by Aer-ki Jyr
“What’s the fastest way to get this to Vreemont?”
“Better question is how to get Vreemont here. There’s a lot of debris that we have the tools to analyze that a courier ship wouldn’t…if you’re interested in maximizing time.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“No. We’ll have to call him in.”
“Do you know where he was last?”
“We can probably narrow it down. Thinking of a rendezvous?”
“Yes. Start prepping to move.”
“The shipyard? We’ve got too many berths filled to move.”
“Leave behind what you can’t carry. This takes precedence.”
“You think it’s that important?”
“I do.”
Todi exchanged glances and a telepathic conversion with one of the Titans, then the lift stopped early and the junior Archon got off, leaving the three remaining to continue on towards where the debris was being analyzed.
“It’ll be a few hours at minimum unless you want us to get sloppy?”
“Don’t waste anything, but we need to find out what they can do before we lose another base.”
“Tauntaun?”
“Hopefully…or they’ve got two new pieces of tech in the field.”
Todi grimaced. “I see your point.”
“We can confirm one point,” the other Titan with them added.
“And that is?” Paul asked her.
“How the functioning…call it a sensor package…works regarding range. We have the data from the intercept.”
“Conclusions?”
“A beam we can’t see, with maybe a slightly greater range than our own. I don’t think it’s too much farther, or the scout ship would have kept a greater distance while tracking Morgan’s fleet.”
“A beam we can’t see?”
“That’s me guessing, but if the physics are something new I think that would be the worst case scenario.”
“Full sensor beams and we couldn’t track them. Yeah, that’d be bad, but the Kaeper was using conventional sensors too.”
“Overlap to conceal during engagement?”
“Possible,” Todi agreed, “but speculation until we can get some solid data.”
“Or a beam that can pass through stealth fields so they can stay hidden while tracking,” Paul added. “There are many unpleasant possibilities if they’re working with a new level of physics.”
“So much for their lazy tech progression.”
“They respond to threats,” Paul reminded the ViLord. “The harder they’re pushed the more they adapt and grow. This may be a sign that we’re fighting them a little too evenly for their egos to take.”
“So the more we win the more dangerous they get?”
“Pretty much,” Paul agreed. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”
“Very. We could be at risk from this too?”
“If they can follow unseen…” Paul said, confirming the obvious problem with Ghostblade keeping hidden.
“Any chance this new tech is an enhanced stealth system?” the Titan asked.
“You said no a moment ago,” Paul reminded him.
“Then we have a way to find them.”
“Mine the jumppoints with active sensor buoys?”
“Even if they have cloaking devices they can’t handle the stellar radiation at braking speeds. Add our own sensor bursts and we can find these ships…assuming this one wasn’t a prototype.”
“I doubt we’re that lucky,” Todi added.
“It’s a thought,” Paul agreed, “but if they also have probes in place it won’t catch those. We need to know they can do. Until then we’re going to be vulnerable.”
“They could run us out of the Devastation Zone entirely?”
“You might be right, but they’ll have to know where to look and they felt like hitting Tauntaun first. Something else is going on beyond just a new toy.”
“Or they would have waited for a longer list of targets to hit simultaneously,” Todi added. “They’re testing us.”
“Or distracting. Either way they’ve got a lot of hammers heading this way.”
“What do you need from us?” the Titan asked. “Meaning Ghostblade.”
“Lay low until we figure this out. No more raids and keep movement to a minimum. If there’s already been damage done, we need to minimize it.”
“Wonderful,” Todi groaned. “Are we looking at another wave of border losses?”
Paul looked directly at him, grey sparkling eyes to grey sparkling eyes. “Depends how many ships they end up sending, but this new toy doesn’t help them assault worlds unless we’re way off on the speculation. They’ll have to hit us hard and I think they’re going to try soon, but we’re not on our heels anymore. They’ll have to up their efforts a lot to put us back there. Let’s hope we’re not that popular yet.”
“The ass kicking you just laid on them might change their perspective,” Todi cautioned.
“We’ll see,” Paul said as the lift doors finally opened. “Either way, we fight whatever comes and evacuate if needed. Same old same old.”
“Except they might be shutting down our ability to hit them in their territory,” the Titan said as the three walked out at a decent clip.
“Not if we can figure out what we’ve got…and we’re a lot better at playing catchup than they are.”
“Meaning that if they find out we’ve got it they’ll come for us? Is that why we’re moving?” Todi asked.
“No…just a side benefit,” Paul said, already having considered that possibility.
6
Paul and his fleet stuck around until the Ghostblade shipyard and assembled fleet was ready to leave, just in case they had been followed here. He didn’t want a follow up assault hitting them before they had a chance to figure out what this new tech the V’kit’no’sat had created was. The possibility of that was low, but easily avoided by delaying their departure.
When the Ghostblade fleet finally did jump out, Paul sent a third of his Warship-class jumpships with them after reshuffling the drone count a bit to give them a few extra. That left the remaining 2/3rds with Paul, most of which were well below 50% with the extra carry capacity partially filled with salvaged debris.
