Star Force: Capitulation (SF95) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  Troublesome, but how does it involve you?

  The Nexus falling will destabilize a power structure that spans a quarter of the outer rim. What will happen if it falls is unknown, but we would prefer to shore up our existing alliances prior to that potentially happening.

  You fear a storm is coming.

  We are working with the Sety to avoid it, but we fear they have overreached in the past and are now paying the price for their arrogance. The Chamra control all Chamra territory. The Sety control a small fraction of theirs. You have incorporated other races into your civilization, but done so without weakening yourself. You are stronger for it, and if anything can be learned from you we wish to know it.

  You want to study us further?

  We want to interact with you for a number of reasons, and that is one. We also want to know what is occurring here and relying on secondhand information is not preferable. Better to have a piece of our own on the playing board that can report back…and one that can potentially come to your aid if you require it. Our basic premise is that you are worthy of greater interaction and that the loss of your civilization would be a negative influence on what stability is left. Our mere presence with a system in your territory will send a message that certain other civilizations will take notice of.

  You fear your enemies are growing bolder with the weakening of The Nexus?

  We do not fear it, we know it. The Chamra will maintain our territory, but we do not have the strength to step in and replace The Nexus. If chaos is to ensue, we would prefer to have stable regions firmly establish to work out from, and establishing a link into yours would be a small step in that direction. Our relationship with the Trinx is an ancillary factor, but a preferable one.

  “I understand,” Oni said, releasing his arm as they neared the far side of the bridge and the long promenade that ran the length of the cityscape canyon with multiple others above and below on different tiers. “We can discuss price later, but your request is granted. Did you have a specific system in mind?”

  “No, but the larger the better. We will have to develop it from local resources but we want to grow it into a significant foothold, not a hollow presence.”

  “Atmosphere?”

  “None required. Size and resources are the pertinent factors.”

  “Let’s find a starmap and have a look,” Oni said, but the Chamra stopped walking and faced the railing. The trailblazer stopped as well, only to see him generate a holographic starmap out over the dropoff several meters wide.

  “That works,” she said, seeing the whole of the Trinx Region displayed before her. She pointed her finger at a specific subregion. “Zoom in here.”

  2

  May 1, 3543

  Ottark System (Occupation Zone)

  Kiik (Meintre relocation hub)

  The Star Force cargo jumpship came out of its interstellar jump against the larger of two stars in the binary Ottark System, decelerating at the head of a small convoy of six nearly identical ships, but it didn’t wait for the others. Though this system was owned by a foreign power there was no danger here and the nearby fishhook-shaped warships were standing guard to make sure that it stayed safe.

  The jumpships weren’t the only traffic currently transitioning through stellar orbit, for there was a nearly continuous flow of vessels coming from the nearby Grid Point Stargate, and most of those were Meintre transports carrying equipment and people out of The Nexus to Kiik where they were all being sorted and assigned work/living slots in the new colonies. At present they had four systems with considerable inhabitation and two more with bare bones facilities supporting work crews readying them to accept additional workers.

  Moving an entire civilization, even one reduced by warfare, was a monumental task. The entirety of the Meintre race was coming here eventually, and it wasn’t because they wanted to. Their sector within The Nexus was being slowly overrun, so rather than stand their ground and die or try to evacuate to somewhere closer that didn’t have the resources to take them in, they’d struck a deal with Star Force to relocate here beneath their protective halo of warships arguably more advanced than those now guarding this system, not to mention the sheer intimidation factor coming from an empire that had tamed the Uriti. That alone would keep some enemies away, for fear of seeing one of the massive beasts arriving in their home system to destroy it…despite promises by Star Force to never use them in such a way.

  But they had the capability to if they changed their minds, and the very public and well documented history of their wars since the inception of their empire made it clear to everyone with half a brain that Star Force didn’t make threats it couldn’t back up…and they’d vouched for the protection of the Meintre and everyone else living within their empire’s domain. This system was owned by The Nexus, but it was surrounded by Star Force systems and that put it within their domain on a very widespread and often chaotic starmap, for one couldn’t draw lines across ground where there was no ground, but every system that had been tagged as under Star Force protection was publically known so there would be no misunderstandings.

  Anyone that came here looking for trouble would have to deal with the thousands of Meintre warships guarding it, then one call through the Star Force comm relay grid that was connected here via an orbital facility on the very outskirts of the system would bring nearby warships to their delayed aid. No one could fight the Meintre with Star Force so close nearby unless they came in with overwhelming force and the Meintre collapsed quickly, but they were not a weak nor a young race and knew well how to defend themselves, despite the mismatch they were encountering back within The Nexus.

  This system was bottled up tight enough that Star Force would have no problem pouring combat fleets in here before too much damage was done if the call was made, and that double layer of protection was why this cargo convoy hadn’t been assigned escorts. They only had 8 jumps to make to get here, and given such a short distance and the jumpships’ superior speed, the gigantic armored behemoths could move about freely and leave the warships free to go where they were more needed.

