Star Force: Return to Earth

by Aer-ki Jyr

  The inner material was hard enough that it wasn’t like diving into water, more like diving into sand, but Nami pushed further, using her biological gravity drives to drill herself into the Hadarak as much as she could without breaking her own armor in the process. Once she got herself fully inside she dug in another half mile or so, leaving only a tiny bit of her dark blue body visible from space, then Paul got the telepathic warning from her.

  He immediately moved the drones further away, enacting the shield alteration that would protect them from the disabling field she was about to emit. If he didn’t do that the drones wouldn’t go dead like other machines would, but they’d be hindered and right now he didn’t need to give the minions any free shots. So as the weaker shield modifications were enacted he flew the drones away and played a game of cat and mouse to buy some time as a tiny bit of the disabling field flew out from the gap in a cone-like trajectory that barely hit any of the drones.

  It didn’t affect the minions at all, but it was merely the precursor for the detonation wave that followed. When in atmosphere it was able to create tsunamis that would wreck hundreds of miles of a planet’s surface without digging down into the crust. But here, fully encompassed by living rock, most of the wave had nowhere to go and was reflected back on itself multiple times over, enhancing its destructive power exponentially.

  Paul saw the surface of the Hadarak swell up like a pimple for a few long seconds before it broke, with a 20 mile section blowing out like a shower of asteroids followed by globs of the ‘soft’ tissue. There wasn’t much of a bleeding effect, for the Hadarak didn’t have blood, but there were magma-like liquids oozing out of it along with a lesser amount of true ‘soft’ tissue and fluids as the new crater held its shape with Nami no longer in it. The blast had propelled her outward, moving slower than the ‘asteroid’ chunks of armor, but still careening away from the Hadarak at a decent rate as Bahamut and Devastator now targeted the huge wound with their ranged weaponsfire.

  Almost immediately after that huge kick in the ass the minions went crazy. They no longer moved in organized groups or attacked specific targets. All of a sudden they lost cohesion and attacked anything within range, whether it be drones or Uriti, as the Hadarak suddenly began to pull back on a trajectory headed towards the star.

  Paul focused on the minions while telling the Wranglers to order the Uriti to do the same, and it wasn’t until sometime later that he got an update from the Wranglers as to the Hadarak’s reaction. The blink he’d been looking for had happened, for while it was essentially cursing the Uriti for existing, gone was the arrogant superiority that it had shown before. It knew it was in trouble and if it stayed it was going to die, so it was running to the safest place it knew possible…the gravity well of the star.

  To a damaged starship a star was the last place it would want to go. The wound on the Hadarak, had it been a machine, would allow the star eat it from the inside out like the way Olivia-051 had destroyed a Mach’nel. But he knew that wouldn’t happen. The greater the gravity the more the wound would squeeze closed, compressing down to where the true soft tissue and fluids would not be able to reach the surface. In fact the entire body of the Hadarak would shrink in the heavier gravity well, and in that compression they healed the best. It seemed counter-productive to most forms of biology, but the Hadarak were something entirely different.

  It needed food from the rocky planets, but as far as healing went, if one was damaged, they needed gravity…and the more of it the better.

  Paul ordered everyone to let it go, and thankfully the Uriti didn’t argue the point. The minions didn’t leave, however, and had to be destroyed. The Uriti helped with that, drawing their attention away from the drones and taunting them to go kamikaze or get within their point defense range, but Paul made sure to capture the last few. That wasn’t easy, and he hadn’t brought the necessary equipment along with them to take permanent possession, but with the Hadarak withdrawing he wanted to get some of them alone and see if the Uriti or even the Archons could make telepathic contact.

  So he consumed himself with that task as they watched the Hadarak limp off to the star and sink down within it…but not so far they couldn’t track it. Until basic repairs were made it could only go so far in, otherwise the burning effect of the star would kill it, but after it ‘scabbed’ over a bit it’d go all the way in to the stellar core where it would be safe from the ‘little beings’’ fleet as well as most of the Uriti’s weapons.

