by Aer-ki Jyr
Vi’che bristled at that, but then let it go. He wanted help, and he wasn’t going to turn it away just because it was Star Force…not that he had the ability to order them away. The fleet they had brought was 5 times larger than every ship the V’kit’no’sat had in the system, and that wasn’t even counting the Uriti that was worth far more than all the ships combined.
When the carrier opened a tiny spec emerged, but it was still a Uriti. It was only 450 meters wide, but some 16 miles long and Vi’che recognized it as a Zolom. Not the original, but one of the offspring, and it looked like a giant, thin space snake that was, ironically, headed directly for his planet while the Star Force ships split up and headed for the others while the transport drifted out to null space between the 3rd and 4th planets to park.
Vi’che had a brief conversation with Star Force, but it was more them informing him of what was going to happen than them offering to help. Apparently they knew more about the minions than the V’kit’no’sat who had assigned the Qua’cho to this planet, for the sandy world he was situated on was ideal to minion growth despite having no ecology on the surface. That was why he was having such a hard time routing them out, and that’s why it was going to become home to a Star Force minion colony.
He walked out of the city and onto a nearby sand dune to see their arrival. The Star Force ships stayed in orbit and began landing a few troops here and there, but it was the giant snake that had his attention. It was almost directly overhead when it began shooting small object off it that rained down to the planet like meteors, splashing into the sand in controlled landings. Out of those fleshy pods spewed forth different types of minions…minions that were not people, but rather biological machines and far inferior to the Hadarak ones because of that fact.
But these Uriti minions went straight into exposed tunnels and disappeared beneath the surface, hunting either resources or the enemy, Vi’che didn’t know which, but then the great snake in space half disappeared over the horizon in orbit before it curled over and began to head straight down to the planet narrow end first.
Vi’che climbed to the highest sand dune he could to watch while monitoring the tracking feed via his personal armor that was currently retracted into gauntlet mode, but it still allowed him a mental link to the telemetry as Zolom-12 hit the surface at decent speed and poked straight into the planetary crust like a needle. It took a significant delay for the earthquake to make its way to Vi’che’s position, but the entire dune shook and flattened out a touch, half burying the Qua’cho’s heavy feet in the sand.
He shook himself free as he saw the tail of the Uriti compress a bit as it slowly pulled its way underground nowhere near to any Hadarak growth chamber, but once the Uriti was fully submerged he got an update from Star Force indicating that the Uriti was going to be spawning its own growth chambers and the fight would become minion versus minion with the V’kit’no’sat providing the extra punch to assure victory.
Vi’che wasn’t going to argue with that, but then Star Force added the caveat of their minions staying to possess the planet and the entire system, ensuring that the Hadarak would not be able to reinfest it later without significant effort. And such an effort would result in a Star Force courier minion being sent to inform them of the incursion.
That changed everything for Vi’che. He knew the V’kit’no’sat could not permanently inhabit these systems, but if Star Force grew minions to hold them then they truly did have a chance of denying the Hadarak their desired growth fields…but that also meant that Star Force was gradually going to be claiming possession of huge chunks of the galaxy after the Hadarak purged them, and he didn’t like that. Especially if and when the Hadarak started taking chunks of V’kit’no’sat territory.
But if he had to choose between the two, then it was an easy choice to make. The V’kit’no’sat were allied with Star Force and at war with the Hadarak, and if they could turn the Hadarak plans for massive minion producing systems against them and fight fire with fire, so much the better. Fighting Star Force’s Uriti would be easy compared to fighting a tier 6 Hadarak, and if they had to swap one enemy for the other, then that was a beneficial trade to make.
And if Star Force remained an ally and wanted to handle the minion wars, then so be it. The V’kit’no’sat were hunters of Hadarak, not minions, and if Star Force wanted to free them up to fight the big ones, then that would both be a relief and something worthy of the V’kit’no’sat empire.
No matter how you sliced it, today was a good day, even if the V’kit’no’sat had to take a back seat to Star Force here.
Vi’che’s assessment didn’t change over the following 9 months as they cooperated in the successful torching of the Hadarak minion facilities across the system, and when it came time to pack up and leave, the Qua’cho were happy to be rid of the system with the knowledge that Star Force now had it locked down. It was a secure victory, short of a Hadarak arrival, meaning the Qua’cho’s efforts here were not in vain and not just an endless holding maneuver.
The Uriti had already left 4 months ago, moving to another site while leaving behind a few Star Force ships and one of their Wranglers who could control the minions, but as the V’kit’no’sat packed up he was informed that Star Force was leaving as well, but they didn’t want to leave their minions alone with the V’kit’no’sat still here. He found that curious and inquired further, only to be told that the minions were not the brightest organic weapons and that Star Force didn’t want them inadvertently attacking the V’kit’no’sat. They said the odds of that happening were low, but without a Wrangler to oversee them some bad behavior was possible when they didn’t have enough prefabricated orders to cover new circumstances.
