Star Force: Essence (Star Force Universe Book 51) Read online

  1

  October 22, 128439

  Aquaman System (Chexva Kingdom)

  Trident

  Three long oceans dominated the planet of Trident, hence the name given to it by Director Davis, stretching from a communal fourth ocean on the equator around the planet up to a long mountain chain that separated the tips from the base ocean. The planet was 52% water, making it far from being a true waterworld with oceans covering the entire surface, but Trident was one of six planets in this star system that had vast amounts of water on them.

  That was rare, and made the Aquaman system the defacto capitol of Star Force’s aquatic races, with Trident holding the deepest water at more than 17 miles deep at the bottom of the three ‘prongs.’ The pressure there was too much for most of the aquatic races to bear, but a handful actually preferred it and had been relocated here from other worlds for a number of reasons. The J’gar were one race that did inhabit these depths, but the Elarioni were not. So the tiny, fast moving form of Ariel swimming through the crushing water pressure in an armor suit was an unusual sight for the large bodied denizens of the hot water that was almost to the point of becoming steam.

  That was because of the closeness to the magma layer of the planet…but the pressure resisted the expansion into a gas, so there was a constant tug of war that resulted in random plums of steam forming on the bedrock and shooting up towards the distant atmosphere above, making it look like the seafloor was under attack.

  But the real attack had happened long ago, and Ariel was here to continue her study of it. The long gashes in the planet that had formed the 3 oceans were not natural. They were the result of weapons damage made by something that Star Force couldn’t identify. It wasn’t a Hadarak, that much they’d been able to determine, but the lingering mystery was one they weren’t going to ignore and Ariel had spent many years here and traveling across the galaxy to try and match up what residue there was to other sites. So far she’d done little more than eliminating possibilities, and while the source of the attack was still unknown, they’d learned that this planet used to be closer to a true waterworld and the deep trenches gouged out of the crust had drawn in enough water for some continents to form.

  Beyond that it was estimated that a lot of water had been lost during the attack, thrust up into space and settling into a thin set of icy rings around the planet. There was also wayward chunks of ice all across the system, probably having been thrown out when whatever happened here went down over a million years ago…at least.

  Solving this mystery was the oldest living Elarioni’s passion, and one of the few things that could keep her interest after spending so much time helping her race grow, and then helping other aquatic races to do the same within the Star Force empire. Continued growth now bored her, for there was no challenge in it. The successes of the past were simply repeated on new worlds, with few wrinkles to keep her attention. But the devastation of a waterworld such as this, long ago by a weapon and enemy unknown to Star Force…that was something she could not pass up, for if it could happen before it could happen again, and Star Force needed to figure out how it was done in order to defend against it.

  Ariel’s body would be crushed at this depth without her armor suit, but she wasn’t afraid in the least. She’d been exploring the trenches on her own for decades and could outswim any of the larger denizens…including the primitives that also lived here and tried to eat anything they could get their teeth on. Star Force fed them real food at various points, but old habits still existed in the stragglers so she had to be careful.

  That said, between her armor’s systems and her telepathy gifted to her as an advanced scout, she could see everything around her despite the blackness, for there was no light out here away from the cities and the bulb fields that Star Force had planted around them. No, there was just rock, rock, and more rock, but within that rock was sometimes something else…

  Ariel was unique amongst the Elarioni, for she was friends with the trailblazers and the only one whom they’d taught the secrets of Essence. And since her eyes had been opened, she could sense it in others. It was literally the glue that held one’s Core to their body, forming the bridge between that which couldn’t be sensed to the classical physics. And now that Star Force could sense Essence it had opened up a treasure trove of new research into technologies that others literally could not even see, but the deeper mysteries of Essence were beyond Ariel, and her skills were limited, though she was developed enough to be able to sense the traces of a very powerful Essence still trapped in the rocks in a few places deep within the trenches on Trident.

  There wasn’t much left, and there shouldn’t have been any after all this time, but whatever had attacked this planet had to have a huge Essence effect. Something far larger than a Hadarak, for the Uriti had informed the Archons that they were on the lookout for those that glowed, and one nearly horrific accident was barely avoided using the Uriti override when one took notice of a command ship on which Blade-097 was training his Essence skills. He’d created enough of an Essence rush that the Uriti had felt it and instinctively moved towards it, intent on destroying the ‘glow’ before being stopped by the Wrangler on site.

  A lengthy discussion followed, because all living beings possessed Essence, and how could one as small as Blade attract the Uriti when larger ones, like the Oso’lon, did not. The Uriti had informed them that they did not glow, nor the Hadarak, and after a lot of awkward communication about things that there was no a common vocabulary on, the Uriti had confirmed that the ‘glow’ was not the presence of Essence, but the ‘rush’ of it.

  ‘Rush’ was what the Archons called the agitation of Essence, causing it to surge forth beyond one’s body or enhance within. Basically anything that wasn’t the normal state was defined as a ‘glow’ to the Uriti, and even something as small as a Human apparently stood out like a beacon to them.

