Lurker Read online

  “You’d destroy the ship’s ability to target before you released it.”

  “Yes you would,” the I’rar’et said simply. “Look closer.”

  Tennisonne flipped through chart after chart of theoretical data, for no prototype construct of this model had been approved by him yet, and he couldn’t understand what Belo’chat was getting at until one of the Zen’zat below finally gave him a telepathic hint that the others were not privy to.

  It’s not a ranged weapon. It must attach to the Hadarak first.

  An eyebrow went up on Tennisonne’s face, but he didn’t look in the direction of the Zen’zat below him nor thank him as the pieces suddenly began to rapidly fall into place and he saw what Belo’chat was on to.

  “How long does the process take?”

  “I think between 6 and 8 seconds, but that’s just my guessing. There’s no way to know the actual burn rate without a test.”

  “Impact speed?”

  “Negligible. We can’t ram them. I tried those simulations to no end.”

  “What about the grapple fields…never mind,” the Mastertech said, seeing an optional upgrade point on the back of the weapon not far from the crew module. He’d assumed it was redundant at first glance, but now that he was digging into those specific files he saw that it was for a countermeasure package that would work like Rentar, the psionic that canceled out Lachka fields. The Hadarak grapple fields worked in a similar manner, but not with the same energy, though the amount of power required to override a field of that size was so much the V’kit’no’sat hadn’t been able to put the devices on their warships after they’d created the countermeasure.

  “Ram charge,” Belo’chat explained. “One time use.”

  Tennisonne exhaled slowly. “I hate building expendable ships.”

  “If we can get through their Yeg’gor layer in exchange for two Kafcha, that is worth the trade compared to what we would lose through regular combat.”

  “So these are for the small ones?”

  “They are multipurpose. Can you not see the value?”

  “The blowback will negate a lot of the damage inside a cavity.”

  “Yet this will make their escape near death unlikely.”

  “You want to save them for a finishing move?”

  “In some situations, not all. Primarily they are to break through the Yeg’gor for our warfleets when a Ysalamir is not present. Even a single one might be able to scare a Hadarak into retreat.”

  “Not exactly what I’m looking for, but Paul would kick my ass if I didn’t pursue this. Alright, these are small enough. Build a prototype, just make sure it doesn’t explode in my yard,” Tennisonne warned, pointing a finger at the Vik’s beak.

  “Charging will not occur until it is beyond the shipyard. Thank you.”

  “Just make it work,” Tennisonne said, flying back down to the floor and walking to one of the smaller Zen’zat-sized access doors. “We need every edge we can get.”

  “What do you mean we lost it?” Yori-007 asked.

  “We don’t know where it jumped out,” High Admiral Chi Gori said from onboard the Human’s flagship as it rendezvoused with the trailblazer at one of the massive ‘temporary’ Star Force bases along the edge of the Hadarak Zone. This one wasn’t for evacuees, but a rally point for shipping fleets bringing in replacement drones, personnel, and an insane mass of supplies, all of which were being housed in mobile structures landed on six planets in the system and arranged into what otherwise would have been impressive cities had one not seen an actual Star Force city before.

  “I know the minion beacons can’t follow it, but you should have been able to pick it up on the other side.”

  “It destroyed the closest beacons, and those further out saw it disappear with a null field cloaking device. They were able to track it backlit by the star until it passed by the horizon…then there was no way to figure out what jumpline it took out of the system.”

  Yori felt his jaw hanging, then snapped it shut. “The Hadarak has a cloak?”

  “Not a true one, just a total absorption field…at least as far as the minions can detect. They’re not exactly our top of the line equipment.”

  “We wouldn’t have anything if we hadn’t spammed them into empty systems,” Yori pointed out. “Was someone following it?”

  “Not that we know of.”

  “Then maybe it’s getting close to its target,” Yori said, mentally checking the battlemap to see what was near that area, but nothing stood out to him. There were several systems with ongoing battles, but nothing major. It was all backline scrapping with minimal forces, most of which was minion versus minion.

  “I think it’s entering the combat arena,” the High Admiral differed. “And it doesn’t want us knowing where it’s heading.”

  “Too many slip’n’slide accidents?”

  “Its speed is still considerably slower than ours. We can avoid it if we know it’s coming.”

  “The Ysalamiri?”

  “If it has come in response to the Hadarak scream, then it is most likely hunting the weapon that did it.”

  “It’s not on course for that system.”

  “And it probably knows we would have moved on. My instinct says it’s a predator going on the prowl.”

  “But if it’s slower, how is it going to catch us? We’ve only seen one so far, but even if there were a dozen of them, the galaxy is so big that if they can’t move faster than us…”

  “I know, Yori. It doesn’t make sense, but it just cloaked and we lost it track of it. I’ve got ships heading into the general area to try and locate it again, but I’m not hopeful. If I was it, I would change course immediately after.”

  “So would I. But how is this thing getting information? It has no idea where to go unless it passes by courier minions or their own worlds, which it hasn’t yet, has it?”

  “It has been staying clear of all Hadarak locations.”

  “Almost as if it isn’t Hadarak?” Yori hoped.

