Star Force: Capitulation (Star Force Universe Book 73) Read online

  1

  May 1, 154927

  Bri’shan System (Hadarak Territory)

  Ti’shak Jumpline

  Over 26,000 years had passed since the Neofan made contact with Star Force, and during that time the Human-led Empire had ascended to intergalactic notoriety when their Grand Border was completed…and held against the Hadarak surge. That brought many visitors from other galaxies to witness what was occurring, as well as an invitation to join the Bond of Resistance, which was declined.

  Star Force was holding its own, and with every century that passed the Grand Border got stronger, despite Hadarak reinforcements now flowing in from other galaxies. That was what the Neofan had hoped would happen, and they had gotten their wish. House Atriark’s standing within their race had skyrocketed, due in no small part to the rest of their Houses having considerable difficulty holding onto their new galaxy.

  But for Paul-024, none of that existed beyond reports he periodically got in Hadarak territory or the brief stints passing back beyond the Grand Border for repairs, refits, or crew swaps. He’d spent the past 26,000 years on naval patrol duty, hunting down Lurkers until the Hadarak stopped sending them. They were out there. He could feel it. But they were losing so many to the Borg vessels they were now only spamming lesser units and hammering the border everywhere in the hopes of breaking through at some point, and they were making larger efforts periodically at random spots, one of which he was intercepting now.

  The Bri’shan System used to be a Brat’mar exclusive holding, but now it was 8 planets fully infested with Hadarak to the point that some growths were coming out of one of them and reaching well up into orbit…or they had been until Paul had knocked them down, but an assault on the planets was mostly pointless, for he couldn’t hold them even if he took them.

  But that wasn’t the reason why he was here. It was just the backdrop to the naval combat taking place on the Ti’shak jumpline, for a stream of reinforcements were moving towards the Ari’tat section of the Grand Border in another of their mini-surges and Paul had found it before too many had gotten to target. Now he stood his ground, one 327-mile wide Borg vessel poaching Hadarak carriers, mainline units, and occasional Wardens as they jumped in vulnerable due to their staggering.

  He’d been here 18 days, and had been fighting constantly for that duration…but not from his astromech. Right now Paul was in his personal training sanctum, holding a handstand on his knuckles in 12g as the crown-like interface glued to his forehead linked him to the ship and the ongoing battle outside that Captain Numann had well in hand.

  All of the crew, including Paul, had to rotate or the constant carnage would win the battle of attrition over them, and Paul especially with his Saiyan genetics constantly bugging him to be active. Over the years he’d learned to delegate to his crew rather than spent hours linked to his astromech, which was essentially a very familiar computer system that he would use the ‘Borg’ Essence ability to extend his Core partially into, giving him a temporary add-on to his brain and computational power.

  That wasn’t necessary for an ongoing battle such as this, and in truth Paul didn’t need to be here…but something told him he did. The Hadarak seemed to be out of tricks, but he couldn’t believe that. Something felt like it was going to drop on them ever since they pulled back their remaining Lurkers.

  He’d expected them to start pairing up, or even in large groups, but that hadn’t happened yet. Instead the Hadarak were fighting at less than full capability, and that didn’t fit with their MO. It seemed they were waiting for something, and when it hit it could very well break the Grand Border. Paul just didn’t know what it could be. They’d already destroyed several tier 6 Wardens. What else did the Hadarak have to throw at them?

  The tactic that brought down the Neofan wouldn’t work here, for Star Force territory was sparsely populated compared to the jam-packed galaxy one the Founders had formerly called their home. They had overpopulated it to the extreme, and then the Hadarak had come in and pushed it even further past the tipping point. That was off the table here, if the ‘tipping point’ truly was what the Neofan had claimed it was. Star Force had no data on the apocalypse monsters other than what was given to them, and while Paul considered that angle it didn’t feel right. The Hadarak were up to something, he just couldn’t figure out what.

  So he stayed in the war zone, moving randomly from system to system and causing havoc wherever he could. Hitting these transit lines accomplished a great deal of that, but finding them prior to their reaching the Grand Border was not easy. No interstellar comm system was able to be set up in Hadarak territory, so the fog of war was the norm here.

  Paul lived in it. Breathed it. And poached from it. The Hadarak had nothing that could match his Borg vessel, and there were many spread around the Grand Border…but not enough. Most of the combat was being accomplished with ‘smaller’ regular warships and drone fleets. Paul assisted with some of the larger ones near him, but most of his time was spent off the grid behind enemy lines while the rest of the galaxy was protected on the other side of the Grand Border.

  Not that it was safe over there. It all depended on who you were, where you were, and what situation you were in. Many people were killed in small scale situations, and in truth everything in the universe occurred in the small scale, but when one pulled back and looked at the large scale, the two sides of the Grand Border stood in stark contrast. Paul lived in the danger side, making himself a monster among monsters and racking up a kill count so high he’d long ago deactivated the ship’s stat board.

