Reignor Read online

  1

  Date Unknown

  System Unknown

  Hadarak-occupied planet

  When the Hadarak took over a world, they killed everything they came across in the way of animal life. Sometimes smaller rodents would escape the purge if the Hadarak did not have their tinier forms in production that could actually catch and kill them, but in general, once a planet was fully ‘consumed’ there would be no lifeforms on it except Hadarak.

  The plants were irrelevant, but were slowly taken for resources as needed. The entire biome would be replaced with a Hadarak one, for the Hadarak had to eat as well. They had to breathe, travel, build, and reproduce. They could be sent to a barren, rocky planet with decent atmosphere and begin digesting the rock and sand, from which they would grow biological structures that would produce other molecules that were necessary. Those would then build different structures, and so on and so on.

  Some Hadarak growths were capable of alchemy, which was the loose Star Force term for changing one atom into another by rearranging the subatomic particles. Nature accomplished this on its own through a variety of means, foremost of which were gravity wells. Under intense pressure subatomic particles would realign into less ‘inflated’ states. The Neofan referred to this process as Do’sho’bu, translated as ‘the shifting.’ Each time there was a shift the new atom became more dense than the last one, such as two hydrogens combining into one helium. When this happened the volume decreased greatly, because you now had one nucleus instead of two, and the halo of electrons and photons around them were now reduced as well into one slightly larger version.

  But two smalls reduced into one slightly bigger version meant not all the photons could stay inside, thus they were squeezed out…and that photon squeeze was what gave stars their ‘burn’ and planets their internal heat generation. Over the eons the atoms inside would get more and more dense until they hit a point where they could lose no more. At that point the stars would grow cold, for no more heat could be squeezed out of them, and the same was true of planets…but the journey to get to that point would see many element changes along the way, with the new material being circulated up to the surface through volcanic activity of various types.

  Thus the surface of a planet, or the upper regions of a star, would see a wide array of atoms that had not existed there before while the excess photons were shot off across space, filling the vacuum of the deep with their spread out heat.

  When this happened, the lifesprings would sometimes replace the dead stars with new ones, but such occurrences were rare. More likely the void dwells would venture into a galaxy to consume the ‘dead’ material. What use they had for it was unknown, but the Pafdreng were known to also consume them during their purges of lifeforms.

  But gravitational crunching was not the only form of alchemy. Some plants and bacteria also accomplished this on a very small level, using the photons thrown off by stars to do the reverse and split denser atoms apart, or shift one neutron into a proton, or the reverse, creating elements essential for many plants to use that were not already present in the bedrock. When these plants died, they left behind their few alchemy results that other plants would then absorb through their roots, thus very slowly creating a biome in the form of dirt that contained far more compounds than the bedrock below could account for.

  Old planets had thick dirt layers. Young ones had thin or non-existent ones. Airless worlds had nothing other than sand worn away from the bedrock by abrasion. The planet Plausious was on had plant life on it long ago, but half of it had already been consumed by the Hadarak, sucking out the various compounds the bedrock didn’t offer rather than using their biotechnology to create it if enough soil and vegetation was close by.

  Fortunately for him there was a section of the planet they had barely touched, focusing instead on consuming and reshaping other parts first. At the moment he sat on the branch of the very large trees in one of the few remaining forests deep into the heart of a massive desert that the Hadarak seemed to not want to venture into. The forest was fed by subsurface springs that seeped water up from below…water that was a byproduct of the planet squeezing atoms into other atoms, with the extra subatomic particles being released to recombine with others where able, and all under immense pressure that brought them up to the surface whenever a crack formed to relieve that stress.

  Plausious had not found this forest early on. In fact, he had been placed on the other side of the planet in the heart of the Hadarak, per his request, in order to combat them. Then the Reignor had been betrayed and abandoned on this world, his only means of escape destroyed by the warship that had brought him here as his people simply left him behind in enemy territory.

  He had assumed he would die, and with that knowledge he had found the courage to fight on longer and harder than he knew he was capable of, desiring the challenge of the carnage instead of succumbing to despair and letting his enemies kill him without making them earn the kill.

  And somewhere along the way something in him changed. He didn’t know when, or where, but it had been early. The long days blurred into an uncountable, never-ending stream. He had no way to tell time here, for the technological garments he had arrived with had all succumbed to the damage of combat and were eventually discarded. Plausious now roamed the planet in the nude, which he found was oddly acceptable. His reproductive organs were internal, hidden behind a bone flap that stayed shut until needed, unlike many races that had them hanging on the outside of their bodies in a vulnerable position.

  As for warmth, it wasn’t an issue in the middle of a desert, though it had been during the winters he had spent elsewhere. Plausious had to use every Essence trick he’d learned…as well as creating a few new ones out of desperation…to produce heat inside him, as well as to craft crude clothing out of rock, sand, dirt, bone, or anything else he could find. None had worked well, but they had kept his body from freezing through the worst times. Though every time he was forced into combat with the Hadarak the clothing would not last the opening engagement.

