Carnage Read online

  And every one of these bastards she killed was one that wasn’t going to do that. Yes, they could grow more and spam more than she could kill, but they were not infinite. She knew that systems like this would slowly develop into Hadarak strongholds and begin producing other varieties of minion. Stronger ones that would then be sent forward to batter the better defended worlds. Scouts were continually bringing information back from those worlds first conquered in this purge, and the images were truly grotesque.

  The planets were no longer spheres, with huge arms and webs growing out of them while others had been wiped clean of all surface features and left bare. No Hadarak were on them, and Esna knew that was because the enemy didn’t want to risk overpopulating this galaxy and bringing the Pafdreng down on them. But the Hadarak weren’t going to let anyone else have them either, and they were so far behind enemy lines no one knew they existed, for the space lanes were so full of naval Hadarak only the strongest and faster ships in the galaxy could make it through to scout the area.

  To many it seemed that Esna’s Clan was fighting a pointless war, but it wasn’t. To the contrary, it was essential. Every victory made her Clan stronger, and they were good enough to know when they were in over their head and back off, so they rarely lost any of their people, and today was not going to be an exception. Esna and the others kept mowing down the Hadarak minions, then the defense wall would push them back over and over again, forming a mountain of dead that would eventually bottleneck the approaching swarms…then the Zeda overhead would raze them as they were bunched up, killing far more than the infantry could ever hope to.

  All the while the mining crews continued to work below the surface, monitoring for Hadarak tunnels trying to dig underneath. Esna had her own little ‘moles’ to intercept and destroy them, so the battle was taking place both on the surface and below it. It wasn’t a battle to conquer the planet, and if Esna tried to do that she’d lose. The Hadarak had too many lairs here, and she didn’t have the personnel necessary to go after all of them. So when one fell they’d spawn more at others and you’d be fighting forever until you brought in enough troops to hit them all at once.

  Clan Kai’sa would be doing that later, when the High Guard fleets were making the space lanes their own, but right now they didn’t have enough ships, so Esna had to focus on building her Clan until then, and her path to do that was in battle, taking resources from the enemy, and even their corpses in some cases. It was messy and ugly, but once they were dead they were just floating trash in space anyway, and the Yeg’gor was too valuable to pass up and just throw into a star along with the rest of their corpses.

  That was the reality of this war, and if you let it consume you it was easy to lose your way, but Clan Kai’sa was not in jeopardy of that. Their homes were literally above their heads, and when they got battle fatigue from so much carnage they were recalled to the sanctuaries within the Zedas and were reacquainted with what civilization truly was. There you could recharge and denumb your senses before going back down again. Esna refused to become the enemy, and if carnage was what was necessary, then honorable carnage would be their way forward.

  No Hadarak was going to be tortured. No Hadarak was going to be harvested before it was completely and long term dead. No Hadarak would be killed if it surrendered…though to date none ever had. She was not going to ‘farm’ the Hadarak. She was simply picking up resources off the battlefield from the dead, and she made sure her Clan understood that as they were constantly having to face these monsters down day in and day out.

  And today was no exception. Esna ran out of ammo 9 times, meaning her pack was fully empty, and she had to be resupplied by couriers carrying ammunition up to the wall guard. Many were Rammus, but other smaller races that were not good at fighting the Hadarak directly had become part of her Clan to play support roles, and they were damn effective. Esna didn’t have to leave the wall up until the assault was over, after which drones were moved out to remove the dead Hadarak back away from the wall many miles to keep the firing lines clear.

  As they did Esna retreated to one of the barracks in the mining site along with part of the Commandos while others took their place on the wall or near it, waiting for the next assault, some of which happened 3 or 4 times a day…and sometimes there would be a lag of a week between attacks.

  Esna didn’t take part in all of them, nor did any of the others. They all had to rotate or risk getting burnt or flabby. They still needed to train, and standing on a wall shooting wasn’t improving anything other than their aim. So once this assault was over she took her leave and got out of her armor inside the well-shielded barracks as well as her clothes, dumping them in a sweaty pile at the foot of a shower tube in a row along with many others. No one was shy here, for this was field work and they weren’t going to build individual quarters for everyone, so there were a lot of naked Commandos getting cleaned up, but she could make the shower tube opaque if she wanted.

