Whitmore Day Page 4

  And that seemed to be a trend. The little cleaning bots would never appear unless it was modestly safe, and to date she had never seen one take a single hit of damage…but they were never far from the battle lines, and in the few times where her Kel’zat needed to retreat for repairs, they scurried out of its way at only the last moment, making her think it was going to step on them each time.

  They were one of many oddities showing up in the Maty during this neverending combat, but not the largest. There were other machines out there, weird ones, that did not respond to her or her Kel’zat, but they were obviously part of the Maty’s defense, though they also did not respond to Nevantha or the other Elloquim who thought they’d taken full control of the Maty’s defense systems.

  Apparently there were layers to them, and some of the layers were beyond their view. Kyra had seen one snake-like machine tunneling through the enemy minions as if they were irrelevant and killing them on contact, only to have smaller glowing ones flying in its wake headed where she didn’t know, but the snake had been clearing them a path.

  Kyra had tried to follow once, but the Kel’zat wouldn’t allow it, overriding her navigational commands and instead going somewhere else where there was fighting to be done, making her part driver part passenger, but regardless they were being effective as the Hadarak could not completely take over the Maty, though some areas that craniem had taken control of were now cut off from hardline communications.

  Kyra had tried many times to get to them, but the Kel’zat wouldn’t allow it…and she’d later found out why. Resistance in some areas was worse, and while she couldn’t monitor what was going on throughout the Maty, that didn’t mean its own defense systems didn’t know. It seemed like the Kel’zat had a self-preservation code running, and it wouldn’t allow them to suicide into a fight that was beyond their capacity to handle.

  But right now Kyra was being led into light combat, with her suspecting that it would turn heavy soon, but to her surprise once she got around the next bend the minion flow stopped, with her ordering the Kel’zat to stomp on the last few trying to scurry under beneath it rather than use its powered weapons.

  It didn’t object, and mashed three of them into goo while having to shoot the fourth that otherwise slipped underneath its lion-like body, but after that there was nothing ahead to fight…but the Kel’zat was indicating that they needed to go forward.

  Kyra agreed, and the quadruped leapt into a light run as it traveled down clean corridors through a zigzag of a path that would have confused biologicals, but Kyra added each twist and turn to her mental map, filling in a little more of the Maty’s massive labyrinth until one of the corridors dead-ended into an opening that had a sheer dropoff going down a very lightly curved wall. The view beyond was massive, for it was some sort of indoor valley, and it was choked with minions and Hadarak growths that were apparently being fed by their own dead.

  Too much, she acknowledged, but the Kel’zat disagreed, highlighting a tiny patch of the zoo ahead of them that was in more movement than the others…

  And the tiny little Star Force biped killing them with wild abandon.

  Identify, Kyra ordered, with the Maty’s own file popping up what it already had accumulated on this one. It was one of their trailblazers, she knew that much, but the Maty couldn’t hack their comm system to know for sure, yet Kyra had their basic codes and gave them to the Kel’zat…with Morgan-063’s ID signature popping up on the file now that the Maty knew how to read it.

  But the combat profile rating it had given her was beyond the realm of possibility.

  Confirm accuracy.

  The Kel’zat scoffed at that request, reiterating that the analysis was correct and wanting to move in and assist. Kyra knew this may very well be her deathknell, but if the Kel’zat wanted to engage then it couldn’t be as suicidal as it looked.

  In her momentary deliberations the Kel’zat highlighted several structures in the valley that were not of Hadarak construction, indicating their value as higher than normal within the Maty and requesting that they recover them from enemy possession.

  It seemed reckless, but Kyra decided to trust the Kel’zat and gave her acceptance…but it didn’t move. When she inquired as to why it gave her position locations around the perimeter of the artificial valley, and when she zoomed in on some of them she saw other Kel’zat waiting on identical perches and empty ones…that were quickly being filled by new arrivals.

