by Aer-ki Jyr
The main control centers of the ship were quickly discovered, seized, and cleansed of all threats, including the automated internal defenses that did more damage than the defending crew. Two Zak’de’ron took body hits and had to be evacuated back to their ships, but none died. Between their size and technology the KoQ didn’t stand a chance. It was the release of the Uriti that threatened the Zak’de’ron, and boarding a ship they had not been able to scan from the outside left a lot of questions and numerous possibilities for sabotage.
Eventually the sedative production areas were located and it was confirmed they had been turned off. Two crew members were discovered in the area and they tried to fight to the death, but they were not allowed to die yet. They were captured, stripped of their armor, then physical contact had to be applied to get through their formidable mental defenses, part of which were mechanical, for apparently the KoQ were cyborgs, though in a very small fashion. Still, such mechanisms couldn’t be affected by telepathy and worked to counteract the influence on the rest of their minds.
But their mechanical components were too few, and once flesh to flesh contact was made the Zak’de’ron’s Ikrid gave him an advantage that he then used to fight a brief but intense war for control of the KoQ’s mind…with the small creature preventing him from taking full victory, but he didn’t need to gain control of its body, merely drain the necessary knowledge from its mind.
Once that was done, the Zak’de’ron applied full pressure to his foot and squished the KoQ to death within a second, then wiped the gore off on the deck plates and peeled the rest off telekinetically as he moved to the sedation equipment. Fortunately it hadn’t been damaged, but it had been deactivated and if it wasn’t reengaged the Uriti would wake up eventually.
The KoQ technology was impressive, with a few variations the Zak’de’ron didn’t recognize, but with the stolen memories he and his brothers were able to eventually access the controls and override the lockout that had been put in place. It took two days to do it, but fortunately the Uriti was not one to quickly awaken, and the amount of activity it had begun to show was immediately reversed as the sedative flow was reinstated.
By that time the fighting was long over, with the debris from the KoQ ships being towed from the battlefield and shoved into the star to dispose of it. There could be no trace of this incident left for others to discover, so the Zak’de’ron fleet spent another 3 days searching for and collecting even the smallest pieces of debris before taking navigational command of the captured KoQ carrier ship and moving it out of the system under stealth. Its systems were not as good as the Zak’de’ron cloaks, but it would do against almost all of the galaxy, including the V’kit’no’sat, and the few that could penetrate the KoQ technology were not known to be in this region.
A few Zak’de’ron ships stayed behind as a rear guard while the rest took up the place of the KoQ convoy and escorted the carrier ship off its original course towards a new destination. One where the Zak’de’ron could quietly study the Uriti on their own, away from both the V’kit’no’sat and Star Force, with no one knowing what had happened to the Knights of Quenar or their prize.
4 days earlier…
“We are being towed,” Bashmeh reported from the remains of one of the Knights of Quenar warships. “Trajectory is towards the star. They are going to burn us rather than finish us off in combat.”
“Then we have a chance,” Yarnin said over their unified comm network. “They may not know of the Durolin. Everyone move there now!”
Bashmeh did as ordered, moving through what corridors were still intact even though many had no air. His shields retained a pocket for his use, supplemented by recyclers, allowing him and others to move where they needed through the wrecked ship. They passed through two sections that still had life support, meeting up with four more KoQ survivors before they passed through another breached section, eventually arriving at one of four Durolin the battleship possessed, only one of which was in this piece of ship.
Before they got there the light from outside was becoming oppressive, heralding what was to come, but the first of the plasma didn’t begin to eat into the ship until all 18 survivors arrived at the Durolin, eating into the KoQ personal shields that would hold for some time, but the deeper they fell into the Star’s upper atmosphere the worse it would get.
Yarnin looked around at all the KoQ then pointed to Bashmeh.
“You are chosen. You will go alone.”
“There is room for us all inside,” he protested.
“But the supplies are limited. One of us must survive and report what has happened. This foe must not be allowed total victory. The Durolin has limited speed. If we all go, the supplies may not last. Sending one maximizes the chances of our data returning. You are the smallest of the uninjured. You are the logical choice. Go now before the burning begins in earnest.”
Bashmeh looked at his fellow Knights, accepting their decision and sacrifice. His mission now was clear, so he did not delay. He opened the aperture to the Durolin and walked inside, seeing the increasing wisps of plasma hit its boundary shields and stop there, protecting the interior. He then sealed and locked the doors, condemning his brethren to death, but it had to be done.
Bashmeh walked through the small emergency vessel and came to the control compartment where he activated the specially designed shields that would allow it to survive within the star. The rest of the battleship would burn off around him, but the Durolin would survive away from the sensors of the enemy…unless they were superior as well.
Bashmeh knew he could take no chances, so as the other Knights died in silence outside, for they cut their comm link to him so he could not witness their deaths, he allowed the Durolin to sink farther and farther into the star along with the debris all the way down to a level that he could not pass. Using shield dispersion rather than gravity drives that could possibly be detected, he altered the density level of the Durolin and caused it to hold position in the deepest layer of the star that it could survive.