  It also deposited itself on other objects, lingering there for some time before dissipating out of existence. That meant whatever had gouged out these oceans had been experiencing an Essence ‘rush’ or had been an Essence weapon. Neither truly made sense, for there was no reason for Essence to still exist here after all this time. Most residual Essence dissipated after a few hours or days, or in some cases could linger for years in very small amounts where repeated inundations occurred…such as the trailblazers’ training facilities.

  Why it was still here was another part of this mystery Ariel had not yet solved, but each time she found a pocket of Essence she got a little closer to understanding…and today would be a watershed moment in her search.

  She was swimming along, her senses open for even a hint of Essence present in the rocks or in a living being when she got a faint trace far to her left. Ariel turned immediately and tracked it down, feeling it emanating from a flat section of seafloor. Her senses weren’t tuned enough to pick out its precise location, and when she got close it seemed to feel as if it was coming from all around, but when she caused her own Essence to rush, drawing from a point inside her like opening an air valve and having the gas rush forth, she expanded her Essence field beyond her body as if into two large wings that she swept the area with until she brushed upon the trace.

  When her Essence crossed the trace it absorbed into her, letting her feel the Essence as if it were her own. Once again the power it had once been attached to was so massive it defied quantity, but as the seconds passed the Essence blended with hers and the feeling diminished…except that it allowed her to see another pocket of identical Essence nearby that slowly faded from view.

  Ariel frowned, not sure what was happening. Her senses shouldn’t h
ave been altered by the interaction, so was this a mirage that came with the merging? The Elarioni swam to the location the larger ‘glow’ had been but couldn’t see anything, so she swept the area, getting nothing.

  On impulse she reached her armored hand down and surged a physical connection through it, allowing her Essence to saturate there and provide a link, almost as if the armor was temporarily becoming part of her body. She could feel the gauntlet on her hand more than she ever could before, and began dragging it through the silt on the seafloor until the fingertips touched the rock below. She did that for several minutes searching for the mystery glow, then when she was about to give up and try something else she made contact with something she had never experienced before.

  It was an Essence contact, but so intense that it blinded her far more than her training sessions with the trailblazers. Theirs was so bright she could hardly stand it, but what she touched now completely overwhelmed her.

  Ariel went limp and began to drift in the water unconscious.

  When she woke it was hours later, but her handprint trenches on the seafloor were still visible in her armor’s lights, for there were no currents this deep to move Ariel around, yet she felt as if she was moving at lightspeed.

  She didn’t know where she was, or who she was, for several minutes as her mind regained its clarity, but even then the memories were so vivid that they overlapped her real senses. Ariel could feel the rock melting under an insane pressure, compacting down into the ultra dense plates that she knew dominated the bottom of the trenches. A few cracks had formed through which magma traveled, but most of the plates held firm and transferred the heat up through their structure rather than succumbing to it.

  They’d been analyzed before, finding an immense density that was better than a lot of the primitive civilizations’ starship armor plating, but otherwise there was nothing special about it. Now Ariel knew it had been Essence fused, which was a technique the trailblazers used to melt molecules and atoms together in a variety of ways technology had a hard time doing, or could not do entirely. It had been a breakthrough that led them to the invention of Tu’gor armor and a number of other things that they now crafted machines to do after they first learned to do it with Essence.

  Ariel swam in a twirl, trying to get her feel for the water again as she tried to make her Essence calm down. It was overwhelmed with foreign Essence and her Core was having trouble absorbing it all. Thankfully Jason had taught her a simple trick to bleed off Essence, and she raised her right arm out in front of her and pushed it out through her fingertips, causing a vortex of water to form and shoot out away from her.

  The undisturbed silt on the seafloor kicked up into a dust-storm, obscuring the lights on her armor to the point where she couldn’t even see them, but her Pefbar was still intact and that allowed her to remain upright and aligned with gravity as her head was still spinning. She had so much Essence in her, far more than ever before, that her body didn’t want to take it all in. That left her aglow in a pool that was inundating her, but the vortex was slowly bleeding it away.

  Ariel did not use her Lachka, knowing that wouldn’t be as power hungry as a direct Essence effect. She was using the mysterious energy field to move the water itself rather than piggybacking on her psionics and enhancing them. That was how the trailblazers got the most use out of their Essence, but right now she just needed to empty out and return to inner calm, but the bubble she was in seemed to have no end. It was cloying in a way she’d never experienced before, but the intact part of her mind realized this was why it had persisted for so long.

  There were no living beings this deep to graft onto. If there had been the Essence wouldn’t have lasted a week until something brushed up against it and absorbed it. It didn’t take one skilled in its use to absorb it, for any living being could by accident, but this deep where no one lived aside from the larger races that never bothered to touch the seafloor, there was no one to graft onto.

  And whatever this cloyingness was, it was keeping the Essence together in a way that Ariel thought was impossible. It took a Core for Essence to exist with, and whenever Essence was separated from a person…like Ariel was doing now via the Vortex…it would slowly dissipate and disappear, but this glut had not and now it was clinging to her hard.

