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

  It wasn’t, but tactics had to shift in ways that many did not see or did not condone. Assaults had to be swift and thorough, with the idea of taking a planet completely abandoned. They had to kill and move on, and get so good at it that they would outstrip the Li’vorkrachnika’s ability to regenerate and spread.

  Star Force was doing that here, but no one else was and Star Force wasn’t going to go after the coreward territories…at least not obviously. There were the Hradeiti and a few other small programs that they had under way to allow others the beginnings of footholds that they could potentially push out into enemy territory, but none were even worth mentioning in terms of the grand scale that would be required to end this threat once and for all.

  That meant the Li’vorkrachnika were going to win…unless the Skarrons took it to them.

  He’d been told that there was no communication between the Skarrons and Star Force, but right now the Li’vorkrachnika in the coreward region were partially boxed in by both the Star Force line and the Preema. If the Skarrons pushed them back that direction this nightmare could finally come to an end, but what would make them entertain such notions?

  That wasn’t something he could answer with the data in front of him, so he focused on figuring out what could be done in individual star systems with the resources provided to him. More often than not he was allotted too little, but on occasions such as that he knew the task was in finding ways to do more with less…not something he was entirely unfamiliar with after working for the Li’vorkrachnika.

  They’d had far more primitive technology than the Fassna, but after a very long war attrition had won in their favor and his homeworld was conquered with him on it. Most of it was savaged, but a piece was preserved and ordered to surrender.

  It was then that he’d met his first templar…and from that point on he’d been living in a continual nightmare doing things he never would have done just to keep the surviving Fassna population alive another day.

  He’d given them centuries, but it hadn’t been enough. Eventually he’d failed the templars, or more accurately Star Force had succeeded, and that at least was not something he regretted. His people may have been destroyed, but the Li’vorkrachnika were losing far more and he was enjoying each and every report of a new world or system falling to this odd, yet impressive confederacy of dozens of races. Hundreds actually when you counted all the small ones that they attributed their ‘ward’ status, though some of those were actually quite large by this point, having been sheltered and trained by the Humans until they were a force to be reckoned with, the rest of Star Force notwithstanding.

  It was a deep shame the Fassna survivors couldn’t have joined them. If they had, they would have more than made up for the kindness of inclusion.

  But they had taken him in as an individual and he was going to repay them for that however possible. If they hadn’t discovered him inside that wall with their psionics he would have been dead by now, having withered away in a pain-riddled demise similar to the way his own race had gone out. He was the last of them, but his end would not be the same. No. From this point on there would be only accomplishments, for when his death did eventually come it would not be a loss. Part of him was already gone. He would simply be finishing a past action.

  And that gave him a wonderful sense of freedom…and an opportunity to strike back at the Li’vorkrachnika, knowing that they could do nothing worse to him than they’d already done.

  And given the locale he was currently living in, he knew he’d never have to see another of their ugly faces again, which was another relief that he owed Star Force for. His life, whatever was left of it, was going to be free of their stench in more ways than one, and many of the tasks the Archons were assigning him didn’t involve the Li’vorkrachnika at all.

  Given time, he expected none of them to be as Star Force slowly eradicated them on their side of the boundary line.

  A digger variant crawled along a narrow dirt tunnel, its legs pushing hard behind it in order to get the leverage to scrape away another layer of the wall with its four arms using a flat claw-like appendage on each of them. Material rained down on the bone-covered skull and its equally armored back, with it using a row of spikes to dig into the ceiling as it leveraged itself up from time to time.

  That material would then be collected by others and moved out, but right now this digger and his twins were traversing the circular tunnel and enlarging it with each pass, pushing out from the machine dug tunnels very close to their objective which they had orders not to disturb more than to scrape away the dirt and rock around it. Right now they were not that close, still making entry passages that would later be reinforced into proper tunnels, but with the sensor-defying material of the target they never knew for sure just how far they had to dig.

  So loop after loop came with them getting closer and closer, but this one still hadn’t seen or heard of anyone getting through yet…but when he got about halfway through this tunnel arc he passed by another smaller shaft that was very recently bored as a digger crawled out.

  “I have contacted it,” he said, holding up his hands. “I could not damage it, it is so hard.”

  “How far?”

  “20 meters. It is…” it began to say as the collar-like comm device activated in response to the report he’d just sent.

  “Contact made. All diggers report to specified coordinates and began excavation.”

  “Follow and see,” it said, with both of them now being ordered to expand on this site.

  The newcomer knelt down and crawled on its legs and lower hands until the one in front of it stopped and a mix of dirt and rock started to come back into its face. In turn it shoved the material under it between its legs and into a new pile that another digger would get to as soon as it arrived.

  Inch by inch they progressed, digging forward while sealing themselves in with a loose pile blocking their access but leaving a narrow air gap so they could continue breathing. When the second lizard got to the artificial wall there was now a small room dug out with a very low ceiling that could accommodate three of them tightly, but two would be used so they could have room to maneuver the dirt around and send it back out what was now a chain of diggers funneling it up to the equipment zone that would send it back to the surface and quickly rid these areas of it.

  The small chamber was widened until five of the diggers would fit comfortably, then they began raising the ceiling up high enough that they could walk around. At that point the connecting tunnel had been expanded enough to allow for walking as well and more diggers poured in and started carving away much more material…so much so that eventually beams were brought in to produce a box onto which panels were added, creating a bit of a platform for them to work off of.

  Slowly that platform was added to as more dirt/rock was removed, with standard variants coming in to further assemble retaining walls that would keep pressure on the surrounding areas to prevent a cave in as more and more of the deep red and smooth structure was revealed. It had an imperceptible curve to it, but otherwise looked like a flat wall that the diggers own claws, which were designed to carve through various forms of rock, could not so much as leave a scratch on.

  It would take powerful machines to break through, but they were forbidden to do so until the templar arrived. They were simply to clear the area and erect the necessary structures to allow ease of access down from the surface. That process continued for weeks and nearly a half mile of wall was revealed by the time the templar finally arrived.

  The diggers and standard variants moved aside when he arrived with a heavy escort that was made up of mostly maulers but also with a lot of standards with heavy weaponry. Behind them came large walking machines standing 3 meters high and dwarfing the Li’vorkrachnika. They were not of their making and foreign in look and design, but they were with the templar so no one regarded them as being threats.

  With them came an alien that walked up to and joined the templar just short of the massive
red wall. Most of the diggers continued work on the edges, but a few that were scraping material away from the floor crawled up through the meter-wide gap between support beams and red wall and looked at the newcomers, seeing the templar having a lengthy discussion with the alien. At several points the taller biped’s headtails whipped around angrily, but there was no physical fighting that broke out…with both pairs of body guards waiting nearby to take up action if that were to occur.

  The digger knew that if something did happen he needed to run towards the alien and grab at his legs, holding him in place. The walking machines were too big for him to topple, but if several of them were to grab and push on one leg they might be able to take it down, or at least delay it from getting to the templar…though it had what looked like ranged weapons. Still, even if he only lasted 2 seconds into a fight, he could be of some use.

  But no fighting was going to break out and eventually the argument settled with the alien pointing above them and to the right with the digger receiving new orders to start expanding in that direction within a minute. As he and the others began to reposition he walked by the templar and alien as they both walked up to the edge, the Li’vorkrachnika standing back a step away from the drop off, but the two headtails shook with a nervous twitch as the alien toed the edge and placed a hand on a structural beam so he could lean out towards the wall.

  He put his other hand on the hard red surface as the digger passed nearby and overheard him say a single word when he made physical contact with the artifact.

  “Hamoriti.”

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