Star Force: Mak'to'ran (3) Read online

  “Never mind us. We will do our duty. Restore the empire, Era’tran. That is something Zen’zat cannot do.”

  Mak’to’ran’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the Zen’zat’s slightly disrespectful, but appropriate challenge.

  “We intend to.”

  2

  April 18, 3622

  Nezad System (V’kit’no’sat territory)

  Kabbter

  Having stayed on his ship for the duration, Mak’to’ran oversaw the quick and relatively easy takeover of the planet. Many of the inhabitants were sympathetic to his goals and did not resist while others actively helped, but it was the Zen’zat that were the primary arbiters of the transition. As it turned out they, like many on other planets, were very reluctant to fight each other and the various races in this Stun War, seeing it as a violation of their duty to the V’kit’no’sat. No side had been sanctioned by Itaru so they were left without a clear line of authority…at least until Mak’to’ran had arrived.

  He might be a rogue, but he was an Era’tran and his reputation and stated goal of reforging the bonds of unity in the V’kit’no’sat automatically snapped most Zen’zat to his command when he entered a conflicted system, for they were in a no-win scenario and they saw him as leading an honorable path out of it.

  Mak’to’ran didn’t disappoint, and rather than put in Era’tran overseers, he had brought both Lir’nen and Bav’tor from other systems that had proved loyal and quickly supplanted them in the leadership positions in both colonies on the planet as well as their own captured warships, returning most to the possession of the planet while keeping a few and manning them with volunteers to join the rebel fleet that would soon have to run or risk being caught by the Itaru hunter fleets.

  They still hadn’t been able to catch or pin down Mak’to’ran’s ship, but the others in the rebel fleet were not as fast and could not outrun the hunters. Keeping them useful but safe was tricky, but an experienced naval commander knew ways to get it done and one of those was to keep scouts in the nearest systems to watch the jumplines.

  One of them had just arrived, giving him an approximate arrival time of a fleet of 12 Oso’lon-allied vessels, all Kafcha-class. Mak’to’ran had enough ships here to make a fight of it even without the help of those now returned to the planet, but his mission was to reunite the empire, not whittle it down with pointless combat. To that end he immediately dispatched every other ship in the rebel fleet on a jumpline opposite to where the hunters would be incoming, but he stayed behind to continue to coordinate events on the surface until the 12 ships arrived and quickly moved out to the planet to intercept him.

  Mak’to’ran did move his ship to an outgoing jumpline to another small planet, barely larger than an asteroid, but it would be enough gravitational pull to redirect off of. Sitting there in orbit he waited for the hunters to come out of their microjump then contacted them directly. Seeing that he was poised to outrun them again they held position and chose to respond to the comm.

  “Tell me, Zep’sha. What is the point of chasing if you aren’t going to get any faster ships?” he taunted, with the diplodocus glaring back at him through the hologram.

  “You can’t run forever.”

  “I have been for nearly 2 decades and you refuse to alter tactics. I don’t anticipate any difficulties going forward.”

  “What would you suggest?” the Zep’sha scoffed.

  “Switch sides,” he answered pithily.

  “Your treason will not be tolerated, let alone augmented. Stand down and return to Itaru as ordered.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Because it is commanded.”

  “We have true traitors in our midst. How can you be sure your orders do not originate from them?”

  The hunter hesitated before speaking, and that told Mak’to’ran a great many things.

  “Itaru is more than just one race. The condemnation of your insolence is unanimous.”

  “So the Era’tran condemn me as well?”

  “They stick to their racial loyalty, as typical.”

  “Then it’s not unanimous. Your arrogance is not an excuse for lying. If Itaru is not united, do not claim it to be so!”

  “The order issued is valid even if not all Elder representatives agree. You are to return.”

  “Are you aware of the assassination attempts made against me?”

  “No, nor do I care. Our orders and yours are clear.”

