Star Force: Keyholders (Star Force Universe Book 61) Read online

  1

  February 3, 128550

  Stricorva Nebula (Unexplored Frontier)

  Gamma Temple

  Paul-024 leapt silently through the air and up to a beam overhanging the walkway, grabbing the underside and sticking there as Sara-012 followed a half second later. Both were invisible, and the Vargemma race known as the Dotaramin had neither telepathy nor any type of Pefbar, so as long as the Archons’ cloaks held they would remain unnoticed, assuming they didn’t get bumped into in the crowded hallway as they patiently made their way towards the primary cargo loading docks.

  The top of those were covered in a force field, and if they used their Jumat to push through it they’d be detected, wasting months of clandestine 00 Agent work that required them to maintain their cover, for as of yet no one that they’d come into contact with inside the Temple knew of their presence…or even Star Force’s existence for that matter. And they weren’t lying to them, because the trailblazers weren’t exactly in a position to chat, so their information was being obtained from mental scans of those races that did not have telepathy.

  They had to be careful to figure out which ones did and did not, but the Caretakers had extensive files on all the races inside the Temple…which now included them…but there was no automatic alert sent out to the Vargemma. Unless someone inquired as to how many races there were and came up with the additional one as an anomaly, then their dataset that the Caretakers had begun to make on them was essentially lost in the mountains of information available to the denizens.

  Avoiding the Caretakers was not an option, for they had to have food and stealing it from the Vargemma was not the best option. Soon after arriving in the Temple they’d made contact with a Responder far away from any Vargemma city, and from there they’d been directed to another site where the autonomous robots inquired as to their dietary needs and then set about to manufacture what was required. Explaining was one thing, and a possible route, but giving them a sample of the food in their packs made it easier for the Caretakers to simply replicate the molecular structure, though they’d had trouble with the ambrosia.

  It had taken them 2 months and 4 days before they had successfully been able to synthesize it, and both Paul and Sara were glad they now had refills, for this had become a much longer mission than either had suspected, going on well past the 6 month mark. It felt like they’d been here longer than that, because every second of every day they risked detection and had to stay on the alert, even in the wilderness areas where no Vargemma traveled.

  They’d spent several weeks out there just training alone and in the open air, but neither trailblazer could fully relax. They were gambling on the size of the Temple providing them with anonymity, and after a while it seemed obvious the Vargemma were not monitoring every bit of the interior of the sphere, but you never knew for sure. And now that they were operating inside the Vargemma cities, they couldn’t decloak for one second outside a secure area, though they’d managed to find or make a few of those on their own.

  But at least they were able to move around while sneaking rather than having to stay in place. Hanging here upside down from the ceiling as a group of 26 Dotaramin slithered by on their tail-like legs, which made them look like a Human walking on their knees, Paul and Sara had to fight their urge to move or even vibrate their bodies, for even a little ‘tinking’ sound could give them away. The gargoyle-like race had very good hearing and even a better sense of smell, but thankfully Star Force had designed dampening equipment for both into their armor, though the most important aspect to their success this far was the fact that the Dotaramin were not looking for them, nor even knew of their existence.

  This wasn’t the first Vargemma city the pair had infiltrated, but rather the 18th, and in each one the people they quietly mind raider from afar or temporarily captured, interrogated, then blanked their minds and released, all said the same thing. They had no idea what Star Force was, nor did they even know about the war going on beyond the Temples. Not the war against Star Force, nor the expansion of the Hadarak. They thought the galaxy was as it always had been, and not too surprisingly their entire mental framework was based primarily in this Temple with a little outside knowledge of some of the others.

  But that was mostly rumor. No one of the 1,294 people that they’d pulled information from had ever left the Temple. All had been born here after the first of the Vargemma had arrived, and no one knew when that had been. History had been lost, or perhaps deliberately erased, from public knowledge. Petty spats with rival races, day to day work assignments, and the mandatory Essence donations are what drove everyday life here, with a few aspiring to more but knowing only those with exception skills were given access to the Caretaker facilities, and those individuals held high status within the Vargemma society. Especially for mating rights.

  Population expansion was desired, but regulated. Only those that achieved a certain benchmark in Essence skills were permitted to reproduce, and that was the same across every race Paul and Sara had found here. Similar reports had come from the Paladin in Alpha Temple, though a few races they’d found in Gamma were not present in Alpha, and that had begged a new line of inquiry during their interrogations.

  The answers were not straightforward, for they could only access specific material in their minds if they knew what to look for. Browsing memories was extremely hard if you went beyond the past few days, but the greatest limitation was that these people didn’t know very much, and the Archons sensed that was deliberate. They had been told that the Temples were the most glorious and luxurious places in the galaxy, with the worlds beyond being savage and full of death. That, at least, was more true than not, but there was an undercurrent to that knowledge that deterred people from wanting to go out there and look. Only those who were truly beastly in their Essence skills would venture forth to do the Founders’ bidding and search for other Essence users to bring into the Temple…but no one in their right mind would actually want to live out there.

