Star Force: Extirpation (Star Force Universe Book 56) Read online

  1

  July 3, 128532

  System 1199930 (Hadarak Zone)

  12th planet

  Paul had the Excalibur slingshoting around the 12th planet in the system at very low orbit, just above the atmosphere and probably scaring witless the millions of denizens living there in mud huts as the 327 mile wide mass passed through the sky and blotted out the sun momentarily, only to have a smaller, angular mass follow in the same orbital track as Keychain chased the Star Force ship, unwilling to let it get away.

  But it wasn’t catching him, and by now it should have learned that basic fact. Over the previous 3 months Paul hadn’t let it out of his sight, following the Lurker from system to system across 173 lightyears and 13 jumps. Its null field couldn’t defeat the backlit tracking sensors, nor could it absorb the Ghostbane sensor bounces, and every time it accelerated using its gravity drives it pinged the Ghostbane, but the sensor itself was not great for long range and was rarely equipped in Star Force vessels. Paul had one in the Excalibur just for a rainy day, and had confirmed that it could track the Lurker, but he had something even better than that.

  Keychain was a Hadarak, and slow as hell navally unless it used its Essence to enhance its speed. When it did that, the Essence Rush was clearly visible from the other side of the star system. There was no way Paul could miss it, so as long as he was onboard the Excalibur, Keychain couldn’t hide from him and there was no way in hell he was going to let the bastard out of his sight so it could sneak up on and ambush another fleet.

  He’d gotten so comfortable being Keychain’s shadow that he’d told the other trailblazers to start using the Ysalamiri again, but with Essence capable Archons onboard just in case there was another Lurker out there. If Keychain was the only one, and Paul stayed with it acting like a very large tracking beacon, then it was harmless to the Ysalamiri because they could avoid it and only attack Hadarak that were several jumps or more away from Keychain.

  Paul didn’t know if the Lurker had figured that out or not, but he’d been shadow boxing with him for 3 months and getting a feel for its navigational capabilities, even with Essence enhancement. He’d been doing some very reckless things in the name of research, but Ace and the others had gotten a good feel in their combat with it to give Paul some parameters to work from, and so far Keychain hadn’t laid a finger on his ship.

  In the beginning it had tried to hide, then run, but now it was pursuing him aggressively and he assumed it had fully regenerated its Essence levels. That would put it at around 2 to 2.5 months recharge rate, considering it had to be using some Essence for the interstellar jumps. There was no way for Paul to gage its actual power level, but a ballpark estimate was a considerable improvement over none at all.

  And the more he taunted and got chased by Keychain the more he was learning about it, and that in turn would be passed on to the others and increase their safety, so he wasn’t going Captain Ahab after Riona’s death, but he did intend to kill this bastard and had been cutting the margin of escape down considerably to test Keychain’s maximum firing range. He’d trimmed estimates down to extreme Tar’vem’jic range and still hadn’t received any Essence attack, meaning he was now able to pester Keychain with weakened Tar’vem’jic hits that apparently the Lurker could not respond to.

  Yet it chased him. Why?

  As the Excalibur came out of its slingshot, it headed for null space within the system and Keychain soon followed, glowing with Essence as it had to boost its speed again to keep up and try to close the gap, but with the Excalibur’s superior speed it couldn’t make it unless Paul made a mistake…and with him plugged into his astromech and essentially bonded to the ship itself, his reaction speed was so high there was no way Keychain could get the jump on him.

  Maybe that’s why it kept chasing. Perhaps it was frustrated after an eternity of being dominant in a galaxy that had nothing to truly oppose it with. But Paul wasn’t making any assumptions, for assumptions could get him and his crew killed here, and along with them the information they had gathered to date, for there were no other Star Force ships in the system. The last contact he’d had was 3 jumps ago when a courier caught up to him, but he’d told it to leave immediately. He didn’t want anyone else around the Lurker until he got a solid feel for what it could or could not do, and right now he had no idea how many different tricks it had buried inside that Yeg’gor armor.

