Star Force: Resolution (SF89) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  1

  June 30, 3272

  Adriart System (Uriti Preserve)

  Stellar Orbit

  Nefron stood at a workstation inside the Zeus, which had become his mobile home ever since the Uriti Preserve had been established. Right now it was in system number 7 of an 11 point circuit that they were slowly parading their two Uriti around in. This system, like the others, had an established navigational course that they would run both the Uriti through in turn, as well as several construction sites on the major planet to facilitate mining operations across the Preserve.

  In addition to that, there were three mobile observation stations here. None had interstellar jump capability like the sedas did, but these were fast enough to move around the system and keep out of the way of the Uriti while they housed the workers, researchers, and every other person assigned to this system to keep them out of danger should either Uriti take unpredictable action.

  But to date that had never occurred. Both of them went where they were told and were getting along with each other like siblings. The command language that Nefron was using was also getting more advanced as he pressed and instructed them to do more and more delicate tasks. He wasn’t teaching them anything new, rather utilizing greater depth that the Chixzon had never bothered with in the field but had been meticulous to construct while growing the Uriti in order to obtain maximum control.

  They’d never needed it when all they did was point the Uriti at a system and say ‘destroy,’ so what Nefron was doing now was really a continuation of their research rather than something new of his own. That said, this wasn’t the only project he was working on, and while direct communication between him, the Archons, or anyone else and the Uriti was still hitting a stone wall, he was getting much closer on yet another project.

  The reason he could control the Uriti was because he was Chixzon and he had the specially built transmitter. The transmitter had been duplicated many times over and existed in 14 different starships within the Preserve that functioned as backups should the Zeus ever see a catastrophic malfunction, but as talks with the Knights of Quenar and The Nexus continued to bear fruit it was obvious that they were going to need to be able to control the Uriti in more than one system at the same time. Even if he wanted to keep all of them in one system, going out on retrieval missions would mean that Nefron wouldn’t be here to oversee these two, hence he needed a way to give the Archons the ability to issue orders as if they were coming from him.

  Doing that meant making the transmitter and the Uriti think they were Chixzon as far as telepathy went, and it wasn’t about power or skill, for the Archons had far more of that than him. What was needed was a telepathic fingerprint that matched his own, or at least the narrow band that identified him as Chixzon, and right now he was troubleshooting the final problems in his design on a simulation program while the ship’s crew left him alone.

  That was typical, for aside from Riley and a handful of others nobody ever saw him in person. His quarters and work facilities on the ship were located in a very specific region, meaning the only time he got out from there was to do workouts or eat. He didn’t avoid the crew then, but they didn’t stop him to ask questions or force interaction. A few nods of respect and they’d pass him by, leaving him to his work that never seemed to end.

  He’d had a long talk with Davis before the Director had left to go back to Earth and both of them knew how important, and potentially disastrous, this Preserve project could become. Already there were more races in the Alamo System from unaligned and otherwise unknown civilizations than there were in Star Force, and more were coming in by the year. All had various agendas to push or play, but between the Star Force fleet, the Voku, and the enigmatic power of the KoQ, order had been kept and progress was being made on many fronts, but Nefron knew how fragile everything was even if it didn’t appear that way to outsiders.

  Something Riley had told him long ago had stuck in his head. It was a quote from Star Wars, a little obsolete reference that the Archon had thought pertinent.

  Fear attracts the fearful.

  That was illogical, but over time as Nefron observed the races and representatives coming into the Preserve from his fortress of solitude onboard the Zeus he began to see the nugget of truth in that stupid statement. Fear is something that drove one off, but here these races were, coming up to look at the very beasts they dreaded. It was as if the fear was attracting them here like a narcotic. They wanted to be close to the danger without getting bit by it, which was reckless on its face, but the fact was races from across the local quarter of the galaxy’s outer rim were showing up for little more than to see the Uriti and the empire that had them under its control.

  Others wanted more than that, but some appeared just to want to feel the fear and bask in it, almost daring fate to smite them down the closer they got.

  And the fleet was having its hands full keeping ships to honor the perimeter range. There was always someone wanting to go closer, but at least in this system they didn’t have to worry about that very much. Almost everyone was back in Alamo while a handful of Star Force jumpships were here carrying spectators, and he knew those ships wouldn’t be violating the boundary lines. There was, however, an occasional ship that pressed further into the Preserve than Alamo, but the KoQ usually got to them before Star Force did, and they’d intercepted one Cabrari ship just a week ago.

  Right now it was sitting in a higher orbit around the star with a contingent of Star Force troops onboard it as an assessment was being made of what to do with the crew. If there had been some misunderstanding they might be allowed to keep their ship. If not it would be added to the collection of trophies from various races stupid enough to violate the Preserve boundaries that were floating in a very public display orbit in Alamo to remind everyone that Star Force was taking the security of the Preserve seriously.

