Reclaimers Page 3

  The Great One understood, and told him of his own near death at the hands of the Hadarak and others. The galaxy was a dangerous place, but the herd was making it safe for all, large and small, and there were many more large ones in the center of the galaxy that had to be saved…or fought…once they got there. A Great Journey was promised to the Uriti, for one day they would live amongst the largest gravity wells as their kin did, but first they must remove the threats and safeguard the galaxy for all…and he was asking for this Uriti’s help.

  But he did not understand ‘asking.’ He was bred to be commanded, and the Great One said he would learn to become more than commanded with time and training the small ones would provide. For the Uriti had been made as tools, but had become a great deal more over time, and the commands were now only used to warn them of danger to themselves or to others, for the small ones were many and often in the way. If care was not taken, they would be killed accidentally, so the commands served a purpose, but were rarely used after the Uriti found themselves. The Great One said this Uriti was small and new, and had not found himself yet, so he must obey the Great One’s commands and come with the little ones. And he must come now.

  The Uriti didn’t understand, and the commands echoing in his mind were still conflicted, but the Great One allowed him to choose between them, though even as he began to move away from his cage toward the magnificent presence he felt his will tearing apart. He could not disobey, yet if he stayed put he would also be disobeying after a delay, and in that delay he could at least think.

  But the Great One explained this to him, and though it caused him distress he followed the Great One’s commands and moved toward him slowly, for the star was so far away and he could barely pull upon it, but after moving past the cages for the little ones he came into the shadow of the Great One and moved inside his huge cage…at which point the commands from the masters in his cage stopped speaking.

  That left him with only the commands of the newly arrived masters and the Great One, and they were not in conflict, giving the new Uriti a sense of peace, though his confusion still troubled him.

  The Great One assured him he was making the right decision, and caressed him with a lightning cascade that felt so good he could not comprehend it. Some of the pain he had been feeling since birth was destroyed, and his mind woke up a second time, seeing the universe with more clarity than ever before.

  The Great One said he would learn much, but first they must travel inside his cage, for it could move much faster than even he could across the stars. And they must get his 7 kin out of their cages as well, in addition to the remains of the dead ones.

  He asked what dead ones, then he learned a grim truth. Many had died here, before them, but they would not be left to drift in the cold. They could be taken with them, and eventually find their place in the heat of a star where all Uriti truly belonged.

  As he was explaining where they were going, another Uriti came out of its cage and he felt the Great One beckon to it. After a short period of time it too began to move towards them as the excitement of the future grew in the safety and security of the Great One’s presence.

  The Uriti knew he belonged here, even without the Masters’ commands telling him to remain with the Great One. This was the best moment of the Uriti’s life, and he was soaking in every moment of it as another lightning cascade washed over him and removed more unseen grime from his mind and pain from his body…

  Pol’ake continued to issue commands to the Uriti, playing a tug of war with the Neofan, for their transmitter he couldn’t override. It was a dedicated system and not connected to the overall network, but fortunately Kara had been right about the other Uriti tipping the balance.

  One by one each Uriti was released from its cage, and one by one they all came to the enormous carrier Star Force had brought with them and took their place alongside Bahamut, looking like little eggs alongside his massive winged body. Each of the Zak’de’ron Uriti was a different design with different capabilities, but the command control genetics were identical in them all, including the dead ones that were stored at nearby constructs that served as warehouses for all this operation had needed so to not have to rely on regular starship traffic to supply them and potentially reveal their location.

  Once all the Uriti were inside the carrier, Bahamut left them there behind the jamming field that was blocking the transmissions from the Neofan, and he flew out to the first of the warehouses that contained the dead and ripped them open with his invisible grasp so easily it made Pol’ake cringe. Out of their Zak’de’ron facilities he pulled each of the corpses and carried them back to the living ones in a few trips, making a nest out of the floating corpses and 8 living Uriti, into which he crawled back in and surrounded himself with, tucking them all carefully inside the shield perimeter, then the carrier began to cover over again with solid hull sections, sealing them all in for the journey further into the galaxy.

  And the Neofan were left impudent. Whatever powers they possessed, there was nothing they could do to stop the Uriti, and the conflicting commands he had been sending out guaranteed the dominance of Bahamut over the others. It was a masterstroke of strategy on Kara’s part, and it also avoided a combat situation with the Neofan.

  Not to mention it didn’t require Pol’ake revealing his presence either, which he appreciated greatly.

  The dragon expected another conversation with the Neofan, but they did not contact Kara and she did not contact them. And as quickly as they had arrived, the Star Force fleet and Uriti carrier simply turned around and headed back in towards the star, leaving the Neofan stranded there until one of their own ships arrived to pick them up. And if it had to come from another galaxy to do so, he imagined their anger would be supreme upon arrival, but would that trigger a response? Or would they simply suffer it in order to not jeopardize their situation here?

