Star Force: Dominance (Star Force Universe Book 50) Read online

  Prologue

  More than 120,000 years have passed and Star Force has grown to become the dominant force within the galaxy, even more powerful than the V’kit’no’sat, though to outsiders they are two parts of the same empire.

  It took 67 years to defeat the lizards, though they were never completely eliminated. Always some ships would escape to set up shop elsewhere, and wherever they were found they had to be eradicated. They were a plague on the galaxy that would not completely go away, and to this day there are still a few out there surviving in the vastness of the galaxy trying to rebuild away from the eyes of the empire.

  Star Force territory now stretches all around the galaxy, based off the completed Hula Hoop grid point network, with spurs running out towards the far rim that are continuing to be expanded upon. But even then, there are still vast tracks of unexplored space in the rim and much that Star Force has no control over, for even within its domain there are a multitude of systems and races that it does not control.

  The Voku are one of those races, totally surrounded by Star Force territory now like many other civilizations, yet they have grown to be one of the stronger races with the Zak’de’ron quietly guiding them. The other wards that the Voku were charged with protecting have also grown, though not as far, but beyond those Star Force does not know how many other races the Zak’de’ron have in their thrall.

  The return of the Zak’de’ron never occurred. Mak’to’ran’s coreward empire has recovered and grown, even without the rogue Oso’lon and J’gar civilizations that have completely forsaken that empire. They have been replaced by Oso’lon and J’gar factions within, grown from the few planets that remained loyal, but they are not dominant within the empire, for the Era’tran now reign supreme as the leading race within the V’kit’no’sat.

  Under their guidance they have expanded, now occupying more than three times the number of worlds previously possessed, and have pushed the Hadarak border close to the deep core. The escalation of that war continued for some time until a courier escaped destruction and reported back to the Hadarak of the existence of the Harthur…at which point the Hadarak seemed not to care and diminished their patrols while augmenting them with pairings.

  Whatever threat the Hadarak thought there had been quietly killing them had been disproven, so they’d gone back to their normal habits save for the pairing, which meant Mak’to’ran also had to go back to the normal warfare tactics, for Harthur were not applicable against two Hadarak simultaneously. The Hadarak had learned, so even when Mak’to’ran bought two Harthur to bear in the same system, it was almost impossible to pin both of them…and the one that was free would not run without the other, meaning it would come and destroy the Harthur pinning its companion, freeing it and forcing the blood-soaked conventional warfare the V’kit’no’sat had fought for millions of years to continue.

  It was that constant attrition that kept the V’kit’no’sat from outgrowing Star Force, despite the fact that the rimward faction was engaged in nearly constant warfare itself…though against lesser opponents. The few major wars in the past were over, and no one now dared to challenge Star Force with their thousands of Uriti. All save 3 of the originals had been discovered and returned, meaning either two were still undiscovered or had been claimed by the Zak’de’ron along with Bulmuthal.

  When Star Force had confronted the dragons about the theft of it from the Knights of Quenar, they basically had shrugged and said ‘finders keepers,’ which made many believe they also had the other two, but no one knows for certain. It was almost a moot point now, for while much smaller, Star Force now was able to produce more Uriti of its own, each a copy of the originals with some minor adjustments.

  Gone was the Chixzon self-destruct programming from the new Uriti, though the originals could not be altered. Their genetics were protected against such alteration, and only when initially developing could one craft their genome. That mean the now much larger originals were at risk, but their offspring were not, though they still retained the necessary overrides to insure they didn’t accidentally destroy a planet or fleet if they had a temper tantrum, yet the new overrides were not ones the Chixzon could access, for the coding had been altered to prevent such interference.

  But while the Zak’de’ron were nowhere to be seen, the Chixzon were everywhere. Never out in the open, but since the destruction of the lizards Star Force had been fighting a cold war against them with numerous battles against other enhanced races doing the Chixzon’s bidding. And it wasn’t just outright war, but backroom deals, negotiations, trade disputes, genetic and biological plagues…the Chixzon were working against Star Force at every turn, and the V’kit’no’sat as well, for Mak’to’ran had informed Davis of the many attempts to drive a wedge between the races and start another civil war, but the bonds Mak’to’ran had forged were holding solid and growing with time.

  The Chixzon could not directly attack Star Force, and Star Force could not find them. They had gotten close many times, but their agents always managed to evade capture or detection, though the evidence of their manipulations were spread across the galaxy, and especially in the regions Star Force hadn’t yet pacified, but also in the gaps within the Star Force domain.

  It was a long war, and one that hadn’t diminished one iota over time. The Chixzon were patient and persistent, but so far they hadn’t found a way to get at Star Force, though they and others had tried before. Once word spread of the Uriti’s ability to destroy planets an economic war was set in place against Star Force and its trading partners, but Star Force didn’t suffer for it. Davis had long dictated that Star Force systems had to be self-sufficient, so the economic warfare couldn’t damage them, but it did hurt their trading partners.

