Star Force: Veracious (SF48) Read online

  Kyler didn’t know how many assault pillars they had back in their home systems, but he got the feeling they would be making a whole lot more in the coming decades, for now they knew that their boomsticks could get the job done, and Kyler suspected that the stronger Star Force and the ADZ became, the more attention they were going to draw.

  And from the look of things, the lizards weren’t considering them to be a minor threat anymore.

  2

  April 2, 2534

  Solar System

  Earth

  Scrolling down through the list of battles, Paul mentally chose the one he wanted and the V’kit’no’sat hologram shifted to the file in less than a hundredth of a second, giving him the post-mission statistics, sensor records, and analysis of the Hjar’at’s assault on the world of Daspoelna. It was one of thousands of high level battles that the pyramid database had logged inside of it, with Paul growing more intrigued with those records as the years passed. Star Force’s technology wasn’t close to catching up with the V’kit’no’sat’s yet, but the more they advanced the more relevant these records became, and he needed to understand their ultimate nemesis long before they encountered them face to face.

  The Hjar’at were the most militant of the V’kit’no’sat races…and that was saying something. All were highly skilled and aggressive, but the Hjar’at more so than the rest with a biology to match. Their Saroto’kanse’vam were not natural to their bodies, rather a genetic upgrade that gave them the powerful plate/spikes that ran from their necks down their back and all the way to their tail tip. They’d been given permission for the upgrade by the other races because of their affinity for hand to hand combat, and the transformation had suited them perfectly.

  They were deadly on the ground, combining their body armor with the Saroto’kanse’vam into a living, breathing mech that was far more agile than anything Star Force had constructed. Most of the time they ran around dominating their foes with discharge attacks or used the weaponry built into their armor, allowing them to act as a mobile turret while their Zen’zat handled the smaller threats. It wasn’t until they faced a truly dangerous foe did their full range of skills become evident, even above and beyond what Paul had seen in their training vids.

  The battle records he was looking through now contained one such instance, dated some 439,826 years ago, that occurred in the densely populated core of the galaxy. The star systems there were so packed together that a region a few lightyears in diameter would hold more systems than Star Force’s Core Region did, which made navigation far more tricky, often requiring a lot of short jumps to get through an area. Only once you got further out into the galaxy did the spacelanes open up and you could make longer jumps.

  The V’kit’no’sat had such good navigational capabilities that they would actually surf the gravitational eddies and travel on curved jumplines when they moved through the core, which required very precise charts and a level of technical skill that Star Force didn’t currently possess. This allowed them to have a much greater freedom of movement through the core than other races did, meaning where others hid away from the galaxy the V’kit’no’sat had an easier time finding…though there were so many systems and races in the core that it made the rest of the galaxy seem sparsely populated in comparison.

  It was that densely packed population that the V’kit’no’sat dominated over, and Paul could see why they spent their time there and not expanding out towards the rim. There was so much density that there was no reason for them to look outside of it…save for they’re being the badasses that they were. That also explained why the V’kit’no’sat were only interested in colonizing worlds with a very specific set of qualities, which in Earth’s case included the water to land ratio along with other concerns. The water dwelling races held considerable sway over the V’kit’no’sat and when they colonized new worlds it was usually a shared endeavor, so landlocked worlds were out of the question.

  The world that Paul was looking at now was the reverse of Earth, with more land than water, but still sizeable oceans that the V’kit’no’sat had wanted…trouble was it was inhabited, meaning they were going to have to conquer the indigenous races in order to claim it. Normally that wasn’t a problem and the V’kit’no’sat got what they wanted, but in this case they had to fight exceptionally hard to claim it.

  There were many races on Daspoelna, such as on Earth, but only two that were advanced enough to cause the V’kit’no’sat any concern. They had no names in the records, for they were not a spacefaring race with relationships in the surrounding area…and the V’kit’no’sat had wiped them out before learning their language or even what they called themselves. Normally any race worthy of the V’kit’no’sat’s attention garnered an evaluation team that would investigate, learn, and catalog information about their subjects, which was why the pyramid database was so massive, containing files on 1.2 million different races…and those were only the ones that had drawn their interest.

  The core was full of races that the V’kit’no’sat simply didn’t wish to conquer and they ignored them up until they had reason not to. Daspoelna had been one such world, but when the light assault team comprised of Rit’ko’sor and Zen’zat they’d sent to the planet subsequently got massacred on the ground, that drew a very serious response, for the V’kit’no’sat were not accustomed to losing…at all.

  Paul found it odd that they hadn’t used their fleet, which sat in orbit and simply monitored the ground war. At first he thought that was out of pride and that the V’kit’no’sat wanted to beat the enemy on the ground rather than admit they were inferior and just blast away from orbit…but then later on in the battle record he saw that the natives had some incredibly powerful anti-orbital ‘guns’ that shot down some of the V’kit’no’sat transports as they tried to land too close to a particularly sensitive region of the planet.

