Star Force: Rajamal (SF97) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  2

  October 12, 3597

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

  Ennsop (Lir’nen outpost)

  The armored dilophosaurus knelt down next to a large chunk of rock and pushed with his strong legs, using his weight and the help of two Zen’zat to move the debris off the remains of the second Zen’zat that had been caught in the enemy ship’s suicide run. There was no mental signature to be found, but the Lir’nen was going to recover the body anyway. Part of the armor functions were still intact, allowing them to locate it amongst the crater where the ship fell, but the biometrics were signaling that he was dead.

  Never the less, missing both arms and a leg wasn’t always fatal and the chest armor looked to be in pretty good shape. The neck, though, had a gash across it and a piece of wood, no less, sticking out from the wound.

  “Pull him out,” the Lir’nen ordered, with the two Zen’zat accompanying him carefully extracting the body from the mess and laying it free on a more or less flat slab of dirt/rock beside them. Using his limited Lachka, the Lir’nen floated over a Kich’a’kat and placed it against the left arm socket. He arched a scaly eye ridge in mild surprise when it activated, melting into the wound and sinking its fibers out through what was left of the body.

  Several minutes passed before a heartbeat returned, and along with it a mental signature. That was good, for the other Zen’zat had been beyond help, and according to the limited logs he was pulling from the damaged armor the lesser internal Kich’a’kat components had revived and sustained him long enough before failing entirely to enable the rescue team to get here in time…but not by much. He would live, but he would be of no use in the upcoming fighting.

  The piece of wood detached from his neck on its own as the tissue there partially regenerated, but without supplemental materials to regrow it fully, the Zen’zat body was still a mangled mess. They would have to get him back to the outpost to regenerate everything, but one of the living Zen’zat took a knee beside him and peeled back the armor on his fingers so he could make a direct connection to the stricken mind and settle it as the Kich’a’kat withdrew, it’s work done.

  “What shall we do?” the other Zen’zat asked the Lir’nen, which stood slightly shorter but massed far more with its horizontal back and tail stretching out some 8 meters in length.

  “They will be avenged, and soon.”

  “We have no more combat Zen’zat.”

  “We won’t need them. These vermin are no match for us, so we’re going to take care of this here and now. We will not wait for backup. But we must keep some of them intact long enough to ascertain their source. The reckoning will not end here, I promise you that. Bring him,” he said as a small gunship being flown by another Zen’zat drifted over to them upon mental request and the partial, but living body was laid down next to the remains of the dead one as the Lir’nen and its two research assistants jumped up inside and rode back across the sky towards their small outpost.

  They were on a frontier world at the very edge of the V’kit’no’sat empire, and one not shared between races. This planet and system belonged to the Lir’nen, but their interest here was purely scientific. They were studying the internal makeup of the odd planet and making adjustments to mining equipment for use in other systems that faced similar difficulties. It was a research outpost only, not a proper colony, and there were only 6 Lir’nen here along with 9 Zen’zat, two of which were combat trained for security reasons. The rest were research staff.

  When the surviving Zen’zat was returned to the medical facility his limbs were regrown, but his status remained grim. His mind was non-responsive for 7 hours before suddenly waking up in a surge of pain and horror. A nearby Zen’zat tried to restrain him, but she was thrown across the room with a single arm thrust of the warrior as he punched and kicked and tore up the bed he was laying on and anything else nearby in a rage, but left the shell-shocked research assistant laying against the wall until one of the Lir’nen came rushing in.

  Unable to subvert the Zen’zat’s mind, the Lir’nen had to take to physical restraints. Had he been a warrior he might have been able to do it with Lachka, but his was trained for delicate manipulations of microscopic equipment, not brute force, so he was going to have to use his natural abilities to subdue the crazed survivor…which was easy enough.

  The Lir’nen took three steps toward him in a slow charge, lowering its head with its two cranial spines sparking to life and creating a convex bioshield that it used to ram the Zen’zat off its feet, then hit it two more times before pinning it between the shield, the floor, and a wall as it shouted telepathically.

  Be still! You have been rescued and are in no danger!

  But it was no use, and the Zen’zat even struck back against the bioshield. It didn’t use any of its psionics, only its limbs, and that suggested this wasn’t a thoughtful assault, merely the reaction of a mind that wasn’t fully functioning.

  The Lir’nen gave him a little room, just enough for the Zen’zat to get to his feet, then he rammed him again, harder this time, and pinned his soft flesh against the wall as the Lir’nen’s four eyes stared up into the face of the crazed warrior. He had to dig his feet in hard to keep the pressure up enough, otherwise even the weakened Zen’zat would have been able to free himself, but after another 20 seconds of struggling the resistance stopped and he fell unconscious to the floor as another Lir’nen arrived.

  “What did you do to him?” he asked as the Zen’zat slumped to the ground naked save for a pair of shorts.

  “I did nothing,” he explained, telekinetically lifting the Zen’zat onto his feet and dipping his short neck underneath to help lift him up onto another bed that hadn’t been destroyed in his rage. “He suffered an overload. The repairs were not complete.”

