Star Force: Intellect (SF85) (Star Force Origin Series)

  1

  July 29, 3222

  Krachnika System (lizard capitol/homeworld)

  Michra

  “Terms?” Trevor-153992 asked, thinking hard. “Surrender was always unconditional, but it’s never happened before with the lizards. If they’re asking…we can’t blow this chance. Get me a comm line to orbit. This isn’t going to be my decision to make. Especially if it has anything to do with that mastermind they found.”

  “Mastermind?” the Bsidd asked.

  “Nevermind, just get me the Fury.”

  Paul was in the sanctum onboard the Excalibur when an Archon ranger came to find him. The blonde had the nerve to interrupt him during a sparring session with four Knights, but as soon as she told him what was happening and handed him the portable commlink he realized this was more important.

  He held the small cylinder in his hand and pressed the activation button…with the training mat he was standing on suddenly overlaid with holograms that showed four of his fellow trailblazers much as he would have seen them if he’d been in the nexus.

  “Paul, good,” Greg said, giving him a nod. “I think your outreach effort has paid off. We don’t have an ID on who is asking, but someone on the lizard side is asking what are our terms for surrender.”

  “They give up,” Paul said simply.

  Taryn cracked a smile. “Me, verbatim.”

  “If this your new friend,” Greg continued, “he might want to negotiate something less than that.”

  “And you want me to talk to him?”

  “We’ve held off responding just yet, but we don’t want to delay any more than necessary with fighting ongoing.”

  “How was the question delivered?”

  “Comm signal.”

  “Any encryption?”

  “No,” Trevor answered, his hologram now appearing. He had been listening in to provide intel, but the holographic system prioritized the trailblazers unless someone else spoke. “Just an open comm directed to us.”

  “Directed how?”

  “A message flag like we instructed our allies to use. I don’t think they wanted us to miss it in all the signal clutter.”

  “Text?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then send this back immediate, also in text. All offensive operations must cease and troops withdrawn immediately. Stand down will be reciprocated and maintained so long as no craft leaves the atmosphere. Li’vorkrachnika commander will then personally confer with Paul in order to establish further parameters of surrender.”

  Rio raised an eyebrow. “That’s a cease fire, not terms of surrender.”

  “Do you have something in the works here?” Olivia asked.

  “I anticipated something like this might happen, so I’m one step ahead of all of you. If he’s thinking what I think he’s thinking, we have to discuss terms personally. If we give them now, he’ll request to negotiate, so this saves some time.”

  “And what do you think he’s thinking?”

  “I think he’s asking questions and has run out of time. I doubt he’s ready to fully surrender, and I don’t want to back him into a corner with the choice being full capitulation or death.”

  “They’re real used to the death thing,” Rio agreed.

  “What do you have in mind?” Greg asked.

  “There are several possibilities I’ve worked out. It all depends on him.”

  “Where do you want to meet him? Not back up here.”

  “No, I don’t think he’ll surrender his freedom again. Somewhere on the planet…somewhere that they won’t have booby-traps set up waiting for me,” Paul added, seeing some looks of recognition that this could be a ploy to kill one of them before the planet was wiped out.

  “Fine, but I’m going with you,” Greg added. “In Commando armor.”

  Oliva looked at him warily. “You really think it’s a trap?”

  “My gut says no, but I’d like to be there as backup anyway…incognito, and our armor loudly declares our skill level.”

  Trevor’s image appeared again. “Message was sent and we’ve received an immediate response wanting to know the location of the conference.”

  “That was fast,” Rio pointed out.

  “Tell them that I’ll pick a location and land there,” Paul ordered, “and they’ll be informed when I land, but cessation of the fighting must occur first.”

  “I get the feeling you’re about to let us in on a brainstorm,” Olivia wondered.

  “Maybe,” Paul acknowledged. “We’ll just have to wait and see how this plays out.”

  After a quick shower and a bite to eat, Paul headed down to the surface after transferring over to the Fury, picking up their extra Commando in a detachment of six along with two Archon strikers. The dropship flew down to a section of city that was on the border between lizard-held areas and Star Force-cleansed territory and just on the lizard side.

  They received no attacking fire as they landed, and both sides had pulled back from the border as required. Paul had additional Star Force troops within a few kilometers of his chosen position if needed, as well as having skeets in the air near that area that could be at his position within a minute.

  The dropship landed on a rooftop and the strikers and Commandos quickly secured it and several levels down. When they finally got to the few lizard denizens there, they mentally shooed them out of the building. At first they didn’t move, but apparently received orders at some point later for they all began vacating the location at once. It took another 3 hours before a few lizard minds showed up at the very bottom of the building and began making their way up through the levels, with Paul immediately recognizing the formidable intellect of the mastermind as it shown like a beacon amongst the much duller lights of the other lizard minds.

