Vargemma Read online

  Few people knew that, and Star Force didn’t advertise the internal apparatus of the Uriti, for it was virtually impossible to scan through their thick armor. Hadarak had their brains in their center of mass, the furthest from their exterior possible for the greatest safety, but apparently the Chixzon hadn’t been so concerned when designing the Uriti’s biology, for there wasn’t any known threats to them at the time that could even get through the outer layer of armor short of lengthy warfare on a massive level.

  Then again, maybe it had been by design just in case someone tried for a core shot. Regardless, the asymmetrical internal alignment of Bahamut had saved his life, for the Vargemma had left him for dead after he went inert from the massive shock of the damage.

  That battle had been in the field, not in a Preserve, and while Paul had not been there he had been close by and immediately took possession of the Uriti while sending out orders for the rest to scatter and hide. That also meant emptying out the existing Preserves and separating all the Uriti into different escort fleets and breaking up the herds.

  They hadn’t like that idea, but once they were told of Bahamut’s near death and the attacks on the other Uriti they immediately wanted to be taken to fight them…for they didn’t understand the nature of the threat. That was why Paul had Bahamut record a telepathic message that the Wranglers then took to the others, so they could see through Bahamut’s memories and his own orders/suggestions. Even Paul couldn’t figure out exactly what it was they were passing on, but it did the trick and the Uriti were immediately onboard with the run and hide plan…while Star Force figured out a way to fight this new enemy, at least. After that they’d be back with a vengeance.

  Paul had been getting updates through the relay grid long before he got to the Repository System, knowing all the time that the Hadarak were making more advances in their absence. The evacuation fleets had not been recalled, nor the warships protecting them, but the active hunting of the Hadarak was now relinquished to the V’kit’no’sat alone, with Paul having come home by way of Itaru so he could explain the situation to Mak’to’ran in person.

  What the Zak’de’ron did was their own business, for they weren’t coordinating with Star Force, but the V’kit’no’sat were…and Davis had already sent a courier to Mak’to’ran carrying several of their scientists back with them along with the prototype blueprints for the Legion Project version of the Ysalamir. Originally only Star Force was going to develop them, but now wherever they did they were going to be targeted, so while Paul and the others dealt with this new war in the Rim, the V’kit’no’sat would build the disposable Ysalamir and test them away from the Vargemma’s prying eyes.

  At least that was the plan. They knew the Vargemma’s strongholds were in the Rim to keep them away from the Hadarak, but how much surveillance they had of the Core was unknown. The V’kit’no’sat might be bringing the Vargemma’s wrath down on them, but Mak’to’ran was eager to take on the problem and allow them to hit them if necessary. He was worried about the Zak’de’ron stealing the plans, but he wasn’t going to be timid about the testing and production, for he’d already assigned 532 different systems to prioritize the Legion development.

  The Era’tran had said the Vargemma could not hit them all, and if they did it would be little loss, for the Legion was designed for one time use anyway. They were meant to be destroyed, which was why Davis had agreed to let the V’kit’no’sat produce them. The blueprints weren’t quite finished yet, but the few prototypes they’d been doing limited testing on had been destroyed in Epsilon Eridani. Belo’chat, however, had not been, and the I’rar’et was one of the few scientists sent back to the V’kit’no’sat while the rest stayed in Epsilon Eridani doing simulator work only based off data they’d already collected.

  No more planets had been hit by the Vargemma yet, but it was still early. A year in galactic warfare was almost nothing, for the time it took to move around from system to system was immense when the battlefield was the entire Rim. Still, they knew where to find the Ysalamir and the Uriti, so Star Force was going to have to do a damn good job of hiding the latter, and no updates he’d received when arriving in the system had indicated any further strikes.

  After he’d pulled that download from the outpost he’d gone dark and slipped onto the sandy world where he and the others had stashed a lot of their private stuff, including a full Star Destroyer replica he and Roger had made a long time ago. It was fully functional, but extremely outdated by today’s technology, and now hidden in its own hangar underneath the sands separate from all the other roaming facilities, but the one he was arriving at now was the main hub that contained their best stuff.

  It was more sentimental than anything, though there were also some items of importance relating to Essence and a few odds and ends they’d collected from past civilizations that had fallen. They were still working on those tidbits trying to figure out what they were for, but anything that had even the glint of technological superiority got the full treatment at Star Force’s largest research centers. What came here was more of a curiosity and ongoing brain teaser, which was why the challenge-hungry trailblazers had laid claim to them.

  In addition to that there were mementoes from throughout their history in Star Force, whether they be bits of debris from certain battles, genetic samples from odd races, exotic plants, etc. Everything here meant something to them, sort of like a library of past activity they could reference from time to time, but Paul hadn’t been here since before the Hadarak war started. Long before, actually.

  So when he found and landed in the hangar, he took a little stroll down through the small item galleries before he met the others, ending up in the armor hall that had standing mounted combat suits from every version of Archon armor ever fielded…and the hallway stretched for nearly a mile with two rows, one on either side, standing as if at attention.