  “There are factions that want me dead, and many more that want me silenced. My returning to Itaru only helps my enemies. It does not aid the V’kit’no’sat. I am loyal to the empire, and if Itaru is not then their orders no longer possess authority.”

  “You are delusional.”

  “And you are blind. The empire is fractured, Itaru has no real control, and we are on the verge of a lethal civil war even if the treason of Terraxis does not come to light. When I am seeking to unify, what message does it send when Itaru tries to silence me?”

  “That Itaru is still in control and that no rogue may replace them.”

  “Am I responsible for the fracturing?”

  “On a large scale, no, but you are encouraging dissidents.”

  “Perhaps Itaru should spend less attention on me and more on the state of the empire.”

  “Perhaps they would if you heeded their order and returned.”

  “Do not throw such weak lies at me. It is insulting. If you are going to lie at least try and make them convincing. Have you no shred of pride left in you?”

  “We serve the empire, not our pride.”

  “You young fool. Without pride we are nothing. Pride is rooted in truth, and there cannot be dominance without truth. Assertions of superiority are worthless if they cannot be backed up, and the willingness to verify comes from pride. With no pride you are little more than a slave.”

  “Pride blinds. We are loyal and do what is required of us.”

  “Pride prevents what is ‘required’ from violating the bounds of honor. Following orders cannot be our top priority. Maintaining the integrity of the V’kit’no’sat and our mandate to fight the Hadarak will always come first, and if Itaru stands in the way of that, then it must be ignored.”

  “Never. Itaru defines our priorities, not you.”

  “This priority was the founding principle of the V’kit’no’sat. Even Itaru does not have the authority to override it.”

  “There you are mistaken.”

  “Tell me, fool, what is a greater priority than fighting the Hadarak?”

  “Maintaining the empire, which includes enforcing Itaru’s orders.”

  “The dominant do not maintain, they overcome. They rise above. We are constantly growing and improving, not maintaining. You advocate stagnation.”

  “You advocate anarchy.”

  “No. I advocate we turn our unified attention back against the Hadarak as we probe to find the heretics within us. Having our fleets here in defensive posture accomplishes nothing and risks much if the border is vulnerable to penetration.”

  A side prompt alerted Mak’to’ran to another comm channel opening, but not from the planet. It was coming from another of the hunter ships.

  Using his Sav-enhanced mind he opened a textual transmission with them while continuing his vocal conversation with the Zep’sha. The ship in question was Sevn’orr, which was one of the few amphibian races, but unlike the Dan’chey this race didn’t like to live on shorelines. They were equally comfortable dry or fully submerged, giving them a huge advantage as a civilization as well as ties to both the Oso’lon and J’gar. They had sided with the Oso’lon, but these long-necked quadrupeds also had good relations with the aquatics and shared many worlds with them.

  So far they hadn’t taken part in any of the fighting, lethal or stun, and theirs was one of the more stable races that was strong, but not particularly fast to act. Their backing Itaru made sense, but the messages being exchanged between the unnamed individual and Mak’to’ran indicated that th
ey were very displeased with the situation and that this individual had been sent to make contact with him by their leaders.

  Mak’to’ran knew it could be a trap, but there were ways to protect against such things and as he continued to berate and size up the Zep’sha…who was showing signs of wavering ideologically but was in no way going to disobey orders…he arranged for a rendezvous over a year into the future and far from this system.

  After that the banter continued until he grew tired of it and gave the order to make the microjump. The hunters immediately backtracked to the star and tried to intercept his ship there, and while they did get there first they couldn’t get close enough to fire any disabling weaponry. Mak’to’ran slipped through their grasp again as he accelerated on an interstellar jump so fast they had no hope of catching up and seeing where he would go next at the destination system…which meant he had effectively lost them again, assuming they didn’t have scouts ahead.