  That really perplexed Paul, but as he dug through the records…which were not indexed well…he discovered a surprising fact. Whereas the V’kit’no’sat were a technologically advanced race with genetic engineering, these two races on Daspoelna were biologically advanced races that accomplished everything they needed without what would traditionally be considered technology, right down to the beefy ‘lightning’ weapon that was throwing up what the V’kit’no’sat had tagged as Icara’moson energy.

  It was a very high end weapon, and one that the V’kit’no’sat couldn’t fully defend against with their smaller craft, for it seemed to have a shield penetrating capability. A side note in the records indicated the necessary shield matrix to defend against it, which had been added as a post-battle entry after the remains of the natives were studied and cataloged.

  It appeared that the two races on the planet had not colonized space by choice rather than lack of means, and were more than capable of defending themselves against the V’kit’no’sat. Why they didn’t fire on the ships in orbit he wasn’t sure. Maybe it was their pride working against them as well, but whatever the case there was one continent on the planet that had to be approached by land, otherwise whatever came into it would get toasted by mountain-sized turrets that dotted the landscape, which forced the V’kit’no’sat to ground their troops on the far side and work their way around in a major ground campaign.

  Which is what the Rit’ko’sor had done after losing transports on a direct approach, then when they encountered the natives they were beaten handily by the giants, which were the size of a 2-story building and bigger for the land race, with the swimmers being even more monstrous.

  Paul ran through several more reports, trying to piece together some sort of summary that the records lacked. It seemed an enormous amount of data had been cataloged, but was then never organized afterward, like a stack of papers on a messy desk. Everything was there, but if you hadn’t been the one doing the writing then you were going to have to piece together everything on your own…which was typical V’kit’no’sat thinking. If you needed the data then you’d understand it already�
�and if you didn’t, then you’d have to suffer through the learning curve as penance.

  Which Star Force and the trailblazers in particular had already been going through. The way the database was ‘organized’ was less odd now than it had been in the beginning, but there was still a lot of searching that had to be done, without any ‘google’ function to use. But being self-sufficient had its advantages, one being an abundant amount of time to do some digging, which eventually led Paul to realize that of all the various races on Daspoelna, none were wild. They were all biological constructs or hybridizations created by the natives to serve a particular function.

  That hadn’t occurred to the V’kit’no’sat until the later days of the brief war, when the forests and oceans suddenly seemed to come to the aid of the two races with the lesser ones going kamikaze and throwing themselves at the V’kit’no’sat, sometimes just latching on to slow them down while the combat-capable ones made the kill.

  The entire planet of beings belonged to the nameless races, which resulted in a second major defeat for the V’kit’no’sat, and one of the few in the Hjar’at’s personal history.

  That didn’t stand, as more reinforcements were called in and a huge offensive began, both on the land and in the water, with the water war seeming to be the more savage, improbable as that was. The natives didn’t wear armor like the V’kit’no’sat did, but instead they grew it on their bodies, both the water race and the land race, with the later having very thick, rock-like plates that reminded Paul of dragon scales a bit, though they were much larger.

  But despite their bulk the giants were faster than the Hjar’at…which was what prompted the V’kit’no’sat race to show their full power in order to try and counter them.

  Paul didn’t believe what he was seeing at first, then began to reconcile a few facts as he went along. The Hjar’at were jumpers, and impossible ones at that, which he guessed, no, he knew had to be due to the anti-grav properties within their armor. The Zen’zat armor that had been left in the pyramid had the same design for drifting and dropping applications rather than flight, but Paul had been able to use it to jump really far when he and the others had messed around with it initially. Their Archon armor was still wholly inferior to it, but they were steadily closing the gap with every revision that they made.

  That said, the Hjar’at had to be doing a lot of the jumping off of muscle in order for the armor to amplify it such. He had seen training videos of the Hjar’at outside their armor, moving, running, and jumping, but nothing to this extent. Now he wasn’t sure if they’d just been taking it easy in the training vids or they really needed their armor to escalate their battle abilities…and he was starting to think it was the former, for all of the other Hjar’at battle records he’d studied had them in armor as well, and none of them showed the huge dinosaurs to be moving with this much agility.

  There were different sizes of Hjar’at, just like there were different sizes of Human, but those deployed into battle were not young ones, meaning they all had sufficient size…equal to a small house…yet they moved with reflexes that more befitted a cat. And still the giants were faster than them, and capable of throwing off energy attacks of their own from some of their armor plating, or what looked like it, with Paul identifying the places on their arms, chest, and head where they could release their various bioweapons from.

  The fighting got intense even before the ‘wildlife’ came to the giants’ aid, with the giants having a slight advantage…and Paul was keenly interested in the fact that the giants were bipedal and not quadrupeds like the Hjar’at. As he studied their interactions he had the feeling, or more accurately was hoping for the feeling, that bipedal combat was somewhat frustrating to them, for that was what Star Force mechs were patterned on, and if they were ever to go hand to hand with the Hjar’at in the future it would be in a bipedal mech, for there was little chance of doing it in their Archon armor…though he knew Morgan would argue that point.

