Star Force: Baron (Star Force Universe Book 43) Read online

  “Results you will have.”

  Davis extended his pale hand across the desk and shook the glowing one from the Protovic.

  “Welcome to the Monarchs, Baron Daegan.”

  2

  September 17, 4863

  Citadel System (Pavana Region)

  Spectre 14

  Baron Daegan had spent many days with Davis as he schooled the Protovic on this and that during the brief breaks in his schedule. Most of what the Director told him he had never heard before, or was a slightly different take on familiar concepts. All of it was concise and easy to remember, though a few things Daegan did not fully understand. Davis had told him he wouldn’t for some time, but to remember his words for later when he had the prerequisites to process the information.

  After his choppy indoctrination into the Monarch ranks, Daegan was sent to the Beacon capitol of Citadel that was one of the largest systems in Star Force. It contained 152 planetoids, all of which were inhabited in some format by over 128 different races. They were not mixed together like Axius was, rather with each having its own little piece of turf, though 3 of the planets here were Axius ones. Arch Duke Scarven was in charge of both the Axius and Beacon factions, though the former was much more powerful than the latter.

  Beacon was more a work in progress and, in some cases, a hindrance to Star Force. While Beacon technically counted as a faction, none of the races within it were. A faction had to be capable in all five forms of combat plus have considerable industrial capability. Beacon could supply everything it needed…until recent years. The influx of new races had put it’s ‘faction’ status into doubt, for now other parts of the empire were having to supply it with the necessary raw materials and foodstuffs it required to house the influx of refugee races until they got them producing at sufficient levels.

  Axius was a smoothly functioning faction with two millennia of experience, but Davis had mentioned that the Frontier Region Axius worlds were a lot more hazardous. He hadn’t gone into full detail, but there was a problem looming that had caused a rift between those worlds and the rest in Star Force. They were essentially quarantined until they could become civilized enough to interact with the rest and that worried Daegan, for he was going to be given a race with no Star Force experience whatsoever. Not even a prior trade relationship. And he was going to be assigned a world in the Frontier Region.

  He’d just gotten to Citadel three days ago and had met with Arch Duke Scarven immediately. They’d discussed which race he was receiving, as if the final decision had not been made yet, but eventually he was given the Hdjkarvenitshevi…whom an Archon had thankfully ordered to be renamed the ‘Tahm.’ Baron had looked it up, for Davis had insisted that many of the names Star Force used were homages to the distant past, or in some cases jokes, and this was no exception. Tahm Kench was a fictitious character from a game that looked remarkably like the Hdjkarvenitshevi, and the shorter name was much easier to pronounce.

  Right now there 50 Tahm in the system, undergoing testing to determine their biological needs and Daegan had already met with two of them this morning. Of the 50, only 6 had learned to speak English, and programing their native language into translation computers was taking time, so he had to work through those six as translators and even his new Monarch Ikrid upgrade didn’t provide him enough power and skill to be able to figure out what the hell they were saying in their odd mix of blurps, squeals, and rumbles.

  Their English accent wasn’t too bad though, and he could understand the 6 of them well enough, though at times he had to use his telepathy to check on a word or two. The Tahm, as they told it, were victims of both the V’kit’no’sat and the Preema…but the latter wasn’t true and the Preema had warned them that the Tahm were incessant liars. That was a problem he was going to have to deal with, among many others, and he could see why the Preema had wanted to get rid of them.

  The real question was, why ever take them in to begin with? He hadn’t gotten any information on that from the Preema and so far he couldn’t get anything useful out of the Tahm about it, but one oddity of their race was the fact that they reproduced very slow. One offspring per Tahm, who were asexual, per 64-68 years. Their biology was so lethargic it was surprisingly resilient, giving them very long lifespans even without training. Amongst the Preema they typically ranged from 300-600 years, though they claimed they used to live over 1000 before the Preema poisoned them with toxins that reduced their lifespan.

  No such toxins had been found in their bodies thus far, so that was probably another lie.

  Within a few days Scarven’s medtechs would figure out what they could and could not eat, and then fashion foodstuffs designed specifically for them…along with a version of ambrosia, though Daegan was not going to give that to them immediately. There was a lot that had to be changed prior to that, and the Baron anticipated quite a lot of resistance.

  Add on to that the fact that they were aquatic…or technically amphibious, but they preferred to live under water. They had to breathe air off and on, but had small gills that could temporarily support them for more than an hour. They would eventually have to get to a pocket of air or they’d essentially become drunk from low oxygen levels and the Mastertech that had been assigned to Daegan for this assignment suggested that they could look into a genetic alteration to increase their gill efficiency to eliminate the drunken state and make them fully aquatic.

  The Baron had told him to hold off on that for now, but to keep it as a possibility for later. He needed to learn what the Tahm were first, before he decided to make any changes, and getting foodstuffs and basic shelters established for the 128 million Tahm he was getting was his top priority. A Kiritak colony had already been established on a world known as ‘Bench,’ but they were waiting for his design specifications before they started to construct facilities for the incoming amphibians. Right now the Kiritak were busy expanding their own mining and industry infrastructure, but Daegan only had 8 months to prep before the Preema convoys carrying all the Tahm arrived.