  So it didn’t want to attack alone, but in a pack. So much the better, especially with all the room to maneuver in here.

  Kyra waited patiently until it was ready, then she signaled for it to move in…and as one, some 348 Kel’zat leapt into the air out of the surrounding tubes, and flew/fell down the slopped walls until they got their feet under them and ran down the increasing curves all the way to the enemy infestation below.

  Flying minions intercepted them before they got to the bottom, but they didn’t have the firepower to stop the mechanical beasts, and when Kyra’s Kel’zat got within range of the ground formations it transformed…

  The body shape altered slightly, the armor puckered and tightened up in certain spots, and new weapons formed on the flanks as it ran into the hordes and unleashed an inferno off either side as if it was the center in an hourglass of fire that incinerated the attacking minions to the left and right.

  Those ahead it dealt with in more conventional manner, but further on Kyra could see little fires all over the valley as the other Kel’zat were doing the same. Why this Kel’zat or the others she had ridden in didn’t use this technique before she didn’t know, but it was very effective at killing those within 70 meters of it, though it created so much smoke normal visuals barely functioned and the Kel’zat had to rely on other sensors to navigate.

  Kyra was ‘safely’ inside her cargo hold, connected to the Kel’zat electronically, but she felt lost in the combat as the machine’s war coding far surpassed her own in the melee. The Hadarak were not willing victims, and they fought hard with swarm tactics that nearly knocked her Kel’zat over and pinned it to the ground multiple times, but the fire cones fixed that problem on each occasion, allowing it to get back to its feet and shoot/stomp more and more of them all the way up to one of the growths that had partially encased a vertical cylinder that the Kel’zat had tagged as a priority target to be rescued.

  It was larger than the Kel’zat by a factor of 18, and towered over the combat below, yet the Hadarak growth was taller than it, and wrapped around it in a coil with large bulbs forming at various places. The Kel’zat’s feet produced claws that Kyra had never seen before and it leapt at one of the corkscrewing ‘ropes’ that led upward and dug in on it to get grip, then it began to climb as many minions tried to jump at it and pull it back down.

  As it climbed the head portion billowed a green energy that ignited and withered the growth beneath it, leaving a black trail of dripping goo behind as they finally rose high enough to get out of the smoke layer covering the battlefield. Not far above that the Kel’zat stopped and proceeded to use its face weapon to begin cutting all the way across one of the spiral tethers while keeping it forward claws dug in to the growth above.

  Finally it snapped, with the Kel’zat’s rear feat falling off, but it held on above and scrambled up as the lower portion tiled away and began to uncoil, flinging itself in an arc around the cylinder multiple times before the whole thing came crashing down on the minions below.

  That was when Kyra finally saw it. The cylinder was not opaque, but translucent, and what was inside it had been mostly obscured by the growths, but not now. Not on the lower section.

  Inside was a monster, frozen in place. Kyra didn’t know what race it was, but a quick check with the Kel’zat confirmed it was still alive and entrusted to the Maty for safekeeping…which was why they couldn’t let the Hadarak cut through the protective barrier and gain access to it.

  Kyra’s Kel’zat continued to climb and burn as it went, getting all the way to
the top where it severed the connection to the growths that were taller than the cylinder…and that was when Kyra realized there were many, many cylinders behind it. Some occupied, some not, but with Hadarak growths covering most of them.

  Key points on the growths were now being highlighted, and Kyra could see other Kel’zat climbing like they were and seeming to chew them away with their face weaponry. Her Kel’zat was assigned two more spots, and by the time she finished the last pits attached to her cylinder broke free and fell away, but the main growth still stood, traveling three quarters of the way to the ceiling and continuing to growth further a few inches every minute.

  Then the Kel’zat took over and perched on the top of the cylinder it produced a mooring beam out of its eye sockets, attaching to the main stalk at the same time other Kel’zat on other cylinders did likewise…then Kyra noted the combat at the base just before a large crack sounded as the trailblazer down there somehow broke through the 215 meter wide mass.

