Star Force: Symbiosis (Star Force Universe Book 72)

  1

  May 18, 128888

  Happhetima Nebula (Zavrex Kingdom)

  Gamma Tricumbda Temple

  “Where are they?” Arch Duke Binoy demanded from onboard the Elcee flying city that contained the hidden command center for the Star Force occupation forces within the Temple.

  “Sector 88294. Access point is a standard cargo terminal.”

  Binoy watched the hologram of the unidentified individuals entering the Temple through one of the Essence portals that up until now had only allowed Caretaker units through. As far as was known, no person had transited between Temples except through the large, obvious ones on the surface. The smaller ones hidden underground were in Caretaker-guarded areas where no one was allowed entrance, and those that tried were either killed or stunned and removed by the Founder-made drones.

  Star Force now had control over those drones, and while they had put the kill code on hold, they hadn’t allowed the Vargemma to access those areas, so they shouldn’t even know those smaller portals existed.

  “Transit point?”

  “Vector is from an unknown location,” the Paladin Researcher explained, having been assigned to the Arch Duke’s command staff to offer him insight to the ongoing projects in the Temple while simultaneously giving the Researcher a prime position to analyze Temple macro dynamics and how they responded to the Arch Duke’s alterations.

  “Shit,” the Human whispered, knowing that Jason’s mapping expedition had cataloged all visible transition routes the Caretaker drones were moving on in the shadow network. Binoy thought he knew of all the routes into and out of Gamma Tricumbda, but apparently there were others, else he would have received a heads up about this incoming transit at the minimum. In theory anything coming out of the ‘Coins’ would be intercepted by Jason’s units, living or otherwise, but somehow these few dozen individuals had gotten here via an unknown access point. “Could it be a ship?”

  “Possible,” the Researcher admitted. “Most likely sources is an unidentified portion of the shadow or dark networks, or another network entirely. An Essence transit was made and received, but no identifying orders came with it.”

  That was strange, because the Temples often talked to one another, as did the shadow network, in the form of computer code. Usually it was to coordinate work crews and cargo transfers, to make sure the destination wasn’t already overloaded before they sent more and spent the extremely valuable Essence to do it in a way that was undetectable to the ‘mundanes’ in the galaxy. This transit hadn’t been announced ahead of time, which wasn’t unheard of, but traveling without puddle jumper or other craft was. Whoever these people were, they were coming through with bare skin exposed on their face, hands, feet, and tail tip. The rest of them was covered in some form of thick clothing with robe-like flaps draping them in a regal-looking aesthetic despite the glowing patches that made them look like some mishmash between Tron and Dragonball Z…for they looked very much like Form 4 Frieza, except their heads appeared dolphin smooth and tapered backwards into two fleshy splits.

  Their heads didn’t glow, but their clothing did…

  “I believe that clothing is biological,” the Researcher said a moment before Binoy could fully form the thought in his head.

  “Implications?”

  “Observation only.”

  “Darren,” he said, turning to another Human on his staff. “Inform Viceroy Frassa that we have potential hostiles. I need a hologram in that chamber now,” he said, walking over to a silver circle in the floor that would scan and transmit his image while surrounding him in a shield wall that would display the surroundings in the arrival room they were monitoring.

  A moment later his view switched to just that, being transmitted from a Star Force-controlled Caretaker drone that entered along with several others that were being retasked there remotely.

  The Arch Duke’s image appeared in front of the drone, life size, but with enough staticy interference for those viewing to know it wasn’t real. The hologram technology was good enough to simulate that, which is why Star Force added the distortion to make it clear when there was a transmission into the field, especially when dealing with strangers.

  Binoy mentally triggered the translation program as several of the new arrivals noticed his image and turned their heads toward it, revealing sickly yellow eyes surrounding black pupils that were a little too wide.

  “Hello. My name is Arch Duke Binoy. I am the current commander of this Temple. Please identify yourselves. You are not on our arrival schedule.”

  The drone that was transmitting the hologram moved forward, as did his image, then it winked out momentarily until another drone took over the transmitting as the first one was crushed by an invisible force and thrown against a nearby wall like a piece of trash.

  “Be aware,” Binoy cautioned, “that we are nice people, but able to…” he cut off as the system went down. “What happened?”

  “Jamming field most likely,” the Researcher said as multiple people on the command deck frantically worked the problem. “We lost connection to everything within…20-30 meters. I can’t be more precise than that. There aren’t enough nodes in the walls down there.”

  “Where’s the Viceroy?”

  “He hasn’t responded yet.”

  “Inform Morgan, and assume defense procedures. Assume hostile intent. Do we have any interface attempts?”

