Star Force: Keyholders (Star Force Universe Book 61) Read online

  But even as he worked on the space whale he knew his logic was flawed. The universe was heavily tilted towards the darkside, and he’d seen time and again that those who did not resist it became consumed by it. In some ways he figured that was a defense mechanism, for someone who experienced something horrific that they could not understand nor control would try to avoid it happening to them by doing it to someone else first. Or some believed that by participating in it they could control it themselves. Either way, the darkside corrupted people in continuously hideous ways, and those that did not die from it seemed to get worse over time rather than better.

  As bad as the V’kit’no’sat were, they at least clung to some sense of honor. But maybe looking at the universal carnage of both the Hadarak and the apocalypse monsters the Founders had decided lives were a commodity to be used rather than people to be protected. The Caretakers weren’t torturing the space whales for sport, but the callous way they didn’t even bother killing them before slicing them up was just abhorrent. It was also a form of blindness, and Jason couldn’t figure out if they were just numb to what was going on or doing it intentionally.

  But one thing was for sure now. The Founders were an enemy as much as the Hadarak, and Star Force had a lot of catching up to do before they would be able to dominate either one of them. But for now, at least, his only opponent were the Caretaker drones, and against them he was clearly superior…as attested to by the piles of debris floating around the harvesting facility that had once been their guards and harvesters.

  The space whale he was working on now didn’t have a name, nor did it have a recognizable language. That wasn’t unusual for races without vocal chords, and especially for those that lived in the void…or semi-void…of space. These guys did communicate, but it was more hand signals, though Jason knew well how useful those could be if you did them right. In this case it was bioluminescence since they didn’t have hands, and though they could bend a little, they were mostly just floating rocks and looked the same.

  Jason had trouble boring a hole through their corovon heavy shell, but since they absorbed material through it there were tiny pores everywhere. Currently they were all closed tight in defense mode, but he’d been able to work his way in to the interior and start repairing what was in the nearby 20 meters or so with his Haemra, and he’d chosen one of the gashes where a chunk had literally been sliced then scooped out of this one’s back. It had already started to seal over with some form of black goo, and he didn’t want to interfere with that, so he took up position nearby over the intact hull and got to work.

  His Haemra could reach a long ways if he established tendrils using the space whale’s own biomatter to create them, but normally the psionic worked as much with the target’s nervous system as possible and using it to trigger healing abilities the individual already had. That wasn’t going to be good enough here, so Jason was forced to manually trigger regeneration of one area after another, but the space whale was going to take days to recover at that rate, and he didn't know if it would last that long.

  Fortunately he also had a tier 4 psionic called Dar’dax that was a huge upgrade to Haemra, though technically different tissue. What it did was allow him to create small biological drones that he could send off with orders to fix this or that. They would operate remotely without his direct input and expire after a given amount of time, which he could select, and Jason had thousands of them out into the space whale’s body right now. He was having to cannibalize some of its tissue to create them, but it had plenty to spare despite what it had lost.

  Jason couldn’t fill in the 6 ‘scoop’ marks and the 18 cuts the harvesters had made to it before he and his team had destroyed them. He just didn’t have the mass for that, and from the memories he was browsing as he worked he knew these guys grew very slowly, feeding mostly off of stellar wind and accumulating mass from it when they didn’t have access to nebula or the occasional asteroid. They never went to the surface of a planet, though he sensed their biological gravity drives were strong enough to. In fact they avoided heavy gravity wells entirely, grazing in the same star systems most of their lives with only a rare and dangerous trip between systems when their feeding grounds grew bleak.

  Some would risk traveling elsewhere, hoping for more without actually knowing. Others would wait until the next stellar nova blew out a shell of material from the local star. Most stars did regularly nova, expelling their outermost layer in a massive explosion on a regular basis. Even Sol had done so a number of times, but fortunately Star Force had developed planetary shields by then capable of withstanding the expanding dust/rock shell that shotgunned everything in the system.

  That very nova effect was how planets formed in the first place, at least the regular way when the Lifesprings were not involved. The star would nova, sending gas, rock, metal, and everything else out in a wave that would gradually slow as gravity pulled back on it. Because stars spun, when they threw the material out it would also be moving sideways. The pieces that were lucky enough to make it into an orbit would take years to be sucked back in, or some would spiral out and eventually leave the system. The rest of the junk that went more or less straight out would come straight back and get gobbled up by the star again, then possibly thrown out a second time when the next nova occurred.

  But when a star novaed the larger molten chunks would solidify into round orbs, then those orbs would pull in other bits of nova trash with their own gravity and grow in size. The ones that survived and found more or less stable orbits became planets and picked up more matter with each additional nova, all the while being pushed outward a bit with each wave. That meant the planets closest to the star were probably the youngest and the others farther away were the oldest.

  The stuff that did not form planets or get sucked back in created halos around the star, otherwise known as asteroid belts. Some rotated around the star, others were so far out by the time they’d finally had their momentum stopped by gravity that they’d gently drift back in until they got picked up by a passing planet, slamming into them and adding mass or getting lucky and becoming a moon.