Still, Paul had a fleet that no roaming V’kit’no’sat battlegroup…let alone a scout…would tangle with, but he needed to get his ships refurbished and back into patrol rotation before the next big hit came. If it occurred now he wouldn’t have the firepower needed to repulse it, and having to wait on others to get to wherever the hit came down would take time. If it happened near his fleet he needed to be ready, so he had Admiral Baeren set course rimward from their position in the galaxy while angling spinward.
Paul still thought of it as ‘northwest’ in mind’s eye, but his fleet couldn’t head straight in any direction he liked. They had to bounce from star to star, so the course they laid in had them traveling between dozens of systems in a zigzaggy line using the larger stars that allowed greater transit speeds. Black holes offered the quickest routes, but there were none available from his current position. On the galaxy map they’d acquired from the V’kit’no’sat there were many such routes, but each required a black hole on the either end, for when you accelerated super fast you also had to have a large gravity well to brake against…else you’d plow right into the star and die instantly.
So fast travel throughout the galaxy had trade routes moving through standard jumplanes to connect from one black hole link to another. There were some in the Devastation Zone, but they were always patrolled and essentially shut down by the V’kit’no’sat. Star Force could run through them, given their engine speed and size of the black hole systems, but the once massive amount of traffic that flowed through was now gone, leaving them empty and barren…just like the rest of the Devastation Zone…and it seemed the V’kit’no’sat wanted to keep it that way until they finally finished off annihilating Star Force.
They’d done so much damage to the Hu
man-led empire it seemed incalculable…but Paul knew exactly what had been done, where, and how. He also knew that Star Force was a lot bigger rimward now than it had been before, and they were a long way from being defeated. Each day Paul and the others held the line, the planets on Star Force’s side digging in deeper, building more anti-orbital batteries, stronger shield generators, additional Sentinel-class defense platforms and other impediments to the beatdown the V’kit’no’sat were trying to continue exacting on Star Force.
They were winning. There was no denying that. But Star Force was bleeding the V’kit’no’sat heavily for each victory they racked up and he and others had guessed that they had chosen to stop the constant assaults until they could assemble a larger attack force, hence the lull in major activity in recent years. If that was true then the hammer blow was coming now and Paul didn’t like leading a damaged and heavily weakened fleet. He wasn’t the only trailblazer out here and didn’t have even a tenth of the ships roaming about and contesting with the V’kit’no’sat assigned to him, but the Devastation Zone was so large now that they were by necessity spread out, and if the enemy could spot the holes in their positioning they could hit and take a system before Paul could get his fleet back up to full strength.
Which was why Paul was starting to think the assault on Tauntaun had been fought the way it was just for that reason. Paul wanted a chance to grind down the V’kit’no’sat and they had wanted to grind him down…meaning they wanted combat to diminish Star Force’s number of chess pieces on the board so when they made their move Paul and others would have less in position to reinforce wherever they hit.
That was why Paul wasn’t personally escorting the Ghostblade fleet and getting answers as soon as possible. If and when they discovered anything he’d get the information belatedly through the relay grid…assuming it was still active. If the V’kit’no’sat could find the base on Tauntaun then they might also be able to find the relays and start plucking them en mass…which would black out Star Force’s ability to communicate with each other across the Devastation Zone and leave the front blind to any incoming assault force.
There were many small outposts within the DZ that he could get replacement ships from, but few with sufficient numbers to replace what he’d lost. Actually there was only one place he could go without returning to the front and stealing ships away from some system’s defense fleet. A place the V’kit’no’sat could not go…or rather wouldn’t after having suffered defeat after defeat in such horrific numbers that Star Force owned a piece of territory that the V’kit’no’sat had given up on taking.
Or at least they’d given up on taking it prior to erasing the rest of Star Force, for hitting the front was far easier in comparison than hitting the Uriti Preserve. Though in truth it wasn’t Star Force territory, but rather a group of star systems where Star Force kept some very powerful allies and looked after them…and those allies were the reason why the V’kit’no’sat would not go anywhere near those systems now.
It took nearly 5 weeks to get to the Preserve, with them entering via the Willy System, one of 34 system in the Uriti Preserve. As soon as they came out of their jump they were met by a fleet of Star Force ships with many others present…but no Uriti. There were some sedas nearby as well, but further off in the system there were 3 inhabited planets. That hadn’t originally been the plan for the Preserve, for the Uriti could destroy them if they so much as sneezed, but over the centuries the relationship between the Uriti and their handlers had become so reliable that Star Force was now comfortable building permanent structures in the Preserve…and daring the V’kit’no’sat to come get them.
A quick look at the battlemap data for this system told Paul that the Uriti were not here at present, and he knew they rotated through the 34 systems randomly. In the past they had traveled in one group, but even after the V’kit’no’sat hit Earth and this long and costly war dragged on more Uriti were being collected from their hidden slumber and brought here by powerful allies whose only interaction with Star Force was due to the Uriti.