  He wished Davis had given him some more time to prep, but as he said he was being thrown in head first and had to adapt his way through all this. It was a massive challenge, but not one that Daegan felt was overwhelming. He knew the key was to take it one piece at a time while keeping the overall program in mind…yet without letting the mass of what was ahead crush him. Races didn’t become annexed in a single moment, it was a long transitional process even for the most applicable ones, and a virtually indefinite one for the recalcitrant races.

  And with their habitual lying, Daegan had a feeling he had gotten one of the recalcitrants.

  “Hello, Tahm 2,” he said as he walked through a door into a very humid chamber that was half deck and half pool with three of the Tahm floating in the water with their wide heads just above the surface. “I have more questions.”

  “Ask,” the deep voice said as the deceptively fat Tahm walked up the submerged stairs and stood before him. Tahm 2, for Daegan wasn’t even going to try to pronounce their original names, stood as high as his chest but was three times the Protovic’s width. He was biped, with two flipper-like arms that had fingers build into the webbing that could grasp objects about as well as Daegan could. However, they preferred grabbing a lot of objects with their very sticky tongue and pulling them towards them rather than walking a few extra steps and picking them up…so it wasn’t unusual to see little bits of saliva everywhere.

  “Warship construction,” Daegan said, sitting down in a chair after telekinetically brushing off a few droplets of liquid. “How did your ships compare to the V’kit’no’sat…and no embellishing please.”

  “I never embellish,” the Tahm lied. “Our ships were formidable, but considerably smaller than theirs. We preferred close combat, and could savage them when we got into range, but they cowardly held back and shot us from afar whenever they could. They could also reproduce much faster than us, so even if we killed 10 of them for every one of us, there was no way we could w
in the war. We eventually fell to the attrition and were forced to flee.”

  “You know this how? I assume you were not there.”

  “I was not, but we have extensive records. We will bring them with us. You can view them then.”

  “I plan to. You said you prefer close combat, why?”

  “It is the only honorable option.”

  “I see. How many warships do you possess now?”

  “None. The Preema took them from us. All we have are cargo ships.”

  “What did you do for the Preema? I doubt they would have taken you in without some form of compensation?”

  “They hate the water. They used us as slave labor.”

  “To do what, exactly?”

  “Fight the monsters in their deep worlds. They hate the water, but they have worlds that are completely covered by it. I think their egos made them. They could not pass over the worlds so they had to own them…but they could not without our help!”

  “What did they get from those worlds?”

  “Valuable resources from the sea floor…but it was guarded! We had to fight the aquatics down there on a regular basis to get even a small harvest.”

  “Harvest of what?”

  “Nodules. They are the excrement of some of the monsters, but certain ones contain concentrations of compounds only found in very small amounts in the water. The monsters collect them in their bodies over the years then, every now and then, drop them to the sea floor along with their foul excrement. We had to go down there and find them for the Preema, but we didn’t give them all of them. We hid some for ourselves.”

  “Do you know what exactly those compounds are?”

  “I can do better than that,” Tahm 2 said, closing his mouth and wiggling in place for a moment. Daegan heard a gurgling sound and suddenly the Tahm’s mouth opened and his tongue unfurled with a golf ball-sized gleaming green orb. His tongue dropped it into his hand, which he then held out to Daegan.

  “A gift to our new friends.”

  The Baron took it slowly between two fingers as the saliva dripped off it, finding it to be very heavy for its small size.

  “You kept this in your stomach the whole time?”

  “No. We have internal pouches in our stomach where we can save various things. The Preema never knew.”

  “Why didn’t this show up on our scans?”

  “Because we passed it back and forth,” Tahm 2 said, causing Daegan’s own stomach to clench up in disgust at the thought. Apparently gut swapping objects didn’t bother the Tahm at all. “We have two more, if you also want them.”

  “Are they all the same?”

  “No, they’re all different colors. We don’t know exactly what they are, but the Preema wanted them pretty bad.”

  “I think I know what this is,” the Baron offered. “It looks like corovon. Pure corovon.”

  “And what is that?”

  Daegan glanced at him oddly. “You’ve never heard of it? Or just don’t recognize our word?”

  Tahm 2 turned and shot his tongue out at a nearby shelf, grabbing a small device and pulling it to him. “I shall check.”

  Daegan waited while the Tahm reviewed the English language database the Preema had given them, then after several minutes he flung it aside, clattering on the floor and nearly falling into the water.

  “It says it’s a building product, but I have no knowledge of it. How valuable is it?”

  “It’s a very strong building product. And quite valuable. Not the rarest of the rare, but close. Normally you don’t see it in its pure form. You have to process enormous amounts of ore to get even a small amount of the raw material. Which is also why this is quite heavy.”

  “Pure stuff, huh?” Tahm 2 said, using a colloquialism that suggested he’d studied quite a lot to learn the Star Force language while the others hadn’t bothered to even learn two words. “How much is it worth?”