  And they were free to move around this system as well, for they were bringing in badly needed exterior resources to help spur the growth of the system, all of which was originating from a series of Kiritak colonies within the Occupation Zone. The Meintre were paying for the cargo and Star Force was supplying them with as much as they wanted, but most of the building here was the result of local productivity. The Meintre needed specialized items and raw materials from Star Force, the kind of which didn’t occur in this system or were hard to get at…such as corovon and solari, the latter of which the Meintre had no current means to procure on their own.

  That would have limited their building to inferior facilities and a few higher caliber ones constructed with whatever solari they could import from The Nexus, so the nearby availability of the Star Force markets was a great asset, especially when Star Force had extended a dedicated branch out into this region of the Occupation Zone specifically to supply them with resources.

  The Sety had set up and brokered the deal for the Meintre, but since their arrival they’d been dealing with Star Force directly and had begun to grow their own independent relationship with them…and they hadn’t been disappointed. Rather they’d been overwhelmed with the professionality and efficiency of their empire, not to mention the reasonable prices of the resources being offered. Others would have jacked up the costs to make an obscene profit, but Star Force was merely asking for compensation for the work they were doing in their place and the Meintre were grateful for that along with the Star Force defensive umbrella backing them up as they brought their vulnerable civilian population in one ship at a time.

  When the arriving cargo ship transitioned into orbit of Kiik it didn’t find a waiting Star Force starport to offload into, nor a Meintre equivalent. Rather it dispersed its own fleet of dropships and larger transports when needed directly down to the surface of the planet and began unloading with four o
f the others while the fifth headed for an orbital shipyard to deliver materials there.

  Most of the crew of the cargo ships were Kiritak with a scattering of other races mixed in, meaning that it was the short, diminutive race that was piloting the ships down through the atmosphere and into the waiting aerial escorts of the Meintre, who screened for them against the curious and the dangerous, though most foreign ships never made it past the blockade around the stars, scared off by the present of the fleet even if they did have navigational options to get here.

  When the Kiritak landed and opened their holds they began hauling the various sized crates out onto conveyor belts that pulled them inside loading docks for nearby trains. A few of the Meintre came out to oversee the offloading and take inventory, though the Kiritak tried to stay at least a few meters away from them at all times…for they were huge and walked awkwardly. They stood several meters tall and had thick bodies that sported six heavy legs. Their heads were more massive than an individual Kiritak and they had four tentacle trunks drooping down that they could breathe through as well as lift objects with.

  They were reminiscent of elephants, but heavier. They looked hard to kill, but not capable of traditional combat. That said, the Kiritak didn’t want to get anywhere near them when they were mad, for a single footfall could crush one of them…and the same went for an accidental step in the wrong direction.

  The Meintre further back and barely visible inside the train loading facility wore mechanical harnesses that had robotic arms that latched onto the crates and lifted them where needed, and the Kiritak could see them hauling more than one crate at a time as they walked across the open-topped platform where the trains would park. There were multiple rail lines stacked on top of one another with platforms off each and an elevator system connected to the conveyor belt that fed into what was suspected to be a sorting facility, but wherever they momentarily disappeared to the Kiritak didn’t know because it wasn’t visible.

  As they had done numerous times already and would continue to do round the clock for the coming days, the Kiritak offloaders would bring the crates out via anti-grav sleds and sometimes a small mech when necessary, load them onto the conveyors, and swap manifest lists with the Meintre watching. Accounts would be balanced and electronic currency released for each accepted shipment, then the dropship would leave empty and head back up to orbit to reload and make the trip all over again.

  Before this jumpship was empty another convoy would arrive, and then another and another, giving the Meintre a constant stream of supplies that traveled out on the trains to various locations based on what the cargo was. Raw materials were sent on a line to the north that joined with others coming from multiple offloading spaceports and linked to a massive industrial area that would mold and create the various products that the Meintre needed to build with, combined with the natural resources being collected and processed on the planet.

  More trains would leave that area and travel to construction sites while others carried various types of plants being bought from Star Force to accelerate the growth of the Meintre’s food production facilities. Those were located towards the west and southwest and were the fastest growing construction sites on the planet, as was necessary to feed the gigantic aliens as they poured in from convoys that were depositing their living cargo in other locations.

  Those evacuees traveled by train as well to immigration centers where their identities were logged into a system designed based on a Star Force model. It was all of Meintre construction, but given Star Force’s experience with moving entire populations and their continuing influx of refugees from across this corner of the galaxy, they’d sought out any advice that would make their own relocation run more smoothly but had created their own technology for the task.

