More than a week had passed since the Uriti vs. Hadarak fight, and fortunately the Hadarak was not ignoring them while it was planted on the surface of the planet and its minion workers were digging into the crust at an alarming rate, returning vital materials to it that were probably going towards the repair of its tentacles and the development of more naval minions.

  Bahamut, after two days of talking to the Hadarak, had gone to bathe in the star to help regenerate its injuries while the other four stayed with the Star Force fleet over the planet and continued to converse with the Hadarak. Even though it had declared them as needing to be destroyed, it oddly had no problem talking. It couldn’t kill them right now without minions, so as it waited to grow more it coldly kept talking in an almost casual manner.

  The Uriti were not so cold. They were angry, and even after 9 days that anger had not abated. They were conflicted about what to do with the Hadarak, wanting to attack it but not wanting to at the same time. Despite its rejection of them they still felt a loyalty to their ‘kin’ despite the frustrating hive mind signals that the Uriti were naturally rejecting.

  The Uriti had allowed Paul and the Wranglers the ability to talk through them, though the Hadarak didn’t know it. The Uriti operated as translators, so they were asking the questions, and the vivid apathy of the Hadarak was galling. It was rooted, Paul had discovered, in their utter refusal to acknowledge anything other than themselves as a ‘person,’ though that term didn’t truly translate. It was as if no other lifeforms counted for anything except the Hadarak, and the fact that this one could talk to the Uriti freely and even acknowledge that they were alive, yet completely disregard their right to exist was sickening.

  It wasn’t unique in the galaxy, unfortunately, but Paul had never seen anything worse. The only shred of consideration for the Uriti came in the way of a heartless apology that they had to be destroyed, as if they were Hadarak that had strayed across a line and thus stopped being Hadarak…yet it talked to them as if they were. The dichotomy was appalling, and the Hadarak made it clear that as soon as it was capable again it was going to attack and destroy the Uriti and their Star Force ‘minions.’

  And what was the most blatant thing about the Hadarak stance was the lack of anger. It wasn’t mad at the Uriti, or Star Force. They simply had to die. It was as if the Hadarak were just out mowing the grass…except grass wasn’t ‘alive.’ It was a biological machine, not a person. The Hadarak didn’t seem to consider anything to be a person, and Paul wasn’t even sure how they regarded each other, but had a suspicion that they didn’t identify other Hadarak as separate lifeforms, rather an extension of themselves. He couldn’t confirm that without another one present, but the feel of the hive mind was so strong he would have felt comfortable placing a bet on his guess.

  So to the Hadarak the galaxy was theirs and there was no one else in it. All other living beings were a different class and theirs to kill if they deemed it necessary…and the code they lived by decreed that the Uriti had to die, so this one was going to kill them without blinking an eye. Just like that, without any remorse, anger, hatred, or frustration. Even its failure to kill Bahamut and the damage it took didn’t seem to anger it. It was simply going to heal, refuel, and go at it again, confident that the superiority of the Hadarak was unbeatable. It didn’t seem to identify itself as a…

  Paul’s thoughts cut off as he felt a presence nearby in the sanctum onboard his ship. He couldn’t converse with the Hadarak non-stop and the Wranglers were better at it, so right now he was holding a handstand pose while lost in thought with a few other Archons present in the massive training facility packed within his command ship…but now another mind had been added to them, and a powerful one at that.

  “You know we have to kill it, right?” Kara asked, walking up to Paul and sitting about a meter in front of his face, crossing her legs, and slightly leaning forward to look into his upside down eyes.

  “That’s not what we came here to do,” he said, casually holding his handstand.

  “Why did you kill the courier minions then?”

  Paul sighed, then did half a cartwheel over onto his feet, collapsing down into a cross-legged sitting position in front of Kara.

  “They were going to go whistle up reinforcements.”

  Kara’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t like having to kill them?”

  “They’re not drones like the Uriti minions, they’re people.”

  “And?”

  “And all those four were doing was relaying a message. They didn’t attack us.”

  “So why’d you do it then?”