  Esna climbed up on top and sat down, sliding her feet into the warm water as she was about to slide off the edge and go in all the way as she paused and sniffed both her armpits before she washed the sweat off.

  Neutral watery smell, which meant her body was operating normally. With that quick, regular check done, she slid over the edge and dunked herself below the top of the shower tube water level, slicking her 3 inch long hair back as her head came back up and floated with her feet a few inches off the floor of the tube. She held on to the side and just soaked as her mind was still caught up with the rigors of battle, but slowly her body slowed down, then her mind followed some time later. The other Commandos were not much different, and the shower tubes served as both cleansing units as well as mini refuges from the carnage outside.

  They allowed them to drop their guard and relax, and after all these millennia of repeated battles Esna had it down to a science. After only 18 minutes she was refreshed and drained the tube before climbing out and resetting it for someone else to use.

  After grabbing a fresh uniform she headed over to the mining site command center and started working on her strategy stuff, linked into the orbiting Zedas so she could get information from all over the planet as the other Commandos sought out training or another round on the defense wall.

  She couldn’t be out there all the time, for she was the Clan leader and it was her responsibility to put the Clan in a position to one day rid the galaxy of these monsters.

  And to do that she needed more than a rifle and a good firing line.

  She needed an army, and hers was growing by the year in size, experience, and technology…but it wasn’t ready yet, and Esna had to get it there before the High Guard had their fleet maxed.

  When that happened, Star Force would push back. Until then, she’d play the carnage game and do it better than the Hadarak since they wouldn’t allow anything else.

  For if one succumbed to the carnage, and forgot who and what they were, then the enemy won whether you died or lived, because if you lived you would become the enemy. Esna would never do that. Never could do that. Her path had made her immune to it, but she still had to deal with the stress.

  Carnage was the jungle she had been born into, and while she would not become the jungle, she knew well how to exist within it. And how to do so honorably.

  Once Clan Kai’sa grew large enough, the Hadarak weren’t going to stand a chance.

  It was just a matter of time and a lot of hard work to get to that point.

  But it was coming. And every day and every battle that passed brought her a little closer to it.

  4

  October 18, 154929

  Ha’ven Nu’meori System (Home Two Kingdom)

  Ha’shavi

  Paul and Cal-com had been walking and observing for several hours with the Archon’s head feeling like it was deflating. Somehow he’d accumulated a lot of stress and had locked it in to the point he didn’t even realize it was there, but now that he was deliberately shutting off his extra senses and confining
his natural ones to a sliver of vision in front of him, muffled hearing through his robe, a fully intact sense of smell that was not necessarily a good thing in some of these dirty streets, and the feel of the rough road beneath his shoes, the lockdown was cracking open and the stress was bleeding off…and a remarkable amount of it.

  “Trouble,” Cal-com whispered, telepathically pointing ahead about 60 meters on the somewhat busy street full of pedestrians and no vehicles.

  The crack in Paul’s mind resealed in an instant as he opened up his senses to see a scuffle happening between two of the Tri’meori as the other passersby stepped back to give them space as they beat on one another viciously, with some people tripping over each other to get out of the way as those nearest got caught up in the flailing limbs, turning over carts and spilling produce out all over the street.

  Suddenly everything grew quiet…and still. Hundreds of people stopped moving, stopped talking, and froze like statues, including the two scuffling who backed off from one another only to stare at each other as they too froze.

  “Is that you?” Cal-com asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How many are you capable of controlling?”

  “More than this. Their minds are weak,” he said as the people started moving again in twos and threes until everyone was cautiously blinking away their confusion and going about their business again, with the two fighters no longer remembering that they were fighting after a little mental washing as both were given a priority task in opposite directions that they headed off on, forgetting about each other until they were out of sight. If they wanted to go at it again it would be after Paul and Cal-com got through the area.

  “I knew you were powerful, but I’ve never seen that trick before. What exactly did you do?”

  “Asserting control over their minds without taking direct control of motor functions. I let them handle that, but put very firm restrictions on what they can and can’t do. That way they stay standing without me having to do it for them,” Paul said as they walked past one of the fighters as he went up the street they were walking down.

