by Aer-ki Jyr
It set itself up, expanding out into its large setting at her command. The foot-long cylinder transformed into a 16 foot-wide hexagonal chamber 9 feet high and two feet off the ground, standing on 7 footers that sank into the snow several inches and sought out the ground. They adjusted to different lengths to level everything out, then the newly formed door swung open and Kara walked over to sit down on the doorstep.
She blew out a breath, looking across the frozen terrain she’d just covered. The glacier behind her sat between two mountain ranges 58 miles apart and ran for 219 miles. Below it was a series of small rivers that meandered into each other and combined into a monstrous one that traveled down through descending terrain and out of the snow zone on the planet. It eventually ran all the way down to the nearest Kiritak colony where they were busy mining and building the necessary components for export to the rest of the Star Force empire.
There were 3.6 billion of them on the planet, and a total of 18.3 billion in the system with only a scattering of Humans and other races acting as managers where needed. This region of Mewsovex hadn’t seen their expansion, leaving Kara completely alone ever since arriving on the planet and being dropped off via dropship in the upper forest 5 days ago, with her traveling on foot ever since.
It had been Sara’s call, for the facility that the Kiritak had built for her lay up in the glacier. It’d take another day or two to get there, and while she could have just had the dropship take here there directly, Kara was glad that Sara had nixed that option. This was the first real vacation Kara had had since becoming an Archon, and it was badly needed in the aftermath of what had happened to her.
That was months in the past, and the memory of pain had faded, but the implications of what had happened were still fresh in her mind. If the Dragons found her she had no doubt they’d reprogram her Vorch’nas as they wished, for it had fully unlocked when it had to rebuild itself, and she was learning a great deal about what it could truly do.
But for now she didn’t need to train…as odd as that sounded...and was on this planet to hide. It had been suggested that she go to an uninhabited planet, but hiding on a highly populated one would make it harder for the Dragons to pick her out amongst so many others. No one other than some of the trailblazers knew where she was, with no record of her presence being recorded. As far as records were concerned, she was still onboard the Yi with Amber-403 acting as her doppelganger.
Her fellow second gen had even taken on her purple/white hair to make her look more like Kara, but in truth her command ship…her former command ship…was so big that a person could get lost in it easily. Aside from the Captain and a few other personnel that were let in on the secret, no one onboard the ship, or in the rest of Ghostblade, knew that she was gone and replaced.
As far as Kara knew she was off the Dragon’s radar now, and with how big the galaxy was she hoped to stay that way. From now on she wasn’t going on combat missions, wasn’t participating in training Trails, and wasn’t going to have contact with another living person on the planet. She was going to be totally isolated while the billions of Kiritak nearby went about their hyperactive business without knowing she was here.
They’d built the facility she was heading towards, but only on the in person orders of a low level Archon messenger that Sara had sent, for there was to be no record of its production and if any of the trailblazers traveled here that might tip off the Dragons if they had penetrated Star Force database security despite their assurances they hadn’t. That Archon didn’t know who the facility was for, and the ship that had brought Kara here hadn’t realized it, with her hitchhiking along without any official record after a word with the captain of the cargo ship that Sara had shuffled her out to through 4 other systems. She’d really tried to hide Kara from prying eyes, and hopefully all the stealth work had paid off.
Kara felt alone out here, despite the occasion glimpse of a ship in orbit. None came down into the atmosphere over the frozen zone, and with her Rensiek activated she wouldn’t appear as a heat signature amongst the snow and ice even if someone was looking.
Then again, she was walking in the snow open for any eye to see now that the most recent snowstorm had mostly blown off and the sky was clearing. Kara knew her solitude here was going to be one of anonymity, and if the Dragons were in orbit to be looking for her, then this mission was already a failure.
That said, she wasn’t going to be up on the ice much longer. Once she arrived at her destination she’d be below ground, for the facility was hidden from view and sensor scans. Now that Kara had no more responsibilities to attend to, she could disappear and work this out on her own schedule, and that peace of mind was something she was realizing she badly needed.
Part of that peace of mind was due to the fact that Aaron had traveled out to find Paul and deliver her warning about the sword and tell him everything that had happened without risking it going over the relay network. Aaron had told her he’d pulled a deep mental scan of Paul when he was there and couldn’t find anything amiss…along with the fact that Paul had taken her advice and chucked the sword into the nearest star, not wanting to take the risk of keeping it onboard the Excalibur in storage.
And that meant Kara was done. No one needed her for anything, her Clan was now someone else’s to lead, and she was no longer a security risk. The Raptors would be dealt with the Star Force way, with the trailblazers learning and adapting as they went rather than relying on V’kit’no’sat and Dragon knowledge. That was probably for the best in the long run, but Star Force didn’t have that long to tinker with them before the truce expired.
How much they would lose because of this she didn’t know, but it had to be done. Star Force had to lead, not follow the Dragons, for they were not trustworthy, and even after two millennia of learning from the V’kit’no’sat database Star Force was easily going beyond it and charting their own course, as they’d done all along modifying tech and tactics as they deemed necessary. Kara regretted them not having that asset to springboard off of, but when the database was tied directly to one’s mind, it wasn’t worth the risk of tampering.