  A lot of races had begun to respect that, as well as the fact that this place was becoming a great deal more important than they’d thought. It wasn’t just about the Uriti anymore, though that aspect was never going to diminish. There was constant wrangling and complaints about control and potential abuse of power by Star Force, but some of the other races were requesting permission to set up colonies nearby to take advantage of the crossroads that the Preserve had become. Previously it had been an undeveloped region, even when the lizards controlled it, but now there were several black hole ‘highways’ that were developing traffic spurs to this location and creating a slow link between several regions that had not seen connectivity before.

  But beyond that, the location was making the connections important, and as a few savvy empires began to ingratiate themselves with Star Force and secure planets around the perimeter of the Preserve the rest of them took notice and a rush of interest and negotiations was forming that attracted even more races from afar…and all of whom were very interested to meet him.

  But Star Force wasn’t allowing that, thankfully keeping Nefron out of the whole diplomatic mess while allowing him to observe it from afar. No one could get close to the command ship aside from other Star Force vessels. Even the KoQ and the Voku kept a respectful distance, but so long as he was the only one that was able to control the Uriti this ship was going to be the weak link in the entire operation, meaning that he had to find a way to give the Archons the redundant ability to issue the Uriti orders.

  And he was close to it now, so close that he’d called Riley in to help him test the equipment that he hadn’t yet told him he’d been developing. When the Archon arrived, the Chixzon waved him over to an auxiliary control station with a flick of his armored hand
.

  “Did we get a message back?” Riley asked, referring to their endless attempts to communicate with the Uriti outside the defined channels.

  “No. I just need a mind other than my own right now. Link to the console please.”

  Riley did as asked, making telepathic connection with the machine via his bare hand on the panel before him and waited for whatever Nefron was going to do.

  “This is the Chixzon navigational program used to direct the Uriti. Nose around it a bit and tell me what you think. It’s hooked into a simulator so you’ve got a fake Uriti to experiment with.”

  “Recreated or copied?” Riley said as he mentally started to fiddle around with the alien interface.

  “Mostly copied, but I reworked some of the commands into English so you’d be able to adapt to them quicker. I can rework the whole thing later, but right now I just need to know if you’re compatible. I’m scanning you as you work, so just keep busy for a while.”

  “Fiddling as ordered,” Riley said as he began utilizing the simulator for some basic obstacle course runs that had a fake Nami pulling loops around a planet and its four moons.

  As he worked Nefron made adjustments, fine tuning what he thought was needed to sync up the Archon’s brain to the Chixzon designs, but Riley grew bored before he had finished.

  “What’s going on, buddy?”

  “I’m close. Give me another 20 minutes.”

  “Why the secrecy?”

  “I don’t want to tell you about it unless it works.”

  “Prefer to fail in private?”

  “You could say that,” Nefron half agreed. “I don’t have to explain the why and how, I can just keep working the problem in silence.”

  “I’ll humor you then, but this thing is pretty primitive.”

  “The Uriti can’t be remote controlled, only ordered.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve seen you tell them to do stuff that’s more complicated than the options I have here.”

  “Sorry about that. I didn’t copy everything. I just needed a basic control package to work with. If this works, I’ll give you the…”

  “What?” Riley asked, sensing his friend’s mind freeze in surprise.

  “I just shunted your mental moniker over to the Uriti so I could get a calibration reading. I expected it to fail, but they both just accepted it.”

  “Meaning what exactly?”

  “Statistics,” Nefron said, shutting down the simulator and bringing other programming online at Riley’s station. “Try and draw status feeds from them.”

  “How?”

  Nefron’s mind suddenly entered the Archon’s in the form of the computer linkage that allowed him to bypass the Ikrid blocks. With his help Riley was able to navigate mental program controls he had never seen before, catching on quickly as the Chixzon guided but did not do any of the tasks himself. Within a few minutes Riley felt the raw feeds coming in from the Uriti as they were shunted to the display on his control panel.

  “Hello, fellas,” the trailblazer said, recognizing their massive yet obtuse intellects emanating out from the star they were currently bathing in. A prompt from Nefron and Riley tried to connect to them directly with a simple order.

  Suddenly their minds opened to him for brief moment, both of them acknowledging the order and beginning to climb out of the star to a point in low orbit. Both Riley and Nefron watched as they came out, neither asking questions, then when both Uriti stopped exactly where Riley had told them to Nefron let out a long sigh as he sank back onto a nearby stool.

  “Finally.”

  “What the hell did you just do? Find a way for me to piggyback onto your signal?”

  “No. I found a way to give you your own. I didn’t think it would work yet, I just wanted the data from the attempt. It seems I was closer to the solution than I thought.”

  “Enlighten me,” Riley said, eager to hear what he’d come up with.

  “I was going to try and create a bit of Chixzon brain tissue for you guys to give to whomever you trusted enough to give orders to the Uriti, but I eventually nixed that when I realized you wouldn’t want any more tissue crammed into your already thick heads. Especially some that wasn’t your own.”