  When he entered he had come in at the most advanced section, with suits similar to the one he wore as gauntlets on his forearms, except the others were fully deployed so they looked like real people standing there…but between his Ikrid, Pefbar, and Essence he could tell they were all empty as he walked down between them, his flexible boots clicking on the hard, smooth floor as he worked his way back through history.

  All the suits had a similar vibe to them, but when he got to the far end and saw the earliest of the combat suits like he’d worn on that first Moon mission against the Chinese so very, very long ago he almost cringed. They were so bulky and inflexible, no shields, no sensors worth a damn, no regenerator or all the other trinkets Star Force had worked into the design over the years as they figured out how to build components smaller and smaller.

  It amazed him how much they’d been able to accomplish starting with next to nothing, as well as how fortunate they’d been that the V’kit’no’sat had not found them sooner. Luck had been with them, despite the massive losses, and now he sensed they were in a somewhat similar position.

  “No, it’s not that bad,” Jason-025 said, walking into view around the open archway at the end of the hall. “But I had a similar feeling when I got here.”

  “We’re not ready for this, but we hold a technological edge. I’m not sure how much we can dive in head first, and how much we’d lose by holding back. We need to know who these bastards are, and we don’t have the luxury of a V’kit’no’sat database to tell us.”

  “True,” Jason acknowledged, leaning against the archway as Paul stood looking at the earliest of the armor suits. “But we know the Hadarak scare the shit out of them.”

  “Or what’s in the Core that we haven’t seen yet. I get the feeling we and the V’kit’no’sat are the JV teams left alone to pretend we’re varsity when we truly aren’t.”

  “You’re still shook, aren’t you?”

  Paul waved that thought away with a chop of his hand. “That’s not it.”

  “What then? We’ve overcome a hell of a lot before, why not now?”

  “Nothing that I ca
n put my finger on. I just have a bad feeling about this.”

  “Riona?”

  “She didn’t have a chance, and that still pisses me off.”

  “Ditto, but I’m not off my game. You are.”

  Paul raised an eyebrow. “How did you notice?”

  “We’ve shared battlemeld so much that I can tell how you’re walking your mind isn’t right.”

  “Well,” he said with a sigh. “It basically comes down to the fact that I don’t know who to punch and what to do until I figure that out.”

  Jason nodded. “You’ll feel better in a bit.”

  Paul’s eyes raised slightly. “You have something?”

  “More mysteries, but yeah, we’ve got several somethings. Davis had a long chat with our new Knight of Quenar buddy, and from that we’ve been able to identify a lot of Vargemma activity around the galaxy that we’d missed before. They haven’t been hiding as much as you might think.”

  “Meddling?” Paul guessed, though thoroughly intrigued.

  Jason nodded. “They’ve got more of an agenda than they let on. We haven’t figured it out yet, but that Essence orb that Ariel found is their doing. They haven’t just been storing up their own Essence, they’ve been quietly harvesting it through various means around the galaxy, and murder seems to be their top preference.”

  Paul’s expression went dark. “Go on.”

  “The Knights of Quenar said they recruit other races that learn how to use Essence, but that’s not all they recruit. They have associates that work for them, we think, so they can act in the galaxy without attracting the attention of the Hadarak. How the Hadarak would find out I don’t know, they seem pretty mundane so there’s gotta be more to it, but a lot of people have gone missing…not whole planets or continents being scooped up…but people vanishing that we think end up on their Essence meal plate before being turned into a meat crop for other races.”

  “Which hides their involvement entirely,” Paul extrapolated.

  “And our shutting down of the meat trade in the civilized areas of the Rim has made it harder and harder for them to do their dirty work. Some of those sickos we’ve had to take down were, in retrospect, working with the Vargemma. Their fingerprints are everywhere now that we know what to look for back through history.”

  “Why not just take us out then? Before we got this strong?”

  “We’ve got a few theories, one of which is that the Hadarak are not the only ones watching them. There may be more varsity teams out there than just the Hadarak and the Vargemma.”

  Paul face-palmed, then ran his fingers through his short blue hair. “What now?”

  “Nothing but speculation at this point, but unless the Hadarak have another means of monitoring the Rim than minions and space monsters, the Vargemma are hiding too damn hard when they could be operating freely, on the deep Rim, at least.”

  “Any luck with a defense shield yet?”

  Jason pointed a finger directly at him. “Yes, and we’ve been going about it all wrong. The Ambassador was forthcoming in that regard.”

  “Is he here?”

  “No, but Davis took good notes. You don’t block Essence attacks, you conscript them…if you’re strong enough.”

  Paul blinked as that thought set in. “Not cancellation?”

  “Not unless you want to drain yourself dry, but he said that will work if you know what’s about to hit you. If not the amount required is too damn high to use more than a handful of times.”

  “Show me.”

  “I can’t, because I haven’t learn to do it yet. Still fumbling around, but at least we have something to fumble with now. No more standing around twiddling your thumbs. We’ve got a lead on a defense and we’ve got a lot of work to do beyond that. You want to…”

  “Nope, let’s go,” Paul said, cutting off the sarcastic comment before it was out of his best friend’s mouth as he walked through the archway and out of the hallway of past memories. “We’ve been working this solo for too long. Time to grind this out as a team.”

