Star Force: Legacy of the Ancients (Star Force Universe Book 59) Read online

  3

  February 12, 128548

  Unexplored Frontier

  Beta Temple

  Bar’ku entered the Beta Temple via the bridge along with 329 other people, though he was the only non-Human amongst them. The Kret’net was the only amongst his Knight race that had learned to make the breakthrough to Essence…and that was only because an Archon had taken the time to teach him.

  Bar’ku was a Maverick, and thus had access to the same knowledge that the Archons had, but without having someone to work with…in his case on a long mission in the primitive regions of the galaxy…you couldn’t learn to feel the Essence of another, which made the process a great deal easier, though painful. When you moved your own Essence around it felt natural, but when someone else did it to you it was horrific. But that pain also came with the knowledge of moving Essence, something that pre-breakthrough people could not experience on their own.

  So a little nudge here or there could be useful if one was close to a breakthrough, and Marren-882019 had been willing to spend some of his downtime to help Bar’ku get over the hump once he sensed he was close. Normally all Essence ascensions occurred in the Jepiker System, which was home to the Archons and Mavericks where Head Trainer Wilson kept them under close watch as they developed their basic skills so that they didn’t accidentally kill themselves in the process. But since Marren was one of the more skilled Essence users, he had felt confident he could handle the Maverick’s upgrade process, though in truth it had been more of an experiment than anything, for no Kret’net Maverick had ever proven themselves even close to the threshold.

  Marren had been surprised when his lessons, written by Wilson, had worked. After their co-op mission against the Vengarri was over, Bar’ku returned to Jepiker and Wilson for further training. Now, years later, he and many other Essence users were being reassigned to the newly acquired Beta Temple as the trailblazers tried to reach the Paladin through the existing inter-Temple transit system.

  Some 43 trailblazers were already here, with the others staying away for security reasons, but so far the Vargemma had not arrived in this Temple, which was supposedly not accessible to them for the simple fact that it had not been needed. They were not the masters of the Temple network, merely the guests, and this one was slowly becoming Star Force property.

  When the travel orb arrived and cracked open, Bar’ku stepped down out of one of the larger compartments onto an elevated platform that led to a ramp down to the floor. The Humans with him moved down smaller ramps while others were close enough to the floor to just step out. The orb had been constructed to hold many passengers of different sizes, and he was by far the largest to arrive here to date, standing more than twice the height of a Human and, more importantly, containing more Essence in his larger body.

  That would make his donations to the Temple system more valuable, but skill level always mattered in that respect, and those with the highest skill levels had a higher concentration of Essence within them. But as far as rookies went, he had more than the others and that would allow him to do more training/exploring before running himself dry as they would be working themselves hard to learn the new techniques and share between them…all in the hopes of advancing at least one person high enough to get access to the portals.

  When Bar’ku stepped into the reception chamber he noticed the murals on the walls, which he’d already studied in detail via the reports taken back to the Empire…but he wasn’t here for them, and the small reception committee camping out in a prefab structure set in the middle of the reception chamber directed the new arrivals to the exterior door rather than the tunnel.

  Bar’ku and the others walked out into the exterior beneath a shield bubble covering a Star Force-built landing pad. Beyond it was the barren ice-covered landscape he’d expected to see, but being here now he could actually feel the magnitude of the Temple. It was ancient and powerful, but also asleep. He looked up, seeing the faint trace of the horizon where the land arched upward and disappeared into the haze of the sky that dimmed the light just enough to make it hard to track, but with an armor enhancement he could in fact see it continue all the way up over his head, with the small glowing spot in the center being the Temple’s artificial star dead overhead, then past it the surface terrain circled back around and down to his position.

  It was too large for the term HUGE to encompass, and apparently they were all alone here aside from the drone workforce the Founders had left behind to care for it. Bar’ku didn’t waste time sightseeing, for he and the others boarded a barge-like craft that was not of Star Force’s construction and took off across the frozen landscape.

  “Where did we get this?” one of the Humans asked the pilot, who was a Bsidd.

  “We ordered it from the Caretakers, along with a lot of other stuff. So long as we provide the natural resources, they build for us. I’m told we’re not going to keep doing that, but until we can get our own infrastructure set up we’re working with the native technology for the most part.”

  “And the platform?”

  “We’ve got a Kiritak colony set up and growing. They built the platform to handle specialized cargo shipments. We’ve got travel orbs coming and going on a two hour basis giving them what they need along with the reinforcements. That’s what those crates are that were stuffed inside the extra compartments. Look there,” he said, pointing a mandible to the far right as they flew.

  Bar’ku glanced along that sightline and spotted another barge heading in from a different direction towards the platform.

  “That’s them coming to pick up the stuff. They’ve got outposts in 4 different Regions already, doing what I’m not sure.”

  “Prep work for the Paladin and Bsidd,” an Archon that had arrived with Bar’ku answered. “We’re moving in here for keeps regardless of whether or not we get to the Alpha Temple.”

  “Why not just use all Paladin?” one of the techs asked.