  “He’s here,” Paul said for the sake of the others. “I’ll meet him four levels down. Pull back to there.”

  The trailblazer abandoned the roof and the dropship, then waited where he wanted as the lizard contingent slowly ascended through the building. Rather than waiting in a room, Paul was leaning against a wall in the hallway as the first few standard variant lizards came up their stairwell and into sight. They visibly flinched when they saw him, but held their fire as they trained their small rifles on his bright pink armor, knowing that they couldn’t do much to stop him if he wanted to kill them, but they’d do their duty regardless of the outcome.

  A handful more came up, then the much larger mastermind appeared, dwarfing his smaller guards. A mental prompting by Paul brought him forward as the enemy commander motioned for the other lizards to wait a few steps behind him. Likewise Paul waved a hand at the two Commandos with him to give them some space and they retreated a few meters back while the others were stationed around the perimeter looking for lurking threats.

  Paul retracted his helmet but kept his shields up, though they were invisible save when something struck them. “Been doing some thinking?”

  “You sent me here for just that,” he said, raising a hand up and brandishing his new claws. “I owe you for that.”

  Paul knew he was being genuine, though his words could have been taken to mean it as a vendetta. “And?”

  “What are your terms?”

  “Normally we go with unconditional surrender, but word has kind of gotten around of what we do and don’t do, so when some people surrender to us they already have a vague sense of terms. In your case, I’m guessing you have a proposal for me?”

  “We must maintain this planet.”

  “Agreed,” Paul said without hesitation, which caused a flinch by the mastermind.

  “You anticipate
d this?”

  “I have an estimate of facilities still intact, but I do not know the full extent of your subsurface holdings nor the output of all your assets given your uncertain population. What is the current status of your foodstuff production?”

  “Low staffed, but adequate for current demands. We are operating off of reserves in many areas.”

  “How much excess production do you have?”

  “None. We are operating below necessity.”

  “Anticipating losses?”

  “They are inevitable, so why keep workers in the factories when they can be fighting you?”

  “What’s your current population? This world only.”

  “I only control this world. I do not have an accurate count, but estimates are in excess of 800 billion.”

  “And if your current facilities were fully staffed, how many could they sustain without expectation of losses?”

  “2.2 trillion.”

  “I need you to cease producing additional personnel, save for specialists as needed.”

  “You want to reprogram our genetic code?”

  Paul shook his head. “No. If we wanted to add the Li’vorkrachnika to our empire we could have done so long ago. We’ve had access to your genetic nodules for some time, but we’ve never grown any of your people. Doing so would do nothing for the rest of you, therefore there was no advantage in our doing so. Once you are grown, the genetic locks cannot be undone.”

  “Experiential development?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And I am an anomaly?”

  “You have the ability to work around your existing blocks. Even if they were removed on the others they would still obey the memory of them.”

  “I fear it would be far worse. I speculate that genetic coding is what is binding them all to my command. Without it they would most likely kill each other.”

  “That is a possibility I’ve considered.”

  “If you do not want us to produce additional population, and you do not want to alter our genetic code, then are we to exist here until we wither away?”

  Paul frowned at him. “After all this time, you surely have enough information about us to know the answer to that.”

  “What good is training for them if they can’t overcome their blocks?”

  “They still follow your command, correct?”

  “They would have a difficult time finding a way not to. You mean to make this a functioning prison world…to what end?”

  “The simple reason is so we won’t have to kill the rest of you to claim this planet. That will also save us time and resources, but that’s not really the point.”

  “If we cannot produce more population, and they cannot train and grow as you do, then this planet will be rid of us eventually.”

  “No,” Paul said, sensing that he wasn’t going to agree to that. “I am not planning on being rid of you.”

  “Then tell me what I am missing…or is that something my mind is blocked from seeing?”

  “You confirmed it?”

  “Some of our genetic coding differs from what is recorded in the databases. The templars lied to us, though I do not know for what purpose, specifically.”

  “You exist to serve them, yet there has been a betrayal of trust and you are presently in internal conflict. Without a purpose here, the deaths of your people are meaningless and you seek to put an end to it…while you search for internal resolution.”

  “Your being able to read my mind saves considerable time and effort communicating.”

  “As to the question of training, full knowledge is not required to attain self-sufficiency. You feed yourself workouts and your body and mind digest them. So long as you are getting what you need, it can be achieved via orders, though aspects that require internal modification will suffer. I believe you can restructure your civilization to include this, and at the minimum give those currently alive time to achieve what they lack. I intend to give everyone here the ability to persist indefinitely, though I have no illusions of it being a given. I will not be handling their training, therefore my confidence in the outcome is considerably less.”

