by Aer-ki Jyr
It was insulting, but it was also the evolution of what had begun long ago. The V’kit’no’sat had been doomed to eventual extinction, despite how hard Mak’to’ran fought to prevent that, and now he knew why.
It was because they had been founded on a lie, and that shaky foundation could be eroded away by the truth. The Zak’de’ron tried to hide this truth, then later the Elder Council as well. The V’kit’no’sat races were never united in equality. Not with the Zak’de’ron, and not on their own after they thought they’d annihilated their former superiors.
It was odd that those who claimed equality the loudest were ironically those who lived it the least. Star Force didn’t claim equality at all, other than a basic right to live. Beyond that they were based on inequality of skill. The best led, the weaker followed, and the weakest were carried with no control over their fate outside the hatchling pens provided them. Might gave you power in Star Force, but it was true might. Not ego. Not inheritance. Not bloodlines. You had to earn your power, and no one could cheat their way up the ranks. And Mak’to’ran had found that in that environment, a bond formed unlike any other. For everyone walked a similar path, faced similar challenges, and if they rose to a certain level, were of similar merit.
Star Force’s Empire was based on the foundation of truth, and they clung to it proudly. Never covering up. Never suppressing. If they were challenged they gladly faced it, for if they did not deserve their accolades they wanted to correct that either by reassessing their correct standing or by training to improve to the point where they did deserve it.
The promise of the V’kit’no’sat had never been realized until they were absorbed by Star Force and remade, yet now they had equality based on inequality…or rather they did not have equality of position or power, but rather equality of opportunity. All had a pathway to rise. No one was blocked. No one was kneecapped. And no one was fast tracked without merit.
And that Empire had deemed Mak’to’ran worthy to continue to lead the V’kit’no’sat as a piece of its ever growing territory, and to take the brunt of the fight against the Hadarak…and they had not failed. Director Davis had given them a nearly impossible challenge, and they’d accomplished it. It was a bloody accomplishment, but not compared to how they once engaged the Hadarak. They had thrown more blood at the enemy than Tar’vem’jic blasts, and traded their people in exchange for a few Warden kills.
No longer. The losses they had taken building and defending the Grand Border were honorable ones. No one was abandoned. No one sacrificed. But they did stand up and take the hit for others…voluntarily…for it was the place of the strong to stand between the weak and the danger. That was the way of the warrior, and the V’kit’no’sat were no longer beggars for a true title. They had earned the mantle of warriors rather than the butchers and bullies they had been under Zak’de’ron rule and influence.
That influence was now thoroughly burnt out of them, and many generations of new V’kit’no’sat were now fighting alongside the older ones without ever having that taint upon them.
But Mak’to’ran remembered. Perhaps not everything, but he remembered enough. The universe had rewarded those V’kit’no’sat who stayed loyal to the promise of equal dominance of this galaxy with a twist of fate no one could have predicted. And now that he stood here on Wendigama, in the heart of Itaru, as what a true V’kit’no’sat should be, the memories of the past faded into irrelevant ash. The history of the V’kit’no’sat was not something to remember with honor, but a gauntlet they had to pass through to earn their place and many…no most…had not made it.
Yet those who did now stood immune to the corruption of the past and any future reincarnation of it. They were now incorruptible…a side prize for what they endured while still clinging to a shred of hope as the universe beat them up every which way possible. Mak’to’ran was a true V’kit’no’sat now, and he realized that Wendigama had never been their home. Merely a waypoint enroute to their home, the outer boundary of which was now the Grand Border, with their future territory to extend into the Core and not the Rim.
The denser sections of the galaxy were their destiny, while the older Star Force races inhabited the Rim. Mak’to’ran appreciated that, for it gave the V’kit’no’sat a chance to build their own future rather than inheriting someone else’s. What lay ahead he didn’t know, but the records in the Maty gave him a far better picture of what was actually in the Core…and it was literally a sea of monsters waiting to be conquered…honorably…but conquered none the less.
His future, and that of the V’kit’no’sat, was in endless battle. Endless glorious battle with the power of the lightside fueling their courage and steeling their nerves against the nightmare of what they had to face.
And they had to face it, for if they didn’t who else would? Who else could? And if they failed, countless generations would be born into a galaxy of nightmares they didn’t have the strength or knowledge to root out, for once the darkside got entrenched enough, its power was unstoppable until its internal strife caused it to destroy itself.
And those born during those countless eons were cursed. If they survived, and most wouldn’t, they would be forced to live darkside or to escape to some corner of the galaxy where it didn’t exist. Finding pockets of anonymity to try and find some sanity in with no hope of ever forming an effective resistance.
How Star Force had managed to survive the V’kit’no’sat Mak’to’ran still did not understand, despite knowing of the internal wrangling that had hampered the extermination efforts. But against the Hadarak as they stood now, the Star Force of back then would have been run over easily.
It was the duty of those who had the strength now, and the freedom to grow stronger in the lightside, to use their power to remove the hatching traps the universe sent others into and free them before they even entered this universe. That was his mandate now, and the mandate of the V’kit’no’sat. They fought to save those alive today, but the numbers that would be sent into this universe later would dwarf those currently here, so they were fighting more to clear the way for them to have a chance to choose their own fate rather than be locked in a no-win scenario by the ever present shroud of the darkside.
