by Aer-ki Jyr
“About time you got here.”
“My apologies, Riley. It took some time to gather the necessary materials. We assembled it enroute to save time.”
“You’re forgiven,” the Archon said sarcastically. “Come on inside and meet Bahamut.”
“Bahamut?”
“I named him.”
“As you wish.”
“You don’t approve?”
“I am unfamiliar with that name.”
“Comes from a kickass video game series called Final Fantasy. Look it up when you get some spare time.”
“Another of your antiquated classics?”
“You say that like you don’t care,” Riley said deadpan.
“Call him what you wish.”
“Thank you,” the trailblazer said, gesturing to the nearby races. “These are the guys that have taken up stewardship.”
“What is the Uriti’s condition?” Nefron asked bluntly.
“Still sedate,” the cyborg said, sizing him up. “You are an expert on the Uriti?”
“I am.”
“How do you intend to control them?”
“I have a transmitter that will send the necessary control signals.”
“Untested?”
“It was built from the design of those who originally used it. This particular one was just constructed.”
“You don’t intend to test it here?” the Sety asked.
“No, I do not.”
“Then what is it that you need to see?”
“What has been done to the Uriti. It has been incapacitated by those that do not fully understand its function. I do. I need to confirm its status and diagnose any unforeseen problems.”
“The Ancients have successfully kept these beasts in check since their capture. Their systems function perfectly if not disturbed,” the cyborg stated evenly.
“I need to confirm that.”
“What do you fear?” the Trinx asked.
“Many things, but I am hoping all is well.”
“Be specific,” he reiterated, standing between Nefron and the lift that would take them down into the planet.
“They can communicate with each other. If the other gets close enough, it may be able to wake this one. I need to see just how sedate Cardosan is.”
Riley coughed.
“I said you can call it what you want, not that I would reciprocate.”
“Fair enough,” the Archon surrendered with a smile.
“You have studied the Chixzon intensely?” the shapeshifter asked.
“I possess their knowledge.”
“Do you know why they created the Hamoriti?”
“To dominate the galaxy…no less.”
“They sought to destroy everything?”
“No, they sought to intimate. They destroyed only those who would not submit, and to give visible examples to others so that they would. They would rather rule by extortion than conquest.”
“Let’s take him inside,” the small Dati suggested. “Perhaps he will have some more pertinent questions for the Oracle.”
“It’s locked us out of the Uriti chamber after I went in,” Riley explained. “It doesn’t trust us enough to let us sightsee.”
“But it let you in earlier?” Nefron asked as they stepped into the lift.
“It said it wanted to study my resistance to the telepathic aura.”
“It is quite strong. How close did you get before you had to turn back?”
Riley smiled. “I made it all the way.”
Nefron looked at him closely as the doors shut them in and they began to descend.
“It hurt,” he admitted. “A lot, but I was able to hold it together long enough to get to it.”
“What did you do?”
“I touched it.”
“You touched it?” Nefron said quizzically, then a surge of worry ran through him.
“No, I didn’t connect to it. Figured that might kill me before I knew what was happening.”
“You probably couldn’t get through its armor anyway. The Chixzon could never get within touching range of them. They had to craft them from afar.”
“They made them so dangerous even they could not touch them?” the Sety asked.
“Their power was craved, thus safety requirements were not considered relevant. They were never meant to cohabitate systems. They would be kept outside Chixzon worlds and released into target populations. They did not trust them anywhere near their own colonies, but they did utilize their minions for defensive purposes.”
“Are you feeling alright?” the mage asked.
“I will be able to sustain its presence so long as I do not come within 3 kilometers. I may be able to sustain outside of 2, but I do not want to test that theory. Already my mind is numb from the reverberations.”
“You are telepathic?” the cyborg asked.
“I am,” he said, standing next to the Archons with the other races keeping a little space between themselves and his black, rock-like armored body and his dangling spear-like limbs that were bracketing his head.
“What is your position within Star Force?” the Sety asked.
