Maty Read online

  “I am giving you that opportunity now, so what say you? Must I break you of your bad habits first, or will you rise above the lies of the past to answer the call to greatness. To become protectors of the galaxy, as has been your fake destiny all along. Now you have a chance to make it a real one, and I will show you how. Star Force doesn’t fear you, and doesn’t fear strength, for we are not manipulators like the Zak’de’ron. We truly are dominant, but we have not claimed this galaxy yet. The Hadarak stand in our way, and we are trying to protect as many people as we can against their might, which extends beyond this galaxy to many others. The Hadarak have reinforcements they can draw from other galaxies, so even if we claim this one the war will not be over. We must first take it, then we must hold it. A task worthy of any protector, but one that is only feasible for the most elite.”

  “Cal-com said you had the potential to become elite, and after meeting him I agree. The Voku are worthy, I believe, but ultimately that will be determined by your actions, not my imagination. So I call upon all Voku and the newly returned Bo’ja. Join us willingly, and I will complete your training as we go along the path of transforming the breeding ground into a full-fledged Faction of Star Force, and one that will join the ranks of the other elite protectors already doing battle against the Hadarak.”

  “You are not ready for that now, but we must begin preparations now…or we can go the indoctrination route and lose a thousand years in the process. Do you have the mental fortitude to analyze the situation for what it is, or is all you possess blind loyalty? Cal-com thinks you can rise above this limitation. Break this last chain the Zak’de’ron enslaved you with. Will you join me in freedom and answer the call of the Protector? What say you, Voku? What is your true merit?”

  The rumbling was there, and louder than before, but other than that it was still silence…and this time Hightower refused to break it, waiting for their answer as he scanned their minds. There were many different thoughts, confused, hurt, defiant…but sooner the rumble of audible confusion had competition. A song was being sung by a few, and it quickly began to spread.

  Hightower didn’t know what it was, so as it began to grow clearer he searched the Voku database via his armor at a thought, finding it to be an ancient song from before the Zak’de’ron had found them. It had survived all this time as a lesson, for it was a crude song that showed strongheaded defiance was the path to destruction. Loyalty and obedience were the path the Zak’de’ron provided and that had elevated the Voku. This song from the past, called Nuri’tu, was an example of what no to do, and it was the only bit of history from before the Zak’de’ron that still survived.

  And now they were singing it. A war song. A song dedicated to total attack. Never retreat, never surrender, to the death. At first Hightower thought it was defiance against him and Star Force, but then he started to scan some of the minds of those singing it and he realized just the opposite.

  The Voku wanted war. They wanted a good fight. A righteous fight. They had wanted to become Bo’ja, but so many had been rejected and denied the ability to fight that it was an undercurrent in their psychology that had been silenced…until now. The Voku wanted relevance. They wanted peerdom. They wanted to rise higher than they were now. They wanted to reach the level of the Zak’de’ron, or at least fight alongside them. But they were leaving this galaxy behind, and with their departure also meant the end of their restrictions.

  Hightower had just hit on a gold mine that he hadn’t realized was there. The Voku were fed up, as Cal-com had once been, but they had no outlet for it…until now.

  The song continued to get louder, and then all of a sudden it seemed to spread everywhere…and not just in this city. But across the planet, and out through the lag to the other systems in the coming days.

  The Voku were united in one thing above all else. As Cal-com had said, they were meant to be Protectors. It was literally what they were born for.

  And they were answering the call the war.

  Hightower smiled broadly, nodding his head in acceptance of their response.

  There would be no need for indoctrination here. The Voku were ready to grow now.

  Cal-com had been right, more so than he had expected. Now it was up to the Lord to deliver.

  And the former Marquis of Clan Saber wasn’t going to have any problem doing that…

  2

  March 27, 154957

  System 19923004 (Hadarak-Occupied Territory)

  8th planet

  The Elloquim Nevantha, a 284 mile wide living starship, came out of his microjump from the pair of stars in system center and decelerated into mid orbit around the large rocky planet that was infested with Hadarak directly over top of a spire that reached up from the planet and branched out like a firework above geosync orbit, and from there fed spaceborn minions as it continued to branch out into nodules that grew even more of the infestation.

  The Elloquim was only half the size of the bulb at the top of the spire, but it ran straight into it with speed as the starship’s tentacles were tucked protectively behind it in a bunched tail. The ship’s shields hit and flared with the impact, then the whole spire top exploded in a debris field that looked like powder being thrown out in an expanding sphere with solid chunks flying within it.

  Nevantha came out the other side with only minor hull damage, his shields temporarily depleted, as the spire tipped and cracked along its spindly length, soon to fall back down to the planet that the Elloquim was headed to.

  This was enemy territory, far from the Grand Border, and Nevantha had no backup…but then again he didn’t need backup, and as he got closer to the atmosphere his hangar bays opened and a cloud of the most recent PanNari attack drones spilled out and accelerated like a swarm of angry bees towards the larger clouds of Hadarak minions coalescing into tendrils headed their way up from the surface, but even more from orbital facilities larger than Warden-class Hadarak.