  So if the space whales waited long enough another wave of food would eventually come their way, but stars didn’t nova on a specific schedule and each was different. If waiting for one took too long a herd would move on and take their chances elsewhere, but that was a last resort for all but the bravest of them, for some would move out to establish their own herds in other systems, all the while staying away from the planets and the people who lived on them and typically residing in the nebula or outer asteroid belts far, far from the star that had spewed them.

  They were shy to a fault, and Jason absolutely hated what had been done to them. They didn’t harm anyone and the Founders had targeted them probably because of their size. All this mass and resources for just one life. That was cold math that seemed to fit them, and he had a feeling they were hunting them across the galaxy and not just in this one region.

  His team had backtracked some of the hunter teams, finding tiny gravity wells that they used as transport. The math on them didn’t add up, so Jason was assuming they were using augmented drives based off the technique the Uriti had revealed to Star Force that would allow a lot more power out of weak gravity, though he couldn’t confirm it here. He didn’t have a ship, just a heavily outfitted infantry team. There was no point nearby in the Caretaker network to get a ship to, though some of the trailblazers had gone back to access the few of those points that had been found, but Jason didn’t have that luxury with this barbaric facility.

  And the worst part was, the Caretakers were sending units to repair it. So if he left they’d just rebuild what had been lost or, probably, create another one elsewhere to keep on hunting the space whales. He wasn’t going to let that happen, and unless the others needed his direct involvement, this was his new war to wage and he was just getting started, but in order to get a fleet into this secondary grav jump network he had to figure out where the space whales
were hiding. He knew if he did that he could work it from the other direction even if Tennisonne hadn’t worked up a new engine design yet.

  Where this space whale had been was what he was looking for as he tried to calm it down and reassure it was not in danger anymore. Jason was making sure it couldn’t move, not by the restraints the Caretakers had on it, but his own Ikrid lock on its body. And even if it tried there wasn’t much gravity to use here, so they were basically helpless once they arrived. There only a mere spec of gravity pull in one direction that Jason could find, and even the Caretakers couldn’t use that to work with around the facility. They had to use mooring beams for everything.

  There were six more space whale survivors and the carcasses of 83, all in varying stages of dissection. If Jason was going to get this guy home, the sooner the better, for the sight of the others were not something even he was comfortable with, and he’d seen so much carnage in his life he was partially prepared for it. This guy had never seen another space whale die, for they appeared to be naturally self-sufficient, and that probably made them even better feed stock for the Founders.

  Jason let go his physical connection to the space whale, pulling his armor in over his exposed palm before decompression had a chance to ravage it, then he hand walked along it over to another gash and reattached, working his Haemra there as his Dar’dax minions swam around inside the massive body looking for preprogrammed targets to sink into and start repairing almost as fast as Jason’s active Haemra could.

  “Hey boss, we’ve got incoming. Looks like another hunter.”

  Jason’s teeth clenched, but he didn’t abandon his healing effort just yet. “How many?”

  “Looks like they got a pair of them. They’re not turning back at the sight of the facility.”

  “Take one of the puddle jumpers and go out there. I want that ship this time.”

  “We know what to do now. You staying here?”

  “This guy isn’t out of the woods yet. If I leave he might not make it. Do you need me?”

  “Nope. We’ve got this. Keep at it,” Kira-1301 said confidently as she and four other Archons began jumping off wherever they were on the large station and using either psionic or energy tethers to pivot them around and redirect their movements at quite fast speeds in the zero g environment.

  The five of them was all that would be needed, though there were 42 of them here in total with another 9 off hunting the hunters in captured ships, though none of the actual harvester vessels. They had some puddle jumpers and other small craft they’d captured and reprogrammed, and one of those is what Kira’s team was heading to now.

  She leapt/pulled her way across the exterior until she got to the captured ship that had a door-sized hole in it, then she pulled herself inside and waited for two more Archons to arrive. When all 5 were in one of the others took the helm and flew them out towards the approaching harvester, but without leaving the mooring range of the station. If you lost your grip out here, ship or otherwise, you’d float away with any decent momentum push, and the tiny anti-grav engines in the puddle jumper wouldn’t be able to reel you back in before your power supply ran out.

  So it was dangerous out here even without the Caretakers shooting at you, and this extremely remote location far from any star was what made it so useful. Nobody could get here, and without the mooring system you couldn’t navigate even if you did unless you had the technology to latch onto the station itself and pull yourself along.

  The puddle jumper met the harvester as it was about to dock, with the Archons leaving the tiny ship and getting on the front of the exterior hull with the two captive space whales tethered in the rear in slots capable of holding 16 of them at a time. Before they even got a few steps along the hull several guard drones popped out and trolled along using their own mooring beams, then opened fire at extreme range.