But that was behind her now, the decision and actions were made and could not be walked back. Star Force was committed to moving forward on their own, and Kara’s future was equally locked. She had to remain a ghost now as she explored the depth of her Vorch’nas and tried to figure out a way to keep the Dragons from altering it.
Was there a way? Maybe, maybe not. She didn’t know and the depth of customizations her Vorch’nas offered was mindboggling. It would take her years, at the minimum, to explore it all, but she was no longer blocked with what she guessed were ‘worthiness’ tests. Those had been destroyed along with the data and mental programming when she’d thought she’d killed the thing, though now she was glad she hadn’t. It was the only thing keeping her alive, and after a very clandestine meeting with Star Force’s best medtechs, including Nefron, it had been determined that her genetics had been slightly altered in a way they couldn’t fully fathom.
The alterations were stealthed against a regenerator’s ability to see them, which meant it couldn’t alter that bit of sabotage coding that caused her own body to produce and release the poison that had nearly killed her. Even without her psionics and the regenerator, the poison would have built up slowly as her natural healing ability repaired individual cells, meaning she would have died more slowly, but she still would have died. Only her Vorch’nas was ‘safing’ the sabotage programming and allowing her body to heal normally, and without it she was as good as dead.
Nefron had tried several Chixzon remedies on tissue samples taken from her, but the genetic coding the Dragons’ used was so different he couldn’t crack it. They literally had a means of producing code that was not based on standard molecules, and every time he was able to neutralize or remove it, it would reappear…because there was also a stealthed virus within her replacing the coding if it was ever destroyed.
She wasn’t contagious, for the vir
us was unique to her body, but a regenerator couldn’t see it to eliminate it, nor could her own immune system. It was a very elaborate trap designed to not allow her freedom from the Vorch’nas, and right now, with their current level of technology, Star Force didn’t have a way to permanently remove the Dragon coding.
And so long as that remained, her body would poison itself when healing without the presence of the Vorch’nas.
So she was stuck with the thing, but it was different now. Halfway between a level 1 and level 2 Vorch’nas in size and on the opposite arm, it was a visible reminder that she was entering a new phase in her life…and a perilous one at that. She could not allow them to find her again, and if she was ever to be truly free she had to find a way to either remove the Vorch’nas or master it. Since the first wasn’t an option now she was going to work on the second. It had been a part of her for nearly her entire life, and now that it was unlocked she was more powerful than before in a multitude of ways…but always vulnerable to the Dragons.
That was her Achilles heel, and one she could not tolerate.
Kara sat on the doorstep for a while just looking at the snowy plains before her and the distant mountains bracketing them, though she could only sneak a peek here and there in between the clouds dumping snow off and on as if they were doing strafing runs.
“Well, at least it’s a nice place to hide,” she said, letting go her Rensiek and feeling the cold hit her warm body for the first time today. “If you’re an Archon.”
Kara stood up and walked inside, passing through the energy shield keeping the warm air contained within. Kara felt it hit her as well, along with the continuing relief of powering down her Rensiek. The effort to maintain it so long was taxing, and combined with the walking she was actually tired despite having done no training since arriving on the planet.
She pulled some rations out of her pack and ate them, then slid into a sleeping sleeve and got some rest as the two tiny distant suns set and the temperature outside plummeted even lower.
Kara woke before sunrise, packing up her tent and pulling her backpack on as she braved the cold that had frozen the top of the river water in a myriad of irregular shapes while the rest of the liquid continued to flow beneath it. In a few hours the temperature would rise enough to melt it off again, but the water itself would not get more than a handful of degrees above freezing no matter how much sunlight it soaked up.
When Kara breathed, the air passed through her Rensiek perimeter, stripping it of excess heat and keeping it on the barrier as the liquid in her breath froze into an icy plume, then the cold air she breathed in picked up the heat on the inside of that barrier as it passed through, keeping her lungs from getting chilled as she began hand climbing up the sheer glacier wall that was right behind her campsite.
Only it wasn’t quite sheer, with many odd crevices that offered something in the way of handholds. She made others as needed, taking her time and letting the environment soak into her senses as she chose not to fly to the top. It was her way of letting go and diminishing herself, yet still being passively badass enough to take the hard route up.
A little less than an hour later she was at the top and took a moment to look back the way she came from the glacier edge, seeing a small rivulet of water tracking past her on the right and taking the dive off the edge to join the rest of the melt lines that began to increase their flow as the sunlight was already reaching this height while the area below was still fully in shadow.
More snow storms were visible on the horizon, one of which was tracking her way fast, but it didn’t concern her. She was immune to the cold, so she soaked the moment in then casually began walking up the glacier in her T-shirt and shorts, finding a couple hours later the setting in her Vorch’nas that allowed her to alter her hair and skin color. The trek across the endless white sea gave her a lot of time to mentally dig into its now open interface, and she was both pleased and sad to trigger her purple/white hair to disappear into a dark brown.