  Nevantha knew they were warehouses, and the amount of minions inside were staggering, but he didn’t care. His smaller drones flew out to face them heavily outnumbered, but they were not expendable the way the Hadarak minions were. These drones were small, but heavily armored and shielded, and they began to cut through the enemy with little effort as the kill count began to climb rapidly.

  Nevantha’s computer mind recorded everything his sensors, and those of the drones, could pick up, and tallying the kill count was a simple task. Coordinating the entire battle was more challenging, but well within his combat parameters. As the drones began their skirmishes with the larger enemy minion clouds forming in the distance, Nevantha’s now grown starship mass came to a hover just above the atmosphere and began firing down onto the planet with several beam weapons to probe the defenses. When no shields were encountered, slower moving blobs were dropped onto the surface in a hexagon grid pattern, with the resulting detonations obliterating everything within a radius of 83 miles at the minimum.

  The Elloquim cleared the Hadarak from an area of more than 2.2 million square miles in a matter of minutes, then began boring a hole down through the planet’s singed crust with a vivid blue energy beam that he held constant for more than half an hour as the battle in orbit continued to escalate, with the starship having to defend against some minion strikes that got past the skirmishers, but his battle might was not tested with such exterminations. Though if the full armada of Hadarak in this system was allowed to gather from across this world and the other planets, victory could not be assured. That was why Kyra had a limited time to accomplish her mission, which was launched a few minutes before the cutting beam abated so that her landing ships were near the surface when the debris fountain rising around the base of the blue beam suddenly ended when it was shut down…

  The QuipNari was of the same race as Nevantha, but she had not rid herself of her physical body as he had, nor did she wish to become a Craniem in any form…which was considered near treason for her people. All were born with a biological mass, but were integrate
d with more and more technology as the cyborgs sought to eventually transfer their Cores into a fully machine state. Few were able to, and many died in the attempt, but Kyra and a few others had no wish to go that route and were commissioned as a branch of the PanNari known as the QuipNari, who were used as scouts across the galaxy.

  Her body was Human, for her infiltration mission had been into Star Force territory. That is what she had been designed for, but now she had a new purpose. Nevantha had adopted her as his personal field operative, and while he could have relied on drones entirely for this mission, he was sending her down along with them for enhanced efficiency as well as the possibility that his remote link could be cut as far deep underground as he had drilled.

  Kyra flew in a small invader pod along with hundreds of others carrying combat drones inside down through the still smoky bore hole…not that the surface of the planet was any different with all of the Hadarak infestation having been vaporized into dust that would choke the planet for some time. Her mission was not up there, and the destruction was merely cover for her to do her job.

  A few scout drones preceded the pods, giving Kyra and Nevantha eyes up ahead, though she wasn’t the only living being going down here. There was one other, a Craniem tasked with drone coordination on site, and his now fully mechanical mind was held inside a well armored canister implanted in one of the pods by itself. It appeared identical to the others, including in mass, but inside were heavy shield generators, engines, communications equipment, and a handful of weapons. Its purpose was not combat, but to keep the Craniem alive through the dangerous mission, for he was not expendable the way the PanNari machinations were.

  As they descended the Craniem, whose name was Tovi Sha Neum, selected points on the wall and had certain drones drill in and attach, becoming weapon mounts and comm links while the bulk of the pods descended down all the way to a mass of goo that was leaking out into the bottom of the shaft and forming a small superheated pool that was effervescing up the column over top the undamaged construct below.

  That construct was not known to exist here, nor did Nevantha predict what it was, but he had calculated the presence of something in this system, and once he arrived his magnificent mind had located it through inference alone, though Kyra had never had any doubt. Becoming an Elloquim was the highest honor, and most sacred trust, within the PanNari race, and his skills were not exaggerated. If anything, the PanNari did not truly know the might of the Elloquim as Kyra did, having lived inside him for most of her life. She had been responsible for freeing him from his prison, and ever since he had given her higher security clearance than a QuipNari deserved, but she hadn’t argued. She served him now, and both of them were eager to figure out how the Hadarak were organized so effectively without any visible means of interstellar communication.

  Limited telepathy was used, and had been calculated, but it too had a long lag. Essence-related communication boosts had been discovered and explored, but still there was something in this region that was causing the fiercest resistance to the Grand Border, and Nevantha had backtracked the reinforcement flows coming from the Galactic Core to this transfer area. Something else was here increasing their accuracy, and the armor below that was powerful enough to resist the coring beam appeared to not be of Hadarak origin…but to have their organic mass covering it within the planet’s crust.

  They had probably discovered it and infested it as well. One of the drones landed in the pool and moved through it, making physical contact with the armor in an attempt to analyze it…but it could not. The surface was entirely non-reactive to the probes being used. It was there, but what it was made of could not be determined.