  He still didn’t know how it emitted the goo that had devoured part of Morgan’s ship, and then an entire asteroid in his own test thereafter. The goo had died shortly after it ran out of resources to consume, leaving behind a decaying material that, conveniently, would make for minion ambrosia. He didn’t have any Hadarak minions to test it on, but based on what he knew of their biology and nutrient needs, a Hadarak could drop a few seeds into the decayed goo and have them grow like wildfire. The goo left in orbit that had previously been the asteroid had been dropped into the star to avoid it being used as a giant egg to grow millions of minions in, or perhaps something a lot larger.

  Regardless, it was minion food in addition to a planetary destruction weapon. Paul’s analysis had confirmed it could destroy the outer crust of any planet before temperatures and pressures at lower depths blocked further expansion. It could destroy a planet Earth’s size in approximately 240 days, as far as rock was concerned. How it would respond to water and biomass was another matter, but it wouldn’t alter that figure by much, for under the oceans was bedrock and it would spread there even if the water itself slowed its progress on the surface.

  Paul had sent a request for a countermeasure to be developed back with the first courier to get to him, for if this was allowed even a day on a planet, it would be virtually impossible to stop. They needed something just as virulent to go after it, for right now they didn’t have any shield dampening technology that could stop a Hadarak from landing on a planet if it wanted to.

  But so far Keychain seemed obsessed with Paul rather than any of the planets they were passing by. The Admiral was buzzing them, not for the effect on the denizens below, but to test the maneuvering capability of the Lurker and note when it had to pull on its Essence to supplement its natural movement ability. The more he did that, the more of the Lurker’s limitations would become known, though Essence had a way of stretching them in unpredictable ways.

  Paul eased back on his speed a touch, letting Keychain get within Tar’vem’jic range again, then just stitched his forward bow with dozens of shots while once again matching speed. The Lurker just took the hits, trying to accelerate more, but knowing if it made a huge surge of speed that Paul would match it instantly. So it wasn’t trying to catch up as fast as it could, but it wouldn’t quit its pursuit or let Paul get very far away, and he was beginning to suspect some plan unfolding.

  But as long as he could score some hits, he was fine dancing around the system and chewing off some Yeg’gor from its hull…

  He got an update ping from the star, showing a new contact coming around the horizon from the far side, and despite the fact that Paul’s eyes were closed and his mind melded into the Excalibur, an eyebrow raised as he saw an identical copy of his ship coming into view and accelerating into a microjump heading not for his position, but a rendezvous point that was transmitted to him from Roger-009.

  He had to wait a long time before they got within realtime comm range, but Keychain hadn’t broken off from its seemingly stupid pursuit, nor was it doing anything about the Tar’vem’jic hits it continued to take, so Paul was patiently watching it while waiting for Roger to get within range.

  “I thought I told you to go kill some more Hadarak,” he sa
id when Roger’s hologram finally popped up in mind’s eye.

  “I thought Ace told you not to attack it,” Roger countered. “Can you outrange it?”

  “Seems to be, but something is wrong here. It’s taking hits like it doesn’t care and by now it knows it can’t actually catch me. I’m not sure what it’s up to, but I doubt it’s just stupidly stubborn. Why are you here?”

  “Same reason you are. We gotta crack this bastard before it kills anyone else,” Roger said as he pulled logs from the Excalibur so he could see what Paul had been up to. “Damn, you two have been dancing a lot.”

  “Yeah, and I’m not letting it step on my toes. Any guess?”

  “Might be trying to see how much fuel you have.”

  “Ha, then we’re going to be at this for a while. He hasn’t eaten anything more than star stuff since we began.”

  “Could be some rock down in the star,” Roger noted, seeing that it had made many stellar dives between system jumps. “Drones?”

  “Been ignoring them unless they’re real close. I think it’s trying to conserve Essence. Other than ramming and goo, I haven’t identified any conventional weapons.”

  “We’re calling it ‘ooze’ now,” Roger updated him. “And we’re pretty sure it’s a minion food generator.”