  “This right here could be used to produce decent civilian armor covering half a starship when combined with other materials.”

  “How big a starship?”

  “Half a mile long.”

  “And those cheap bastards never even bothered to share. Just gave us a few worlds and kept us there. We couldn’t trade with nobody, and they made us work collecting these to earn our ‘lease.’ Damn slavery if you ask me.”

  “I was told you didn’t want to come to Star Force?”

  “In truth I didn’t. Figured whatever you would have us do would be worse.”

  “So why give me this?”

  “You’re asking what we like to eat. The Preema never did. Gave us ghastly stuff before we were able to make our own.”

  “Are you traders?”

  “The best there ever were. The V’kit’no’sat envied our corporate empire, which was why they attacked. Couldn’t beat our prices and everyone came to us instead of them.”

  “You cheated them, didn’t you?” Daegan guessed.

  “Absolutely not! We never traded with them. They wouldn’t allow it. We were beneath their dignity to interact with…except when killing us, that is.”

  “How do you remember that much? Is historical study your specialty?”

  “We keep detailed records that all little, ah, Tahm are required to watch.”

  “Movies?”

  “Yes. What you call movies. That’s how we teach them, by example.”

  “And who creates these movies?”

  “The people who lived in that time.”

  “Not after?”

  “No, never. We couldn’t be assured of the truth of the matter if the recreations were not made by those who experienced the events.”

  “So no real data?”

  “Whenever possible, but most important things in life are not recorded…or recorded properly.”

  Even without his telepathy Daegan could infer what ‘properly’ meant to the Tahm.

  “Thank you, Tahm 2. If this is what I think it is, it’ll help us secure some credits that will go towards your new colony.”

  “You’re going to trade it? I thought Star Force didn’t pay for such things?”

  “We have a vibrant trade market, or did the Preema not tell you that?”

  “So we’re going to be charged for our new colony construction?”

  “No. No. Our markets are a luxury. All our important stuff we build for free. But that doesn’t mean I can’t put this on the market and get a little extra, you understand?”

  The Tahm smiled wide, with his mouth stretching farther than Daegan’s shoulders. “Oh I understand perfectly. You understand trade like we do.”

  “Perhaps not that much, but I learn fast.”

  “If you can make a deal on that one, I’ll get the other two to you soon. I don’t have them inside me at the moment. Nor do they,” he said, gesturing with his flipper towards the others in the chamber.

  “I’ll keep you updated,” Daegan promised, then turned and walked out while purging the orb of its saliva using his telekinesis and trying to keep it off his fingers. He squeegeed it all off before getting out into the clean hallway, then tossed the orb up in the air once, catching it as it fell and feeling his arm give slightly under its weight. It was damn heavy, and he was all but sure it was pure corovon, but he needed to make sure.

  “You are correct,” the Kiritak foreman assigned to his rapidly growing staff said after returning from the research lab. “It is pure corovon.”

  “Could it have been stolen from one of our warehouses here?” Daegan wondered, thinking that a small possibility but not wanting to rule it out entirely.

  “No. We don’t fashion them into orbs. Wastes too much space. We use cubes.”

  “Of course. Did you find any biomatter in this?”

  “None other than the Tahm saliva on the surface. The corovon lacing pattern is, well, irregular. A biological source sounds plausible, though I’ve checked our records and we have no knowledge of any race in or outside Star Force that produces corovon pellets.”


  “I imagine anyone who does know of such things would want to keep that knowledge to themselves. What can we use this for?”

  “You mean in the new colony?”

  “Yes.”

  “We use corovon in our building construction, but not for the Tahm. Those are weak structures just designed to temporarily hold them and our own buildings are already established. We don’t have any use for it until we start building the Tahm’s permanent structures, then it will be quite useful.”

  “And if we trade it away, can we get something of value for the temporary structures?”

  “We’re operating off of seed status now, so anything extra would be valuable,” the Kiritak said, meaning that after the initial Kiritak colony was constructed, all future building materials had to be mining, refined, and fabricated on site, for no additional supply convoys would be arriving to supplement them given how small a population the Tahm had.

  “How about some additional aquatics craft?”

  “Additional? We have none at the moment.”

  “Then use this and get whatever you can.”

  “Not my area of expertise, but Hohovni should be able to,” he said, referencing another of the few Kiritak that were here to help Daegan with the analysis of the Tahm and plan the construction efforts that would have to begin within a month.

  “I’ll get it to her then,” the Baron said, taking it back from the shorter biped.

  “You said they have more of them?”

  “Not sure if the others are corovon, but they said they were different colors.”

  “Not corovon then. It’s always green in pure form.”

  “That’s what I thought too. Digestion isn’t going to alter this, is it?”

  “I doubt it. That’s about as inert an object as you can get. Bonding it to other subatomic particles requires a massive amount of energy. I doubt a biological could ever produce a fraction of what was required.”

  “So how is this formed?”

  “Stripping it out from other stuff isn’t that complicated, but when the corovon particles get in close like that it’s hard to pull them apart.”