  Though it was hard to believe, the Hjar’at could run faster than they could, and their maneuvering capabilities in close range were astounding. Paul thought he could dance around one with effort, but with their ability to simply shoot him with their armor’s cannons or their Saroto’kanse’vam he didn’t think they’d last long unless they gained access to the higher level psionics…and even then it’d be dicey.

  The trailblazer was still in awe at how easily they moved. It seemed one of their favorite attacks against the giants was a blindsided run-up, with their target’s attention elsewhere so it couldn’t evade, whereupon the Hjar’at would sprint forward and transition into a bit of a hopping gait, then plant its face into the ground just short of the giant and use it as a pivot point as it brought its Saroto’kanse’vam to life with a neon blue glow, then flipped over onto its back into a lightning fast roll. The first few back spines imbedded into the ground, with the larger ones in the center of its back cutting the giant and sticking into it as the Hjar’at’s tail came up and did the same.

  With the Saroto’kanse’vam melting through the bioarmor and digging in deep, the Hjar’at would either knock it down from the impact or twist it down from its new grip points, then flip over and right itself with several very damaging thrashes that would leave the giant either dead or heavily wounded. Paul saw the Hjar’at try this multiple times, but with the giants’ speed they had to catch them off guard or they’d evade easily and catch the Hjar’at with its belly exposed. Paul saw several get pinned to the ground that way as a giant dodged to the side then moved back in as the Hjar’at flipped, landing an arm on its armored underside to pin it to the ground with its primary offensive capability dug into the dirt and unable to fire.

  Several Hjar’at died from such a maneuver, but the rest didn’t seem to hesitate to try when they thought they had a chance at it, for it was a very quick kill if they executed it properly, and they could recover and get back up on their feet literally as fast as a cat or dog could, making Paul reassess Star Force’s limited hope of battling them with mechs. The V’kit’no’sat word for the technology was ‘Kelzat,’ which loosely translated meant ‘strong war,’ but oddly enough they never used the technology themselves, though many other races did…and now Paul knew why.

  The Hjar’at, when in armor, were far superior to any mech and made the neo look like a plodding rock in comparison…underscoring just how far Star Force had to go to find a viable counter, aside from orbital bombardment, which Paul still favored when there weren’t bystanders or his own troops to get hit.

  Paul spent several hours going over that one battle record, seeing that the V’kit’no’sat eventually overwhelmed the natives with a combination of greater numbers and the addition of three other races to the assault force…as well as a handful of Hjar’at ultras. Those literally were walking buildings, far larger and stronger than their smaller kin, enhanced to massive size by V’kit’no’sat growth enhancements so they could drop the hammer on the bigger races, and this situation definitely qualified.

  Still, they didn’t dominate, and had to fight a very long and hard effort to beat their way into the central zone of the native civilization and end their land-based resistance while a group of V’kit’no’sat swimmer races did the same in the oceans. Both assault groups came out of the attack with heavy casualties, but above all else the V’kit’no’sat ego had to be satisfied and they finished off their opponents hand to hand without resorting to any sort of naval activity other than shipping in more troops and ensuring that none of the natives fled into space…though none actually tried, preferring to slug it out on the ground to the last man.

  Which is exactly what happened. The V’kit’no’sat were not interested in taking prisoners and went about exterminating every living thing on the planet that moved, then burning the vegetation and everything else off the land and introducing a biological ‘destroyer’ to the oceans that likewise purged them over the course of several months as the microbe multiplied and erased everything from the waters.


  After the planet had been thoroughly cleansed, the V’kit’no’sat terraformed it to their liking and moved in, claiming their prize after eradicating one of the strongest races in the galaxy…and who knew how many more of them were out there, spread across the galactic arms or buried deep in the core with too many systems to count.

  Checking the time on his watch, Paul bookmarked that particular battle record for later review, then headed over to the training areas in the pyramid, needing to meet up with Ben-044 and Wes-049 at 4:30 for a challenge run.

  3

  April 4, 2534

  Sevvna System (beyond the ADZ)

  Outer Asteroid Belt

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” a Regular commando said softly, walking in on Bri-921 as she held a splits suspended with her feet on small padded blocks so she could get a few degrees past 180.

  The Archon ranger looked up at him, holding her stretch. “It’s alright. You have news?”

  The commando nodded. “Scout just came back. We’ve got a probable location.”

  “Good,” Bri said deeply, her voice laced with a bit of lingering anger. “Tell them to get my ship ready. I’ve got a workout to finish, then I’ll be up to command.”

  “As you wish, Archon,” he said with an abbreviated bow, then turned to walk back out the open doorway he’d entered through.

  “Don’t say it like that,” Bri complained, prompting the man to turn back around. “You make me sound like Vader.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind,” she said, rolling her eyes and waving him off with her left hand, careful not to throw off her precarious balance. Her hand came back down and rested on her leg as the commando left, with Bri’s eyes glancing at the clock on the wall. It read 4:21 and was counting up, meaning she had another 39 seconds to hold this stretch before switching to another.