  Many had to walk away from Star Force, but over the course of time they found their way back, and even some of the instigators finally saw the futility of the embargoes and revoked them, realizing they had more to gain from the trade than Star Force had to lose. After that point it was seen as hopeless to stop them, and even the eventual emergence of new Uriti, which enraged many across the galaxy, including the V’kit’no’sat, could not unseat Star Force, for no one could find a weakness to exploit, and even with a small Uriti accompanying a battle fleet there was no way to militarily defeat Star Force short of overwhelming numbers that could no longer be produced, for Star Force had simply grown too much to be outnumbered.

  So the battles moved to the dark areas, the small worlds, the cracks in the Star Force empire. And it was there that Davis prosecuted his war against the Chixzon and others, for he knew well that the larger a civilization became the more difficult it was to maintain. And the greatest threat to Star Force was internal instability, which virtually all of Star Force’s opponents were trying to stoke whenever an opportunity arose.

  Equally a threat, the ability to have so many worlds and so many people to hide events within the masses was something that worried Davis constantly. He had to have alert Star Force security forces who had their eyes and ears everywhere on their own planets, making sure someone didn’t stake out their own little turf inside Davis’s own cities, and now, after so many millennia of growth, Star Force security outnumbered the military that had fought during the V’kit’no’sat war, and still Davis was worried about what might be falling through the cracks.

  There were always threats and worries, but on the whole Star Force was gobbling up the Rim and making more friends than enemies while doing it, and the Star Force military had grown into such a monster that almost no one could stand against their third tier troops, let alone the elite Knight races.

  Whenever there was a wa
r of conquest, it was the Knight races that would be called upon first, led by Archons and Mavericks that now numbered in the billions, yet for every one of them there were 12 systems owned or protected by Star Force, underscoring just how large their piece of the galaxy was and how rare the Archons and Mavericks still were.

  Their numbers had grown greatly, as had their power, but their rarity put them in the position of being the Jedi of the galaxy, and they were just that revered and feared, but when it came to the warfare it was the Knight races that they led into battle, for they had been granted the psionics of the V’kit’no’sat as default, whereas the other races had to attain them by individual advancement. The tradeoff was that the Knight races had no civilians, and those that wished to leave their heritage duty had their psionics suppressed rather than removed, which many could not stand after living so many years with them.

  Those that did leave formed their own worlds, loosely called the Cast-offs, that were part of Star Force, but the majority of those being born or hatched into the Knight races held to their duty, which was to be the first line of defense against invasion, and the first ones to seek out combat wherever it was deemed necessary. They were made up of the more advanced races, most of which had come from the V’kit’no’sat in the form of a few individuals here and there. Some of the races that did not voluntarily migrate to the rim Mak’to’ran had sent to Davis in the form of individuals sentenced for execution…who were given a choice of that fate or being exiled to Star Force.

  Some chose death, but those that didn’t provided the eggs for Davis to add every single V’kit’no’sat race to Star Force save for the Les’i’kron, none of whom would allow the dishonor of leaving Itaru’s service. It was thought that was a side effect of the culling process when they’d been diminished and genetically engineered into service, but as for the rest of the original V’kit’no’sat races, all were now Knight races within Star Force, though Mak’to’ran had added several new ones since that Davis did not possess.

  The Ziviri were one of them, though Star Force still had some of their own. They were not a Knight race, and the V’kit’no’sat had heavily upgraded them over time whereas Star Force had not, for Davis felt it was better to let a race prove itself before the enhancements rather than forcing them forward and hoping they accepted the mandate. The Meintre were a good example of a race who had earned their advancement, and they now stood as a Knight race along with a few others from outside the original V’kit’no’sat ranks, though none of the original Star Force races had ascended to that level other than the Kvash…and that was mostly because of Paul’s continuing pressure on them to break their stagnation. Once they did, their true potential showed through and Davis had been pleased to add them to the Knight ranks.

  Star Force appeared to be unbeatable, as did the V’kit’no’sat, whom they were still separate from, but no longer had a quarrel with. In the lower levels of both empires they were seen as two sides of the same coin, with migration allowed in limited respects both ways and an enormous amount of trade occurring across the border where the Hula Hoop transportation network had been built. It was now the focal point of the galaxy, both rim and core, and Star Force held it tightly within their reigns.

  Together, the V’kit’no’sat and Star Force now controlled most of the galaxy…but that control was an illusion, for there were too many systems and too many places for nefarious individuals and races to hide. While Star Force was working to diminish that number, they would never eliminate it entirely. Not when they allowed other civilizations to exist freely as long as they behaved themselves, and Davis wasn’t going to start invading planets simply because they were not part of Star Force.