  His ship could hold millions of people if needed, but the current crew was only 12,834. That was still a lot of people, but on a ship this size it was a very lonely situation if you let it become one. Paul made sure his crew kept a well-knit bond, but it was one he didn’t share. Most of his time was spent in isolation amongst his own chambers, and other than Captain Numann he rarely saw one of the crew face to face unless there was an emergency…and this crew was so good there were no incidents. All were Clan Saber and loyal to the core, but they didn’t interact with their Clan leader other than to follow his battle prompts that came through the computer system.

  After living for so long, even individuals thousands of years old seemed childish. Not because they were, but because Paul had ascended so far that interacting with them felt like replaying a movie you’d watched 50 times already. Knowing every line before it was said, with nothing ‘new’ to it. The only new things were Paul’s training as he pressed his limits in certain areas, but most of his training was maintaining what he’d already built. Even the Hadarak combat was repetitive, and whatever they were planning for the future hadn’t manifested itself yet, so Paul was left in the doldrums of doing the very badly needed work of naval combat, but without much of a personal challenge to it.

  But he was the best Star Force had in naval warfare, and that wasn’t an insult to Liam-090 and Roger-009. They both acknowledged he was slightly better, but while they had pulled back from across the line duty after the Lurkers retreated, Paul had not. Something compelled him to stay…and it was fear. Fear of being elsewhere when the hammer dropped. But when he was out here, he was in the hammer’s path and could potentially intercept it before it got to the Grand Border.

  Or at least that’s what his subconscious told him.

  Paul kicked his legs and flipped over to a standing position, his shoes hitting the ground hard in the enhanced gravity as he walked a few steps to the left and lifted a box-weight that had built-in handles. He pulled it up over his head and held it there, fighting the 200 pound weight and the enhanced gravity as he m
onitored the combat outside and allowed the rest of his Sav-enhanced mind to wander elsewhere.

  If he was lucky he would get a daydream, for those were the only real ‘new’ things he could experience. A lot of it was just unprocessed thoughts that gave the appearance of newness because there was no pattern associated with them until processed, but every now and then he would come across something else. It wasn’t a dream ascension trigger. He could tell the difference, plus those were all deactivated since he had all the psionics already manifested.

  This was something else, and it rarely popped up…but today it did again, randomly. It felt like his path, where he needed to go, and every now and then he’d get a whiff of it…only to have it disappear.

  Logic, reason, strategy….that’s what he was left with. That’s what he lived on. But this other sense was beyond them. It felt right, but he could never hold onto it for very long, and today was no different. When he lost it the buzzer on his current hold wasn’t far behind, and he dropped the weight in front of him as gently as one could in the High-G room, having it smack heavy pads with a single thud, leaving Paul staring at the walls for a moment as his mind was elsewhere in multiple places.

  He’d felt lost like this before, back during the lizard war, and it’d taken Riona to snap him out of it then. But even knowing that, and having a pattern to work off of, he still couldn’t shake this numbness other than for a few fleeting seconds during his dreams. He was missing something right in front of him, but he didn’t know how to open his eyes to see it.

  It wasn’t a siphon developing, unfortunately. Wilson hadn’t been able to figure out how to make them occur, but he’d managed to find a way to scan for existing ones using a process that Paul still didn’t fully understand because he’d never returned to the Jepiker System to be taught it, and it wasn’t something that could be transmitted as data. Some of his peers had, and he wanted to go there, but there was no one better at hunting Lurkers than him, and the assassins pulling back didn’t give him an opportunity to leave. It made him more worried than had they kept up their previous attacks.

  The fleet had gotten good at predicting and killing them without him, for the most part. But if they started doing something new then Paul had to be here, not taking a vacation while leaving other people to guard the Grand Border from the most lethal assets the Hadarak had revealed to date.

  Paul was playing Sentinel against a threat that had withdrawn, leaving him to find little ways to cause unique havoc out here, and while that should have satisfied him it didn’t. He felt like there was something more important he should be doing, and every day that passed he couldn’t find it, making him wonder what was going on.

  He was blind to something, and when Kara had discovered her Siphon it had happened in a similar way. She had isolated herself to explore within, and Paul was essentially doing the same out here by accident. But whereas she had figured out a breakthrough new ability, he had nothing to show for him internal misgivings.

  As for the Jinxes, there were now 4 of them…not counting Strovok. Two were Archons, one Maverick, and one an out of the blue Rammus by the name of Hyio who when he developed Essence abilities he a Siphon unlocked at the same time.

  So Star Force had a grand total of 5, while House Atriark had 0. None of the Neofan had the Siphon ability themselves, and all the ‘discoveries’ were controlled by their ruling House, currently Mutavi. Star Force had requested as part of the agreement with House Atriark to return Strovok’s master and turn over any other Siphons they had captured and conscripted, but the ruling House kept those and many other assets as their exclusive property, so their recovery wasn’t within House Atriark’s ability to deliver.

  They had, however, been required to give up their biological armor. Pol’so’nep was what they called them, after they’d genetically and technologically altered them for their uses, but the race’s original name was Boos’mo, and they had been all transferred to Star Force from House Atriark’s possession. The Neofan now wore mechanical armor in their place, and were more than happy to make the exchange considering they were living comfortably within three Temples while Star Force was doing the fighting against the Hadarak.