  “We need experience as well,” Bar’ku answered, looking down on the Humans standing around him, all of which were keeping a couple steps away from the edge of the small open-topped barge. “We have a lot to learn.”

  “Wow,” one of the Humans said as the view of the distant barrier city started to pop through the atmospheric haze across the ice sheets.

  “Wait till you see what’s on the other side,” the pilot said, standing behind a dais that held the flight controls. “We’re going up and over, though we do have people inside that…somewhere.”

  Bar’ku understood what he meant. The city was so huge that even a million people could get lost inside a section of it, and Star Force had far less than that here, given the limited trips through the Bridge available to them. The Paladin would be able to reproduce adults once here, but the Bsidd and Kiritak would have to train their younglings for multiple years before they would be useful. That said, they would still multiply rapidly and bypass the need for mass immigration over the decades to come.

  Hopefully it wouldn’t take that long to get access to the portals, but if they were being brought in to colonize, maybe the trailblazers thought it would take that long. If that was the case, then the work Bar’ku had been brought here to do would be even more important than he thought, for speed was necessary to get to Alpha Temple and the others in order to put down the Vargemma, which were still making attacks on Star Force territory and causing massive disruptions to the Grid Point system, with each construct knocked offline cutting transit routes and forcing slower redirects through normal system to system jumps.

  The deaths were mounting up too, with Star Force only able to minimize them during attacks. The Vargemma’s movements and Essence technology were too powerful to stop altogether, especially the Olopar, even with Uriti-charged Materia being rushed to the highest priority targets.

  A lot of Carry Orbs were being created here by the Caretakers, then sent back to the Bridge Endpoint where a trio of waiting Uriti were filling them up to be sent back immediately. Those Carry Orbs were the
n being taken to an input node so that the trailblazers could get the exterior barrier shield and other systems online. As it was, the Temple was visible from the exterior, but it was in such a remote location that no one had noticed.

  They’d been able to pinpoint it via exterior star views available from the city systems, and it was not within Star Force territory. Rather it was in one of the large sections of the galaxy that remained unexplored for the most part. It was about a fourth of the way around the galaxy from Earth on the anti-spinward side with Itaru more or less between them, though much further into the Core and off the straight travel line from one to the other.

  Star Force’s territory on that side of the galaxy was thin and based mostly off the Hula Hoop route. They’d been nibbling away at it for centuries, but no major push had been made when other areas were asserting their need for a Star Force intervention. There were a few major powers in the larger region, but nothing of consequence in the immediate area around the Beta Temple, which sat in the void of space without a nebula, asteroid field, or even a planetary system nearby. It was just out in the middle of nowhere, making everyone question exactly how had the Founders gotten the material out here to build it in the first place.

  As the barge got closer to the massive wall before them, it began to slowly rise so that when they crossed it they did so without any sudden course correction. The flat ‘roof’ of the city looked like a long plain of its own on an entirely artificial planet, except that the section ahead of them was glowing.

  Bar’ku didn’t catch on until they passed the terminator and the sky above them suddenly got much brighter. The top of the city was too high in elevation to have snow, so it had been completely clear, but now the Kret’net could see that the glow on this side was from the reflected sunlight, which was much more intense.

  “Segmented radiance,” one of the techs said in awe. “They can actually make that damn star shine more where they want it and less elsewhere.”

  “Indeed,” the pilot confirmed as they moved across the lit half towards the far side of the barrier city. “With the extra Essence being added, more Caretaker units have been going out and adding more hydrogen to the reserves. That’s allowed them to amp up the sunlight in one region, and one region only. You’ll see for yourself when we get there. There’s a reason why we didn’t set up camp around the Bridge endpoint. That region is too big, and the Caretakers won’t allow part of a region to vary from some protocols they had, so we needed a smaller one, and this is it. There’s an extra border city crisscrossing it further North, so about a third of it here is isolated, and we have enough hydrogen to light it up to normal levels and the cities are so high the atmosphere doesn’t flow from one to another very much, if at all.”

  Bar’ku was surprised by the revelation, for he hadn’t been told any section of the Temple was being altered, but when the barge finally passed over the far edge of the city the glaciers that had been everywhere else were now melting. Huge rivers of water were gushing down across the landscape towards lakes and oceans that were slowly reforming. Most of the land was still white, but there were large sections of rock visible along with a few tiny bands of green popping up.

  “Are we planting that?” a tech asked, pointing to the green.

  “Nope. The Caretakers are reseeding from stores they kept safe all this time. Apparently everything here used to be warm and flourishing, then the Vargemma stopped giving so much Essence to the Temple network and it had to cut back use in the unoccupied ones. They had to let everything die, because the trips to transport hydrogen eat up Essence. They still made enough to keep the basic systems functioning and some radiation so everything didn’t get down to absolute zero and fly off if the gravity got shut off. But now that we’re here and supplying Essence, they’re fetching hydrogen from who knows where, for they won’t say, and this small Region is getting reseeded as the ice retreats.”

  “Plants only?” Bar’ku asked, wondering if they were introducing animal life as well.

