Star Force: The Forever Empire (Star Force Universe Book 69) Read online

  1

  August 31, 128843

  Hadarak War Zone (Len’mak Region)

  Ki’na’so’vrein System

  Ever since the trailblazers had begun absorbing the V’kit’no’sat races into Star Force things had started to change for the Knight races. They had always been seen as the mirror image of the other empire, with that distinction starting with the Rit’ko’sor when part of them had chosen to join Star Force rather than rejoin the V’kit’no’sat. They’d been given the name ‘Raptor’ to distinguish themselves from their no-so-liked kin, but none of the other Knight races had chosen Star Force.

  Individuals had. Planets had. But their races had not. They’d been absorbed in one form or another with their hatchlings becoming the true Knight races, and it had always been assumed that the Knight races were the way the V’kit’no’sat should have been all along. And because of that living rebuke to their original empire they had kept the same names, symbols, and other similarities with them as if they were in a gigantic war of philosophy to prove who was the better.

  It had been assumed that the absorption of the V’kit’no’sat systems would occur in the same method, and their ‘version’ would slowly fade away to be replaced with the Knight races as the normal Era’tran, Brat’mar, Oso’lon, etc. But that’s not what the trailblazers had in mind, and many like Totem were pleasantly shocked when the new order began rolling out.

  Totem was an I’rar’et. One of the originals that had chosen to transfer out to the Rim rather than face a death sentence in the V’kit’no’sat for establishing a rogue colony. It had only been a few buildings on an airless moon for the purpose of a smuggling depot, but it hadn’t been sanctioned by Itaru for I’rar’et possession and he’d been sentenced to death along with the others caught there.

  Mak’to’ran had offered them a choice of exile to the Rim, and he’d taken it along with some of the others, but most refused. They died rather than face the embarrassment, but Totem had gone and never looked back. He’d been glad for a second chance, while all the time hating Itaru for their stupidly strict code that punished defiance rather than misdeeds. He could have killed the Oso’lon Primearch and gotten the same death penalty, which was pretty much standard for anyone who defied Itaru’s edicts.

  He hadn’t expected much when he got to Star Force, but had found a kindredship with the other ‘illegals’ who had successfully fought off the empire to establish their own here. But in them he also found a great deal of wisdom as they pieced together another I’rar’et civilization in the Rim under the moniker of ‘Knights.’

  The Knights were entrusted to safeguard the Star Force empire as the primary combat troops, superseding even the Humans themselves. Their race was mostly civilian and pathetic, but out of it they crafted a small number of superior warriors. For the Knight races it worked in reverse, with the expectation being that of superiority with an outlet other than death for those who did not measure up…or for those who chose to walk a different path.

  Totem had served as a Knight since before the I’rar’et truly were Knights. He was here when they were first being crafted, and in all his combat experience since then he had never failed to be busy. There was always some mission to somewhere that needed help to keep the Knights occupied, but now that constant schedule crystalized in the new order that was taking shape.

  The name I’rar’et was no longer his own. Those in the Core were now I’rar’et within Star Force, and the I’rar’et were Border Guards. The High Guards were roamers, going where the danger was, seeking it out and confronting it, while their own worlds remained safely guarded by the empire. The Border Guards were quite the opposite, placing their homes in harm’s way or near to it, and drawing a line in the stars across which the Hadarak could not be allowed to pass.

  Both were to be considered Knights, for their civilizations would operate on the ‘duty first’ framework rather than the ‘your mission, if you choose to accept it’ methodology of recruitment that most of Star Force operated on. The Border Guards would protect against the Hadarak surge, while the High Guards would assist them and go wherever else was needed, and with that new division came a clarity in purpose that Totem was thankful for. He didn’t want to sit and defend, he wanted to pursue and hunt the evil in the galaxy all the way back to its lairs, wherever they may be. And with large chunks of the Rim still unexplored, there was plenty to do even if the Hadarak just up and disappeared one day.

  He knew they weren’t going to have that luxury, but then again he didn’t want it. He wanted never ending action, and now that he was officially a High Guard Knight, that’s pretty much what was being promised him and the others that wanted to stay, with an option for transfer for any of the current Knights wishing to go to the Core and help build the Grand Border. The same reverse offer was going to the V’kit’no’sat there, offering to bring them to the Rim and teach them to be High Guard, after which there would be a definitive difference between the two civilizations. Enough to trigger a name change.

  The I’rar’et would be the Border Guards, while the Terodactyl would be the High Guards. The name came from Earth before Star Force was founded there, with a slight spelling change, but it meant the same thing. Two names for their race, and now two destinies. He was officially no longer ‘V’kit’no’sat’, for that name was staying with those whose entire purpose was to be Hunters of Hadarak, and would be their official moniker while ‘Border Guards’ was a working description for the transition period.

  What Totem now was, was High Guard. And within the High Guard his Faction was the Terodactyl, with a symbol of their own to distinguish from the I’rar’et. His path forward had never been more clear than it was now…though for the moment, ironically, he was playing Border Guard along with his Terodactyl fleet as it was stationed above a small yellow star into which two surviving Hadarak Wardens had fled…and would not come back out.