  But patience was a skill Ariel had learned long ago, and she waited as the Vortex slowly cleared her mind enough that she shut it down and let the remainder of the Essence bubble soak into her, trying to learn from it.

  Sometimes memories would come with it, other times new insights or senses that a person did not regularly have. Essence melded to the Core it was attached to and took on those attributes of the individual, with the trailblazers able to briefly give non-telepathic people telepathy by bathing them in their Essence. Those people didn’t know how to use it, at first, but repeat it enough times and they were able to develop some rudimentary skills even though they lacked the Ikrid tissue.

  When the Essence reformed to their Core they lost that ability, which was why Ariel knew she only had a limited amount of time. She felt more alive now than ever, as if her body was too small and she needed to grow to match the energy within her, but Ariel held still and tried to glean as much from the Essence’s former owner as she could.

  But she was confused. There was a mix here, of biology and metal, that obscured any fine detail. She was so obsessed with getting a feel for the former owner that she almost missed the obvious. When she stopped trying so hard it crystalized in her mind…and a sense of dread hit her. A moment later she summoned up the largest Vortex she could, trying to clear the Essence from her like a nightmare until just her own remained, but it still carried the taint that made her feel so vile she wanted to die.

  Ariel pushed her own Essence out to near depletion, feeling so lightheaded she half passed out again, but she was free of the nightmare in a real sense, though the memory remained. She pushed it away, trying to become herself again before even thinking about analyzing it. Ariel wanted to take her armor off and feel the free water on her skin, but she couldn’t at this depth so she swam upward, racing towards the distant atmosphere not fast enough. She couldn’t speed up using her Essence, for it would take time to gradually bubble up from within and replace what was lost, so she relied on her armor to propel her upward until she got to a depth where hundreds of thousands of Elarioni swam in great swarms through the cool water moving from one outpost to another.

  Ariel retracted her armor into two gauntlets that she tore off her arms and threw away, then she swam in circles, trying to peel the taint off her body and she squirmed internally, having held it together long enough to get up here, but now she couldn’t bare it any longer. She was in such a fuss that the nearest Elarioni took notice and swam to help, encircling her in a ball as she twisted and contorted herself, fighting something they could not see.

  She was bombarded with telepathic questions that she didn’t answer, couldn’t answer, but that contact helped steady her until she curled up in a ball and just floated in the water, drifting upward slightly as the others swam in close with one touching her…then recoiling instantly as a black haze seemed to jump from her mind to the other.

  The other Elarioni shook it off after a few moments, but no more touched her or tried to pry too deeply with their limited telepathy, for Ariel was poisoned somehow. Poisoned of the mind, but none of them understood the importance of what they had briefly touched in her. But she did. She understood all too well what had happened to this planet.

  A great claw had impacted the surface, scooping out rock and water alike, and taking with it all those swimming in the water. This planet had been harvested. How and why she didn’t know, but it had been mass murder. The death echoes of those caught had emitted their own inadvertent Essence Rush, which was impossible, yet it was there, in the background of the rest…the death of billions like a faint echo, as the planet underneath them was suddenly lifted up and swallowed by some terror Ariel couldn’t see.
/>   As the minutes passed the horror was replaced with anger, and Ariel used that anger to center herself. She flapped her tail and cut the drift she was experiencing, then she extended her Pefbar to find her gauntlets…which were sinking lower in the water. Ariel swam past the other Elarioni and reclaimed them, then told the others she was alright and took off as fast as she could towards the nearest transit tube…but her Essence was low and that fatigued her, so she reactivated her armor and let it swim her to the closest entrance to the tube network that shot travelers through high pressure water channels, allowing them to cross miles far faster than through natural swimming.

  Ariel surfed those tubes until she came to a city, and within that she went to the first secure comm terminal she could find and sent a message to the trailblazers, telling them what she had discovered.

  There was a planet-eating monster out there, and it wasn’t a Hadarak. It was something else that used Essence, and may very well be what the Hadarak were searching for and guarding against.

  2

  November 30, 128439

  Aquaman System (Chexva Kingdom)

  Trident

  Paul-024 and Dina-077 landed in one of the water-based cities on Trident that was partly above the ocean and stretching deep down into it like a carrot. Their dropship landed on a lower tier of the pyramid-shaped upper side, opening its boarding ramp as four blurs flew out across the landing pad and over the edge of the next tier. They continued to stair step drop until they got over water, then they flew out across the ocean for half an hour before they turned down and plunged in where they wouldn’t run into any of the shallow water infrastructure around an artificial island chain.

  The four Archons…two trailblazers and their apprentices…wove a path down through a mix of auxiliary habitats branching off from the outpost, bypassing a lot of Elarioni, Dogiv, Shevati, and Fpom until they got low enough where they passed by a number of Garas’tox and J’gar. They were easier to avoid, given their larger size, but their rendezvous was in the deep water where few went without augmentation.