  Individuals with useful skills were sent to work camps immediately while those too sick, young, or otherwise damaged were sent to the south where the bulk of the ‘useless’ population was stowed away. No one was going to be left behind willingly and the Meintre were evacuating those planets most at risk first, which meant their available workforce here was largely randomized and a hurdle to overcome, which was why they had programs already underway to help heal, train, and develop individuals in the ‘useless’ population to the point where they could do at least one task of value, at which point they’d be moved to ‘regular’ colonies in the east.

  That same geographical structure was used for the 18 import locations on the planet with each filling out more and more as the years passed. Export locations were mining colonies supplying the Meintre with the raw materials they needed and were often temporary constructs, many of which were located in a nearby asteroid belt and sending their own stream of dropships down to export spaceports.

  Altogether it was a crisscrossing mash of people building, growing, or just living interconnected almost exclusively using trains. There were so many rail lines covering the inhabited portions of the planet that it looked like someone had taken a page out of George Jetson’s universe, but it all functioned extremely well, with the Meintre making good use out of the resources they collected and paid for to grow their infrastructure enough to keep up with the evacuation quotas. Only so many ships were available to carry people out, and that was the amount of immigration the Meintre here had to maintain in addition to new local births.

  The Meintre were long living, but their birthrate was even lower than Humans. That meant from a civilization standpoint that the loss of population in the warzone was far more of a crippling blow than for other races, and to counter that vulnerability the Meintre had adopted a defensive persona, both in attitude and technology, with them boasting some of the strongest planetary shield generators within The Nexus…against which their enemies were nibbling away, but at least that protection gave them more time to evacuate their people before they were overrun.

  And had it not been for the newly activated Grid Point Stargate, the evacuation convoys would not have been sufficient in number. Now the out and back timeframe was reasonable so long as they could acquire enough carrier berths in the network, for which the Sety had already made arrangements, due in no small part to the fact that the Meintre were not just being evacuated to get them out of danger, but in order for them to reset themselves and then to start growing a warfleet that could return to The Nexus and aid the others in their fight to stabilize their crumbling alliance.

  The Meintre had promised to do so and no one doubted their word on that. Give them enough time and resources and they’d build a fleet that was very hard to destroy, but one that was less suited to offensive missions. That, ironically, was exactly what The Nexus needed now, for there was no real discussion about retaking lost worlds. The goal was to hold onto as much of what they had as possible…then if they could do that, and truly stabilize, they could think about going after their enemies and taking back the worlds that were stolen or had devolved into anarchy in the chaos.

  The Meintre were badly needed, but not so much that the Sety and others would come to their aid in force to help them hold onto their current worlds. The Meintre were not happy about that at all, but they had no choice in the matter. This was the only viable alternative proposed to them and they had to take it, but now that some of them were here and getting used to the situation, they were finding it preferable. Not in the loss of their worlds, but in the fact that they had a real guardian to watch over them rather than the failed promise of The Nexus.

  Some speculated that Star Force’s promises might end up being hollow as well, but their efforts to take the nearest regions of The Nexus under their own protection and try to stabilize them, with the Sety’s blessing no doubt, was a signal that Star Force’s home territory wasn’t in jeopardy…and that’s exactly where the Meintre were setting up shop, as were the Gfatt and Albos. Even the Sety had a few worlds already established in another portion of Star Force, and it was widely held common knowledge that this was the only real source of stability available to The Nexus.

&nbs
p; Moving their entire population here and forfeiting their current worlds was an insanely bad idea, but given the alternatives it might prove to be a good thing in the long run. Should they have stayed and fought with assistance from other Nexus members that never materialized they could have been fighting a no-win scenario. Here they were free to build without having to deal with attrition, meaning that time was on their side so long as they could get all their people out in time.

  But the sight of their most developed system out of the four they currently inhabited was incredibly demoralizing to the Meintre as they arrived. This was literally nothing more than a large refugee camp, not a home, and that wouldn’t change for a very long time.

  Building up an entire world, let alone a star system, was something that took many generations and an incalculable amount of hard work, dedication, and perseverance. Everything that they’d accomplished in the past was being forfeited by the evacuation, and that gnawing distaste was eating away at the Meintre in a mix of futility and anger. Anger at their enemies, certainly, but also anger at the Sety for not having organized The Nexus better. For there not to be enough ‘safe’ regions to pull assistance from to help the besieged ones was…well, it was borderline treason.

  The Meintre hadn’t failed in their task outright. They’d held on to their territory up until the word of weakness had leaked out and the Verrma had chosen them as their target. The Nexus had never eliminated the enemy within their domain because of their strength and a policy of containment was enacted while other threats were being dealt with.

  Now that policy had backfired royally, for there were no reinforcements available to come to the Meintre’s aid…or at least that was what they’d been told. Some Meintre doubted the total truth of that, but there were reports of invasions and rebellions across The Nexus, so at the worst it couldn’t be a total lie. Never the less the promise had been broken, and the responsibility for that lay with the Sety. They were not the entire Nexus, but they were the heart and driving force behind it.