  As for Kabbter, the hunters couldn’t do anything to them. The system defense fleet was larger and they had no authority. Mak’to’ran had already made a complete overthrow of the locals and had brought enough loyal people in that he could trust to insure that those deposed didn’t regain their positions. The planet was now out of the Stun Wars and it would be a long time before anyone from the Bav’tor or Lir’nen leadership could react to the change in power…and by that time the planet would be firmly in Mak’to’ran’s little rebellious empire, even if they didn’t advertise that fact.

  The idea was to make the necessary changes and then have these worlds he was altering blend into the existing framework, essentially going dormant from a rebellious point of view, but quietly holding themselves together and preventing outsiders from coming in and destabilizing them again. If sufficiently high ranked Lir’nen or Bav’tor came to Kabbter there would be a problem, but if they only communicated by Urrtren or by courier the messages, then any orders they contained stoking further conflict would be ignored or reworked to maintain the allegiances of the two races sharing the single world.

  They would not be wasting resources in a pointless war, though in truth this was but a very minor planet and not worth much effort, but every dot on the galactic map mattered to loyal V’kit’no’sat and Mak’to’ran wasn’t going to skip over any of them. If the major fighting started to happen, then small worlds such was this would suddenly become important when the primary worlds got trashed and if the V’kit’no’sat were going to have to be rebuilt from the ashes of a civil war, the more little bastions of stability that Mak’to’ran could arrange beforehand the more he’d have to work with in the aftermath.

  Right now Kabbter was on its own, but in a much better situation than just a few days ago. Feeling satisfied with his mission there, Mak’to’ran continued through several system jumps before coming across the checkpoint for his rebel fleet…or at least part of it, for he had ships operating across the galaxy and the few put into play here were a drop in a bucket that continued to fill.

  When he arrived at the rendezvous there were only six ships, but he soon received the standard report indicating that all had arrived without incident and the others had proceeded onward according to previously logged orders. Those here were the head counter that reported to Mak’to’ran to insure no one was lost and the five recently acquired ships, four of which were Lir’nen and one was Bav’tor. They had plenty of Zen’zat on them as well, and it was time to take them to what would be their new staging base.

  Mak’to’ran dismissed the Kret’net Domjo to return on its own, with it immediately switching its identification codes to match a ship not labeled as a rogue, thus allowing it to move freely throughout V’kit’no’sat space. Mak’to’ran never traveled under such subterfuge, and so far none of his rebel fleet had been targeted. Whether that was by skill, luck, or lack of commitment on the part of Itaru’s minions he wasn’t sure, but the more public he became the greater emphasis there was on capturing or killing him and not his phantom fleet.

  That was the hope at least, and right now he had 5 more ships to work into the fold and crews that were mostly new. They now had veteran commanders, but in order to sustain them all they had to have sponsors and such sponsorship had to occur outside of public view. Kabbter would provide cover as far as crew assignments went, logging those individuals onboard as being present on the planet and the ships would not be labeled as missing by the local authorities, though word would inevitably get out through the Urrtren as the arrogant visibly counted ships and spotted inconsistencies.

  None of the five ships had engines the equal of Mak’to’ran’s Kafcha, so he was forced to travel slowly as he escorted them through obsolete systems that were not actively monitored while avoiding those that were. Thanks to the gravity drive efficiency and power of V’kit’no’sat ships, even the slowest of them had access to far more jumplines than the other races in the galaxy, making it hard to pin them down to an area unless you had an enormous number of scouts in play with access to the Urrtren to spread information faster than the ships could make jumps.

  The small flotilla didn’t encounter any through the 7 additional jumps they made, the terminus of which was a rendezvous with a V’kit’no’sat cargo ship. It was half the size of a Kafcha and was carrying both supplies and equipment necessary to service the crews. The Zen’zat were completely replaced by others, bringing those new volunteers into a network that would reassign them to other places across the galaxy and taking advantage of the fact that they were present in all territories serving all the races. Them not having their own territory was a huge advantage in this situation and the reassigning of them was something that the Era’tran handled more than other races, giving them the perfect cover to continually spread out and quietly test the allegiance and tensions of every system and starship in the galaxy.