  “Ok,” Kara said in the aftermath as Paul and others dealt with the last bits of minion combat and weren’t too distracted. “Guess I called it wrong. He did wuss out.”

  “That’s good. It means they’re not totally unreasonable.”

  “Yeah, but what do we do now? If we let him live he goes back and tells the others…”

  “We may have to face that, but if he can learn that we’re not defeatable, it might be able to learn other things.”

  “You think we have a window for negotiation?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far, but it did blink. That’s a crack in their kamikaze mojo that may be able to be widened. This is the first time they’ve encountered the Uriti, so I’m not too surprised that they didn’t understand what they were dealing with.”

  “Yeah. So does this mean I have to turn in my trailblazer credentials?” Kara asked with a cringe.

  “No, because you weren’t wrong. We are in a bad situation if it goes and reports back to its buddies. We just can’t go to the darkside to solve our problem.”

  “If he attacks again, do we have to let him retreat?”

  “No. If it attacks again we kill it. We’re not playing games here and our Uriti took damage. If it attacks again it won’t live to repeat its mistake a third time, but I get the feeling it’s not going to without backup.”

  “So it’s Armageddon then?”

  Paul shrugged. “Let it heal up a bit, then we’ll ask it.”

  10

  August 15, 4834

  Itium System (Hadarak Zone)

  Stellar Orbit

  Another three weeks passed before the Hadarak came up out of the star. It hung in the very outer edge, sort of peeking out, with the missing chunk of it smaller but still obviously present. The smaller injuries were much better healed, but it seemed that the Hadarak was going to take a lot more time to fully heal, and probably would require some raw materials that were difficult to find within some stars.

  The Hadarak was eerily silent for nearly a day, just sitting there in the upper edge of the star, and the Uriti were not talkative either. It was almost as if they were staring each other down, but eventually the Hadarak broke the silence by inquiring where they had obtained their weapons.

  The Uriti had already shared their origin and the story of the Chixzon, but the Hadarak didn’t seem to understand. Its very rigid targeting system was now in conflict, for the Uriti were not Hadarak, they were not minions, and the idea of them being malfunctioning versions of either now seemed to have been ruled out. The weaponry the Uriti possessed had got its attention in a ‘that’s not fair’ way, as if the Hadarak were meant to automatically win and suddenly this one was faced with a no-win scenario.

  That was making it reassess, and Paul could feel through the Uriti that the Hadarak had never done that before. Everything was rigidly defined for it and having to think outside the box wasn’t what it was designed for. The Hadarak was a hunter, but now its prey analyzer wasn’t giving it an acceptable answer.

  But it wasn’t the danger of the Uriti that was rattling it, surprisingly. Paul got the feeling that it didn’t have trouble with dying. It didn’t fear death, or rather it valued something more than life…and that was staying true to the Hadarak mandate. What that was, exactly, Paul couldn’t ascertain, but it was some sort of mission in which they knocked down threats while looking for something else more dangerous. As if the V’kit’no’sat were so insignificant that they weren’t any more dangerous than a colony of ants that the Hadarak s
tomped under their boot whenever they got in the way.

  After all the damage the V’kit’no’sat had done to them Paul couldn’t accept that…unless there were way more of them in the Core than anyone thought. That did worry him, but it was this odd recognition of the Uriti’s weaponry that attracted his curiosity. The Hadarak wasn’t regarding it as a threat, more of a ‘why are you here’ perplexion.

  At first Paul wondered if they had had contact with the Chixzon back during their time, but he quickly ruled that out because the Hadarak didn’t recognize the Uriti. It was a similarity that was now stalling its attack drive, leaving it in a limbo it was not able to break out of.