  Her Kel’zat pushed immediately, and with the others they guided the massive stalk, now deprived of its side anchors, away from the cylinders to where it fell and hit one of the side walls and bent, but did not touch the ground as it was now leaning on the valley while the base tried to skid the other way, plowing into minions that could not avoid the movement.

  The trailblazer leapt up on top of it, then hopped over the edge and fell down out of view on the far side…only to see hundreds of Hadarak minion corpses blown upward over the obstruction as some sort of explosion took place.

  She asked the Kel’zat where should they go next, and in response it jumped off the cylinder into freefall…with Kyra bracing her body as much as she could in case the anti-grav dampeners didn’t fully work. The Kel’zat didn’t brake on its way down, and hit with full force on the ground, smashing three minions and leaving footprints in the hard deck plates as deep as her ankles…then they were running and burning and fighting again as Kyra tried to catalog the monsters inside each of the cylinders they passed.

  They were not all the same. In fact none of them were identical, but all were similar in that they were large with rock-like texture, possibly of the same race, but also possibly from similar ones.

  That was when she remembered a vague reference in the information Nevantha had been sifting through and she had been ineffectively observing. The Maty was referred to as a library, though she had thought that meant data collection, for the PanNari only had data, and most other ‘libraries’ throughout the galaxy were the same…but not all.

  What is stored in the Maty? she asked the Kel’zat, not expecting a full, or perhaps even any answer, but it responded quickly and pithily.

  The past and the future.

  That was when Kyra realized that ‘library’ didn’t mean knowledge alone. It meant ‘storehouse’ as well. They were cataloging things by taking samples and storing them here, or some variant of that purpose. It may have also meant safe haven, for these cylinders were not tagged as dangerous.

  In fact, she had the odd feeling they were survivors of some ancient cataclysm.

  The Maty wasn’t a data center, it was a treasure trove, and the PanNari had only seen the data side of it. There was more here, a great deal more, and something in this massive mystery the Hadarak wanted, and wanted badly. And whatever was in these cylinders was part of it.

  Kyra tried to get a signal back to the Craniem, but there were no communications nodes in range. What she had discovered here would die with her if they didn’t survive, though right now protecting whatever these monsters were seemed to be the higher priority, and the Kel’zat agreed, wanting to know which of three nearby targets Kyra wanted to go after now that they were back in standard ‘kill everything in sight’ protocol…

  5

  December 3, 154960

  System 9923004 (Hadarak-Occupied Territory)

  Low Stellar Orbit

  Paul-024 had been linked into his Astromech onboard the Excalibur for 3 days straight without a single minute of disconnection. His body was being fed by the regenerator in his heavily armored pod, and his Saiyan genetics were no longer nagging at him as they once would now that they’d been upgraded into a calmer Furyan version, but the stagnation was eating at him…and he was simply ignoring it.

  The battle for the system was still ongoing, and wasn’t going to let up anytime soon. Paul and the other 78 trailblazers here had isolated the planet with Maty in it, and the others were busy cleaning its surface of minions after already killing their production ships in space, but the Hadarak naval forces were still in immense numbers spread across the system with more coming in from 16 different jumplines.

  That was one more than yesterday, and they were all pouring into low orbit around the pair of stars. None were even trying to come out early elsewhere in the system, which meant the naval battles around the figure eight orbital structure were where the highest density of combat was occurring by far…and that’s where Paul had stationed himself along with Liam-090, Blade-097, Greg-073, and Jack-020 as they led a large, but far-outnumbered combined Clan fleet in combat against those minions and warships already here, plus those continuing to pour in through the jumplines that they were trying to ambush with limited effect.