  “Just plants. They expect the oxygen to be consumed by the inhabitants, and when it’s not they have scrubbing factories to turn it back into carbon dioxide so the plants don’t suffocate. They’ve got a damn impressive setup here, and now that it’s got juice it’s coming back online and all sorts of neat stuff is being made available to us. You guys are going to be quite busy, I imagine.”

  “That’s the plan,” another Archon echoed. “Where are we going?”

  “The Kiritak colony. We’re basing everyone out of there until we get a better idea of what the city systems can and can’t do. They’re tagged as a research zone, not a habitation. I wasn’t told why, but something happened that caused us to relocate.”

  “Has someone been hurt?” a tech asked.

  “Not that I know of,” the pilot answered as they began to drop in altitude fast towards a dot of infrastructure inside an icy crater that was obviously artificial due to the precise geometry of the snow melt…which indicated that it hadn’t been melted, but rather dug out. In the center of it was the Kiritak colony, which looked like nothing more than 6 large buildings, each a half mile wide, with numerous active landing pads on the roofs.

  The closer they got they could start to see numerous barges moving to and from the partially constructed buildings with Star Force crews onboard, carrying supplies that were probably coming from mining sites elsewhere…or carrying supplies to the Caretaker facilities so they could use them to build more stuff for Star Force. Either way, there was a lot of activity going on for such a small outpost.

  “The air is still cold, despite the sun. Might want to armor up before you walk off,” the pilot said as he came in on approach and found an empty pad near a reception cupola that was sticking up off the otherwise flat rooftop. “It’s going to be a while before all that snow melts and the land soaks up the heat. Months minimum. So you need to keep your cold gear handy at all times.”

  The barge touched down gently and extended a ramp off all four sides to touch the Star Force rooftop below rather than trying to dock at the edges. “Handler is just inside. Report there.”

  Bar’ku nodded his thanks as the group emptied off the barge and passed through the energy shield, getting temperature readings above freezing on his armor’s sensors as he saw others triggering their jewelry to turn into full suits, but the Kret’net did not. It was only a quarter mile walk, and he felt like tasting the air here without filtration.

  It felt cold and raw, but welcoming. He couldn’t isolate the latter part, so it was probably his own expectations. This place had been built for people to discover it, not drive them off, and now that they were here it was coming back online. That definitely suggested welcome, though the surface was definitely not habitable to most races. Hence the insane amount of continuous cities that crisscrossed the entire temple and connected to everywhere. In truth it was just one giant city resembling a spider web, where you could walk from anywhere to anywhere without having to go outside. But for reference sake the Temple denoted certain areas as separate cities, and Star Force had adapted that, as well as adding its own new monikers to the battlemap that was now accessible to their armor since they were in range of the outpost.

  Bar’ku flipped up a holographic visor so he could review it without activating his full armor as the group moved to the cupola and a Human came out to greet them. To his surprise it was one of the trailblazers…Kai-054…standing in just a T-shirt and shorts with his armor gauntlets gleaming on his bare skin.

  “Welcome to Halo on steroids,” he said, throwing his arms wide for emphasis. “Techs go with Archy. Essence-users, follow me. I’m putting you to work immediately.”

  “Is there a problem?” Bar’ku asked, eliminating his holographic visor.

  “Yeah, big problem. Every button I have to press takes a little Essence, and there are a lot of buttons. I need more fingers, and that’s you. I’ll fill you in on the way,” he said, pointing to one of the rare Star Force dropships on the rooftop.
“Snacks are onboard…”

  4

  When the dropship took off it did so far faster than the barge had, flying across the slowly melting region to the far side, then hopping over the other barrier city into another frigid zone. From there they spent another 2 hours before finally arriving at their destination…which was a shield dome covering an area without ice that housed a number of Temple structures on a barren rocky landscape stretching several miles wide.

  “Alright people, we’re here,” Kai said as they descended and watched the exterior view via the tiny holograms in each of their suits, for the walls of the dropship were solid and without windows, even for the pilot. “Don’t overdraw your Essence, but give me what you can. This is going to be tedious.”

  Bar’ku triggered his armor to fully activate, expanding out from his gauntlets to cover his entire body in a black and red solid carapace indicating his Maverick status. The others also fully activated their armor, in a variety of designs and colors, with Kai’s being an odd white/green mix that represented his Clan Yoshi colors, then when the boarding ramp lowered they walked out into a furious wind.

  Bar’ku took the worst of it, given that he was larger than the Humans, but his feet held firm even as they sunk into the snow nearly half a meter as Kai walked lazily atop the snow without leaving footprints.

  “Nice weather, isn’t it?” the trailblazer scoffed. “Use your anti-grav if you want, but not so much that you’ll blow away.”

  Bar’ku did just that, but like Kai he used his Yen’mer to steady himself as he climbed up onto the snow, but his larger mass still left shallow footprints while the Archons’ did not. All of them were having to ‘fly’ into the wind to counteract it, but thankfully all the techs had been left behind and everyone here had most, if not all, of the Star Force psionics. At least the non race-specific ones.