  “I will need to learn before I can develop what they require to…persist.”

  “I will send you the necessary information. I trust you will be able to figure it out without a personal teacher. You’ll also have to make adaptations for your various physiologies, but the basic principle remain the same for all races.”

  “And if we are able to persist?”

  “You will have the time to ponder the riddle of the templars.”

  “Do you know?”

  “No, unfortunately. We’ve never had access to them or their records.”

  “I checked this world, and all of their resources were destroyed prior to leaving. Nothing of value remains.”

  “What is the purpose of your civilization?” Paul asked again, picking up on their previous discussions.

  “I now have cause to wonder. I have a predilection to build, defend, and grow in order to facilitate the purpose of our civilization. I am given assignments and therein lies my personal purpose. The overall mandate is unclear, but from experience it appears to be based on galactic conquest. That should not require instituting blocks on myself and others of sufficient intellect. We would naturally come to the logical conclusions and no mental constriction would be required…thus I am considering the possibility that the templars’ true purpose is not logical, and if we knew of it or discovered it we might choose not to comply.”

  “What specifically do you know of the sovereigns?”

  “That you haven’t already plucked from my mind?”

  “We found nothing.”

  “Because I know nothing. I have never encountered one personally, nor had any communication from them. They are of the same breed as the templars, but augmented in some way…though how I know that is also in question. It from genetic memory only, and I can’t assume that anything is correct without experiential verification.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you, picking apart your civilization and finding out what is and is not true.”

  “Unfortunately no. I know virtually all of that which is on this planet. It is the pieces that I do not know that were purged.”

  “If your coding was a lie, how can you be sure of anything else here?”

  “Because I have been dealing with my resources for a long time. Spotting a blind spot in my own mind is difficult. Finding discrepancies in others is not. There are a few things I need to explore, but my grasp of my own people is solid. It is in variations that there is a question mark. Therefore I must undertake such things gradually.”

  A dark image clouded Paul’s mind. “That sort of experimentation will not be allowed.”

  “Define what parameters you require and I will abide by them.”

  “Your intellect will allow you to manage the inefficiencies?” Paul said, acknowledging the thought he was eavesdropping on.

  “Yes. I also know that I will be unable to hide certain things from you, and doing so will cause you to take action that I will not like. You know that I will keep my word because it is necessary, therefore you will not have to maintain close surveillance. I do not pretend to understand all of your ways, but provide sufficient boundaries and I will enact them.”

  “While you evaluate them?”

  “If you are incorrect, then we will have issue later.”

  “No worries there,” Paul scoffed.

  “That is what I am trusting on. I will not able to affect the homeworld.”

  “I’m not expecting you to. If we manage to capture some of their people, will they take orders from you?”

  The mastermind considered that. “They will unless otherwise ordered to do so. If my surrender here is known, all it would take is a single command and they would die rather than accept me.”

  “If they don’t personally see you, how will they know whom the orders come from?”

  “The
re will be a conflict in markers, save for starships and other forms of remote communication, up until there is a rotation of crews.”

  “Markers?” Paul asked, sensing something new.

  “You did not already learn this?”

  “Apparently not. We must have missed it.”

  “You did not know this long ago? It is the basis of our entire command structure.”

  “Explain it to me.”

  “I can issue some basic parameters to those I command through genetic markers. They can be transmitted via touch or air, but they must be voluntarily accepted. They will impart new genetic knowledge, and if I am deemed a traitor by the other masterminds and they encode that knowledge, my markers will never be accepted. Typically there is not a sharing of personnel, so one individual will contain only one marker throughout their life. In the case of transfers of resources a new marker will replace the old if accepted.”

  “And worlds without a mastermind?”

  “If they are not under my command, then they will exist without a marker. Typically these are low populations and scouts and are expected to operate without my command because their tasks are small and simple.”

  Paul thought fast, finding a big hitch in his plans. “Do the others know yet?”

  “The stand down might have been noticed. My message to you was sent by a means that another world could not intercept.”

  “Any chance of leaks from this one?”

  “None. My command here is absolute.”

  “And if a templar showed up?” Paul asked hypothetically.

  “They give us commands and we carry them out. They do not possess a marker…that I am aware of. I cannot promise that they do not have a way of neutralizing mine.”

  “If I brought you some captives that did not receive orders to ignore your command, would they accept the transfer?”

  “They will, so long as they do not suspect subterfuge on your part, otherwise they may kill themselves before I can assert command.”

  “What kind of information does your marker grant?”

  “Temporary upgrades before new personnel can be grown. Tactical adjustments when fighting a new enemy or when a new weapon system is developed. It is customary to send messengers to every ship and world in my command to spread the marker.”