  Paul sent him his more detailed files since Roger hadn’t pulled them yet. “You sure about that?”

  The other trailblazer sighed. “I was worried about that. The sample we had was dead, so we couldn’t test the rate. These bastards have a long list of tricks, don’t they?” he said as the twin Borg vessel moved into a parallel track but far enough away to not draw the attention of the Lurker.

  “This bastard has more, trust me. I can’t get within medium range to test my theories.”

  “No heart attacks this far out?”

  “No. And I think I know why.”

  “Essence has limited range,” Roger said, echoing his thoughts. “You need a carrier to really reach out and touch someone. I’m surprised they haven’t developed one. A kamikaze minion would seem appropriate.”

  “We’d just shoot it down on approach,” Paul said, wondering why Roger would even suggest that. “Did you have your coffee this morning?”

  “Yuck…no, I’m just ahead of you. Mind if I show you?”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Some bee stings,” Roger said as a chunk of his elongated cube broke off and disintegrated into the ‘tiny’ drones, most of which were under half a mile long. “This should be interesting.”

  Paul continued to keep his ship ahead of Keychain’s constant adjustments trying to catch up as they got closer and closer to the star at an angle that would cut near it then head them back out into null space. Roger’s swarm continued to spread out as it approached the Lurker, becoming so diffuse that they no longer looked like a cloud. They moved behind it, far behind, then approached from a rear angle that seemed odd, because it wasn’t directly behind Keychain, but Paul knew exactly what Roger was doing.

  He was maneuvering the drones into jumpline alignment, meaning they had to put the Lurker and the star in front of them so they overlapped…and when they did that, they could pull directly on the star’s gravity, enhancing their collision speed by thousands of times compared to a near lateral approach.

  Paul watched as a few of the drones made jumps at maximum speed and rammed the Lurker, exploding on impact and leaving some scratches on the Yeg’gor armor. Despite their mass, the Yeg’gor was by far harder, so it was the drones that broke rather than the Yeg’gor, yet that much collision speed couldn’t be completely ignored, so each hit did a little more than Paul’s weak Tar’vem’jic shots, but at such a cost of machinery it was downright wasteful.

  “Can it hit them?” Roger asked, seeing the Lurker not firing any Essence shots against them on approach.

  “Individually I doubt it, but it could put up a bug zapper field.”

  “Let’s sneak one in before it figures that out,” Roger said, highlighting one random drone in particular for Paul to watch…and when it rammed Keychain a massive explosion tore out some huge chunks of Yeg’gor, leaving a 1.3 mile wide crater in its place, which wasn’t deep enough to get to the interior ‘soft’ material.

  “What was that?” Paul said, seeing the Essence rush and knowing it was some form of Materia, but what form he couldn’t put his finger on.

  “A test. Essence-enhanced warhead. Now let’s see if he starts blocking,” Roger said with interest as he continued to send kamikaze drones to their nearly pointless deaths.

  “Expensive test.”

  “Small load, Paul. I didn’t want to risk losing a big one if it could intercept the drones,” Roger said, his image frowning as he saw no reaction from Keychain at all. “Huh.”

  “You didn’t hit tissue. I wonder if they can even feel the Yeg’gor loss.”

  “If they can feel replicators walking around, they can feel the loss,” Roger reminded him. “Did Morgan clip its brain a bit?”

  “I don’t like this. It’s too easy. Run or engage, but it won’t do either. What’s it waiting for?”

  “Maybe you really pissed it off and it’s fixated on you.”

  “If that’s the case I’m going to be severely disappointed,” Paul said, searching the sensors for anything else in the system that could come into play.”

  “It’s only been chasing you in this system,” Roger noted warily.

  “Yeah. It tried earlier, but gave up when it couldn’t catch me.”

  “So what’s different here?”

  “We’ve got no data on this system. You think there’s a trap laid here?”

  “Another Lurker wouldn’t make this one any faster. Sensors are clear. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “There,” Roger said, noting a change in its Essence aura.