  “None,” the Researcher said, already looking for that, but as far as he could tell nothing was happening outside that null zone, inside of which not even the nearby visual cameras could penetrate. It was a black bubble in all aspects, inside of which as now unknown, even using the landlines…

  The Nu’avi continued arriving through the portal, with some 38 already having entered with another 22 yet to arrive. The typical 60 man special response team that the Neofan usually sent to deal with insurrections within their own empire, but on occasion they were sent out into the frontier when something other than the Hadarak was causing trouble. The servant race had trillions of individuals fighting the Hadarak right now, and all were Essence capable to some degree, but only the most powerful and skilled of the Nu’avi were selected for the response teams and trained by the Neofan themselves. In doing so they ceased to be Nu’avi, as far as social status was concerned. Instead they became known as the ‘Emperor’s Hands’ and were loyal to the leading House in the Neofan only, which was currently House Mutavi after they had superseded House Jak’en.

  That transition had occurred when the Pafdreng had invaded the Neofan home galaxy of Utovi in response to the surge of Hadarak at the Core of the already densely packed region. The Neofan had kept population levels strictly controlled to avoid such a fate, but they’d pushed too close to the line and the Hadarak had exploited that numerical critical point by adding their own surge of lifeforms to the galaxy and pushing it over the limit.

  When the strategy had been discovered, House Jak’en had been removed from command of the Empire, it’s leading members executed, and it’s remaining members relegated to disgraced status…meaning they would be the last to be evacuated from the galaxy, and most likely wouldn’t survive to that point. The new Neofan leadership was overseeing the withdraw as well as the assault on their new galactic target, which had not yet been launched yet, but their forces were gathering to storm the Gateways and cut off Hadarak reinforcements there in order to claim a new galaxy for themselves to rebuild in…and they could do that as long as they held the Gateways. Failure to do so was the reason why House Ash’ne had not only been removed from power, but totally eradicated to their last member.

  Once the Gateway
s had been taken, the Hadarak incursion of the Deep Core had begun and was contained, but the only way to truly own a galaxy was to keep the Hadarak out entirely…and only the very large galaxies had the necessary Gateways for long distance travel. If the Neofan wanted to travel to a smaller one they had to go very, very slowly, and there was no way to move the key elements of their civilization that way. They had to use the existing infrastructure already established by their alliance and quickly seize one of the occupied galaxies while most of the Hadarak reinforcements were being diverted to their falling home.

  This was not the first member of the Bond of Resistance to fall in such a manner, but it was the first of the big 3 that were responsible for most of the construction of the Temples and their support infrastructure. Their foreplaning was going to provide the Neofan a chance to rebuild from scratch, which was horrific considering everything they were losing, but it meant they would not be defeated, only decimated.

  Knowing that the future was their only hope, House Mutavi recognized that the stability of the Temple network was critical to combating the Hadarak in the long term, and the addition of an Essence Siphon to the Star Force Empire that had been successfully assaulting the Temples in the Kikawa Galaxy was too much to ignore. This infestation had to be ended and Temple operations returned to normal, even if Kikawa was currently undergoing a Hadarak purge. The other founding members of the Bond had said it was inconsequential and that the purge would take care of the problem, but House Mutavi knew better, and since there were attacks taking place on the periphery of the Zotav that their commanders were continually updating with their success at thwarting, the addition of an Essence Siphon to Star Force could begin to tip the balance in those fights. If the Zotav were somehow infested as well, then all connection to Kikawa would be lost…so a little pruning now was prudent, despite the unlikelihood that a single Zotav would fall, let alone all of them.

  So the Nu’avi had been sent, and as soon as they realized their arrival point was under surveillance and their own machines had been infested as well, they began using their Pol’so’nep to generate the jamming fields before jumping the drones and physically restraining them as they tried to act on whatever programming had been added to them.

  The proper codes they were not responding to via transmission, and rather than destroy the rest they hacked into them using their living armor, which was a combination of a lifeform bred for the purpose and a host of cybernetic implants inserted into it on a microscopic level. The Nu’avi were physically linked to it via their nervous system, and rarely took them off…which was a more complicated procedure than simply taking off clothing.

  Once physical contact with the drones was made their control systems were accessed and analyzed, first rendering them inert using some of the overrides that were supposed to be here…while noticing that others had been removed. That meant Star Force had not only gained possession of the local control room, but they were producing slightly altered new versions of the Caretakers.

  That was unexpected in both ways, but the second was even more alarming. How could an Essence-limited civilization be capable of something like this? Caretaker coding and construction was designed to resist alteration, and even in the control rooms themselves there was no override to these safeguards. They had to have hacked the production facilities themselves…which required overriding other redundant systems.

  This infestation was far deeper than had been reported, but the Emperor’s Hands did not need to call for reinforcements. This was just going to take longer than expected.

  It took several hours to reconstruct the Caretakers they’d seized to original quality, though configured to ignore control room signals unless they contained a specific code that would identify whether or not the Nu’avi had retaken it. That was going to be their first objective, but in order to do so they had to find the one in this sector…for they were always moving through the magma layers underneath the surface.

  The Nu’avi needed surveillance, and right now they were totally blocked out of the natural interfaces which should have acknowledged their bioarmor on arrival. They did not, which meant they had been deactivated or rewritten. But Star Force was not the only one who could do rewrites.