  Pol’ake could not guess. He had never met a Neofan in person, and had no wish to. Star Force would deal with the situation regardless, and if he had a way to assist them he would, but he was glad to no longer be involved in this and hoped to keep far away from their Temples for the remainder of his life…which he hoped to be unlimited.

  To his surprise, though, as they were making their way back towards the star, Kara showed up in his hangar bay accommodations, tiny in size, but largess in power that he no longer questioned. She could kill him quite quickly if she wished, and he could do likewise to her only if she was distracted for a moment…but they were both past any such considerations, and allies regardless of her dislike for him, though the frown on her face now suggested her dislike had another reason for its merit.

  Kara produced a large hologram that Pol’ake could clearly see of one of the Uriti, with her highlighting a specific part of it.

  “What is this?” she demanded.

  “It’s a port for technological attachment,” he said, referencing the nub sticking up slightly on the back of Uriti #6, which looked like a space crab.

  “Meaning what?”

  “It’s the top of a conduit that goes deep inside the Uriti to a void, inside of which we can build what we want. It can be weaponry, cargo, or passengers.”

  Kara blinked. “You wanted to ride inside them?”

  “That’s the only way to assure communications are not blocked,” Pol’ake said, huffing his wings out from his body a few meters then bringing them back in again…the dragon version of a shrug.

  “And what else?”

  “There was potential for multiple applications. We felt it best to engineer the cavity while leaving the specific use to future necessity. But having an Essence-capable individual within operating a weapon that was enhanced by Essence, would give the Uriti far more combat potential against opponents, especially the Hadarak Lurkers.”

  “Are there any side effects?”

  “There are always side effects,” Pol’ake admitted. “And these were not to be the final versions. They were complete enough to survive and help cont
inue the experimentation in actuality rather than in simulation based off genetic profiles alone. I am not knowledgeable on all the details, but I believe this particular type of Uriti has pressure limits on its aperture.”

  Kara frowned again. “It can close over the hole? I thought the whole thing was lined with Yeg’gor?”

  “It is, but for complications we could not make it thick enough internally. The compression factor is also outward rather than in, so we devised an aperture made of Yeg’gor that puckers together and provides solid protection against battle stresses…but the pressures within a black hole are theorized to be too great and would breach the aperture and the thin armor within.”

  “And stars?”

  “Should be compatible with most sizes.”

  “Should be? You never tested it on this one?”

  “These Uriti have never left the testing ground.”

  Kara rolled her eyes, knowing how much the Uriti needed star baths for a myriad of reasons. “You never stole any of our records on them, did you?”

  “Did you have such a theft?”

  “Not that we knew of, but you guys being you…”

  “We had no such knowledge. Have we made a vital error?”

  “Want me to give you the list?”

  “Just the confirmation will do.”

  “Yeah, you screwed up big time.”

  “Not surprising considering these were experiments. Is the damage irreparable?”

  Kara blinked, surprised at his sudden concern for his ‘experiments.’

  “They’re a mess. More so than the original Uriti, and a lot of their biology we don’t understand. Why did you change so much?”

  “We did not. The Uriti genetics we had could not be replicated. We had to create our own from alterations to the captive Hadarak. I do not know how similar or different they are from the rest of yours.”

  “You’re telling me you never gained Chixzon knowledge?”

  “If we had, the original Uriti we found we could have controlled the same way you did. That lack of control should be answer enough.”

  “So everything you’ve done here has been from scratch?”

  “Aside from the inspiration of seeing the finished product, yes.”

  Kara crossed her arms over her small chest. “You’re saying you never captured a Chixzon or created one of your own?”

  “To my knowledge we did not.”

  “Have you experimented on other Megaloids?”

  “Yes,” he said, his tone apologetic.

  “Are they still around to rescue?”

  “Distant past, long gone,” he assured her. “Before this project. We couldn’t capture a Hadarak to study until you devised your Spaceball technology, so we sought knowledge from the capture and testing of others. Most were too dangerous to capture, but the lesser ones we managed to contain and learn from.”

  “And you based these Uriti off that knowledge?”

  “In small part, yes, but mostly we pursued variations in the Hadarak base code, which is far more complex than we imagined. What we lacked were the activation keys, so we had to create our own base code to fill in the gaps.”

  “Activation keys?”

  “Hadarak genetics contain nearly complete genetic codes for all their living technology. Only certain segments are missing, presumably to be supplied by courier.”

  Kara’s head twisted slightly to the right. “Go on.”

  Pol’ake looked down at her oddly. “You did not know?”

  “We never found anything like that.”

  The dragon hung his head slightly. “Most likely that is because they are only contained in specific tissues inside the Hadarak. Vivisection is required to discover them.”

  “Then why didn’t the V’kit’no’sat know about them?”

  “The genetic coding is of a type beyond their comprehension and hidden behind the more mundane structures. It is easily missed, and it is how we ensure security in our interfaces, for we possess the same dual coding structure.”

  “One complete code and one partial one?”