  Totem hated sitting and waiting, but they had orders to do so. He wasn’t commander of this fleet, nor captain of this warship, so he didn’t know what they were waiting for or why, and didn’t bother to ask. They’d been here for 34 weeks just sitting and keeping the Wardens from leaving, which meant they couldn’t split up and go harass two other star systems, nor could they chow down on the planets in this one and grow more minions at their normal voracious rate. Not unless there was a planetary remnant within the star itself or other useful chunk of material, for normally stars did not contain the right mixture of atoms to produce the minions from exclusively…which was why the Hadarak were infamous for chewing on planets.

  Totem was off duty and in the wind chute when the alert came, flying into heavy winds while truly going nowhere as he worked out his wing endurance. The crew were numerous enough not to need every single person in battle conditions, but the tiny comm dot on his forehead relayed his orders to him automatically so he knew he had to get to a gunnery turret.

  He telepathically turned off the wind chute, then flew out into a side tunnel and made his way through the T-shaped warship…which ironically was now the symbol shape of the I’rar’et and not the new arrow shape of the Terodactyl. All new ships produced by the High Guard would be in the shape of the appropriate Knight symbols, which was mostly unique amongst Star Force. Nearly all Factions used the traditional Human shapes, which had been designed based on tactics rather than symbology, though many Factions had chosen to make their drones different shapes or colors to distinguish themselves.

  Totem had been told long ago in a planning meeting that the Knight races were so large in body their ships had to be larger than the rest of t
he Star Force fleet to accommodate the same number of crew, and when ships scaled up so far the design became less important due to the mass involved. The Humans still wanted the best designs possible for their own Faction, and the same was true of the Clans, but with the Knights they’d allowed the divergence due to the fact that some of the oddball shapes actually offered advantages in certain types of combat, while being disadvantageous in others.

  They never would have authorized the assortment of shapes if it was going to be a straight up disadvantage, so they’d let the Knights specialize while they kept to the most useful shapes for the majority of combat scenarios. I’rar’et liked long ships with long corridors to fly through, so a T-shape worked best without stretching the ship out too far, and the 14 mile long Yamcha-class warship he was currently on still felt short to his wingtips.

  The Yamcha was the Star Force version more or less equal to a Domjo, though the framing requirements were not nearly the same. Star Force based theirs on a combination of volume, speed, and defensive rating, while the V’kit’no’sat had gone simply for mass. All the weird shapes of their ships were based on a certain length of rectangular ship with a certain mass, then they were allowed to reshape that mass however they liked within a narrow margin of error, which threw off the length measurements greatly in the final design.

  Star Force had 6 Knight versions of standard drone-control warships. Roshi was the smallest, then Krillin, Yamcha, Tien, Ginyu, and Vegeta. There was a special smaller version for the tiniest V’kit’no’sat races, known as a Chiaotzu, but not for I’rar’et, which was why there were none in the 583 ship fleet in this system, but all 6 of the other classes were present here, with two Vegeta equipped with baby Tar’vem’jic and measuring roughly half the mass of a Mach’nel. That would have been a fair fight against one Warden, but there was also a Ysalamir with them, making this fleet fully capable of hunting and killing Wardens without gutting itself.

  But not inside a star. The Wardens could hide in there forever, and while that kept them bottled up and not harming anyone, Totem felt wasted just sitting here babysitting them. So when the alert came he happily flew to a gunnery pod and landed on a perch nearby 5 others, coming up from the open bottom and sitting back to back with the others while the central airspace remained clear for them to fly down or up at will.

  His feet grasped the perch, mentally linking him with the firing controls for the turrets currently assigned to him, though he could control the entire ship’s weaponry single handedly if needed, though at a cost of efficiency. This ship didn’t tolerate inefficiency, so they had multiple gunners able to apply their full focus to a handful of turrets, with him being given 3 on the upper rear of the main ship’s length. There were no targets selected as yet by the bridge, for it was a general standby alert, and he quickly saw why.

  Another ship had entered the system, and it was not Star Force. The ship was huge, larger than a Borg vessel and the equivalent volume of a Tier 3 Hadarak, and just seeing it enter a system would have sent shockwaves down the people who used to live here…though none were still alive. This system had been hit before the High Guard had gotten here, and everyone had been wiped out probably 10-15 years ago, though nobody knew for sure. They were here to fight Hadarak and take pressure off of nearby areas that were currently under the evacuation that this system hadn’t been lucky enough to receive.

  They’d been known as the So’tra’len, and had fielded colonies all across the Len’mak Region. They’d never been strong enough to bother the V’kit’no’sat, but they’d been known to them and watched. The ground pounders would have been scared stupid at the sight of the Shinogas warship, but Totem knew that it wasn’t well armed at all.

  It had weaponry to fight in space, but mainly to defend itself during transit. The ship was a fat cargo transport in reality, designed to carry the Shinogas from one system to another and protect them against the cold vacuum of space, in which they spent very little time. They had no interest in a warfleet other than to preserve their ability to move from star to star…for it was within the stars that they lived, and where they were the deadliest.