That was the downside of them not being living beings, or so they said, but it made something clear to Vi’che. This was not what Star Force wanted. They were accurate to a fault and didn’t like a single unwanted death from even their enemies. They hated sloppy warfare, but leaving the minions behind to guard the system on their own was going to be very sloppy, for they had to order them to shoot anything that came here and tried to land on the planet.
And that’s what the broadcast satellites they left behind said, in as many language varieties as possible, Stay away, you will be destroyed if you land on the planet.
That was very unlike Star Force, but it underscored the position they were in. Like the V’kit’no’sat, they did not have enough troops to garrison every system, but the Uriti minions had been designed for just this kind of thing by a race of effective, but sloppy Chixzon who did not care about killing billions if it achieved their objective.
But automated weapon systems, even biological ones, were just what the anti-Hadarak alliance needed to combat the Hadarak minion waves that were quickly spreading across the rectangular zones the Hadarak had outlined like curtains being drawn across a window. Even now there were minion fleets moving independent of Hadarak from system to system, most of whom the V’kit’no’sat were destroying easily, but their numbers were not decreasing…they were increasing and it wasn’t going to get any better moving into the future.
Fighting sloppy might be their only recourse, and Vi’che was glad that Star Force was pragmatic enough to realize what must be done. And if minion wave had to be met with minion wave, maybe that would buy enough time for either Star Force, the accursed Zak’de’ron, or the V’kit’no’sat to find a way to kill the larger Hadarak before they moved far enough out into the galaxy to threaten the heavily populated V’kit’no’sat worlds that could not be moved out of their path.
8
February 27, 128484
Vianfra System (Hadarak Zone)
Muon Ti Vicora
“You’re kidding me,” Beny-3933192440 said as he conversed with the linguistics team that had been sent to make first contact with the Vicon race.
“No. The V’kit’no’sat were here 9 months ago and kidnapped 14 of them. Just came in, scooped them up, and left without a word as to why. When we got
here they fired on us before we could talk them down, and they’re not in the mood to let anyone land.”
“How much other contact have they had?”
“None. The V’kit’no’sat were their first alien contact.”
The Frieza-level Archon facepalmed as he stood in the hangar bay in front of the scout ship that the linguistics team had used to get here first and do the ground work that would allow Beny to explain to the Vicon why they had to abandon their two planets…and now they were going to be even more distrusting thanks to those stupid Viks.
“I know why they did it, but they just screwed us.”
“Why did they do it?” the head linguist, a Protovic, asked as his team made up of a variety of Star Force races stood behind him.
“They don’t care about the lives being lost, but if the Hadarak want to wipe out all races, the Viks want to deny them their objective, so they’re ‘rescuing’ enough individuals to repopulate elsewhere.”
“While they leave everyone here to die?”
“Pretty much. How much resistance are we going to get?”
“Heavy. First contact aside, the kidnappings have them livid. They can’t harm our ships, but if you go to the surface they have enough firepower to kill you. We may have to stun and scoop them up. How long do we have?”
“At least a couple months, hopefully more than a year. The closest Hadarak is two jumps away. Has there been any couriers or warship minions seen here?”
“Not that we know of. What probability do we have?”
“About 1/50.”
“What’s your gut tell you?”
“That we have too many planets and too little time to evacuate them all.”
“How did we get so far behind?”
“We’ve been behind since day 1, but it’s the 4th branch the Hadarak are adding that caught us off guard.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Hadarak aren’t just expanding out from the Deep Core to the adjacent systems. They’re moving straight out along certain lines, then angling back and carving a circle track around the perimeter like a fence. Then they’re gradually working their way in and purging everything inside the fence and forcing people fleeing to pass through infested systems. Primitive starships won’t make it, so we think it’s a containment method to prevent mass evacuations. And they just began adding a 4th fence spoke.”
“Will it come all the way out here?”
“If they hold to pattern, it’ll go more than 150 lightyears beyond this system. These people just happen to be in the expansion path. Those deep inside the fences probably have another 500 years before they get hit. We don’t have that time here. Do you have any suggestions how to calm these people down?”
“No. We’ve got their language locked down through 83 dialects and are working on 12 more. You can talk to them, but don’t expect much through dialog unless the V’kit’no’sat want to return the ones they took.”
“The irony is those 14 are probably better off than everyone here. Can you identify a segment of the population that is the most reasonable?”
“I’m sorry, no. They’re all incensed as far as we can tell.”
“Alright, it’s my problem from here on out. Go get yourselves some real workouts for a few days before you leave again.”
“We’re not staying to assist?”
“We’ll know within the day whether or not we can talk to them. After that you have other systems to work on.”
“What about the other dialects?”
“I’ll make do. Thanks for getting this done so quickly.”
The Protovic shrugged. “Their language isn’t hard to decipher, but not having telepathic contact with them forced us to learn it the hard way.”
“Hopefully the next system won’t have been visited by the Viks,” Beny said, poking a thumb over his shoulder. “Make use of the training facilities while you’ve got them.”