They all had a vested interest in seeing them contained, for they were so powerful that a war long ago, even before the V’kit’no’sat existed, saw them roaming the galaxy destroying systems singlehandedly. They were an altered form of Hadarak that plagued the central core of the galaxy and which the V’kit’no’sat had been formed to fight and contain…but the Uriti were different. Bioengineered to be weapons of even greater power, the race whose twisted genius spawned them used the Uriti to extort the outer rim into submission.
A massive alliance from across the galaxy rose to oppose them, but the Uriti were too powerful to be destroyed and a means to sedate them was the key to the downfall of their creators. The sedated Uriti were then taken into protective custody and hidden away in vaults across the galaxy where robotic custodians maintained their sedation, for even without their masters giving them orders they would roam and destroy randomly, thus the containment had to be maintained at all costs.
One of those Uriti had accidentally been released in The Nexus’s territory, and they were completely unable to destroy or contain it, having to fight and lose numerous battles just to keep it from spreading its minions across the galaxy once again. Star Force came to their rescue, bringing the impossible knowledge of how to command the Uriti as their original masters did…and ended that Uriti’s rampage with a simple order.
Star Force had then learned from the The Nexus that they were guarding other sedated and hidden Uriti, which had prompted Star Force to create the Uriti Preserve and to bring them all out of stasis…but The Nexus only knew the location of a few. When word of the Uriti being released spread across the galaxy, or rather to those looking for that information, new and powerful races arrived at the Preserve to investigate the situation. They were near to destroying Star Force to deny them control of the Uriti, but doing so would send the Uriti on an uncontrolled rampage again and they knew it.
That scenario had them try to steal the information of how to communicate with the Uriti, but other races helped them maintain security and eventually Star Force became trusted enough for the other races, some from the other side of the galaxy, to uncover and transport the sleeping Uriti to the Preserve…thus removing the threat of them waking up and going on a rampage in their territory. That meant Star Force was continually gaining more, and to date had acquired 73 of the 118 originally created.
Two of those had been confirmed destroyed during the ancient war when the Uriti creators hadn’t yet perfected their massive bioweapons. That left 116 apparently hidden within the galaxy just waiting to be woke up, so it was to everyone’s benefit that they be found and transported to the Preserve where they would be awakened with the other Uriti nearby to explain things to them in addition to having a Uriti wrangler there to communicate directly with them.
Those Wranglers, all powerful Archons, wore a special gauntlet that allowed them to interface their own telepathy to communicate with the massive creatures without frying their own brains from the enormous telepathic presence of the Uriti, as well as doing so in the proper way that they would respond to orders. That ‘way’ was a closely guarded secret, and the Wranglers were among the most non-visible Archons in the galaxy as they were always in danger of outside influences trying to get access to them and steal their secrets…for a single Uriti under your command was worth more than all the warfleets of most of the races in the galaxy…not including the V’kit’no’sat. They could kill Hadarak and had come close to killing the Uriti in past battles, but with Star Force’s help and the addition of many highly advanced fleets from across the galaxy, there was no way the V’kit’no’sat were going to come in here and destroy the Uriti.
More than that, these races did not want Star Force being destroyed and the Uriti running free again…or worse, the V’kit’no’sat or someone else taking the reins of control from them. Star Force had gradually proven their trustworthiness…to some. Many of the races with a presence in the Preserve
were here to observe because they did not trust Star Force, but many did and were committed to keeping the V’kit’no’sat out and the Uriti here, and regardless of the V’kit’no’sat’s stubbornness they had finally figured out that they should stop trying and dying…for now.
Paul knew they’d be back later, for there was no way they were going to allow the Uriti to exist, let alone in anyone else’s control, but they didn’t have the ships necessary to dent the Preserve deployed out here yet. And if they did, it would be much easier to hammer the rest of Star Force first. Why the V’kit’no’sat hadn’t sent their full might out here was a lingering question, though Paul knew they had to keep a lot of forces along the Hadarak border to fight and contain them, else the Hadarak would push out from the core and unleash their own version of galactic domination.
So when Paul’s fleet came out at the jumppoint and did not find any Uriti, they did find many of those allied races here along with a guardian Star Force fleet even larger than Paul’s, with the waiting fleets ready to hit any enemies coming in immediately and then buying enough time for one of the Uriti herds to arrive. They moved very slowly between star systems, but Star Force had built carriers for them to be used in emergency situations, so even if the V’kit’no’sat hit a system in the Preserve where the Uriti currently were not, they could get here eventually and lay down the hammer…assuming the defending races didn’t already cut them to shreds.
There were some here, including the Knights of Quenar, whose technology was beyond Star Force’s understanding. Were they superior to Star Force was a lingering question, with no one knowing for sure, but they had damaged the V’kit’no’sat enough in previous battles to be a match for them, making their dominance a distinct possibility.
But Paul didn’t see any of their ships here…nor would he. They operated with what appeared to be perfect cloaking devices, so they were probably patrolling the system somewhere nearby, for they put up with NO interference in the Preserve. Star Force actually had to intervene in some cases where a random ship would accidentally enter and they went after it, but the relationship between Star Force and the KOQ had been ironed out in the past and they now worked well together…while keeping a respectful distance. They were allies with regards to the Uriti and nothing more, and both sides knew it.