  “As if it wishes to sneak up on us from behind.”

  Yori frowned. “Even if it knew where we were building the Ysalamiri, it would take forever for it to get that far out in the galaxy.”

  “I agree. I do not know what it is doing, but it being here is not good for us.”

  “Any updates on what killed our minions?”

  “No, but all are dying by the same method, as far as we can tell.”

  “Where the hell is this bastard going…” Yori wondered aloud as he mentally was searching the galaxy map. There were too many systems, too many combat zones, and not enough Star Force, V’kit’no’sat, or Zak’de’ron assets in the region to be able to track it now that it had gone invisible…which meant the scout ships he’d sent to pace it no longer knew where to pick it up. Almost as if they’d known they would be coming.

  “We will know when it arrives,” the High Admiral warned. “We are not the first opponents the Hadarak have faced. And this is not the first time it has done whatever it is about to do.”

  “I really don’t like the sound of that,” Yori admitted.

  “Nor do I…”

  14 months later…

  With the Star Force fleet spread over the entire circumference of the Core with the V’kit’no’sat and Zak’de’ron choosing their own targets in and amongst the others rather than geographically splitting up the combat, the only way to stay in contact was by couriers transmitting comm network updates personally, which meant the scout ships had to know where to go.

  Most of the time the fleets would indicate their battle plans before they left a staging area, but in the cases that they didn’t they’d leave behind markers for the couriers to follow, and Jennine Simpsen was the pilot of one of those couriers. She had sole command of the Valkyrie-class R33913, but even though it was too small to have a name she liked to call him ‘Wilbur.’ She and Wilbur had been together for the past 12 years bouncing around the Hadarak Zone carrying messages. She was the only person
onboard the tiny ship that had almost no weapons or armor, but extremely beefy engines that would let it outrun just about everything else in the galaxy.

  And that’s what courier ships needed to be, even more so than scout ships. She had no cloaking device on her 327 meter long ship, and was easy to see from even the simplest of sensors, but her shields were sturdy and her instincts keen. Pilots didn’t rate a Valkyrie without an enormous amount of training and a considerable field record, for if even one message failed to get through it could mean disastrous results due to miscommunication. The couriers had to get through, so only the most prudent pilots were trusted with them.

  Today though, her message packet wasn’t urgent…at least she hadn’t been told it was. The contents were a large mass of regular traffic data, and something important could be in it, but when there was a special urgent mission the Valkyries would be told, so Jennine assumed this was just a regular run out to Riona-111’s fleet, and the Archon had left an easy trail of markers behind as they tracked a Hadarak to try and kill with the Ysalamir named ‘Bladestrike.’

  Jennine had never seen a Ysalamir before, other than the ship profiles available to all pilots, and she was looking forward to seeing one in person when she made the comm packet exchange, though she hoped she didn’t arrive when they were in combat. That would be unlikely, but not impossible, and Jennine had flown through a combat zone before to drop off a message packet, then high tailed it out of there, but never one with a Hadarak in play.

  Then again, she wouldn’t mind seeing a bit from afar, but her duties wouldn’t let her sit around and watch. She had to make like Sonic the Hedgehog wherever she went beyond the fleet, for moving slowly was an invitation to capture or destruction. Speed was her best defense, so no sightseeing beyond the scope of her duty was allowed.

  But when she made the deceleration jump into the next system she saw far more than she ever wanted to see.

  There was a Hadarak here, implanted into the 2nd world with a halo of warship minions ringing it…and further off around stellar orbit was a trail of debris from Star Force ships.

  “No…” she whispered, checking her sensors and pinging them loudly. Subtly wasn’t the way of a Valkyrie, and if there were any threats nearby she needed to find them so she could run, but there was nothing nearby, so she set course for the ship debris at maximum speed with her dart-shaped ship looking like it was a needle cutting through the fabric of space all the way up to the edge of the newly formed asteroid belt where it slowed to a stop near a half-damaged warship.

  Jennine activated her comm and ran through both regular channels and battlemap interlinks, finding the latter still active. Very active, in fact, with this ship and others in the area being damaged but not destroyed…but no one was answering back other than the automated systems.

  Her teeth were clenched tight to keep them from chattering. She had a sickening adrenaline shooting through her veins, and knew her duty now was to look for survivors while she could, then report back the destruction of the fleet…and the Ysalamir.

  It wasn’t with the other ships, but in closer to the star and ripped into segments that were slowly drifting away from each other, a few of which were even now falling out of orbit and heading in on a spiraling path towards the star where they’d start burning up in a few months when they hit the upper atmosphere, for the outer shell was made of Yeg’gor and even the inner deck materials were mostly immune to the intense heat striking them now…

  Jennine turned her head away for a moment, squeezing her eyes shut and taking the luxury of a few seconds away from the view to grieve, but duty compelled her eyes back on the surrounding area, and as her sensors were recording everything she tried interlinking with whatever was left of the ships to pull information from them, but her clearance level was so low she couldn’t get more than some basic manifest and navigational data. She didn’t have the necessary codes to access the past battlemap logs, but there was one recourse.

