Star Force: Mak'to'ran (1) Read online

  1

  July 23, 3602

  Interstellar Space

  Era’tran Kafcha-class Dreadnaught

  Mak’to’ran strode down one of the long walkways inside the 47-mile long warship, his gait one of patience as he headed for the command deck. The V’kit’no’sat fleet commander couldn’t take his normal route due to battle damage that was unrepairable while they fled, so he had to walk a circuitous route to get through most of the vessel as his crew mildly continued what repairs they could, often having to cannibalize intact sections of the ship to provide the raw materials to fabricate essential components. Right now there was no threat to them, for they were mid-jump and the Human fleet had already passed them by, but within a few hours time Mak’to’ran would once again be bringing his broken fleet into another system with the enemy waiting for them.

  It had been happening in every system since they had fled Terraxis, the heart of the Human infestation where he’d been tasked with investigating the source of the illegal civilization and beginning their eradication. With treachery prompting his failure and subsequent retreat, the Humans had chased the remnant of his fleet across their territory and destroyed many more of Mak’to’ran’s ships, for he couldn’t travel at full speed. Rather he had to travel at the rate of the slowest damaged vessel, and that choice was haunting him. He had lost so many post-Terraxis that logistically it would have been wiser to leave the damaged ships behind, but after the carnage that had happened previously he was going to make the Humans pay for every additional V’kit’no’sat ship they killed…and he’d done precisely that.

  Every system they passed through they had to fight a battle, and he was costing the Human’s Star Force empire a lot of their remotely-controlled attack ships, but neither he nor any of his other 824 surviving warships could reach the enemy’s occupied vessels, nor could they disrupt their control signals. That meant while he was killing more Human ships he wasn’t killing any of them, which only further added to his ire.

  But you couldn’t tell it from his movements or his mind. Both were solid and unshakeable as the Tyrannosaurus Rex walked through a large archway to one of the few remaining transit hubs on the ship. A few others stepped aside to let Mak’to’ran enter the open pod alone out of respect, along with a contingent of Zen’zat scurrying away around his feet.

  It was deeply insulting to think that the small Zen’zat, whom these Humans were altered versions of, could have defeated a full V’kit’no’sat battle fleet, but the treachery did not lie with them alone. Though Mak’to’ran had lost most of his original 10,488 warships, they had come away with valuable information regarding the heresy centered in Terraxis, the most pertinent part being that one of the two founding races of the V’kit’no’sat were involved…and that fact still chilled him to the bone. Regardless of which it was, the fracture that would result from a civil war involving one of them would likely destroy the empire.

  That information, along with everything else he’d learned, had already been transmitted back into the V’kit’no’sat empire when they’d come within range of a Urrtren repeater system, meaning that even if he didn’t survive to make it back himself his duty had been acquitted, but Mak’to’ran did intend to survive. How many more ships he’d lose in these constant ambushes was what was in question.

  His Kafcha-class dreadnaught was the largest hull size in the surviving fleet, making it the hardest to destroy with the pathetically small ships the Humans used, but they always attacked in great numbers, operating like a swarm, and even his dreadnaught had sustained additional damage since leaving Terraxis…in addition to what it had taken during the battle there.

  But it wasn’t the slowest in the fleet. There were a pair of Dak’bri that were holding them up, barely operating on a fourth of the gravity drives they normally used to jump from system to system, making his entire fleet move so slowly between stars that the Star Force fleet had easily passed them by. They’d fired a few weapons as they did, but the approach speeds were so great there wasn’t a chance for a real battle out here. All ships were essentially coasting until they got within range of a gravity well to power their engines off of, but at least they still had a touch of maneuvering capability pulling off of distant stars to avoid any collisions.

  He had gotten a ship count though, and the Humans continued to increase their numbers with every leg of the journey. There would be another sizeable force waiting for them to brake against the upcoming star and chase them around stellar orbit to the outgoing jumpline, killing as many V’kit’no’sat as they could in the process, but with each jump they made it brought them closer and closer to aid, for which Mak’to’ran had called for along with his data dump. Being on the move as they were, it was impossible to receive any targeted reply without a fixed position to transmit to, so he had no way of knowing if or when help would get to them. Until then he was going to have to keep moving and preserve as many of his remaining ships as he could.

  The doors on the pod closed, leaving him the only occupant in the chamber as he telepathically accessed the controls and triggered the short journey through the intact transit tubes that ran the length of the tuning fork shaped ship. All Era’tran ships were constructed with a similar design, but while walking miles from one end to another was doable it was inefficient for the massive bipeds and even more so for the tiny Zen’zat, who had additional transit pods so small that Mak’to’ran and his kin couldn’t fit inside them. They were necessary, however, for the Zen’zat to serve them and conduct maintenance on remote parts of the ship…for there were some areas where Era’tran simply couldn’t fit and was beyond their telekinetic range.