  Food was scarce in the early going, with him having to eat corpses to keep himself alive. Fortunately his digestive systems were capable of filtering out all…or most…of the bad molecules in the corpses. Molecules that were not meant to be food, but without Neofan technology to assist him, he couldn’t pull out the various toxins and trash that any biological body accumulated, and he was forced to eat everything at once in order to stay alive.

  Fortunately, on this desolate world, there were many Hadarak, and all were trying to kill him…so his supply of corpses never ran low. He never had to kill one in order to eat, merely eating the corpses that were a byproduct of combat. That would not have meant anything to him in his past life, but the distinction was crystal clear now. Eating of the corpses was disgusting, but not darkside. However, if one did so willingly it was a slippery slope, for a corpse was a person’s private Temple. Their Core resided in it up until their death, and that vessel should be accorded the respect of what it was. It was not food, nor meant to be. And when a Core was within it, the body was the person, which made eating someone alive one of the worst offenses possible.

  Thankfully his bloodline had never indulged in such things, but other Neofan had. Eating smaller creatures whole, at least the ones that would fit inside their mouths. He had seen it as a personal choice of distaste back then. Now he saw it for the horror that it actually was.

  Plausious adjusted his position on the branch with his feet partially curling around it to maintain a grip on the mist-slicken bark. Pain was an indication that something was wrong, and the excruciating pain of being eaten alive attested to the wrongness of it, even if you could not understand it. Seeing and feeling that pain in others should have been a signal not to do it, but the Neofan had grown
apathetic in a sickeningly subtle way and allowed such things. Those that disagreed did nothing to stop those that indulged in such barbarity, citing it as a difference of opinion.

  How could he have ever been so blind?

  The short span of time he’d spent with Director Davis was what now sustained him. He remembered nearly every word that had been spoken to him, and in his isolation he had learned a depth to the meaning of that instruction that he had not foreseen at the time. Davis had asked him to remember what was said, and thankfully he had done so. Now those memories were his guide as he delved deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the lightside, and he knew now why Star Force would fight wars to stop strangers from eating other strangers. It was a crime against the universe when it happened, and it begged to be stopped. Those who could sit by and do nothing amicably were deaf to the injustice of it. Or worse.

  Davis had told Plausious that his own vision was limited, and he could not understand why people would knowingly do evil. Mistakenly do so he could comprehend, but not knowingly, and now the Reignor shared his dilemma, for it was so obvious to him. The universe had a structure, unspoken rules that some called a ‘code of honor,’ and the basic instincts of all were calibrated to it. That was why you cringed when you saw another person get injured. Why you were irritated when someone cheated, or lied to harm another. Harm was at the center of it, but Plausious understood it to be more a violation of the necessary order. Things were meant to be one way, and when they were not, that wrongness screamed for correction.

  He could not hear it before, but now he could, which seemed oddly ironic. Here, where he had to kill Hadarak on a regular basis to stay alive one day to the next, he was more in tune with their lives than he had ever cared about before. He saw the Hadarak as victims, enslaved into a war machine not of their own making. That didn’t change the threat they posed, or the fact that he had to kill them, but he now saw that killing was not the way things were supposed to be. It was a wrongness…or the means to eliminate the wrongness. Killing was never right, or natural, or preferential, or pleasurable. It was a violation of the natural code of the universe.

  And for some reason, the lifesprings also created an anti-code in the instincts of those it spawned that conflicted with this code, almost as if it was giving each individual a choice…except it wasn’t, because this anti-code called on some to eat others alive before those others even had a chance to choose for themselves. It was anarchy incarnate, but beneath that anarchy was the natural code. He understood it now, for it was the lightside that Star Force spoke of, but that term didn’t register with him. Natural code did, so that was how he saw it now, and his primary mission was to pursue it further even as the planet around him tried to maneuver him into positions where he must abandon it. Positions where following the anti-code would be easier, preferential, or even necessary.

  But Plausious resisted, and had sought out alternative means of nourishment to further separate himself from the anti-code and show the proper respect to the fallen temples of the Hadarak he killed. In the beginning that had been pirating the Hadarak’s own food supply, disgusting as it was.

  There were many forms of it, but the two most basic ones were a soup-like gel that was drank more than chewed. The first time Plausious had discovered it he could not stand the smell, but his hunger convinced him to sample it, in very small amounts, and his biological analysis confirmed it held almost all of the nutrients he needed, for all Neofan had the lining of their mouths covered with the microsensors that told them more about the content of their food than other races’ ‘taste’ ever could.

  But the Reignor knew that those few missing compounds would kill him over time if he didn’t find a supply for them. The highly resilient cells in his body would eventually break down, and without the necessary repair parts they couldn’t heal themselves or grow new ones. Plausious had picked up the habit of licking rocks he found to search for the missing compounds, and when he found a small stone that contained at least one, he could carry it around in his mouth all day, sucking on it and letting the various acids he was able to produce leech it out of the rock.