  Kira and the others dispersed, going after different Caretakers each. She ran with her feet sticking to the hull and not bothering to worry about mooring beams. Her stride was perfectly timed and she deflected several shots off her armor’s shields before she returned fire. The tradeoff ended in her favor, for the drones were not well matched for Star Force technology when they had most of their small internal volume reserved for maneuvering capability and towing, for it was them that moved the giant space whales from harvester to dissection stations.

  But not today, for as soon as her shots got through the drone’s shields two more wrist-launched blasts killed the thing and it started to float off gently from the hull. As Kira ran by it she pulled it towards her with her Lachka, then sliced it in a ‘V’ with her two death saber blades to make sure it was good and dead, then she headed left for her other target. It was already firing at her and succeeded in knocking her shields below 40% before she got within Lachka range.

  Kira didn’t bother shooting it, but rather using a move she liked to call ‘Demi’ based off an old video game she’d played shortly after being born. She used the Lachka energy fields to squeeze the boxy drone from the outside in, crushing it into a paper wad and staying with it long enough to compact it down into a good and dead lump, more out of anger than efficiency.

  The rest of her team dispatched the few guards that had come out of the harvester, for they didn’t carry too many. The facility would have sent out thousands of them to move the space whales, except it didn’t have any more. Kira and the others had made sure of that shortly after they’d arrived, and the ‘make me a drone’ workshops inside had suffered some mechanical failure as well, so they weren’t getting reinforcements unless they shipped them in.

  When the last of the drones failed to stop the invaders and it was clear no more were coming, the harvester immediately turned around and tried to flee, accelerating back towards the distant gravity well but unable to shake the Archons. Kira made her way to a particular section of the hull and sunk her death saber blades in deep, then began cutting out a section of it along with one other Archon as the five grouped up again, all the while with the station slowly shrinking in the background.

  When they got through the hull Kira dove inside, cutting away what equipment she needed to get to a major node junction. There she sank her hacking tentacles into the Founder technology and quickly killed the engines. It took a bit longer to assert enough control to reactive them and fly them back into docking position with the facility, but unlike the last harvester to show up this one didn’t get away, and with a few modifications they were going to have their own personal ride out into the ‘dark’ network as some of the Archons were starting to refer to it, not that there was any light out here now other than the pinpricks of stars in the background.

  “Got it,” she reported to her Clan leader over the comm. “We can start redecorating now.”

  “Make contact with the whales and let them know we saved them. They’ve got to be freaking out at the sight of all the dead.”

  “Will do. You want the others loaded up in this thing?”

  “Not just yet. I’m still trying to find out where they’re from.”

  Kira hesitated a moment, then grinned. “I can save you the time. I’ve got a navigational log.”

  “How far away?”

  “6 jumps and approximately 129 days.”

  “Do you have a map of the others?”

  “Yes. You’re not going to like it.”

  “What?”

  “They’ve got more than 10,000 of these small gravity wells listed…just in this region.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Unfortunately. We’re gonna need some help.”

  Jason audibly growled. “Tennisonne had better work fast…”

  5

  July 1, 128550

  Unexplored Frontier

  Beta Temple

  Scar’vi was one of the Kiritak’s most experienced builders brought into Beta across the Bridge to work on setting up infrastructure inside the Temple. He was 78,038 years old and far superior to any Paladin birthed in the past month, tho
ugh he had to admit the number of hands they were devoting to this project was impressive. He would have preferred to work with an all Kiritak force, as he usually did, but getting them here through only the Bridge wasn’t feasible. He simply needed more bodies than that would allow.

  But when it came to expertise the Paladin were lacking, and they weren’t bringing in very many of their experts from across the galaxy either, mainly relying on their impressive genetic memory that got tweaked every millennia or so. That made them more than newbs, but nowhere in Scar’vi’s league, and getting this spacial tap online as quickly as possible with as few resources was relying heavily on his ability to improvise…something the Paladin didn’t do well.

  Others would argue differently, but he knew the Paladin operated as a unit more than individuals, and their ability to adapt relied more upon mistakes and correcting them than it did visualizing before you made a mistake. Star Force didn’t have time for mistakes now, so he had been tapped by Count Gorva to get this spacial tap up and running as soon as possible, but it wasn’t so simple of a task.

  For starters, there was an army of Caretaker drones running around inside the Temple trying to undo any excavation he made. There were armies of Paladin out hunting them inside the null zones where their comms were jammed so they couldn’t report back that they were under attack, but they kept coming endlessly. Fortunately they did not go on the exterior of the sphere, which was where most of the construction was ongoing…all under the threat of the Essence shield popping up and separating or killing those out there in the blink of an eye.

  He’d been told by the Count that the odds of that happening were low, but not impossible. They were monitoring the Essence donations to the Temple and asking the Responders constantly about how much was necessary to activate the field…and deliberately undercutting that number so it wouldn’t happen. Right now the ice cube of the interior was only melted in a few spots, leaving the rest essentially inert. Until all of that returned to normal, the Temple would not engage the exterior defenses because it would not sacrifice the health of those inside in order to protect those inside. The Essence users took priority over the Temple itself, probably because it was programmed to groom them into more and more donations that would eventually rectify the problem on its own.