“He is a Chixzon specialist, as well as one of our leading geneticists,” Riley answered when Nefron telepathically deferred, not wanting to say something to give away the secret the trailblazers wanted hidden from The Nine.
“What is the range on this transmitter?” the cyborg asked after a moment of silence.
“It will not reach between star systems, but will reach everywhere inside one. Intensity will increase as the range shortens, and how much is required depends on which Uriti you are dealing with and what its current state is. During combat they do not listen well.”
Another silence followed, then the lift doors opened and they walked out beginning their hike across the hollowed out chasm with the red shell of the Ancient Hamoriti prison visible the moment they stepped out. They got halfway to the aperture lift when weaponsfire sounded up at the aperture along with several flashes in the otherwise dark upper reaches where the small lit platform resided.
“What are they firing at?” the Trinx asked quickly, accessing a wristbound communicator and retrieving information. Several other representatives did likewise, but it was the cyborg that answered first.
“The internal defenses have activated. Our guards are being driven out of the shell.”
“What caused this?” the Sety demanded.
Riley groaned. “Come on, Nefron. I’ll get you in even if I have to bust the door down myself.”
“The internal defenses are not to be trifled with,” the Trinx warned.
“Neither am I,” the trailblazer said as he, the mage, and Nefron began running ahead of the representatives. When they got to the base of the lift it wasn’t accessible, already halfway up and coming down, so the trio hit the stairs and began climbing the height the slow way. The representatives assembled a slew of personnel and came up the lift a bit behind the Star Force personnel that were standing on the edge of the platform and blocking lightning flashes being emitted from the perimeter of the aperture that had since closed.
Before the Trinx could order his pair of vassals forward, the dark blue armored Human darted forward and opened fired on the point where the lightning was coming from and covered it with blue plasma. That didn’t stop the weaponsfire at all, and eventually another point sent a lightning cascade towards him. His shields took the brunt of the attack, but his weapon was also hit and it exploded, knocking him backwards and onto the platform while most of the lightning attacks were still being directed at Riley who held position in front of Nefron and was blocking for him.
The mage got up and sprinted to the door, ducking under the point where the lightning was coming from and seeing if he could draw a shot at extreme close range. Either he couldn’t or the Ancient facility didn’t see him as the most valuable target, so he took his advantage and focused his Pefbar inside the wall…then began telekinetically twisting the parts to the lightn
ing weapon until something popped and the weaponsfire from that point ceased.
Three more suddenly appeared around the aperture and shot him, getting through his shields and melting streaks across his armor. A split second later he was dragged backwards across the platform by the trailblazer’s telekinetic grasp as Riley sprinted forward, swapping places with the mage who got to his feet and stood up in front of Nefron while deploying a bioshield to cover the gaps between arms and legs where his armor would not block.
Two mechanical soldiers passed him by as the Trinx sent his vassals up past the charred remains of the previous ones that were lying scattered on the platform.
“Enough of this,” Nefron said with a snarl, running out from behind the mage and taking temporary cover behind one of the vassals. It blocked one lightning blast as Riley got to the wall and took out another weapons battery with his telekinesis, then two more new ones opened fire and zapped him with four shots in total, with his bioshields adding enough resistance to his mechanical ones to keep him in the game as he disabled another one.
Nefron ran around the much taller combat machine as it opened fire on one spot, catching a lightning blast in biologically armored chest and feeling the pain…but he did not fall. He yelled in a fury, catching two more lightning blasts that partially absorbed into his body. As he covered the last few meters to the wall six more lightning blasts hit him, ignoring Riley briefly as they focused all their available firepower on him.
He dropped to a knee as the energy rippled across his body, then he willed himself to stand up and surged forward with his eyes and his spike mandibles sparking into a luminous green.
When he got to the wall he jabbed one of them directly into the firing point of a weapon that was discharging. The lightning arcs covered him, but as soon as the glowing green tip of his biological spear sank into the armored wall the energy ceased. Another fired from his left, but the mage came up and interposed himself and took half the attack before Nefron shoved him aside and jabbed another glowing spike into it, repeating his attack multiple times until he and the two Archons destroyed all of the point defense weapons around the aperture.