  But even if he did, he knew the galaxy was simply too vast to control, and the larger he grew his empire the harder it would be to maintain it. He had broken up Star Force territory into various Kingdoms and was relying on the other Monarchs and Archons/Mavericks to govern them, but they were few in number compared to the mass of worlds out there, and he couldn’t make the mistake of growing the empire too large too fast, especially when he had the Chixzon poking around for every weakness they could find to exploit.

  Many things had changed since the V’kit’no’sat war, but neither Davis nor Mak’to’ran thought they were safe, and between the two of them they guessed that their enemies were working on some truly grandiose plan beyond simple invasion, now that both of them had grown strong enough to prevent that tactic from succeeding. So while the people in both their empires saw this as an era of stability and growth, the two leaders knew it to be otherwise.

  The Zak’de’ron and Chixzon were waiting for something. What it was neither Davis nor Mak’to’ran could guess, nor did they know which one would strike first, but until then they would continue to grow the Rim and push into Hadarak territory as was their mutual responsibilities, but the more time that passed the more both became worried.

  Something was going to happen. And the longer it took to come about, the bigger it would have to be in order to defeat them. But when that future day came to pass, no one would see it coming…

  1

  March 2, 128439

  Grid Point Nenritor (Hula Hoop, Atavari Kingdom)

  “Here you go,” Nari Imarti said, handing her boss/father a cylinder with various food cubes in it.

  “Thank you,” he said as she sat down opposite him in a small booth on the edge of the starport’s café as they waited for their departure flight over to the grid ship that would make a magnetic jump off one of the nearby 3 massive constructs that had a string of installations between them, with this starport being just one grain of sand amongst the beach of infrastructure stretching between the huge rocks.

  “I still can’t believe this,” Nari said, looking out the nearby ‘windows’ that were screens that showed the viewpoint of exterior cameras outside the starport’s layer of protective armor. The sea of various stations stretched as far as she could see with the nearest construct backdropping many of them, for it was as large as an entire planet. “How could anyone build something like this?”

  “It’s Star Force,” Larson Degari said simply. “You get used to it after a few hundred years.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this. You said there are places even bigger?”

  “Some of the grid point have more than 3 constructs, but it’s more about the traffic flow. The more business to be done, the more accompanying stations. Even the nearest star system is full of people benefiting from this transit point, and the next few systems beyond that. Each point on the Hula Hoop has a massive population and business footprint…and I’m sorry to say we’re not qualified to operate here. The leasing costs would put us out of business.”

  “Really?” his 27 year old daughter asked. Up until 11 months ago he’d never met her, or vice versa, but when she’d graduated from the maturia he’d put in for an identification request. That meant Nari had gotten a message telling her that her biological parent or parents wanted to meet her. If she declined they would never know who she was, but Nari had said yes and Larson had immediately arranged to travel to the world where she was first assigned quarters as a civilian.

  “I’m afraid so. These are the big players here. As rich as we are, we have to work hard to have a presence in the medium scale locations, but most of our activities are on the newer worlds where there is much more opportunity. They don’t have the traffic flow, but there’s a lot of wealth to be made within Star Force territory if you know where to look for it. And their fees are reasonable, even here, strange as that may sound.”

  “Competition?” Nari asked as she distractedly watched a rather large Bsidd transport drift by the window.

  “Value. The speed that the Grid Point system allows saves so much fuel and time that it’s worth the costs of operating here. We ship a few things, besides people, through it, but most of our operations are outside the Prime Zone, so we have to use conventional gravity drives.”

  “Prime
Zone is what you call the area around the Grid Points?” she asked, still trying to assimilate all the knowledge her father kept throwing at her, now that she had become his personal assistant overseeing a corporation that had more than 2 million employees spread across more than 350 star systems.

  “It’s not an official term, but the commerce build up at the grid points and their companion systems, and the adjacent systems that have seen a spillover of infrastructure are all high value turf. When you do business, you go where the customers are…and as you can see,” he said, gesturing to the window, “there are so many people moving through these locations the customers literally come to you. There’s actually a shortage of resources here, meaning prices go up, up, up.”

  Nari frowned. “A shortage?”

  “Well not here. This is a Star Force starport and they maintain a stable supply grid. But the stations out there that are not Star Force operated have to get stuff shipped in, and that’s fine for the rare, small stuff, but the larger basic building materials take up volume and mass that is too damn expensive to ship on the grid point system itself. So they have to get it from the nearby star systems…which is why they also get rich…but even then it’s expensive because there are no planets here to draw resources from, so everything has to be shipped in. Do you understand the significance of that?”

  “No, I don’t. We only had basic economics in the maturia.”

  “I know. The maturia doesn’t teach you much unless you go in for the higher level stuff that’s optional, but even then it’s not the same thing as experiencing it firsthand, because people don’t always behave as you expect them to, and business is all about dealing with people. At last count there were 2.3 million races in Star Force’s economic catalog, and they each have their own intricacies. Then add in the personal ones and you have an environment that cannot be predicted. You have to feel it out as you go. That can’t be taught in a maturia.”