  “You’re the one that’s late, buddy,” Jason said, following him a step behind and very glad to have Paul back in the mix. All 100 trailblazers were still alive along with Davis, and they had to figure out a way to fight this war before some ass hole with superior Essence skills could change that.

  5

  May 7, 128537

  Kanethrol System (Novatis Kingdom)

  High Orbit

  Candancen-11898 was nervous. All the Uriti had been ordered to run and hide, and the Wrangler had taken Jaws 04 away from Preserve #9 by herself while the others scattered. Most were already in the Core fighting Hadarak minions, but some had always been kept in the Preserves and rotated in and out, for they needed to be together and war operations almost always had them individually assigned to missions.

  But keeping them alive was the greater priority now…except for Jaws 04. Orders had come through requesting a dangerous mission, and her Uriti had wanted to accept, so she’d relayed their willingness and waited while hopping from one system to another to keep the Vargemma guessing as to their location. Eventually a set of coordinates worked their way back to her escort fleet and the Archon was surprised to see that the target was one of the systems where Star Force had destroyed the enemy’s Stargate outpost.

  There was a huge fleet stationed there, essentially on the enemy’s doorstep, daring them to come out and try to rebuild the station, so she had plenty of extra defenders to help screen for an attack on Jaws 04, but it still worried her. The Vargemma had nearly killed Bahamut Zero, and it had taken only a single attack to do it. If they could pop in, fire, then pop out again quickly, the size of her defense fleet wasn’t a great comfort…but the trailblazers needed information and the Uriti was their new plan to get it.

  Or at least try. They admitted this might not work, and it wouldn’t take long, so Candancen was bringing Jaws 04 in for a quick peek then leaving within a day, two tops, and returning to their system bouncing until further notice.

  When they arrived no Vargemma response was seen, but they’d been able to arrive in systems before without using a jumpline, with or without a scout ahead and guiding them in. The scouts they could kill with the fleet, but there was no way to know where they’d just pop in, so the system commander had the fleet half spread out with as many skirmishers as he dared while Candancen brought her Uriti out to the location where the Stargate outpost had been and opened the carrier ship.

  Jaws 04 ‘swam’ out, looking like a narrow shark with a tapered ‘head’ leading back to an arrow-like tail that forked into two segments. To her he looked more like a goldfish cracker from the old days, but Jaws was a more fearsome title befitting a Uriti so she hadn’t argued the point. Regardless, he was 16 miles long and 5 wide at his thickest point. Not a little guy by a long shot, but still a juvenile compared to the originals.

  Fortunately that shouldn’t matter, because he wasn’t here to fight…but rather to sniff out gravity threads too weak for Star Force’s technological sensors to pick up. The Hadarak, and by inheritance the Uriti, had always been able to navigate interstellar jumps better than Star Force because they could feel the gravity pulls from distant stars and even nearby ships at a far more sensitive degree, and if there was a hidden stronghold out there somewhere it had to be big, and maybe just big enough for Jaws 04 to find.

  The direction the Vargemma ships traveled to and from this station had been previously noted, so they had a heading to work with. The Wrangler gave Jaws 04 that heading and asked him to see if he could feel anything in the general area of that trajectory.

  It didn’t take three seconds before he communicated numerous signatures that the fleet’s sensors could not, and at varying distances, including a star system along that corridor some 529 lightyears away. She knew it was there because of the map, but the fleet’s gravitational sensors…including the most advanced ones they had inside a special scout ship that had been sent here and failed to find anything�
�couldn’t sense the distant star, nor see it, because there was a nebula in between, though the nebula didn’t do anything to mask the gravitational silhouette.

  But between that star too far away to jump to there were other things. Her Uriti could feel the small tugs no greater than what a warship would create within Tar’vem’jic firing range from its own weak gravity emission. It was an insane ability they had, and to this day Star Force wasn’t even close to finding a technological copy of it. Even the V’kit’no’sat hadn’t been able to determine how the Hadarak did it, and they had numerous Hadarak corpses to analyze. The Chixzon database in Nefron’s head didn’t offer an answer either, meaning that the Hadarak and the Uriti were the best gravitational sensors the galaxy had…as far as was known, anyway. The Vargemma had been able to hide a huge power from the galaxy all this time, and who knew what else was out there that could surprise them later.

  But right now all that mattered was whether or not jaws 04 could find the stronghold, and not only could he find silhouettes, he could identify some of them, including a small rogue planet, a dead star reduced to nothing but a solid and nearly cold core of super dense material, some large scattered asteroids…the kind of which if you hit during an interstellar jump there would be nothing left to mark your demise.

  It was rocks like that that Star Force scanned for on the primary jumplines and, in some cases, went to very heavy lengths to remove, but this wasn’t a useable jumpline for the distant star was too far away to accurately jump to. Candancen asked if Jaws 04 had the ability to get there and he answered a ‘maybe’ because of the other gravity wells along the route that he could use to steer a bit. When she followed up he said the distance was too great to make a precise jump to, much like their starships, but the bouncing enroute was possible given the proximity of the dead star and an unidentified mass within the nebula.