  The handful of Caretaker drones that were now back in Temple service were sent out to track down other drones, disable them, and copy the new programming into them…thus replicating their numbers and allowing the surveillance network to grow outside the null zone while hopefully Star Force would not notice if their attention was on the blank spot and not the Caretakers seemingly going about their business, for the acquisitions and rewrites were not flagging as combat, but rather ‘maintenance’ without an update being transmitted upon completion.

  The orders being given by the control room were still being followed, so the large numbers coming to encircle the null zone were making it easy for the Nu’avi to add more to their clandestine control…or so they thought. Once they had obtained hundreds of various models, one was sent back through to inform them that saturation point had been reached, at which point they finally dropped the null field…only to realize that all the drones were lying on the ground in the hallways, physically trashed with scorch marks from cutting energy weapons.

  And nearby was a different kind of drone. One not made of Bond of Resistance technology, but rather one of Star Force crafting.

  A moment after making visual contact several of the Nu’avi were hit with stun weaponry from the drone a moment before it was disintegrated in a mushroom cloud of debris that shot out both ways down the corridor and into the chamber where the portals were located. The simple Essence attack had destroyed it, but the three Nu’avi that had been hit by the stun weaponry had not gone down. Not completely. The bioarmor had absorbed most of the incapacitating energy, leaving their own bodies mostly operable, but it had disrupted them momentarily, enough that another Nu’avi had to destroy the Star Force drone for them…

  “Stun weaponry ineffective,” the Viceroy in command of all Paladin forces in Gamma Tricumbda said via a conference holo call with the Arch Duke and over 200 other people, most notable amongst them being trailblazer Morgan-063. “Essence destruction of the security drone assumed. We have a foothold situation unfolding.”

  “I agree,” Morgan said, glancing to her left. “This is worse than you thought.”

  “Maybe not,” Kara said optimistically. “Depends how strong they are.”

  “There are 60 and perhaps more on the way, though the portals appear to be shut down at the moment,” the Viceroy noted. “Your orders, Archons?”

  Morgan chewed on her fingertip as she thought. “Control rooms are the high ground. Keep them in the magma and away from docking stations for the time being, but prep certain stations for evac if these guys have another way to get to them. I do not want the Paladin making a last stand against Essence-capable troops. Prepare to destroy the control rooms upon evac if necessary, but I want our troops out of them first. Understood?”

  “All of the control rooms or the local one only?”

  “Make plans for all. If they can use Essence travel inside the Temple, they can pop up anywhere. Right now tracking them is our second priority. If they come to the surface we can bring the fleet into play. If not, there’s not much we can do to stop them directly.”

  “What is their objective?” the Arch Duke asked.

  “Either they’re here in numbers to split up on multiple assignments, or they’re here to assault key assets with force. Can we redirect all incoming travelers from their vector to a specific portal of our choice?”

  “I am told yes.”

  “Do so, and make it somewhere else, and get heavy surveillance there.”

  “We need to disable the intra-Temple network,” Kara added. “Explosively.”

  “She’s right,” Morgan agreed. “We don’t need it. They do. Viceroy, send teams to blow them all up immediately.”

  “That will take time,” he cautioned, “but it will be
done with all haste.”

  “Send some Decepticons to the foothold position as well,” Morgan continued. “These guys might be tracking wireless signals. Let’s see how small their focus is otherwise. I also want these 60 ID’d and named. Start a track on guess or calculated power output. If some are stronger than others I want to know. And send a message to Jason giving him their arrival vector to investigate.”

  “Do we have confirmation it’s not outside the Temple?” Kara asked.

  “Confirmed negative,” the Arch Duke said. “No vessels nearby of any type other than our own. No Caretaker craft either aside from known entities and they have no Essence-capable technology in them to act as a relay.”

  “Fox in the hen house,” Kara said to Morgan, who was standing only a few feet away from her out in the forest, but to the holo-conference she had her own separate image that could have been transmitted from anywhere. “If they can get here they can get anywhere.”

  “I know. Jason will have to handle it. This is our problem to deal with.”

  “If they’re coming for me we can draw them to the surface. If not…”

  “They may want to fortify their position first. Binoy, keep talking to them. Annoy the hell out of them if they won’t speak. At least we can get them using some Essence for analysis of threat levels.”

  “Haunting as ordered.”

  “Eyes, people. The Temple is too big and too easy to lose them in. We have to see where they are and what they’re doing, or this is going to go from bad to worse in a heartbeat…”

  2

  May 23, 128888

  Happhetima Nebula (Zavrex Kingdom)

  Gamma Tricumbda Temple

  Five days had gone by, and in that time multiple attempts to get at the control rooms had been made. First was a recall order that had the mobile command centers moving themselves toward the docking ports before the Paladin inside figured out how to override them. Next there were Caretaker units built for magma travel going out to the nearest control room and attempting to latch on and drag it to one of the docking ports.