  The Shinogas warship was identified as a neutral on Totem’s targeting display for a while, then after communication was established it became outlined in green, indicating it was an allied ship, whereas all the Terodactyl ships were in blue and the two Hadarak just barely showing on sensors within the star were red.

  The Shinogas being here explained the delay. Totem’s High Guard couldn’t go into the star to kill the Hadarak, but the Shinogas could, and they wasted no more time in space than necessary, taking their massive ship down into the blinding star and sinking it into their natural habitat.

  The alert didn’t end when the Shinogas were identified, so Totem assumed they were on guard duty. Either the Hadarak fought them in the star, or they’d have to run. And if they did, then Totem and the others would come back into the battle. It shouldn’t be long before the Hadarak sensed them approaching, for their in-star navigational abilities were far better than Star Force sensors, though they lacked the same range. As it was, if the Hadarak had gone any deeper they’d be invisible to the ships in orbit. Maybe they thought they were, and were just hanging out waiting for reinforcements or sipping on star juice. Regardless, they couldn’t see into space or all the way through the star, and the distance they could sense had been pretty well hammered out over the length of this war.

  The Shinogas ship was approaching that range, and that meant Totem was about to see whether or not he got to shoot at something or had to sit and watch through the weak comm link the Shinogas were graciously sharing with Star Force. Either way, the High Guard fleet’s waiting here was over and he’d be getting back to the action soon.

  He just hoped he’d get a little of it today…

  Rin’shen was one of 285 Shinogas onboard their carrier vessel and caressed inside the artificial star within the spherical section of the massive craft. The hull was thick with multiple layers to keep the cold out, for the Rin’shen could not survive in space for long like the Hadarak could. The Shinogas needed the heat and pressure, and could only survive in the upper atmosphere of the stars for short periods of time. Full exposure to space would kill them in a matter of minutes, and it was for this reason they spent very little time in the darkness.

  It was necessary for transit, but unpleasant. Rin’shen felt like he was in a fragile bowl every time he was carried from one star to another, knowing how easy it would be for a superior enemy to crack their defenses. But within a star they were not safe either. The Shinogas had fought the Hadarak and won more than they’d lost in the far past, before Dogoroth had come to save them from the Hadarak assassins that followed.

  The invaders had wanted their stars, but the Shinogas had outfought them in their round forms, but when the angular ones arrived the Shinogas were killed by unknown measures. They were helpless to fight them except in large groups that were able to surround and kill only two of the angular beasts, but usually they were too savvy to get caught, and spent most of their time roaming the deep interior of the star only to spring out and ambush Shinogas when they did not expect it.

  When Dogoroth arrived from the darkness he killed the angular ones with the same invisible weaponry they had, despite his tiny size, then he’d explained that they were Hadarak assassins who possessed something called ‘Essence’ that the Shinogas lacked, and that there was no way to defeat them without it. But because the Shinogas were so good at killing the normal Hadarak, Dogoroth offered to save the Shinogas from extinction by moving them to an ‘Encapsulation’ where they could wait until the time arrived for them to pay Dogoroth back by joining in a massive war to rid the galaxy of the Hadarak…but that war would not take place until enough soldiers were gathered, and it would be a very long time until they were.

  Faced with death or seclusion, the Shinogas had accepted Dogoroth’s terms and he had brought them out to tiny artificial stars placed in a ring around a true one
…but they were forbidden to go to the true one, or any other. The Hadarak could go there, but not to the tiny ones. That meant they were safe in the tiny ones, and there they had stayed for millions of years until Star Force had come telling them the war had already begun…and that Dogoroth was nowhere to be seen.

  The Shinogas had not wished to wait for him, and since Star Force possessed this Essence power needed to fight and kill the ‘Lurkers’ they had agreed to join in the fight where they would be useful. So rather than being given territory to defend or attack, they were being brought in where needed to hunt the Hadarak when they went where Star Force and the others could not. Down deep into the stars themselves, where the Shinogas made their homes out of technology crafted from stellar elements, including their carrier vessels and battle armor, which was now even more advanced thanks to the resources provided by Star Force and their remarkably intuitive engineers.

  Rin’shen waited as the carrier vessel moved them into the star then through it faster than he could have swam on his own, then when they came within range of the Hadarak the ship cracked open and the glow from outside exceeded that from within, allowing him and the other 3 mile long Megaloids to swim free of the vessel using a combination of their biological gravity drives and surface ripples to propel them out into the new star, with the smell of it being something unfamiliar, for no two stars ever smelled the same.

  This one was a mixture of sweetness with a foul stench to it, which came from the Hadarak. Their emissions left a trail easy to follow even if they weren’t close enough to sense…and off on that trail Rin’shen and the others flew through the extremely dense stellar material as the collars they wore around their stubby necks transformed into a thin skin that stretched out to cover their bodies in battle armor.

  Hadarak could kill Shinogas, but with proper armor and weapons that was not going to happen. This was the 8th hunting mission Rin’shen had been on since the trailblazer Jason-025 had brought them out of encapsulation, and so far not a single Shinogas had been lost.