  “Not of known origin,” Nevantha’s voice said inside Kyra’s head as she was crammed in chest to butt along with the ground drones inside one of the pods, stacked like equipment rather than a person…but that didn’t matter to the PanNari. They liked being equipment, and even Kyra could tolerate the lack of movement as her mind was plugged into the PanNari shared link, and she could see through any viewpoint of any drone if she wished, including the pod’s sensors and even Nevantha’s when he allowed her, though at the moment he was blocking her view of the orbital battle in order to keep her focused on the task at hand. “It may be a relic.”

  “Retrieval?” she asked, knowing that ‘relic’ referred to the growing number of advanced technological remnants being discovered in this galaxy that were not connected to any known or previous civilization. And most of the relics did not correspond to each other, though most were fragments that had not decayed over the eons. How old they were was unknown, and Nevantha had been pursuing knowledge of them even more fiercely than the Architects in the PanNari, who served as the organizers of their race, while the Elloquim were essentially their Gods tasked with combat, defense, and whatever else was required of them.

  “Size must be determined. Excavate Hadarak infestation until access point discovered,” he said, for both her benefit and as orders to Tovi. There were 732 other Craniems onboard Nevantha, available for assignment as he wished, but they rarely left the safety of the ship. Yet that was their function, for Nevantha could not. He was the ship, and could never leave it. Nor would he want to. But communications range was limited with regards to drone control, and if he needed to be on another planet he couldn’t remotely interact through forces here, so a Craniem would be left behind if necessary to do that…for Elloquim were not just combat ships. They were true warships, and could spawn infrastructure and entire civilization on planets if they so chose. Everything that was necessary to build up additional war units, resupply centers, and everything short of reproduction in the biological sense. Technologically they could plant the seeds necessary to fabricate at a rate to match or exceed the Hadarak, but that was not the mission here.

  Kyra watched as the pods disgorged more drones that bored their way into the Hadarak living structure surrounding the relic, attempting to carve passageways, but were unsuccessful as the surrounding mass swelled to seal them. That meant heavy excavation was needed, and the carving out of entire chasms began with more units being sent down from orbit to assist, though they wouldn’t arrive for some time.

  Meaning the orbital battle continued, and Nevantha had to delay the Hadarak from arriving at the bore hole from above…with his weaponry being used to snipe units that began to encroach into the devastated surface area around it. Kyra had time to work. The Elloquim would make sure of that. But she didn’t have an unlimited window here. They needed to find an entrance, for they could not cut through the relic in any conventional means, and the larger weaponry that Nevantha possessed could not reach it in its buried position. The cutting beam was designed for rock, not armor of this magnitude, and the more potent weapons required closer contact than a ship in orbit could manage.

  He could come down to the surface if needed, but the small hole that was only a few hundred meters wide didn’t allow many firing options. If Kyra failed entry by any other way Nevantha would try it, but such imprecise firing could destroy whatever was inside when a surgical entry was needed. Fortunately, the Hadarak infestation could also be hacked, and one of the drones manage to patch into an exposed neural tendril and map out the circumference of the very large relic…which was larger than Nevantha and extended well below the magma layer like a root tapping down into the center of the planet.

  The Hadarak had an infestation wrapped around it like a coiled snake, but the general parameters were enough to estimate its size…as well as the access points to the interior. All 7,139 of them.

  The carving teams were immediately retasked to the closest one, and after a modest amount of waiting Kyra’s pod was finally able to move into position. The doors opened and the bipedal attack drones detached from their rack mounts along with Kyra’s body. She was dumped to the ground, landing in a crouch then springing into a run along with the much larger machines…though she was mostly one as well, with her internal Human body encased in thick battle armor that cover
ed her head to toe and kept her alive in the ghastly dome dripping with Hadarak liquids from the evisceration above that had not fully removed all of it. Just enough to create a landing zone around one of the entry portals that formerly had a tendril sticking down into the small shield dome being produced by the relic itself.

  The carvers were already clearing that out, with a tube of Hadarak parts shooting out into another elevated shield column that carried out beyond the landing area and eventually back up to the surface where it would be dumped. Tovi was orchestrating all of that, along with the laying of defensive emplacements on the relic’s hull, securing their foothold a bit while Kyra was tasked with going inside, for Tovi’s pod would not fit. Access to the relic appeared to be designed for small units only, not just here but everywhere else. Cargo access must have been in larger areas not open to the Hadarak…or else the purpose of this relic was something else entirely.

  Kyra ran across the exposed surface of the relic, seeing its black/red surface gleam in the lights of the many PanNari machines flying or running around, and now cleaned pristinely of all Hadarak material, with the drippings from above being scooped up and removed by dedicated units that were working in conjunction with cauterizers that were burning the drip points above into silence.

  The armor beneath her feet was unknown to the PanNari, and Star Force had given them a copy of their database as well…at least as much as they would admit to. They most likely kept some secrets for themselves, but their database was far more extensive than everything the QuipNari had put together on their own, and nothing in it was even remotely close to this reddish material.