The linguists didn’t hesitate and walked past him grateful. The scout ship had a very basic workout deck, which was little more than a few rooms with treadmills, free weights, and a high g chamber. It didn’t have full workout facilities because it was only 600 meters long, unlike the Warship-class jumpship that the scout ship had landed in that was 22 miles long and had a full workout section plus an Archon Sanctum. Even those were limited compared to the surface facilities on some planets, but Beny was able to do his full workouts here and would have gone mad if he’d been trapped in that little scout ship for the two months the linguists had been here.
The Archon glanced up at what looked like a huge ship in the hangar bay, and in the distant past it would have been, but ever since Beny had been born a little over 1000 years ago, ships like this were considered mere toys…but the fact that they were small and inexpensive was the point here. Star Force didn’t have enough warships to spread out as far as needed, so for linguistic analysis duties a toy like this was perfect…unless you had to try and get some workouts done in it.
“My turn now,” he whispered to himself, then headed over to a group of dropships parked on the deck nearby that already had his team waiting for him. With time as short as it was, and as unsure as it was, there was no point in wasting it. He was going down to the surface and communicating with the Vicon one way or another.
The dropships took fire all the way down to the surface, both lachars and missiles, but nothing strong enough to get through their shields. Knowing this, Beny just let them shoot as the four dropships landed in the courtyard of their capitol, then they stat there two more hours as the Vicon continued to shoot and do no damage to the hull, for the shield recharge rate was simply too high.
After the two hours were up and they were still shooting the Archon had had enough. He lowered the boarding ramp and walked out, still inside the dropship’s shield perimeter, and let the ramp pull back up behind him with all of his people still inside the four ships. He wore his armor fully deployed, with the purple/white plates gleaming in the hard sun with bright splotches of light hitting the shield two meters in front of him.
“Please stop shooting,” he said, with his helmet translating his words into the local’s language and broadcasting them out with amplification to get past all the noise of the weaponsfire. “We are here to talk and you are not damaging our ships. Stop firing and talk to me.”
He waited a good thirty seconds with no change, then resigned himself to do this the hard way.
Beny sprinted out through the shield, with it allowing him passage out but not back in. As soon as he was in the open his personal shields began taking the hits, but most of the shots missed for he was running too fast for them to manually target. A couple of turrets with computer programming didn’t have trouble landing their shots, so he made them his first objective, running over to and jumping on one of them, then using the powered armor function in his suit to rip the four barrels apart like he was peeling a banana, then he left them there and sprinted over to the next one, doing the same to it.
His armor pinged an alert as a missile was on approach, giving him just enough time to drop to the ground and enact his super-shields, which was a second capacitor that held a lot of energy ready to dump into an auxiliary shield generator. The result was a bubble shield that formed over him and took the missile hit, then the shield disappeared and the capacitor began to slowly refill to full, though at the moment it had only deplenished to 88%.
The ground around him didn’t hold up so well, blasting the grass and dirt into a mushroom cloud from the donut-shaped trench it carved out around his shield perimeter. Bits of flaming grass clods flew out like projectiles all around him, and for a moment he felt the crowds of armed Vicon cheering, though he couldn’t actually hear them. He was using his telepathy to sample the reactions to his destruction of the turrets, and Beny couldn’t help but smile as he waited a moment for effect, then he sprinted out of the cloud towards the nearest troops set up behind barricades.
Their elation at making a kill reversed into despair
as they saw him unhurt and moving just as fast as before toward their lines. The panic and fear exploded in them…then he skidded to a full stop one meter in front of the barricades even as they shot him from pointblank range.
“Boo,” he said, telekinetically grabbing one of their weapons and yanking it out of the biped’s clawed hands and pulled it into his own. He held it for a moment as lachar shots peppered his shields, then he took the rifle and tossed it over his should as he put his hands on his armored hips.
“Stop firing. I’m not here to fight. I’m here to help you. You’re in danger and everyone on this planet is soon to die. I’m here to save you, so stop firing!” he said, adding some telepathic insistence towards the nearest few. Most of them hesitated, but those who were most crazed with fear didn’t let up…then those beside them took up firing again, and Beny knew he was going to have to approach this differently. They weren’t getting the message that they couldn’t hurt him, so he was going to have to hurt them…a little.
He jumped over the barricade’s two meter height and landed on the other side, punching one of the 7 foot tall reptilians in the chest and knocking him down, then he shot him with a stunner from his wrist-mounted weaponry before dashing towards the next one and repeating the process. With two down, he picked them up, one under each arm, and extended his shields around them so their own people wouldn’t shoot them, then he used his built in jump pack to fly the few meters up and over the barricade, landing on the other side and walking halfway back to his ship with the two prisoners in tow.
He didn’t intend to take them the full way there, but the others were not going to just let him kidnap them. They opened up doors on the barricades and rushed him, with Beny dropping his two prisoners and gladly going hand to hand with the others. He delivered body blows and stun shots, taking down swaths of them while noticing some shots from others farther off actually hitting their own people.