  Which meant the mindset of the Vargemma was focused inwards, and without proper training and challenges the only thing that drove them was their quarrels with the other races. It seemed to be their equivalent of sports, with the rivalries quite intense to the point of feuding in some cases, but it always tempered by the on-looking Caretakers that would respond harshly if any lethal force was applied.

  The fear of the Caretakers was a common excuse for why one group or another didn’t end their rival, whether they had the power to do so or not. If it wasn’t for the Caretakers’ programming Paul figured that the Vargemma would have killed each other long ago, and if that was the reason why the Temple guards had been programmed in such a manner, what were the Founders hoping to accomplish? You couldn’t build an army from this rabble to fight the Hadarak, not without significant changes. Where they just here to increase in number and wait for a Founder to come back and try to make something out of them, or were they primarily here to feed Essence to the Temple network so the Founders could use it for other things?

  The people they’d found being transported through the clandestine network between Temples suggested as much, and Paul wished they’d been able to investigate that black hole, but he didn’t want to be out hugging the exterior of starships any more than Sara did. The key to defeating the Vargemma was getting the fleet inside the network and able to use the portals to jump from one Temple to another, so that’s what he and Sara had been focused on scouting. If Star Force couldn’t learn it from the Responders out of skills order, then they’d have to learn it from the Vargemma…but first they had to find one that knew that particular skill, and they were in
short order.

  Pilots were revered for their ability to travel between Temples, and only the extremely high placed were given that grand task, for there was almost no civilian travel between Temples allowed. There were cargo shipments and official delegations, but the people of one Temple were meant to stay in place and grow, and with the Essence requirements for travel, that put a severe limit on the number of ships moving back and forth.

  The power of Essence was worshiped here. The more you had the better, and the Vargemma cities had the highest security around their wells. The smaller ones had a single one that powered city defenses and such, but the larger Vargemma cities had several and there was no way Paul and Sara could even get close to them. They had all manner of sensors that they couldn’t approach, and the transmission lines taking Essence from collection points into the wells were encased in meters of armor and energy shields to prevent anyone from siphoning off some of it for their own use.

  And their own use was allowed, which was odd. Essence donation was mandated, but not a full amount. Each person had a quota to reach based on their level, but beyond that they could expend or store the rest as they liked, with the only true currency in the Temple being Essence. Some of the races had other forms for distribution of items, though with the Caretakers providing for the needs of anyone who asked it kind of became redundant. Many people here didn’t care about what was going on beyond, and were quite lazy and non-violent. It was the ones that sought power that became vicious, while the laid back masses were more worried about being caught up in an inter-racial fight by accident than they were in actually fighting their rivals.

  Again, it was more like sports to them, something they watched from afar but never expected to arrive on their front doorstep. And Paul figured these people were doing just what their leaders wanted. Being passive, producing Essence, and not causing trouble. With reproductive privilege going to those with high skills…so they could therefore produce offspring more inclined to nature Essence use…there was no family dynamic in the masses, and most had deactivated their sexual drives entirely, whether by choice or mandate, only to be activated again if they earned the privilege of adding their genetics to the next generation.

  Such a lack-luster society did, as expected, degenerate over time with many deaths from ‘old age.’ They were replaced by the offspring of those that did strive for more, thus the weaklings were constantly being purged by stagnation, though that took quite a while given the medical technology and other infrastructure the Vargemma possessed, which was surpassed by what was in the Caretaker facilities, though most people didn’t have access to them. They could roam the wilds in search of them if they liked, with no penalty or restriction there, but the enormity of the Temple made sure only a few managed to make the effort, with the masses having to live in the cities where they were born.

  Movement was heavily discouraged from Region to Region, even city to city. They would let you walk, fly, or swim if you wanted, but you had to purchase regular transport if it wasn’t for a mission. And the way you paid was with additional Essence. Those whose skills were limited barely had enough for the daily quotas and some training, but some did manage to save up enough to transfer somewhere else within their racial domain. They couldn’t intermix with the other races without permission, other than in the wilds, and one of the people Sara had mind raided had knowledge of a black market system that operated out there. He was the only one who did, and it was mere rumor only, but it made sense. You couldn’t control something this large that closely, and from the reports from Alpha the Vargemma weren’t even trying.

  Everything of importance happened in the Vargemma cities, not even the Caretaker-run barrier cities. Everyone was either concerned with laid back luxury or climbing the highly competitive ladder within their race…and that ladder was what was making it hard to get the information the Archons needed. The lower rungs knew nothing about the upper ones beyond rumor, but after months of travel and interrogations the trailblazers had finally begun to make progress.