  Zen’zat had long served all the races in the V’kit’no’sat empire, but they held a special place with the Era’tran who had been their primary advocate for inclusion, not as equals, but as a badly needed servant race. Their small size and atypical body structure had its uses, and over the millennia the Era’tran’s faith in the Zen’zat had proven correct, but now their potential had been taken to entirely new heights with these bastardized Humans that had been given access to psionics they had not earned…along with a level of knowledge that could only have come from one of the primary V’kit’no’sat races.

  What Mak’to’ran had discovered in Terraxis suggested that someone was plotting a rebellion and experimenting with upgrading the Zen’zat and growing Hadarak that would obey their will. The latter was the more unbelievable, but it was clear that this Human empire had been built outside the boundaries of V’kit’no’sat territory in order to give the traitors the freedom to conduct these experiments in secret. Their discovery had obviously come before they were ready to make their move, for the Human empire was still too weak to directly challenge the V’kit’no’sat, but they could still do damage…as was evidenced by the scraps of Mak’to’ran’s fleet, which was made up of dozens of difference V’kit’no’sat races, all of which had been put under his command for this mission.

  No one had said anything about his utter failure, but as he constantly thought through the events that had occurred only a few weeks ago there was little he could actually criticize himself for. These Humans did not fight like Zen’zat and had surprised all of them with their audacity and cleverness. It would do them no good in the long run, for already the V’kit’no’sat were adapting to them, but this Star Force was something new and he was beyond frustrated with his inability to adjust quickly enough.

  But the key point in their defeat was not something he could have anticipated. Either the Oso’lon or the J’gar had given the Humans codes to unlock the weaponry in the planetary defense station the V’kit’no’sat had left behind long ago, and with it Star Force had been able to lure them into a trap that should not
have existed. Both the Oso’lon and J’gar in his fleet had assured him the Humans could not unlock the weaponry on their own, and both races had lost ships in the fighting, the centerpiece of which was the J’gar Mach’nel. The mobile battle fortress was one of only a few produced by the V’kit’no’sat and its loss was nearly the equal of the rest of Mak’to’ran’s fleet.

  But the question kept burning in his mind as he exited the transit pod and continued to walk with quick, plodding steps towards the command deck…

  Did the Oso’lon arrange this, or did the J’gar deliberately sacrifice a Mach’nel in order to cover their own treason?

  He couldn’t answer that or a lot of other questions, but they wouldn’t leave his mind. The very might of the V’kit’no’sat was being challenged, and not from the exterior. This was the work of an insider, and it may very well have been multiple races conspiring together to overthrow the rest, but either the Oso’lon or the J’gar had to be involved.

  And if one of them was, the empire was about to come crashing down in one fashion or another, for they were by far the strongest and wisest of all the races and had in fact been the ones to found the V’kit’no’sat long ago to fight the Hadarak in the galactic core and keep them from spreading outward and consuming more star systems.

  The fact that these traitors had found a way to coopt Hadarak took their betrayal to unthinkable heights, for the V’kit’no’sat continually lost ships in that ongoing struggle for containment. If one of the races had discovered a means to control the Hadarak and had not shared it with the others…

  Such heresy left Mak’to’ran in a perpetually sour mood, but he didn’t take it out on his Era’tran and Zen’zat crew. When he arrived on the command deck he walked into the massive chamber quietly, finding the normal tranquility undisturbed by recent events. Nearly all Era’tran technology was mentally operated in some fashion, so there was little need to talk even during battle. Right now the ship was coasting towards its destination system along with the rest of the surviving fleet, with the sparse command deck staff picking up a few more members as the countdown to arrival neared.

  Those here now were attending to routine ship duties and repair efforts, able to see through computer linkages that fed information directly into their minds about what was happening elsewhere, or by using the myriad of holograms that lit the command deck as much as the surrounding lighting did. Mak’to’ran walked through the relatively wide open space until he came to a short, wide pedestal that he stepped up onto with one stride, then he positioned himself inside a silver circle and sat back on his tail as a whirl of new holograms sprung up around him.

  He could see anything and everything he needed, though at the moment the exterior view wasn’t important. The binary star system ahead was barely visible beyond the surrounding starfield, but the pair of stars they were headed to were gradually growing larger. Everything else was static, including the ships stationed around the Kafcha. All had been locked together in formation since they departed, using navigational adjustments as they left the previous system to align with one another and then using mooring beams to null out the last bits of errant momentum.

  Normally that was unnecessary, but Mak’to’ran wanted the fleet to come out of their jump as close as possible to one another, which was difficult with so much damage spread throughout the fleet. Each ship would decelerate only as fast as it could push against the star ahead, and with missing gravity drives some ships would have to scale back their power in order to stay in alignment with the others. If not, they’d arrive scattered and make easy targets for the waiting Star Force warships.

  No, Mak’to’ran had to keep them together and the most damaged ships at the center of the formation as they raced around the perimeter of the star to get to the exiting jumppoint. Once there they’d accelerate again and get back to the relative safety of interstellar space…but he knew not all of his ships would make it out, and he could only stay and fight so long to protect the ones that were disabled. With each system they passed through they lost more and more, but how many they lost was going to be partially dependent on his skill as a fleet commander and ever since leaving Terraxis he had been doing everything he could to diminish the number of subsequent losses.