  “I see it, but there’s nothing here except close approach to the star. A Lurker can’t hide with a null field there.”

  And then, barely a moment after he said the words, his ship began picking up traces of movement from within the star…and fast movement at that.

  “Shit,” Roger said as he too saw the silhouette manifest on their deepest sensors of a Hadarak-shaped mass quickly rising to the surface.

  “They snuck one by us,” Paul cringed. “This is why we need more scouts.”

  “We need less Hadarak,” Roger corrected him…then Paul’s ship suddenly jerked and fell behind Roger’s.

  “Paul?”

  “Grapple field of some type,” he said, accelerating hard and not getting much response. “Damn it, I’m stuck. IDF resistance, not total, but I can’t jump out. I’m running the capacitors to full.”

  Several of the kamikaze drones were sticking to the rear of Keychain too, zipping in on collision runs and stopping just short of it, then the Lurker changed course and headed down to the star…dragging the Excalibur with it as Paul opened up with all his weaponry as the ranges between the two diminished quickly as he was being reeled in.

  What was happening didn’t make sense, but Roger’s mind worked as fast as Paul’s did and quickly began to assemble the various pieces of data. He altered the collisions of the drones to target all areas of the Lurker, finding that some approaches were still open, but not directly along the jumpline. That suggested that whatever the negation effect was would also have an effect on Lurker, this it had to have some corridors open to pull on the star’s gravity. Comparing that theory to the tract the pair of ships were on, taking out the propulsion that Paul was throwing in, left the Lurker with an acceleration profile headed directly to the star’s center.

  Roger released another Materia-laden drone and targeted that pathway, flying it around between the Lurker and the star, then jumping it out into it. It hit the Yeg’gor armor at full speed, with no resistance detected, disintegrating on the surface and touching the Ta’lin’yi warhead that was bathed in a particular form of Essence that caused it to become so disruptive that even the clenc
hing behavior of the Yeg’gor couldn’t shut it out.

  The material ate into the Lurker like acid, and it was moving so fast it pressed down into the Yeg’gor like a spike before the secondary explosion of the disintegrated material took hold and pushed back out through the breach, causing a short-lived fireworks display that left another crater in the Lurker…but it did nothing to disrupt the death grip it had on Paul’s ship.

  The Hadarak finally emerged from the star, headed directly for the Lurker, and suddenly Roger realized what was happening, for Keychain was burning so brightly in Essence that there was no way that it could sustain the effort long. It was draining itself to be able to reach out and grab Paul’s ship from such a distance, and even as the Excalibur was reeled in the Essence Rush diminished, but not nearly enough. It was burning the equivalent of all the Materia in Star Force possession every fraction of a second and was going to kill itself in the near future if it didn’t stop…but it was pulling Paul directly to the Hadarak.

  And if their theory was correct, that was one massive battery for the Lurker to recharge off of…

  2

  Roger saw the Lurker reach out and latch onto Paul’s ship, though his own Ravager’s sensors could not make out exactly what was happening. It was a grapple field, but altered by Essence into something not quite within the bounds of conventional physics. The ship’s computer could box it in, but it couldn’t see what Roger could see.

  And what he saw was it pull Paul’s ship closer to itself and closer to the star, with the tier 3 Hadarak now rising up into orbit on a collision course. He didn’t know if they intended to smash the Excalibur or get it close enough to hook it with a tentacle, but Roger wasn’t just going to sit here and watch.

  His own navigation was unhindered, so he flew up near the disturbance surrounding the Excalibur but did not come close enough to interact with it, then a series of tiny blue beams reached out to Paul’s ship and latched onto hard points…with the Excalibur doing the same and latching its mooring beams onto Roger’s. Then Roger’s ship pulled hard with its gravity drives and began a tug of war with the Lurker that didn’t last long. The Lurker was using so much Essence that it was literally burning out, but before it finally let go the Hadarak got in between Paul’s ship and the star and made a microjump out to them…and slammed into Paul’s dampening shields.