And there he waited. He waited not hours, not days, but two months before finally rising to the surface for a look at what was beyond. If the enemy could defeat their sensors they could still be here and the Durolin had far less sensing capability, but still he kept within the outer atmosphere of the star waiting to dive back in again if something did appear.
No one did, so he lowered the stellar shields and engaged his cloaking device, heading towards the jumppoint that would put him on a direct line for the nearest KoQ outpost. The engine power on the Durolin was not great, but it would be sufficient and he could hibernate for long stretches of the 18.2 years the navigational computer calculated. The Durolin were meant to be survival pods, but no one knew the fleet was in this system, so no one knew to come looking for them. That meant he had to take the long journey back on his own or seek out allies nearby.
He couldn’t risk the latter, for if he revealed himself to anyone the mysterious enemy might take notice and hunt him down. If they thought he was dead along with the rest, they wouldn’t be looking for him. That was his only advantage. He could not squander it. So he had to embark on this journey with no assistance, for the information he carried was too important to risk otherwise.
He did have enough supplies, if stretched through hibernation. Had two of the others come, they would have ran out. One other might have been possible, but it would have jeopardized the mission with unnecessary risk.
Whoever this new enemy was, there would be vengeance if he returned. If not, they would succeed in attacking with anonymity. This could not be allowed to pass, making Bashmeh’s mission one of both revenge and something a great deal more important.
Someone else now possessed a Uriti, for it hadn’t been in the system when he’d emerged from the star, and if they went to the effort of stealing it from them, odds are they were going to try to do something with it other than stick it back in the crust of a planet somewhere.
Word had to reach the other Knigh
ts, and this was the only way to do it without risking the mission. 18.2 years it would be, then there would be a war of annihilation as soon as they located this race’s territory.
9
April 3, 4862
Mjolnir System (Preema territory)
Asgard (Star Force planet)
Andia arrived in planetary orbit via a small convoy of Star Force cargo ships, escorted by a single warship that had brought them all the way out to Preema territory and the only system inside it that housed a Star Force colony, and a recent one at that. Already there were several cities and even two small shipyards, but the latter were building construction craft to assist in the development of the planet as fast as possible. In order to do that Star Force had sent their fastest builders in the form of two expeditionary forces of Kiritak and Bsidd, along with several Paladin ships that had apparently gotten very busy reproducing.
Kiritak and Bsidd required time in maturias to learn their trade, but Paladin came with their genetic knowledge inherent. They still had to gain experience over time like everyone else, but they were work capable right after their ‘birth’ where everyone else was not, and from the scrawling blots of Paladin infrastructure scattered across the planet, they were expanding their workforce rapidly.
Then again they had to. Shipping massive amounts of construction crews this far away was impractical, at least in the numbers that were needed to build up this planet into an industrial powerhouse before the truce with the V’kit’no’sat expired. The Paladin were the only way to do that, with the Kiritak and Bsidd experts here to supplement them.
Andia wasn’t Kiritak, Bsidd, or Paladin. She was Protovic and a level 10 Mastertech, two grades below the most elite in Star Force. Her superiors were needed elsewhere, and rightly so, but Davis had pegged her with overseeing this entire planet in lieu of a Monarch given the fact that there would be no civilian population here at all. This was a work planet, with Archon backup, making a Monarch unnecessary. Andia was going to be in charge of everything industrial, and with the help of the Archons start producing the very high end equipment that Star Force hadn’t been able to field yet due to the need for resources to be applied to more economical projects.
Star Force had never built a Tar’vem’jic, but now Andia was going to. They’d never build Yeg’gor armor, but now they were going to. They’d never built a Seinac Lancer, but now they were going to. Those three items she was very eager to get to work on, but first they had to build the planetary infrastructure needed and that was going to take decades. Fortunately the Preema were beginning to make good on their part of the deal and their supply convoys could be seen in the system with ships numbering in the thousands as they dropped off crates of raw materials in orbital slots that were now becoming small nebulas.
There was too much for Star Force to get to as fast as the Preema were delivering…but that was going to change. Andia knew it was just a matter of snowballing, and once that happened the Preema wouldn’t be able to deliver the materials fast enough and she’d have to building mining infrastructure in the system, including a Star Forge or two, but right now they weren’t lacking for raw materials.
Another part of her job here was going to be to work with the Preema techs to teach them how to create a Grid Point. They couldn’t do that here, nor could Star Force. They’d have to build it on site or build a fleet of moving craft to drag it slowly across the stars. Star Force had seen how inefficient that was, so they weren’t going to try to replicate that feat. New Grid Points would have to be built on station with ant-like supply trains running nonstop to deliver the necessary resources over the decades required to construct them.