  He had never known why his body was so capable of searching for, analyzing, and extracting food from inefficient sources. All Neofan were structured this way, and it had grown the more they upgraded. Now he knew why it was such a powerful set of abilities. And without it he would have died of attrition long, long ago.

  He had lived millions of years before his marooning here, but that life seemed distant now, for he had never truly lived until he came here, and the moment he had learned the truth of his betrayal was the moment he had finished being born, for he had been fully awake since that time, and the experienced he had gained since then had seen more personal growth than all his millions of years previously.

  Plausious was changed, and for the better, even as his body showed weathering, but his frame was strong. Stronger than ever before. And his Core inside was developed in ways he had not known possible. He wished he could scan himself and see the variations from the outside, but such technology was far beyond him now. If there had even been primitive technology on this planet before the Hadarak had arrived, he had seen none of it. All he had to work with here was the natural, and what he could make of it himself, which was minimal, for his Gorvaj did not contain any such abilities…and those few useful ones he had assimilated from various forms of Hadarak did not afford him even the simple composition of plastics, let alone anything stronger.

  But he had learned how to grow things. Hadarak biotechnology that did not contain a Core, and he used it to hold food stolen from the Hadarak. He had several large canisters in this forest containing the ‘soup’ he had taken from them, and without the proper containment it would spoil quickly. The moss-like vessels he had created maintained it well, and he had stolen enough for several years if need be, though he knew better than to hold it all in the same spot, for the Hadarak kept sending hunters after him no matter where he went on the planet. If they couldn’t kill him, they at least wanted to make sure they knew where he was and harass him constantly.

  Right now he was listening and sensing for the next to arrive, feeling they were a bit overdue. He did not know if they would come from the land or air, but they always came, even if they didn’t know where he was. They would sent out search groups in the thousands to find him, or trace of him, and Plausious had to learn how to conceal his tracks as well as his genetic traces.

  That was one trick he’d absorbed from a dead Hadarak hunter. The best version he had taken had come from one of the land travelers. In addition to its sense of smell, it had pads on its feet that would sample everything it stepped on, to the point that if it stepped in a spot the Reignor had stepped days before it could sense the limited genetic material left behind by his feet, or his sweat. But when Plausious had absorbed the ability from it, he had been able to use another ability in conjunction with it to produce bacteria designed specifically to find his genetic material and destroy it.

  He’d gotten a lot of flakey skin and some sores on his feet before he’d figured out how to keep the bacteria in check before he needed to release them, but the Neofan had figured it out, and now every step he took deposited some of the bacteria in to the dirt, and over time they’d destroy the slight traces he left behind…but still the hunters would find him, though he had been trying to avoid them as much as possible.

  The one piece of his former garments that was still intact was his personal well, now little more than an ankle band around his right foot. He’d had to lock it in that position, or the nanotechnology would have deteriorated to the point that he would have lost it. Now it couldn’t transform, but it still held his excess Essence, and little by little he had been charging it when he had some to spare…and that was rare, for fighting the Hadarak in numbers without using Essence was nearly impossible.

  The Reignor walked out on his branch a few steps, then jumped across to another one, landing heavily, but doing so with such
grace that he barely made any noise as the branch bowed slightly as the tinsel-like leaves draping down beneath it shivered…but they were all shivering in the heavy breeze, so visually he was not going to give himself away.

  That breeze was carrying the dry air from the desert in to the forest, along with the faint scent of Hadarak air minions. His Gorvaj could sense it whenever they brushed across it, and he knew they were in the area, but he couldn’t sense their minds or their Cores just yet.

  But soon, he’d have to fight again. How many times he had done this he could not count, and he’d stopped trying to keep track of his past. His life was in the present, and one massive failure would end his life, so journaling what had come before was pointless. He had to live in the moment with his full focus here and now, else he might not make it to see tomorrow.

  2

  Plausious moved from tree to tree, knowing better than to stay in one place, especially near one of his supply caches. He’d lost many in the past as his hunters moved into the area in search of him and accidentally stumbled across his stores…which they would mark and then other minions would claim after he was driven away. He’d fought for some, but the longer he stayed in one place the more reinforcements would arrive…and after all this time fighting him, the Hadarak had slowly been getting better at it.

  They rarely came at him with ground armies now, instead relying on aerial carriers to bring the troops to him when they needed numbers…but they didn’t come too close. They’d set down out of his telekinetic grasp range, then follow the directions of the hunters to his location. The hunters on their own had little chance against him, but every time he used Essence to kill one, something else would sense it.

  He didn’t know how that was possible, and had assumed it was telepathy that sounded the alarm…except he could now read the Hadarak telepathy enough to get some meaning out of it, and on several occasions he had killed hunters before they had a chance to transmit. A few of those times he was swarmed anyway, and he had slowly ruled out the possibilities until he was left with his Essence use.