  “You know why.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “It’s the first time we’ve met the Hadarak or their minions, but I’ve been studying the V’kit’no’sat data, both old and new, so I have an understanding of how they operate. We’ve also seen this before with the lizards. They throw away lives so casually it’s sickening and they don’t surrender. I don’t even know if the Uriti can communicate with their minions. We definitely can’t at the moment, and if we could they’d probably just ignore us. We need answers to those questions, but those couriers weren’t going to wait until we got them.”

  “Why not disable them?”

  “They’re not in ships. The only way to disable them is to kill or so seriously wound them they can’t move. I have no idea how much damage it would take, and even if we did stop them they’d be lingering in agony. That’s not disabling in my book, and this fleet doesn’t have any weapons to disable biological ‘ships’ a mile long. Interdictors would be the best bet, but none were in range and if I had used the Excalibur at best I could catch one, not all four, and even if I did catch it I’d have to hold onto it indefinitely…”

  Kara held up a hand for him to stop. “I get it. You didn’t like being forced to kill them, but you had to or let them run off and tell the Hadarak we exist, the Uriti exist, and they need to come kill us both. They can’t do that here, we’ll be gone before they could arrive, so you’re worried about them coming out from the Core en mass after us. That threat hasn’t changed. If this Hadarak lives and goes to tell the others himself, the same thing happens. We have to kill it.”

  “Not sure the Uriti will be too happy about that. They still feel the Hadarak are family, and that’s not going to wear off with a single attack. They still can’t understand why it’s doing what it’s doing.”

  “I don’t like it too much either, but we can’t let this Hadarak go back and tell its friends. You already killed the minions to prevent that, so why are you hesitating with the Hadarak?”

  “I was caught offguard.”

  “How so?”

  “We have maneuvering superiority. We don’t have to fight the Hadarak if we don’t want to, and the minions that attacked Bahamut could always turn around and leave. They choose to engage and die. But when I learned about what the Hadarak were going to do and this one sent the couriers off, I was stuck. The couriers weren’t attacking and I only had a limited window to act. Without the help of the V’kit’no’sat and KoQ two of the couriers would have gotten away and we would have had to go after them.”

  “You think fast,” she countered.

  “Yeah I do, and I came to the same conclusion you did. They weren’t directly attacking us, but they were going to bring others to do it for them. If they were just carrying a report back I would have let them go, but this Hadarak made it clear that there was no room for negotiation. They’re going to try and kill us all, and those couriers were carrying the information of our existence back as if it were a weapon. Like the lizards, they aren’t making choices for themselves, I assumed, and I didn’t have time to figure out if that was true or not.”

  “But there’s no rush now,” Kara said, beginning to understand.

  “I don’t like fighting sloppy…and I really don’t like it when I’m forced to by circumstances.”

&
nbsp; “So what do we do?”

  “We came all this way to talk, and since the Hadarak isn’t holding back in that regard, we pump it for information. Unless another Hadarak or courier enters the system, knowledge of our existence remains here. We have time.”

  “But you know what will eventually happen, right?”

  “Consider the possibility that the Hadarak have never been able to communicate with anyone in the galaxy before. Mak’to’ran said they’d never had so much as an inkling of communication, and if that is true it might be that they can’t communicate with others. If all they’ve ever known is their own minds, then their solid wall of unity might only be that firm because they’ve been unchallenged.”

  “Might explain why this one is so talkative, but he’s not coming our way any.”

  “He hasn’t flinched…and I want to find out if we can get him to. Even a little.”

  “So we camp out here, do the talk thing, and then the Hadarak decides to leave and go tell his buddies we’re here. What then?”

  Paul cringed. “I don’t think that will happen, but if it does we’re screwed.”

  “You won’t kill it?”

  “If it disengages, no. If we give it a choice and it decides not to attack, then we let it go.”

  “Even though it’ll do the same thing the couriers were?”

  “Not true. The Hadarak are going to attack us everywhere we are, almost mindlessly. If this one decides to leave it’ll break that mold…which is why I don’t think it will.”

  “You think it’ll fight us until either we’re dead or it is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even if it sees a mismatch?”

  “It hasn’t left the system yet, it’s just restocking.”

  “And they don’t care if they live or die?”

  “The individual dies, the community continues. Again, much like the lizards.”

  “So you think they’re tactically stupid?”