Right now the Preema didn’t know how to build one, and Andia would have to teach them. Star Force had never built one either, but they did control many and had mastered the technology long ago. It would take 6 new Grid Points to link the edge of Preema territory to the rest of The Nexus transportation network, and that was stretching it. Most likely it would end up being 9, plus the three the Preema had agreed to construct for Star Force elsewhere.
That was a more massive construction project than Andia had ever seen, but the Preema had the advantage of not being at war with anyone and having a very large and densely packed empire. This was going to be an effort for them, but they had the luxury of time and resources to apply to it, and obviously felt it was worth what they were getting in return.
Having a link into The Nexus network was going to allow them access to a huge chunk of the galaxy and cut the travel time of the trip that Andia had just taken drastically. Davis had told her that the Preema wanted to control events around them in order to prevent threats from arising that could harm them later. They were very proactive, and giving them access to The Nexus would allow them to watch and prod everything anti-spinward of them in a way they’d never been able to do before.
But the deal didn’t just include that. Davis had negotiated some technology trades and even some biological ones. He hadn’t told her what they all were, for she only needed to know the industrial stuff she’d be working with, but the Director had agreed to give the Preema an Ikrid block. Andia didn’t even have one of those, and making a race immune to telepathic interference was an incredibly powerful thing. Andia knew this better than most, for she was telepathic, as were most Protovic. She didn’t have the more powerful Ikrid, but the Ikrid blocks would stop her telepathy just the same.
That didn’t mean she couldn’t talk to someone telepathically, for the blocks didn’t stop that, but it stopped her from reading their minds and in a war against enemies with that power, having that backstop was something that the Preema obviously valued highly. And they understood that power as well, for they were also telepathic, but apparently hadn’t been able to figure out how to create a block of their own.
As for the parts of the deal that involved her, which were all secret as far as the treaty was concerned, she was to meet and exchange information on the list of technologies agreed. Star Force would give the Preema a lot, they would give her a few new things in exchange, but most of the Preema’s part of the deal was the endless influx of raw materials. That was the only reason a colony was being establish here, so far away from Star Force territory. The Preema were going to supply the building materials and Andia was going to do the building here away from prying V’kit’no’sat eyes.
And what she was going to be building was the big toys. The chess pieces in warfare that were very valuable and hard to kill, but the ones that were often not economical enough to exchange for standard warship production. As long as the Preema were going to feed Star Force unlimited supplies she was going to have the option to take on the long list of projects that the Mastertechs had wanted to pursue but never could, leaving her in a very envied position.
The downside was the isolation and being stranded amongst the very powerful and numerous Preema. If they betrayed Star Force there wasn’t going to be anything the Archons assigned here could do. Even once they built up the planetary defenses, they were still sitting inside potentially enemy territory. This deal was based on a high level of trust and mutual advantage, and she trusted Davis’s judgement as much as she trusted in the Preema’s desire to be linked into The Nexus Grid Point network. They couldn’t do that while betraying Star Force, for the links were going to go through their territory and Star Force could shut them out from it, after it was constructed, with a simple ‘off’ button.
And the up sides of this deal were massive for both sides, which was why Davis had decided to go through with it. Not much was known about the Preema, for they were very secretive about their own territory, keeping everyone else out forcibly. They were almost xenophobic, yet they wanted to have contact with outsiders…but on their terms. And with them harboring races that the V’kit’no’sat had marked for death, Andia could understand their paranoia.
Once her cargo ship settled into orbit and began to disgorge dropships, the Mastertech hopped on one and headed down to Asgard, a world o
f rock and more rock. No greens or blues whatsoever. It was a dead, but very valuable world. A clean canvas on which the Mastertech could work and she wouldn’t have preferred it any other way. Beaches and forests just got in the way, and having to build around them was a pain in the ass. Bare rock was much more preferable, so she was happy with the selected location and the Preema’s willingness to give it to Star Force, for it wasn’t a loan. This was now permanently Star Force territory amongst the thousands of Preema systems.
Isolated she was, but that downside was worth the potential she saw here, and Andia was eager to get down there and assume full command of the other techs.
David-441 had traveled with Andia’s convoy out to Preema territory, but he wasn’t being assigned here. There were lower level Archons that could mind the store well enough and his Piccolo-level skillset was needed elsewhere, but right now there was a high level task requiring him to be here in place of the trailblazers who were insanely busy with other priority tasks.
David was here because the Preema were bringing the representatives of the races that Star Force had agreed to take off their hands, and even as the warship that he was on entered planetary orbit he could see dozens of non-Preema ships sitting quietly in a high orbit waiting for him to arrive. Once he made contact and arranged the transit, Preema transports brought them over to David’s warship in two tightly packed groups, with one representative from each race only.
There were 92 of them in total, ranging from one no taller than David’s knee to a four-winged furred avian bigger than a Les’i’kron.
David waited for them alone, standing silently still as they all debarked along with a few Preema who then approached him with a respectful bow as the Griffin-like aliens bent on their forward knees slightly.