  It also realized it couldn’t beat them, and it wasn’t going to go kamikaze for no reason…superiority complex or no…and that jived with what Paul had learned from the V’kit’no’sat. They did fall back when losing, but only to come back at them again later. Right now though, the Hadarak wasn’t interesting in fighting them. It was conflicted and searching for some way to categorize what the Uriti were. The Star Force ships it didn’t care about and easily dismissed as irrelevant akin to the V’kit’no’sat, but it needed to figure out what the Uriti were in a galaxy they were supposed to have all to themselves.

  The Uriti wasn’t what they were looking for. Paul could be sure of that. But there was something that didn’t add up, because Hadarak and their minions were not supposed to have those weapons…but someone else was? It felt to the Hadarak like someone had mixed pieces of several different things that were incompatible with each other, thus an impossibility that it did not have a preprogrammed answer for.

  Paul got the feeling that everything about the Hadarak was preprogrammed, as if they had a manual to cover every possible situation and their fight with the V’kit’no’sat was outlined in a small chapter of it. The Uriti, however, were not listed on any page and the Hadarak didn’t know what to do…and simply erasing them from existence wouldn’t cut it. It needed to find an answer but couldn’t, and after another two days of talking it finally made a decision.

  It pulled out of the star and headed away from it and the Uriti, traveling around the glowing sphere and heading towards one of several jumppoints that led deeper into the Core.

  “Paul,” Kara said, contacting him as the Hadarak fled at a turtle’s pace. “It’s now or never unless you want to trail it a while.”

  “I know,” he said, faced with a dilemma. If the Hadarak was going for help and was assured to launch a massive attack from the Core then Paul should kill it now before it could whistle up support, for it wasn’t running away to live, but rather to regroup and attack. That meant leaving was in essence an offensive action and by killing it now he would blunt their planned future attack. He didn’t like doing that, but the logic was sound. The Hadarak was an enemy and going to effectively strike at the Uriti, Star Force, and whatever slice of the galaxy got in between them if this one delivered the message. That wasn’t the same as one fleeing a battle just to survive. This one was carrying the knowledge that would ignite the others and it knew it. It knew, and had told them what would happen, so it wasn’t a helpless victim caught up in the actions of others. It was complicit.

  Except now it wasn’t. It wasn’t bent on their total destruction. It was perplexed, and that left Paul with a problem. Something about the Uriti’s weapons had changed that, and he got the feeling it wasn’t Bahamut’s. Maybe a specific one the others had, but the Hadarak hadn’t responded to questions concerning that. This might just be a coincidental familiarity of someone else the Hadarak was aware of, perhaps an ally? Because of that the apocalypse that had been promised before might not occur…but then again it might. If Paul let the Hadarak go he could be allowing it to start now, when hiding the existence of the Uriti from the Hadarak was the safer play.

  But if this Hadarak wasn’t sure about what to do about the Uriti, they might not turn out to be enemies…or maybe no more than the V’kit’no’sat were. The certainty of utter destruction the Hadarak had been blaring before was now gone with a big question mark in its place, and it was up to Paul to make a decision.

  He knew the Uriti were angry, but they didn’t have a desire to destroy the Hadarak. If Star Force asked them to fight they wouldn’t want to, but they were so disillusioned right now they didn’t know what to do either and were relying on Star Force to help guide them…which left this squarely in Paul’s lap.

  There were no guarantees either way, which is what made this hard. And not hard because of the choice being made, but hard because of the consequences that could occur if he chose wrong. The safe bet was to kill the Hadarak regardless, but was that the right thing to do? And even if it wasn’t, was one wrong better than the potential slaughter of people across the galaxy if the Hadarak got ticked and came looking for a fight? After all, they weren’t just innocent bystanders. They stomped on anything that got in their way, this one included, so why not kill it for the damage it had done and slip out of the Core before any more of them found the Uriti.