  When the group of Dotaramin passed, Paul dropped down quietly and walked a few meters forward, dodging to the right to allow 3 more to move by as Sara shadowed him. They had to play this stop and go game for nearly 2 kilometers of tunnel as the high ceilings narrowed to low archways every 40 meters or so, making them unable to just crawl up there. And due to a particular security protocol, no anti-grav technology was allowed in this part of the city. There were sensors to detect it, so Paul couldn’t fly even a bit without setting them off, using armor or Yen’mer, so they had to revert back to old school Jedi jumps and walk clinging to get the job done.

  As the Dotaramin passed they briefly glanced into their minds, and every now and then one of them would feel a brush of air or a faint sound, which the Archons would distract them from, and for good reason. These Dotaramin had Essence detection skills, and if they chose to use them they could see the trailblazers right through their armor at close range and neither Paul nor Sara knew any techniques to shield themselves from that. But here, inside the Dotaramin’s 18th largest city in this Temple, they had no reason to look. And with them saving every last bit of Essence they could, they wouldn’t be using that ability casually.

  So Paul and Sara were not safe from detection, but they’d gotten this far and through the other cities without a hiccup,yet their next objective was going to up the danger considerably.

  At the end of the hallway was the exit to the underside of the shield dome that contained the landing pads for the starships that traveled from one part of the Temple to another…as well as those rare few that moved between Temples. There were only three here at present, and most Dotaramin cities had none at all. They were in their own corner of the 82 mile wide landing grid, and nowhere close to the location where this hallway opened up to the exterior.

  The ships here were personnel berths, with those people boarding or unloading coming from other areas on personal business, having paid their Essence passage fees earlier. Paul and Sara had snuck by that checkpoint easily, for there were merely a couple of guards backing up the teller. No security shields or other real defenses. They just wanted to make sure nobody slipped through without paying, and even the guards had not been using their Essence sense. This was a low security area because no one was really going to benefit from rushing the checkpoint, and the anti-grav restriction was, Paul had found out, to deter remote drones moving around and planting little packets on the hulls of the ships to be carried elsewhere free of charge.

  Apparently there was a group of undesirables that passed messages that way, with little devices no larger than a gnat that would fly up to and hitch rides. Any anti-grav use here was intercepted immediately, and with the miles of tarmac between the thousands of landing pads, it seemed they didn’t care about crawling micro drones because it would take them forever to get where they needed to go.

  Not true for Paul and Sara, because they slunk off from the passengers heading towards the main ship before them that ran a good 2 miles to the left and another half to the right, but that’s not the way the Archons went. They swung around and headed backwards, above ground, towards the restricted section that they could not access from inside the city. That was the boarding area for the inter-Temple transports, so they had to go the long way up top in easy view of anyone watching…except they were both cloaked, and neither the Dotaramin nor the other Vargemma races were permitted to own or use such technology. There were Essence techniques to do so, and those had to be guarded against, but the technology of hiding was taboo in the Vargemma…at least within the Temples anyway.

  The penalties for creating it, let alone using it, were harsh, but it seemed the Vargemma didn’t mind people using Essence to do the same thing. Maybe because they wanted the innovation, and therefore the advancement of the individuals doing so, or maybe they just saw the value of Essence being so high that people wouldn’t waste it on pulling pranks and other low level activities.

  But the restricted
landing pads didn’t count on that, and Paul and Sara had scouted out two others in different races before finally finding the Dotaramin had this single breach in their security. They weren’t expecting anyone to travel across the tarmac out in the open without being spotted, and if there was any unauthorized anti-grav used out here it would be detected as well. The overhead shield dome prevented anything from coming in or out without the access codes, so they were in the protected environment, as far as the Dotaramin figured, and there would be no way somebody would run across miles of open territory to get to the restricted pads.

  Yet that’s exactly what they did, and some 28 miles later they came up on one of the three ships parked there, slowed to a halt just beyond it, and began to look around for additional security measures, either on the pad or the ship itself.

  Ok, now for the hard part, Sara noted as they stood invisible looking up at the insect-like ship before them. It was stretched out with multiple barbs and hook-like joints, but most of the interior space was full, though not all.

  Patience, Padawan. Now we wait.

  My body hates waiting.

  No point in screwing up now because we rushed.

  What’s the plan?

  Plan A is to board with the cargo due in 2 hours. Plan B is to sneak in with the crew. Plan C is to cut our way in…and I really don’t like that one.

  Me neither. What’s plan D?

  That’s your job. I came up with the first three.

  Thanks, she said, looking over the mid-sized ship with her eyes in lieu of the active sensors she couldn’t use. Rambo?

  Paul frowned, though Sara couldn’t see it. That kind of defeats the point of staying hidden.

  Still an option.

  Are you that twitchy?

  Always, she said with a sigh. I hate waiting.

  Me too, Paul said, checking the clock inside his helmet. There was a countdown to the expected cargo shipment arriving in 1 hour 46 minutes and 18 seconds, but better early than late.