Nefron groaned, then stood up straight and flexed before quickly punching his left fist into the red armored cocoon and discharged all of the energy that he had absorbed.
The shockwave was so loud most of the people present at the back of the platform were stunned, ears left ringing, and both Archons were knocked down while Nefron alone remained standing. He couldn’t sustain that much energy inside him for long, and the wall seemed the best place to get rid of it. Had he hit the platform he might have injured or killed those standing on it.
Where the red armor had been was now a three inch deep smoking hole charred ashy grey, and as the chaotic fight suddenly transitioned into panicked calm, he stood there with the representatives and their people crawling out of the lift and the troops they were hiding behind, whether they be vassals or armored version of their own races, and looking at him as the green glow left his body and he returned to pure black.
Everyone took a deep breath, then finally the cyborgs came forward, some six of them, and inspected the aperture, the damaged weapons, and the shallow crater Nefron had blown into the wall.
“What triggered this?” they asked, looking to the surviving guards that had fled the facility.
“We don’t know. It just started shooting us. There are people still inside that were hit.”
“They are most likely dead,” the Trinx said, carefully keeping one of the vassals between him and the aperture as more came up the lift along with other personnel in a second batch. Apparently no one else liked to take the stairs.
“How many more defenses are inside?” Nefron asked.
“Plenty,” Riley said, “but nothing I can’t handle. They don’t have this armor on the inside.”
“We must regain access to speak to the Oracle,” the shapeshifter said.
“I can get us in,” Nefron said, speaking to Riley and ignoring the others.
“Go ahead. I’ll cover you.”
Nefron snarled and his deep black eyes glowed green again along with his two spike mandibles that he thrust into the aperture door, having to push hard to get them to cut through the material but it didn’t resist him too much. Dragging the glowing tips down was slow, but eventually he got two vertical lines cut then started on the top as the Trinx walked up behind him.
“What are you?”
“Do you mind?” Riley asked flippantly. “He’s busy.”
Nefron ignored the Trinx, finishing his cut on the top then doing likewise on the bottom before pulling back and tucking his mandibles behind him as he put an armored shoulder into the heavy door plug and pushed it inside, toppling it over only to receive a short yellow beam from an internal weapons battery…but it never hit him, for Riley’s bioshield caught it as he came in behind Nefron and quickly got out in front of him with the mage coming through a split second later. The pair of Archons worked together to take down the nearby defense turrets with a combination of psionics and the plasma weapons they’d been carrying around on their armor racks.
“Clear,” Riley called back, with a heavily armored group of cyborgs coming in first, followed by the Trinx who looked at the Humans in complaint.
“I can’t get my vassals inside. The gap is too small.”
“Then widen it. We’re not waiting.”
Nefron breathed in deeply. The aura of Cardosan was much stronger now.
The holographic Oracle suddenly appeared before Riley, staring at him accusingly.
“How dare you bring him here!”
Riley stared back at the glowing image through his helmet, wishing it was real so he could vader it.
“Oh, so you do recognize him,” he snipped.
“He is the creator of the Hamoriti. His presence here threatens everything. He must be destroyed.”
“This one is a Chixzon?!” the Sety all but roared.
Nefron glanced at Riley. “Some quiet, please.”
The Archon took in a long breath himself, then the hasty complaints and outbursts from the aliens behind him suddenly stopped as all were frozen in place, including the Cyborgs, with only the vassals unhindered but standing by passively with no orders to operate on.
“Take your time,” Riley said, mentally telling the mage to handle security, for keeping this group suppressed was taking almost all of his focus. “I’ve got them.”
Nefron turned his attention to the Oracle, taking a step towards it with the image moving backwards reflexively despite the fact that it could not be harmed.
“Oracle, I am not here to release this Uriti, but it is within my power to do so from orbit if I so desire. You have no control here, so I will ask questions and you will answer if you wish to keep Cardosan dormant and fulfill your Ftrolee programming.”
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