Her time with Ghostblade was done, and now she needed to let go and move on. She was just back to being Kara, an Archon, who had a very dangerous and powerful bit of jewelry melded onto her arm.
More hours of walking followed, then one more night spent in her tent before the last leg that brought her to the coordinates she’d logged in her Vorch’nas to navigate by.
“Well nuts,” she said, looking around and seeing nothing but more ice with a fresh blanket of snow on top as it continued to fall all around her. “I’m either lost or you’re really well hidden.”
Kara activated and stretched out her Pefbar, reaching as far as she could until a nodule appeared some 50 meters below. It was only half a foot wide, but she recognized it instantly as a telepathic relay. She reached out to it with her Ikrid and found the link to the door activation, triggering it and feeling a small rumble as a boring device clawed its way up through the ice to just below the surface.
Kara walked over to it, seeing that it had stopped a meter below breaking the upper ice and snowpack, but everything else below it had been sucked down rather than forced up, leaving the visual cover on top unmolested. Kara felt another function and triggered it, seeing a small hole melt in the ice and reveal a hatch. She reached down and pulled it open, seeing a small lift car below.
The Archon slid in feet first and closed the hatch, seeing with her Pefbar as water was squirted on top and quickly frozen to replace the ice, concealing her entry point before the lift descended through the now hollow shaft and docked with the facility below.
Kara walked out through the opening doors into an Archon sanctum built just for her where she would be spending potentially the rest of her life in solitude…and befitting trailblazer humor, she saw a plaque hanging down from the ceiling in plain view of the entrance that read FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE.
Below it, neatly folded and laying on the floor, was a set of blue and red clothes, complete with a cape and very short skirt.
Kara rolled her eyes and smiled in an annoyed fashion as she knelt down and picked them up, seeing a big ‘S’ symbol emblazoned on the center of the top.
“You jerks…there is no way I’m wearing this.”
4
December 7, 4854
Vliol System (Brat’mar territory)
Glaxtiel 289 shipyard
Dorchav took a moment away from his scheduling work to walk out onto the observation deck of the now greatly expanded shipyard. Unlike the rest of V’kit’no’sat designs, this deck was only separated from space by an invisible layer of material 2 meters thick. On a warship that would be unwise, for the outer hull needed several protective barriers to help protect the crew, but shipyards were not meant to fight and if this one came under assault and the shields were breached, a little extra armor would do no good.
Since this was the birth place of so many vessels, an observation deck had been deemed an integral part of the design despite the weakness and Dorchav had to admit it was a worthy exception to the V’kit’no’sat building rules. A hologram didn’t truly do the view justice, and seeing the direct light with his own eyes just felt different. Perhaps it was the tiny imperfections in the glass that a hologram did not have, but whatever the case the view from here was better than any hologram could hope to be.
Right now that view was little more than a construction ring that had been enlarged beyond what was needed to build V’kit’no’sat ships, including Mach’nel, to a scope of several thousand miles. It looked much smaller, for the ring was so fat it appeared thin from this distance, but moving to and from that ring were hundreds of thousands of ‘tiny’ craft carrying materials and crew out to the Harthur under construction.
Rather than build each segment individually, the Harthur was being constructed in its fully deployed spherical shape in order to allow maximum surface area for the workers to get at simultaneously. Far beyond this one, Dorchav could see the second under construction as well, along with a third shipyard that was not yet large enough to hold another. It
was being furiously expanded as well, and all under Brat’mar control. For as a reward of the success of the prototype, Mak’to’ran had declared that the Brat’mar would be tasked with the sole production of additional models while the other races shipped their contribution to this system via never-ending streams of cargo convoys.
It was a great honor for his race, and to him personally as Mak’to’ran had put him in command of the infantile program, though he felt he didn’t deserve it. Part of him still felt dead at Star Force’s hands, for he would not have survived without their mercy. The mercy of an enemy they had marked for total eradication…and yet they had chosen to spare him and his crew. Even after all these years that still didn’t feel right and Dorchav had yet to shake the sense that in some way he was the walking dead, carrying his failure with him in each breath.
The empire felt otherwise, for where he had been scorned for losing a Mach’nel he was now heralded as the greatest hero since the Rit’ko’sor rebellion for giving them a new weapon to use against the Hadarak. And even that was a copy of Star Force, stolen from them and modified to a new purpose. It was true that Dorchav was the one that pushed the idea, and with Mak’to’ran’s help had gotten a prototype constructed, but the original ingenuity had come from their enemy and a part of him could not legitimately accept the accolades now granted him.
Mak’to’ran had given him something much more valuable, and that was the responsibility of combat against the Hadarak. Perhaps if he killed enough of them this Human stain would be purged from him, though the destruction of the first had not been enough. It had been a rough two years keeping the Hadarak imprisoned, for it continually sacrificed parts of its body to grow minions that would then attack the Harthur from inside. Entire segments of it had been destroyed, but Dorchav had learned from those losses and successfully contained the beast while making repairs and shipping in replacement segments up until Mak’to’ran had finally given the kill order.