Mak’to’ran looked down at the bare dirt beneath his feet, for he was now beyond the cities and wreckage and out in the desolate areas that had once held V’kit’no’sat structures long since removed. They were empty now, and returned to the basic state the planet had been in before the V’kit’no’sat begun. Dust to dust. And had Star Force not intervened, the V’kit’no’sat civilization would have suffered the same fate eventually, through one form or another.
The Era’tran let out a long, deep sigh, accepting that he had succeeded in surviving the past and those challenges were now behind him, never to be revisited again. Likewise, Itaru was never again going to be home to the V’kit’no’sat. It had a new future now, and prior to Mak’to’ran arriving Star Force had already begun building colonies on all the worlds here, with three presently on Wendigama.
They were little more than construction colonies of Bsidd, Kiritak, and Paladin, all of which were ordered to spam their populations as much as resources allowed, for additional resources would not be shipped in from the rest of Star Force. None were available, so the reclamation of Itaru would be a very gradual one…though not so gradual as anyone thought if Mak’to’ran’s assessment of the three races here was accurate. The Paladin were the fast starters, able to reproduce population that could immediately be put into the workforce, but the Bsidd were unmatched in their ability to generate hatchlings, for their eggs were tiny and their queens could produce them rapidly on their own even without embryo cloning technology.
The Kiritak were not as fast, but they were as prolific. Their fleshy eggs could be produced faster than most races, but what they lacked in reproductive numbers versus the Bsidd they made up for in energy. Their metabolisms were so much higher they would literally run loops around the Bsidd as they worked…th
ough the muscle power and size of some of the Bsidd variants was not matched by the Kiritak or the Paladin.
All three were powerful in their own right, but Director Davis had assigned them to this reclamation project together, testifying to how important it was. Mak’to’ran knew little of it, for he didn’t need to know, but the second individual to be bestowed with the title of ‘Reclaimer’ after the Voku Cal-com had been minted the first had told Mak’to’ran much in confidence, for he was a fellow Era’tran and old mentor named Hamob. Rather than fighting the Hadarak, he had been commissioned to reclaim Itaru for Star Force, and though Mak’to’ran didn’t know their full plans or potential, what Hamob had told him sent shivers down his spine all the way to the tip of his tail.
That was why the system was now off limits to travel. All trade routes diverged around it, and the Star Force Rammus Sub-Faction had been given patrol duty in the surrounding systems to intercept and turn away anyone approaching the jumppoints for Itaru. This system was now a black hole as far as information went, and even most Star Force vessels were not allowed permission to enter.
Mak’to’ran was the only V’kit’no’sat with such permission, but he couldn’t bring his own ship. It was waiting for him in a neighboring system, and the Rammus had brought him in on one of theirs. That’s how intense the security was here, despite the fact that nothing more than recycling and basic colony building was taking place currently…but in the distant future Itaru would become the birthplace of Project Furya, something that Hamob spoke of lightly and with great reverence.
The universe had given the trailblazers an upgrade. Mak’to’ran knew this already. But he hadn’t known the full extent of those upgrades…which were not all the same…nor what they planned to do with them.
The fate of this galaxy lay with Mak’tor’an, the V’kit’no’sat, the Varkemma, and the Rim Factions of Star Force. This was their fight to win or lose. Their destiny or fate to make, but the Director was wise beyond his years, and was looking towards conflicts beyond the Hadarak. Conflicts beyond this galaxy millions of years into the future and on a level of warfare that Mak’to’ran couldn’t conceive of yet…though his current fleet was something beyond what he could have imagined when he ruled here on Itaru. He had learned and advanced, and would again as the Archons and Monarchs showed him the way.
But Project Furya had its mandate in other galaxies, and had to overcome the challenge of holding together an empire of many galaxies without it crumbling under its own weight or suffering from the distances and disconnection involved, as well as continuing to incorporate thousands of new races every millennia and bringing them into the brotherhood of the lightside despite conflicts with their genetic instincts and cultural difficulties.
Hamob told him that a watering down of the lifeblood of Star Force would be its undoing unless a far greater number of Archons could be recruited, or unless they created a new glue to hold the Empire together. A glue with far greater numbers that could lightly spam across the universe binding all those they touched together in a common and replicable lightside culture and civilization.
Hamob had been tasked with reclaiming Itaru and constructing the cradle for a new Faction. One birthed from the trailblazers themselves in their newfound genetic upgrades.
And no one knew what would happen when they tried.
Hamob had confided that three races in this galaxy had a genetic code known to be ‘enlightened,’ and he used that word carefully, for it did not mean lightside or knowledgeable. It was meant to be a very high level of avatar for an individual to be hatched into. The Zak’de’ron were one such race. The Neofan were another. But the genetic tests on the trailblazers, now that Star Force medtechs were beginning to get a feel for what ‘enlightened’ really meant, were showing far higher marks. In loose terms assigned, Era’tran were a level 4 race. That wasn’t a guess or metaphor. It was based off primarily the brain structure and the way the body’s cells were formed, and what they were capable of.