  “Good call there. Would that have worked?”

  “If I could engineer it to be a modifier for the rest of your brain activity, yes, I think so. What I’ve done here is to create a mechanical version of the same thing. This machine is calibrated to you and you alone. It’s crude, but apparently functional. Right now it’s the size of a dropship underneath the floor, but over time I think I can reduce that greatly by further tightening the requirements down to a single individual. Basically, I’m hoping that I can create a palm-sized control device that will make the transmitter and the Uriti think that your telepathy is coming from a Chixzon, and one who has all the proper identification codes.”

  “Wait. Not all Chixzon can order the Uriti?”

  “All the new ones can, but the originals couldn’t. There was a very selective group given that power.”

  “Secret passwords?”

  “Metaphorically speaking, yes. And I’ve created this adaptor to include them.”

  “And it’s tuned for me?”

  “You’re the only person I’ve spent enough time with to have an idea of how your mind works. I was making a lot of educated guesses based on our prior contact. I didn’t expect to get the balance right so soon, otherwise I would have let you know what was going on. I expected this to take months, if not years from this point. I may have just gotten lucky, in which case I’ll have to analyze what I’ve done and figure out what works and why, but for the moment you have at least a limited ability to control the Uriti through the current equipment and settings.”

  “Meaning you can transfer to another ship with a transmitter and we can go two places at the same time.”

  “Exactly.”

  “How long before we can test that?”

  “Not long, assuming this wasn’t a fluke. It’s the refining that’s going to take time.”

  “Down to something handheld?” Riley reiterated.

  “Or a forearm gauntlet, if you’d prefer. It’s going to be a bit heavy at best, but you should be able to wear it.”

  “Archons only?”

  “Strong telepathy is required.”

  “Protovic?”

  Nefron considered. “I don’t want to start there, but that’s a possibility.”

  “Ok, so let me get this straight, just for the record,” Riley said with a blossoming smile. “You just figured out how to create a remote control for the Uriti?”

  “As I said before, you cannot remote control it, you can only give it orders.”

  “Semantics. This device allows me to order it the same way you do?”

  “In theory, yes. All we have is a single test for confirmation.”

  Riley jumped into the air doing a twirl with a triumphant fist raised. “Now that’s what I’m talking about!”

  “It should end Star Force’s reliance on this ship…and me.”

  “Tired of being stuck here?”

  “Tired of not being able to leave. A lot of my work is going to be here regardless.”

  “I hear that. We both need to be here right now, but once this place develops I really don’t want to have to be stuck here endlessly. Got asses to kick elsewhere.”

  “I actually prefer that sentiment to others I was considering.”

  “So right now it’s you and me in the controller club?”

  “You’re barely in it, but yes. It will take me a long time to refine this for you and even longer to do it for another person. I suggest we keep this quiet for now, else someone might realize they’re on the clock to eliminate this ship and me before we create the redundancy.”

  Riley cringed. “Good point. Guess we better hold off on that split test then.”

  “No, we can still accommodate it with some guile. I’ll have to be transferred to another control ship while you
take this one out of the system with one of the Uriti. They will think the other is staying here under orders, but I’ll be here to monitor it as a backup.”

  “After you teach me how to drive with you looking over my shoulder first?”

  Nefron’s eyes flashed green ever so briefly. “Orders. Not control.”

  “It’s more than point and click,” the Archon argued. “I felt that moment of synergy.”

  “It’s simply another means of communication. They choose to follow the orders. You do not actively control them.”

  “Noted. Will you help me run Bahamut through the course?”

  “Let’s start with something more simple while I analyze the interface. Link back in and I’ll set you up.”

  “Simple how?” Riley asked, touching the panel again and getting the equipment added to his mind like another room suddenly popping into existence within a house.

  “Star to planet and back again.”

  “Alright, we’ll keep it simple,” he moaned sarcastically. “Is this set up to make me look Chixzon or look like you?”

  “I used my profile to speed up the process, but it may be more advantageous to rework the interface from various personas tailored to be compatible with the person in question.”

  “Meaning my mind is more similar to some Chixzon than others?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you have others on file or would you have to synthesize them.”

  “Synthesis,” Nefron said regretfully, knowing how much additional time that would take.

  “Long project ahead?”

  “Very, but a lot shorter now than I expected. I don’t know if what I did was smart or just accidentally lucky, but it worked the first time. Let’s see if our luck holds and it works again.”

  “Teach me, Master Nefron. I is ready.”

  “I do all the hard work and you get to have the fun?”

  “Ha. Don’t even get me started on that. I know I’m going to be bored out of my skull letting you calibrate this thing to me.”

  Nefron smiled, a slight cracking of his rock-like lips. “True enough,” he said, linking into his console and finding Riley’s mental signature inside the programming link. “Let’s begin with the basics, my young apprentice.”