  Two were around one star, two around the other, while Paul was holding position between them in the gap that several jumplines ran to, given that it was the center of mass between the pair of stars. He had the Excalibur there surrounded by a sea of drones and no Clan warships…for the combat in the area was too intense and the ‘smaller’ ships would be destroyed. Nothing smaller than a Borg vessel was survivable in this maelstrom and Paul knew it…plus he was hold the most obnoxious position possible to draw the Hadarak towards him in an Alamo-style last hold situation while his brothers were doing most of the damage on the perimeter where the Hadarak were not so well stacked.

  The others were spread across the system hunting down the Hadarak groups that had been here already, poaching the micro jumplines out to the planets, defending the 8th planet where Maty was, mining the outer sections of the primary jumplines so they could kill some ships as they passed through, and were guarding the few jumplines that were seeing more Star Force ships arriving, though they were few in number. Almost all of their summoned force was here, with only the tail ends of the convoys still to arrive. Star Force had what it needed here. It was simply up to the trailblazers to make use of it to take the system.

  Holding it against a never-ending assault was another matter entirely.

  Yet holding the stars was proving the most difficult challenge of Paul’s life. Even Azoro refused to speak to him for fear of distracting his hyperprocessing. The Hadarak moved and coordinated well with their telepathy, but Paul’s drone coordination made them look like they were standing still. He was constricted by comm lag, of course, but he adapted to it better than the Hadarak did and had his forces swirling here and there in unpredictable patterns that the Hadarak did not know how to engage…so they simply headed for the massive Borg vessel in the center of his defensive formation and tried to destroy it.

  Which is what he had planned on.

  Several Wardens had tried to ram, and more were occasionally attempting to improve on their luck with minion wedges to escort them in, but none were getting through the dampening shields on the Excalibur due to its position at the center of the gravity well. Any Warden close enough to try to ram had to pull on two stars that were not in front or behind them, but essentially to the sides…meaning their engine power was minimal. The same went for the minions and Paul’s drones, but his Borg vessel didn’t need to maneuver, for it was holding position, and the lack of normal maneuvering power was making the Hadarak react even slower than normal.

  Paul was processing all of it with the help of his Astromech that his Core was now partially spread into. It was temporarily a part of his body and brain, giving him additional computational power, but it was his instincts that were winning this fight, not pre-recorded attack program
s in the drones. Those were minimally effective against the Hadarak when at a numerical disadvantage approaching 1000:1, but the presence of the Excalibur didn’t truly count as ‘1’ as it was a massive mobile fort that was now dug in with its flanks essentially protected by the two stars as all the reinforcements were coming not from them, but from around them, making this essentially a 2D fighting plane.

  Some were trying to move around ‘above’ and ‘below’, but Paul was cutting them off with drone fleets easily enough. In fact, not all of his drones were deployed, and were still packed in tightly on several massive carriers he had stationed nearby. He was pulling new drones off them when his previous ones were destroyed, giving him reinforcements without cluttering up the battlefield too much.

  That’s what the Hadarak wanted. A slug fest without maneuvering room, but Paul wasn’t giving it to them…and when they got their swarms in close to his ship, or more precisely when he allowed it, the Essence weapons on the Excalibur wiped them off the battlefield, making one wonder why the Hadarak kept repeating the same type of attacks over and over again.

  Perhaps they knew he had a limited amount of Essence to use, or perhaps they didn’t know any other way to fight. Also, there were no Wardens here that were not trying to ram, and some theorized they were the better tacticians that led the minions rather than the warships variants.

  One Lurker had tried to sneak in and get to his command ship, but it had been pinned and vaporized outside its primary attack range. Paul knew better than to take chances with them, so he didn’t hold back on Essence usage whenever they appeared. Riona had died when her fleet had been jumped by one before they had Essence defenses, and to date they were the only real countermeasure against them. Ysalamir worked if you had time to slug it out, but the Lurkers rarely operated that way. They truly were gigantic assassins, and if you were going to kill assassins before they could get to their target, you had to do it just as fast.