  Those Zen’zat replacing them were those that needed to disappear or were not interested in infiltration. Many were not, but simply wanted to serve the V’kit’no’sat and Mak’to’ran’s rebel forces seemed to be the only faction that was holding to unity while others were greedily scrambling to grab up everything they could before the main fight broke out.

  That still worried Mak’to’ran. These traitors hiding in their midst. No matter how much time he spent thinking on it the only two races that could be responsible were the Oso’lon and J’gar…and yet he could easily rule them out given their positions. The possibility of someone else obtaining access to the Zak’de’ron codes seemed more plausible, but that would indicate a knowledge level that no V’kit’no’sat race possessed…at least as far as was known. The Era’tran could do things now that the others were not aware of, and even Mak’to’ran hadn’t know that until Hamob had informed him, but usurping the mantle of the Zak’de’ron was something he still couldn’t wrap his mind around, especially since the Oso’lon and the J’gar would be the ones most capable of doing it…yet they didn’t need to because they had their own priority coding.

  That meant he had to work a problem within a problem, but the one threating to destroy the empire in the here and now was the arrogant and their corruption that was fueling this paranoia and internecine.

  To that end he departed immediately, allowing the new ships to integrate the way others had been doing for years as he took his Kafcha off towards his next mission to another system that needed an attitude change. He’d rendezvous with another assembled rebel fleet near to it, then go in alone and size up the situation. Each one was different, but the growing trend was clear.

  Many of the V’kit’no’sat, regardless of race, were fed up with the pointless fighting. They wanted to fight the traitors, but until they could be identified they were not interested in pressing old and current disagreements to the point of armed conflict…and they really didn’t like the change of territory these Stun Wars were seeing. Races were already restricted by Itaru to the amount of territory and population they could wield and it was obvious to many that greed was fueling these conflicts more th
an paranoia at the leadership levels.

  A lot of people wanted a firm hand steering them in the right direction, and Mak’to’ran was providing that. He’d enter a system that was on the verge of murdering one another and suddenly half the population would snap into line, making it all the more obvious that Itaru had lost the respect of the empire and no longer had enough loyal forces to compel their edicts…which was why so many factions were springing up. Everyone knew the score now, and some of the factions, particularly Yaquik’s Hjar’at, were now wielding more influence than Itaru without technically defying them.

  The Hjar’at and others still had representatives that made up Itaru, but between the obvious alliance between Yaquik and the Era’tran and the fact that the Hjar’at stubbornness was legendary, Itaru knew better than to give them an order that they wouldn’t follow. Right now the appearance of lack of open rebellion was something they could use to try and shore up support amongst smaller races and loyal systems, but with every year that passed Itaru was less capitol ruling an empire and more a strong yet splintering faction in competition with all the others.

  The Era’tran were the most prominent race outside the Oso’lon and J’gar that was still intact, and fear of their unified military and tightness with the Zen’zat kept anyone from attacking them directly, as was their reluctance to attack others. So there was a workable stalemate on Era’tran borders with many negotiations happening openly and behind the scenes to benefit from that, with Hamob and the Era’tran leaders busy with reshaping portions of the empire while Mak’to’ran was working almost independently and functioning as the lightning rod for instability, pulling it away from Era’tran territory and attracting rogue elements from other races that had no interest in joining another race…but a rebellion made up of a multitude of races mirroring the original V’kit’no’sat empire was another matter entirely.

  So he rarely returned to Era’tran territory, with their supplies and ships coming out to him when needed, often through dead drops, and it was to one of those he went to enroute to the next mission rendezvous. He picked up a few personnel and supplies in a cargo module left behind on a planet filled with primitives so pathetic that the V’kit’no’sat didn’t even bother to monitor them.