  “How so?”

  The Lir’nen waited to answer as the scanning equipment updated the statistics as the research Zen’zat slowly got to her feet and walked over to assist if needed.

  “He struck you?”

  “Yes,” she said, shaking it off. “Sloppily so. I believe he is striking anything in range due to a displacement.”

  “Explain.”

  “Something is not right internally, so much so that he can’t access it in order to attack it, so his warrior nature seeks out something else to attack. With limited brain functions an attack is warranted and needed, but he isn’t able to ascertain what to attack.”

  “You have seen this before in Zen’zat?”

  “No, but I remember an instance of it happening to a Hjar’at. I believe his injuries were also concussion based.”

  “Why is the Kich’a’kat not solving the problem?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Nor do I,” the other Lir’nen echoed. “We need a medical specialist.”

  “Very well, but I want this threat dealt with before they arrive. This is our score to settle.”

  “We will need time to fabricate battle armor,” the Zen’zat said neutrally.

  “Do so…for all of us.”

  She nodded and walked out, leaving her kin to the Lir’nen.

  “You mean for us to fight?”

  “This situation is insulting enough. I do not want to have to call for combat aid as well.”

  “They have another ship remaining. The tactic could be repeated once more.”

  “It is currently buried and functioning as the center of their base. If we go there first and eliminate it, we eliminate the threat. We can clean up the rest of them later.”

  “Do we know the exact location?”

  “Close enough. We will leave one Zen’zat here with the injured warrior. The rest of us will go and destroy the vessel, then move on to the rest with all haste.”

  “I have not fought in more than 9,000 years.”

  “Longer for me, but this is necessary. We must mitigate this disgrace as much as possible before the others are informed.”

  “There are no Lir’nen assets nearby,”
he said in understanding.

  “We will have to ask for medical aid from the Ari’tat or Voro’nam. I do not want to ask for their troops. Being defeated by primitives is humiliating enough. We must end this ourself.”

  “So be it. I will be ready.”

  “See that the others are. I will make sure this one remains sedated.”

  When the Lir’nen dropped from the gunship and into the jungle they were quickly met with enemy ground troops, but their weapons couldn’t penetrate their armor’s shields, let alone the plates, and the hip mounted Dre’mo’dons were killing the short, green-tailed invaders with single shots. They were quick on their feet, but otherwise totally unimpressive. The noncombat V’kit’no’sat had no trouble tracking down and killing them in the jungle, though at times a Lachka hold was necessary to maneuver one into shooting range.

  When they came to the underground caverns that crisscrossed the area and connected to the ship the Zen’zat went down, for the Lir’nen were a bit too big to fit comfortably. Instead they headed topside and ran up on the mound of dirt covering the ship while scanning below with their minds and taking control of those within range to ensure that the ship would not lift off.

  They held them in check as needed en mass to prevent a liftoff, but when the Zen’zat worked their way inside and the Lir’nen had fewer minds to handle they started overriding the biological impulses in the last few, preventing their bodies from breathing and shutting down their heartbeats, killing them from afar. Doing so was not easy, for they had to fight autonomic redundancies, but the rage they felt for these vermin encouraged the superior effort in the last few that the Zen’zat hadn’t gotten to yet.

  “The ship is clear,” one of them reported over the comm in their armor.

  “Begin downloads and route everything back to the central computer. Two Zen’zat stay, one to work and one to guard. The rest come with us. We have the remainder of this infestation to purge.”

  2 weeks later…

  An Ari’tat ship entered orbit over the planet, sending down a delegation of medical and security personnel to meet with the Lir’nen at the landing zone within the outpost. Two of the smaller Ari’tat led the ‘tall’ Zen’zat warriors out, behind which came two more Zen’zat carrying medical equipment as the tiny V’kit’no’sat hopped over to the waiting Lir’nen, looking up at them from their half meter height. It was galling that such a small race had territorial holdings greater than they did.

  “The injured Zen’zat is inside.”

  A mental command from the Ari’tat sent their Zen’zat off to find the damaged one, but the four warriors remained.

  “What have you learned of these attackers?”

  “They are expeditionary scouts tasked with gathering information and plucking what vulnerable worlds they can in advance of a larger invasion force. Their empire is primitive, but quite large.”

  “How large?” the Ari’tat asked.

  “It extends through two galactic arms. These vermin reproduce quickly, and such growth is their primary strength.”

  “Have you located a capitol?”

  “No. Their records are remarkably incomplete.”

  “Advanced scouts should not have such information,” the Ari’tat noted what it seemed to think should have been obvious. “How many remain on this world?”

  “None. We have exterminated all visible and I have Zen’zat looking for hidden survivors.”

  Another mental command and two of the Zen’zat warriors broke off from the group.

  “While we are here we will also search.”

  “If you feel the need. They are no threat to us here.”

  “A dead Zen’zat says otherwise.”

  “They crashed their ship deliberately in order to eliminate them.”

  “Admittedly that is odd, but they succeeded nonetheless.”

  “That they did.”

  “Do not consider your pride wounded, Lir’nen. This is an assault to all V’kit’no’sat, and we must respond accordingly.”