Most races that could not speak were level 1 or 2. Others were level 3, as the Humans had been when they were primitives on Terrax. Star Force medtechs had eliminated a lot of junk from their genome and had got them back up to the level 4 of the Zen’zat since then, and all the original races in the V’kit’no’sat…not counting servants…were level 4 thereabout. The Zak’de’ron were level 7, which meant they had advantages the Era’tran did not, and had never known about, especially in regard to intelligence.
The fact that the V’kit’no’sat had managed to overcome and all but eradicate the Zak’de’ron in the first war was even more impressive now, but beside the point. If the individuals being born into that level 7 race were inferior or never bothered to develop themselves, the advantages could be overcome and surpassed by those individuals in other races that grew, but the average person would always be inferior due to superior inheritance of the enlightened race.
The Neofan were rated far higher than the Zak’de’ron, though no living Neofan had been tested. Only genetic material captured as it was cast off the owners, usually in terms of skin flakes. They were a level 14 race, and Hamob had said it was theorized that they knew an Essence technique to force the advancement procedure that had occurred accidentally to the trailblazers. That meant they were far smarter and more aware than anyone had considered them capable of being, and they probably played into that illusion quite regularly so they’d be underestimated when it suited them.
As it stood now, the trailblazers were measuring in at level 16, but no one knew what would happen when they reproduced. Hamob had said he’d been tested individually, not on the structure of his body and brain, but on his intelligence capability, and he’d rated a level 11 while the basic Era’tran avatar was a level 4. Which meant he was accomplishing far more with his ‘inferior’ genetics than the average Zak’de’ron was, and there was a question of how much the trailblazers were developed due to their individual progression or their new advancement. Where they at level 16 as a start, or were they carrying over their high level from their previous Human experience…and Hamob noted, they were accomplishing level 16 mental processes with tiny brains compared to Era’tran and Zak’de’ron, which meant the crude scale Star Force was now using probably wasn’t truly accurate as to level of genetic enlightenment.
But being good for your size didn’t mean anything in life when you had opponents of various size, so the scale being used was in output, and even with their smaller forms the trailblazers were rating higher than Hamob intelligence, the Zak’de’ron’s hidden skills, and the basic genetic code of the Neofan.
Star Force knew how to train level 3 and 4 races. They’d even done training on level 2s trying to advance them up to 3, with some success. But they were now undertaking the challenge of training possibly level 16 hatchlings…and nobody had a clue what that would be like, other than to look at the trailblazers themselves, all of whom were outstanding individuals. What would happen when you put an average person in their advanced bodies?
Hamob indicated there was a considerable amount of danger here, in a myriad of known ways and probably more unknown, so they were going to take Project Furya very slow and methodical, but it was being touted as the key to an intergalactic Star Force that could conquer and absorb other civilizations at whatever speed it wished, rather than having to wait for enough Archons to be minted in order to hold it all together, for even Mavericks were not seen to quite get what it meant to be Star Force 100% due to the fact that Star Force began as a Human culture. Even Hamob said that he and Mak’to’ran, while now fully Star Force, could not teach others to become like them the same way the Archons could. The Era’tran were converts, and many of the concepts were based off bipedal, straight backed, groundpounder philosophy of small size. And there was no way an Era’tran could see from that same perspective in its entirety.
He then told Mak’to’ran that the Director did not trust Humans enough to focus on them either. While culturally they had all the basic bui
lding blocks, leave them alone without supervision and they would stray from the path, slower than hive minded races, but they would still diverge.
But Project Furya had a race hopefully based off the Archons themselves, and therein lay an enormous potential that the Director intended to tap for whatever it was worth, but no one knew for sure what would happen. And if it ended up spawning bad guys in Archon bodies, the reproduction would end immediately and the project canceled, but Hamob was hopeful for greatness.
He wasn’t going to be leading the project. He was here to make Itaru a fitting home for this new Faction and to look after them as a caretaker. Others would be handling the training and development of the Furyans themselves, but on this dust of the V’kit’no’sat past he would build the foundation for a potential future of intergalactic conquest against the legions of the darkside on a scale that made his tail twitch with grandeur.
And Mak’to’ran’s as well. But before all that began he needed to say goodbye to the past and all those who had fallen along the way, both the honorable and dishonorable, and he did that now, alone, in the wastes of Wendigama in the confines of his own mind and memories.
When he finally left the planet, he let the past stay behind and headed for the Grand Border free of the pain and confusion of what came before. His path was crystal clear now. This galaxy was to be theirs, and there was much gruesome work to be done to make it theirs, let alone defend it against the hordes of Hadarak in other galaxies.
The Grand War the V’kit’no’sat had always dreamed about was before them, and from this day forward Mak’to’ran would think of nothing else. This was his destiny, and the destiny of the V’kit’no’sat, no matter how events played out.
His home was on the battlefield, now that he had finally found the right side to fight for.
And that side was the lightside…
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