  In the event of ship disablement, there was a single ‘dump information’ code that all Star Force vessels were equipped with. It was for emergencies only, and had to be authorized by the crew to allow another ship to pull their logs…but if the crew didn’t respond in a given amount of time, the override would kick in and allow another Star Force vessel to pull everything. That was extremely dangerous if an enemy managed to get the emergency code, but Star Force ships were never completely unmanned without being locked down…but those damaged in battle never had a chance to lock down, so after 18 minutes of waiting with Jennine constantly broadcasting the code, the hulks that could still respond did so, and she used the advanced computer systems onboard her Valkyrie to record all of it.

  Normally that would have been more memory than her ship could hold, but Wilbur was configured to carry very large data packets and she didn’t have time to sift through what was being transmitted and only record what was important. She needed to scoop everything and get out, so after a long meandering pass by all the wrecks, including the Ysalamir segments, she headed to the nearest jumpline that led to a fleet in the field, at least as far as her records allowed, and since she had an update packet that had fleet locations last reported, Jennine had a good chance of finding one quickly.

  The closest one she could find was Jason-025’s lone Borg vessel, and as fast as that ship was, hers should be faster, and she was going to have to run him down to get him back here before someone else got to their ships and the bodies lining the corridors…for according to the dump that Jennine was pouring through, everyone in the ships was dead, many of them simply slumped over in their chairs manning their stations.

  Something horrible had happened here, and there were zero survivors reported. Not a single one on any ship, so Jennine had no one to rescue. And if someone was going to figure out what had happened here, she definitely needed a trailblazer. He would know what to do. Now she just had to track him down…before whatever happened here happened to him too.

  5

  June 5, 128530

  Mid Jump

  Sanguine Blade

  Jason sat in a conference room onboard his Borg-class vessel with several dozen of her crew, all of which were pouring over the battlemap data retrieved by the courier. None of them talked, merely mulling through the records of the very one-sided battle that had killed every single one of Riona’s ships, including the Ysalamir. No one had made it out, and losing Riona on top of all the rest felt like a knife blade through Jason’s chest.

  They were enroute to the battle site now, still several days out, but no one understood what had happened. Riona had been fighting the Hadarak that now sat on the planet, wounded with not one, but two large holes in it, ostensibly from the Ysalamir, which meant it had been a multi-day battle, and against a tier 2 that was understandable. But then a new Hadarak appeared out of nowhere on a collision course for the Ysalamir.

  The larger ship moved, just in time to avoid a full on hit, but the angular Hadarak that decloaked only after the impact had sliced through one of the folded-up forward arms, ripping a corner of the Ysalamir away as the Hadarak tumbled from the impact and the surrounding ships fled out of its path like scared mice as it was suddenly visible and sitting amongst them.

  Riona had done well after that, moving her fleet instantly into varied assault/retreat combos as she fought to figure out what this new Hadarak could or couldn’t do, but it turned out that the Ysalamir was not faster. Even after making an emergency microjump towards nowhere the Hadarak followed impossibly fast and managed a slow ram directly on target this time despite the dampener fields being set to full. Its Yeg’gor blade-shaped exterior ring cut into the Ysalamir’s own Yeg’gor hull, each deforming on the hit, but the Hadarak had physics on its side and much thicker armor.

  The Ysalamir’s attached ships executed a flip maneuver, trying to pry it off and only succeeded in imbedding it further, but when they completed their 180 they pulled on the star and jumped back towards it, ripping the Hadarak free and settin
g a collision course with the tier 2 that was still in low stellar orbit and not chasing the Star Force fleet.

  Then somehow the new Hadarak caught up and impacted the Ysalamir again, only to do the impossible and emit some sort of field that slowed the ramming ship until it stopped in stellar orbit, after which the new Hadarak flew around inside the larger Ysalamir, slicing it to pieces as the crew onboard desperately tried to escape, but their ships were being caught up in whatever the field was and hanging there outside it, but unable to break free.

  Riona brought her entire fleet in to fight both Hadarak while pulling out the survivors. A delaying battle before getting set up to run away, except she didn’t get a chance. Something happened and every manned ship in the fleet suddenly had their crewmembers drop dead where they sat. It seemed those wearing armor with regenerators in them survived, and continued to fight the fleet remotely as best they could, then the new Hadarak came flying out of the Ysalamir carcass and intentionally went after the ships with survivors onboard…and disintegrated them.

  Jason sat, looking at the multiple camera shots of what happened again and again, not sure what to make of it, but on the most basic level it was clear that the new Hadarak had went for the Ysalamir first. Mak’to’ran has said the war scream had signaled something worse to come from the Deep Core, now that they had a weapon that could quickly damage Hadarak, and it seemed his prediction had been correct.

  Once all the control ships had been destroyed, the remaining drones continued fighting on their last standing orders…which meant any targets assigned they would pursue to their destruction…and Jason was slightly pleased to see some deep furrows put into the new Hadarak from repetitive strikes, but nothing even close to what one Ysalamir shot would have accomplished. It seemed the Hadarak had been toying with the denizens of the galaxy this entire time, and now that they had a weapon that could effectively be used against them, they were going to be denied that weapon.