  “We claim priority.”

  “And you shall have it, I assume. But you will not pursue this alone unless you have far more resources than we are aware.”

  “You needn’t bother with it. Their technology is primitive.”

  “Is this an attack of ignorance?”

  “We do not know. Their commander was not recovered and their subordinates know nothing.”

  “A bit too hasty in your counterattack?”

  “They are clones without differing markings.”

  “Curious. Have you recovered any of their technology?”

  “We have one of their ships intact.”

  “May we see it?”

  “It is not here. It remains buried where they were building their infrastructure.”

  “Building? Not gathering?”

  “It is not a temporary camp. They were putting down permanent roots from which to spread from.”

  “Rather than assault directly?”

  “They never struck at the outpost. They came here with few numbers and intended to increase them on planet. Gestation time to full adult is something inside of two months.”

  “Do you feel this primitive enemy is greater than their limited technology?”

  “I am waiting for our warriors to make that determination.”

  “What did your Zen’zat warriors say prior to being defeated?”

  The Lir’nen huffed once at the word ‘defeated.’ “Irrelevant.”

  “It’s a pertinent question.”

  “That was their assessment of the vermin, not mine of your question.”

  “Do these vermin have a name?”

  “Li’vorkrachnika.”

  “It needs to be erased from the galaxy.”

  “It will be,” the Lir’nen promised.

  With a mixed contingent of Zen’zat in the medical facility there were no factional disagreements here. Though they may have served different masters, they served the V’kit’no’sat overall and the camaraderie between Zen’zat across the empire was never in doubt. One of their own was damaged and another was dead…and they all wanted vengeance.

  They were here now to attend to the Zen’zat before them. The medics to scan and correct if possible, the warriors to restrain if needed, but primarily here to stand by their brother. All Zen’zat were selected individually out of the Ter’nat population, isolated until they were upgraded and joined the V’kit’no’sat as elite servants, and in that union they entered into a brotherhood that was not feeble. Zen’zat were not a faction within the V’kit’no’sat, for they held no territory of their own, but the bonds between them were as strong as any of the races, and perhaps more so because of the factional divisions they had to straddle while maintaining their neutrality and unity.

  What the medics finally had to report was not good. The Zen’zat’s mind had been damaged from the prolonged lack of blood flow. Portions of it, while physically repaired, had gaps that left his mind incomplete. He was fighting phantoms and unable to be reasoned with, which meant he was no longer fit to be a Zen’zat.

  That meant he was effectively dead. In that situation most Zen’zat would prefer to be eliminated, but the medics indicated that there was a possibility of longer term recovery and the Zen’zat agreed that he deserved the chance to one day recover his position amongst them. It was unlikely that he could succeed, but if he could achieve the position the first time in his life then he had what it took to do so again.

  The Zen’zat negated his service to the Lir’nen on their own authority and took him into their own custody, arranging for a transfer via the Ari’tat to take him back to a Ter’nat world where Zen’zat too damaged to continue their service were sent to recover with the help of those that took orders from their elite kin. Zen’zat had assignments to carry out and could not waste time trying to elevate another, but they would make sure this Zen’zat had everything he needed in order to have a chance to relearn the skills, knowledge, and balance missing from hi
s mind.

  And until he arrived there, he would have a Zen’zat honor guard the entire way until he was ‘retired,’ after which he would officially be on his own, though other Zen’zat would monitor and give orders from afar as to how his recovery team should aid him…and if his recovery should not manifest, a Zen’zat would return in time to give their brother a proper death. They would not leave him to wither away as a Ter’nat. He would die a Zen’zat, one way or another.

  3

  December 15, 3597

  Tham’ron System (V’kit’no’sat Sector Capitol)

  Weech

  “The reports we’ve received indicate a significantly large, yet primitive empire that is rapidly expanding towards our border,” a Lir’nen said, standing on the floor of the Hall of Imperium as councilors from the various races in the V’kit’no’sat listened. “Their attack proved fortuitous in the death of a Zen’zat and the crippling of another, however subsequent analysis of thought patterns suggest such tactics are not a fluke and that these Li’vorkrachnika exhibit a cleverness that allows them to exceed their technological limitations. Coupled with an aggressive reproduction rate and the casual regard for preservation of their own lives, they are essentially a single, unified weapon bent on conquest of the galaxy.”

  “Are you suggesting we should be concerned with them?” the Brat’mar said with a measure of contempt.

  “No. Only that they mistakenly believe that they can attack us with impunity and others who believe the same need to be taught a lesson. Wiping them all out will take a large amount of effort, not in the difficulty of combat but in the sheer number of systems required to be assaulted. We are recommending that…”

  “There is no point in half measures,” the huge Oso’lon said, bypassing the lesser races and jumping into the conversation immediately. “Either they are too primitive to be concerned about or they need to be annihilated. Which is it?”

  “They have killed a Zen’zat,” the Hjar’at stated coolly, “and exploited a weakness in the Lir’nen outpost. They have made a successful attack against us. That should be all the explanation you require.”