  They’d been a little too accommodative of Star Force’s bargaining points, which meant they were either playing a very high level game of poker, or they were so desperate they would take any port in the storm that was destroying their home galaxy…which still was not finished, but all of House Atriark had gotten out. Once they did so they turned their back on the galaxy, not bothering to go back and rescue anyone else.

  Star Force didn’t like that one bit, but the Neofan wouldn’t give them access to the Zotav. Not even for an embassy station. It and the intergalactic network were off limits, and that was one of the firm positions they had brought to the bargaining table…but it was also one that Star Force did not truly need and they knew it.

  Those negotiations had gone quickly and smoothly, after which Star Force’s Essence knowledge grew exponentially as they taught the Elcee the mysteries within the Temples at the pace Star Force wished, bypassing the Temple programming, and then they even went beyond it, instructing them in techniques and basic knowledge of the Essence realm itself that few in the universe possessed.

  Paul now knew much, even without going back to train for it, just by studying the reports being passed to him by occasional courier. Star Force no longer feared Essence, and their major planets were now protected against it, either with Essence shields powered by massive Magicite buried deep beneath the crust where orbital bombardment could not damage them, or by the Star Force-original line of anti-Essence technology that Tennisonne had devised, some of which baffled even the Neofan.

  Paul was still proud of him for that, and it all came down to one little discovery. That being the Denogi and their Essence immunity. When one of them finally came to visit this galaxy Star Force had heavily investigated their natural state, finding one little compound in their bodies that was not found anywhere in this galaxy.

  But Tennisonne had found a way to synthetically create it, and what it was was a shunt directly to the Essence realm. A one way shunt that would take whatever Essence Rush the Denogi created…if they ever learned how…and pull it away from their bodies and away from their potential use. In this way it locked the Essence in their bodies and did not allow them to move it without losing it. And with some modification it was also possible for a similar compound to fix it permanently.

  That had been a Star Force discovery as well, and amounted to an injection that would render an Essence user inert until the body processed out the ‘poison’ that otherwise did no damage. That poison also acted as a mirror, locking in one’s Essence while bouncing off any loose Essence that hit it.

  So now Star Force had an easy way to imprison the Vargemma who misbehaved, and Cal-com now controlled all the Temples save for the three Neofan ones. No longer was there an ongoing stalemate. He’d fully conquered their territory, and the fact that the Elcee were now stronger than the Vargemma had also calmed things down a lot. Their strength and Essence abilities remained, and were always a threat, but their populations were now annexed by Star Force, and most had responded well to indoctrination…particularly with the Neofan’s help.

  The returning of the Founders to lead the fight against the Hadarak did actually happen, so Star Force didn’t have much trouble convincing the masses to join their empire…and all the Neofan had to do was a little showing off and talking, though the benefit was enormous to Star Force.

  But more than that, Earth and other major worlds were now equipped with shield generators that could stop Essence attacks…and buildings and ships that could absorb it using the Petricite that Tennisonne created. It was harder to make then Yeg’gor, but worth it. The Essence attacks thrown against it simply melted away and the energy returned to the Essence Realm…at least as much as it could absorb. Too much too fast could see the Petricite fail, so it wasn’t a total immunity, but it gave Star Forc
e back its fortress worlds and the ability to operate out of strong points rather than having to constantly be in fear.

  And from those strong points the Essence-equipped ships and warriors could strike back against anyone who attacked the undefended Star Force worlds in such a manner. That deterrence was unnecessary in this galaxy, but the visitors from others took heed. Many had started to move into the Rim, coming through the Zotav, until Davis ordered it stopped. A few battles happened, then word got around that you needed to ask permission to come here and set up shop, and Davis put down some very heavy lightside rules for doing so.

  Rules that the Neofan were already following. And rules that most of the Bond of Resistance found perplexing to the point that they would rather not come. But the Neofan understood, at least enough to humor Star Force into cooperation, and a few other smaller races in the Bond did as well, being given permission to establish colonies within Star Force territory in exchange for certain help given to Star Force.

  And most of those that did so were footholds from major empires or refugees from fallen ones. Refugees that had enough Essence to travel on the intergalactic network that Star Force was banned from, and would remain banned from unless they chose to join the Bond of Resistance and submit to their collective decision making…which wasn’t going to happen.

  Paul switched to a punching orb and upped the gravity to 34g to get a good pull on his arms as he worked up enough of a sweat that the beads were dropping off his mostly nude body like bullets. He wore only skin-tight shorts and shoes, with his blue hair cut short enough that it wasn’t flopping around into his eyes. As he punched he gave the bridge one small order to enhance their position amongst the Hadarak units surrounding them, then let them continue on their own merits as he punched with his bare hands over and over again until the very tough skin on his knuckles began to bleed.

  That was his signal to stop, take a moment to use his Haemra to regrow enough of it to end the bleed, then he left the High-G chamber just as a ship emerged on another jumpline.