  And like before, he went through every single ship checking status updates and ordering them to run simulations to confirm gravity drive and weapons availability, then he wove all the ships together like a giant puzzle with each strength covering another’s weakness as he crafted orders for ship movements as soon as they were back inside the glow of the stars ahead and had access to their intense gravity well…for right now all they could do was sip off a trickle from the stars ahead and even less from those closest on the periphery, but V’kit’no’sat technology was so advanced that even a trickle could be used if needed, but maneuvering miles upon miles of warship through space required greater gravity, and the stronger the gravity became the more power the gravity drives could produce.

  All V’kit’no’sat knew that from their youth, but what many did not understand was that the first few seconds after a jump were critical, for the enemy would not know exactly where you were until sensor pings were able to bounce back. Unfortunately they would know your approach trajectory from the stellar radiation reflection pushing ahead of his fleet like a wave as they tore through it at multiple times lightspeed, but the Humans would not know where the V’kit’no’sat jumppoint would be exactly, so they’d have to guess and be nearby, giving the Era’tran a few moments to work with that he wasn’t going to squander.

  But still, as a veteran commander he knew there was an opportunity to maneuver even before they stopped decelerating. One could change ship alignments during the deceleration, and he was going to rework his fleet positioning a bit based off updates to damage repair and what he guessed Star Force would have waiting for them. Their small ships didn’t travel between stars on their own, they were carried on larger ‘jumpships’ and then released inside a system, so he didn’t have a fixed count of the attack craft themselves, but there had been 3,829 jumpships that had passed them by and that would mean somewhere around 200,000 of their smaller ships to contend with.

  Not enough to kill all of his ships, but too many to be able to get his fleet through the system intact.

  Mak’to’ran spent hours planning the gauntlet run through the system, but when they were about 12 minutes away from making their deceleration jump things changed and the energy level on the command deck jumped. He could feel it telepathically as the minds around him, partially shielded from his view as his was from them, became both excited and eager as they received a signal from the system ahead indicating that V’kit’no’sat ships were already there and currently engaging the enemy.

  Along with the transmission was the request for assistance in a very specific fashion, with the commander tag of an I’rar’et he wasn’t familiar with, but he wasn’t going to assume command without even knowing what was going on in the system, so Mak’to’ran accepted the request as he should and began rapidly reorganizing his fleet in the few minutes available before deceleration…for there was no way to slow down prior to the braking jump and buy more time.

  Fortunately Era’tran possessed Sav, a psionic upgrade that not all V’kit’no’sat were gifted with. It allowed their minds to work faster and in more complex ways…something very useful for a fleet commander, but the rest of his Era’tran crew also possessed it and it allowed them to carry out his orders lightning fast. The Zen’zat did not have it, but they weren’t handling the most vital of tasks anyway, merely assisting the Era’tran where needed and they had learned long ago how to interface between the two without losing efficiency. The smaller minds were useful when the faster Era’tran ones got familiar with using them, and only a sloppy Era’tran would try and telepathically communicate to Zen’zat at a speed they couldn’t handle.

  And such sloppy Era’tran didn’t make it into his race’s galaxy-spanning fleet, though he couldn’t say t
he same for the other races, some with less than reputable records regarding such things. Zen’zat were a valuable tool, but one had to know how to use them properly, and fortunately he did, for there were far more of the tiny Zen’zat on his Kafcha than Era’tran, and both worked together flawlessly as they brought the giant ship into the system at the exact spot the field commander has requested while the slower ships continued to decelerate and head in near to the star along a clear path that got them past the ambushers…which were now locked in a heavy battle that Mak’to’ran thought favored the Humans.

  A battle that was now within firing range of some of his weaponry.

  “Stand your ground,” he said aloud to the command deck as well as transmitting his words to the rest of his ships. “And remind them who the galaxy belongs to.”

  2

  The mostly intact ships in Mak’to’ran’s fleet braked hard and came out along with his flagship then diverted towards the nearby engagement that saw the Star Force ships immediately begin to reposition. Most of them disengaged and headed further in towards the star intent on hitting the badly damaged ships now that the Humans realized they were outmatched, but they didn’t all go. Some stayed with curious targets, hammering certain ships that appeared to be of no consequence.

  Mak’to’ran saw through the guise quickly, but not soon enough to redirect his ships to intercept the fleeing Star Force control ships that suddenly found themselves a bit too close for comfort. Had he known their position prior to entry he might have been able to get a few shots off at them with some skilled navigational redirection during braking, but obviously the I’rar’et commander here wasn’t the Era’tran’s equal. He simply wanted to destroy the attack ships that were slowly overwhelming his relief force, and that was honorable enough. After all, they were here to assist his fleeing fleet and the Star Force jumpships were not going to be engaging in the battle itself.