  But Paul wasn’t a rookie and he saw the logic trap in that. If one went with the punishment route, and tracked back all offenses, you’d end up having to delete virtually everyone in the galaxy because actions and misdeeds built on each other, and when you pushed on one domino all the rest began to fall as well. The Hadarak had done so much damage, but then so had the V’kit’no’sat who were formed to fight the Hadarak. If the Hadarak didn’t exist the V’kit’no’sat wouldn’t, so do you punish the V’kit’no’sat for responding to the atrocities of the Hadarak with their own? They were, in essence, protecting the galaxy in their own way, and even their death marks had a cold logic to them with regards to maintaining the dominance of their empire in order to avoid any other threats growing large enough to distract them from the pressure they needed to keep on the Hadarak just to hold the line against them.

  But regardless of why the V’kit’no’sat did what they were doing, it was wrong. The ends didn’t justify the means, and survival, while extremely important, was not the top priority in life. Even the V’kit’no’sat and the Hadarak somewhat understood that, for they were willing to die fighting for their ‘team’ even when it conflicted with their individual survival.

  Star Force’s team was the good guys, and if it meant being bad in order to survive then the choice before Paul was clear…it was what might, and probably would happen later, that was making him cringe.

  “Let it go,” Paul told Kara. “It might come back to bite us later, but we’re not going Sith and killing it for the convenience. If it was still hell bent on our destruction and running to get its buddies to help kill us, I’d agree with you. But right now it doesn’t know what to do. It might only be a temporary reprieve, but in this moment it’s not an enemy.”

  “What about the minions on the planet?”

  “The Hadarak is probably leaving them to die. If they don’t have enough resources down there they’re toast without the Hadarak to support them.”

  “Do we put them out of their misery?”

  “No. They might survive, they might not. We release most of the minions we captured over the planet and keep the few we have the supplies to sustain on the trip back. We’re done here, so let’s slip out quietly.”

  “You’re not happy.”

  “No, I’m not. The Hadarak throw away lives as easily as the lizards do, but they’re worse. The lizards at least see their population as an asset. I think the Hadarak consider their minions as almost irrelevant. Like the rockets in the rocket launcher. They make what they need, and leave behind what they don’t want. It’s not just dishonorable, it’s sloppy and very…” Paul said, finding himself at a lack for words.

  “Disrespectful,” Kara finished for him.

  “It’s worse than that. It’s the assertion that life doesn’t matter. That those minions are nothing more than machines, and we know they’re not. Even the Chixzon were not that cold.”

  “I think they were more concerned with people ignoring
their orders when they crafted the Uriti minions.”

  “I’m not talking about their motivations, but the end result. If that planet doesn’t have everything they need they’ll starve to death. They can’t leave. They can’t build what they need. Lizards, at least, were outfitted with cruisers that could do just about anything with enough time and raw materials. These minions rely on the Hadarak, and I don’t think the Hadarak built enough industry down there to sustain them. It just up and left them.”

  “Which is why it might be better if we killed them now.”

  “It’s a maybe, Kara. If they’ve got even a tiny chance of making it until another Hadarak arrives, we’re not going to deny them that.”

  “And you don’t want to kill the Hadarak for stranding them here?”

  “Not today,” Paul said, knowing she had a good point. “Let’s consolidate the allies we have here. With that hive mind I don’t think we’re ever going to change the Hadarak, but the Uriti are learning. If we order an attack on the Hadarak now, in their current state, without it being self-defense…”

  “Deal,” Kara said, seeing his point. “We let this bastard go and head back, making it clear we’re the only family the Uriti have. If we survive long enough for them to get big, they’re the key to defeating the Hadarak. In the extreme long term, that may be the best play of all.”

  “The thought crossed my mind.”

  “What else is?” she asked.

  “Plenty,” he said, sending the order to the fleet and the Uriti to let the Hadarak go.

  “What’s bothering you the most?”

  “Why does it seem everyone else in this galaxy aside from us is endlessly bloodthirsty?”