  “Ours is not partial, and the Hadarak are missing only minor sections. Once included they can manifest all their potential growths. Without it, the secondary genetics are dormant.”

  “And what’s missing isn’t just out of place, but totally not there?”

  “Correct.”

  Kara sighed. “Then that’s what’s been going on. Every time the Hadarak up their game against us, they must be receiving unlocking codes rather than orders, and they simply fight at the peak of whatever ability is available to them. For some reason I was expecting something more refined.”

  “Nothing is refined about the Hadarak. They are a crude, but effective race of mixed constructs. We attempted to add refinement to these Uriti, and only partially succeeded. However, there is one note in the database I downloaded that I was not previously aware of. Uriti #8 was designed to have a secondary purpose, and that purpose was tested in my absence with preliminary success.”

  “What kind of weapon?”

  The Zak’de’ron shook his head. “Not a weapon, though it has several masking its other purpose. In order to proceed in the future, we needed the ability to reproduce Uriti without relying on captured Hadarak. Uriti #8 was our first attempt to create a Uriti that could spawn others similar to how yours do, though we did not know your method other than the cloning factor. #8 successfully spawned test offspring that were little more than my size. They did not live long, but the fact that they existed at all is a success I had not been informed of.”

  “Test offspring?” Kara asked, picking up on that phrase.

  “We can input whatever genetics we wish the offspring to be. They do not have to be copies of #8, for the Uriti is meant to be an incubator, and the larger it grows the larger offspring it can theoretically produce. It was meant to replace the captured Hadarak before it eventually died due to experimentation complications.”

  “Meaning you cut it up too much?”

  “Methods you do not want to know about. Methods that, in retrospect, I wish I did not know about.”

  “What were you planning to do with the Uriti after you had them perfected?”

  “Conquer the Hadarak, and counterbalance you.”

  “Not conquer us as well?”

  “There was mixed debate about that. Your benign nature made it unnecessary as long as we held a position of dominance. These Uriti were going to be that dominance, for we intended to make them far more powerful than the Chixzon made theirs.”

  “Did you succeed?”

  “Crudely, yes,” he admitted with a spark of pride. “If you can keep them alive long enough to correct the crudeness.”

  “Uriti genetics are locked. Did you find a way to alter them after spawning?”

  “We designed them to have a single access point where we could upload alterations. It was necessary for the experimentation but we not intend it for the finished products.”

  “Is that what the Neofan were doing?”

  “No. We did not share that part with them. In fact, we did not share a lot with them. What they were doing, most likely, was a tissue probe that the Uriti destroyed each time. I have been examining that data since we left, though I haven’t gotten much out of it, for it was Neofan technology and not ours they were using, but the genetic code of all 8 Uriti has not altered in the slightest.”

  “Keep looking,” Kara said, turning around and abruptly leaving.

  “I’m sorry,” Pol’ake said as she was halfway to the door.

  Kara stopped, but only turned her head to the left so she could see him with one eye. “For what?”

  “For our disregard for the sovereignty of life.”

  “Do you even know what those words mean?”

  “Not fully, but I am beginning to sense the wrongness of what we have done. And our failure here has left you and the other Uriti with wounded individuals to try and heal. That is our fault.”

  “Yes it is
. And it’s why we never tried to create our own Uriti, knowing we’d have to go through the same trial and error phase and the horrors that would bring upon those that were spawned with unforeseen complications.”

  “Does Star Force do no experimentation on any biology?” he asked hopefully, wanting to know if there was a way to ‘honorably’ do such things.

  “Only when the alternative of doing nothing is worse for the test subjects,” she said, almost spitting the last two words. “We have found an indirect approach yields results when a sufficient intellect is injected into the process.”

  “Then there is a way?”

  “There usually is. It’s just not usually all that easy to find,” she said, leaving it at that and walking out with that bread crumb left for him to chew on.

  And chew he did, for the challenge of superior intellect was one that always hit the Zak’de’ron hard. And he’d never considered that being superior meant taking anything less than a direct route…but if an indirect one meant the target could be spared in the process…

  The epiphany was not a small one, and like the Uriti’s lightning bath the sudden realization peeled away a layer of suppression on Pol’ake’s mind as well as taking away the dread of having to use what Kara called ‘darkside methods’ in order to be effective. The Zak’de’ron had always believed so, because to them being effective was the goal. Until Star Force emerged, they had never seen evidence of light-handed methods being as effective, if not more so than a direct, brute force approach. The Zak’de’ron were not unaware of subtlety, but they were also not used to putting aside a quick and effective method to pursue a long and tedious one to the same results.

  But if there were long and tedious pathways to do what had been believed could not be done by any other way, then finding them and using them would require a superior intellect that most of the galaxy could not measure up to.

  And that, Pok’ake realized, was why the lightside was defaultly superior, and the darkside was the easily accessible tools of the brutes and barbarians who did not see past today and plan for tomorrow.