  “Essence use?”

  “Didn’t need to.”

  “That’s why I didn’t detect it.”

  “Is it that surprising?”

  Cal-com glanced at his friend’s hooded head. “You may be underestimating how strong you’ve gotten. I don’t know of any Vargemma or Varkemma who could do the same without Essence, and even with Essence I doubt I could replicate that feat with so many people. How do you practice Ikrid skills onboard your ship?”

  “I don’t. At least not mind hacking. Mental interface with remote computer systems is somewhat similar, but not completely the same. I’m rusty because of that.”

  “I’ll take your rust any day,” Cal-com said as a large number of the Tri’meori police force arrived and quickly grabbed the fighter still ahead of them…but ignored the one going the other way entirely.

  The Voku frowned, reaching out to search their minds as well as the one going the other way.

  “Paul.”

  “I see them. We can slip through.”

  “We need to intervene. It was a setup.”

  “How so?” Paul asked, reaching out to search the minds involved as the Tri’meori who was being arrested started fighting back as if his life depended on it…for it did.

  “This one was attacked on orders, now they’re arresting him for the scuffle. Once they get him out of view of the public, they’re going to kill him. Some sort of political assassination.”

  “Not today,” Paul murmured as he quickly got caught up with his own mental scans and soon the entire street went still again, with him and Cal-com walking up to the police officers and the Tri’meori they were soon to kill.

  “I’ll take him,” Cal-com offered, with his Ikrid being handed off control by Paul’s with only a split second of lag during which the 11 foot tall reptilian visibly twitched, after which he became a puppet as Cal-com remote controlled his body and got him moving through the crowd of statues until they got to the edge where there were moving people beyond looking on at the freakish occurrence…but a little mental distraction from Cal-com took their curiosity away and he was able to blend in with them as he walked behind his ward.

  Paul hung back a bit, wiping the memories of the police officers and adding some mental conditioning against assassinations. That way the next time they were ordered to do so they wouldn’t accept it without thinking. They might still overcome his imbedded impetus, but they’d have to work at it to do it. That might put their own lives in jeopardy if their bosses didn’t like them not following through, but that was still better than them jumping someone who didn’t have a chance to fight back.

  And while he was working on them he reviewed the orders he was given as he slowly walked away from the scene. There was quite a bit of wrong going on here, and it seemed to avoid Star Force’s rule against executions they were killing people unofficially in order to get the job done…along with a lot more unsavory stuff.

  That angered Paul in a multitude of ways, but the most shocking of all was the fact that Star Force had set firm rules to allow them to remain independent. Generous rules that allowed a lot of crap to go on but provided individuals caught up in that crap an escape route. There was a Star Force embassy on the planet, though far from here, that would transport anyone off the planet that wished to leave. And rather than send their political enemies there to get rid of them…which many planets did…they were instead killing them, as if getting rid of them wasn’t the objective. It was almost like they wanted the sick pleasure of overriding their control of their own lives and snuffing them out.

  It had been a very long time since Paul had sensed a mind with that level of darkside in it. The Hadarak were different, for they were just going on instinct and programming. This was by choice. It was individuals seeking out the darkside and embracing it, not being tricked into it or programmed to follow it.

  Most of these police didn’t fall into that category, but two of them did, and it turned out they were the ones making the assassination kills while the others were either not in view or simply said nothing and did nothing as it happened.

  But those two…they knew what they were doing was a violation. And for them that was the point. Part of it was old genetic memory, prey and predator instincts, where you went after a target because you were instructed to, and movement and even screeching enhanced the takedown urge, almost as if it were a game.

  But in those predator instincts there was no desire to cause pain or torture. That’s still what happened, but from the predator’s perspective they didn’t understand that. They didn’t understand they were tearing apart a person, just an objective.

  This was different because the whole point of it was to tear apart a person. They didn’t just pull them out of view and shoot them in the head. They would beat and knife them into a bloody mess before finally killing them. They wanted the torture, and reveled in it. They wanted to see their terror and feel it, as some kind of sick rush…which was why they were so useful when it came to assassinations. They weren’t doing it for money or power, they actually liked it.

  As Paul walked off those two individuals collapsed to the ground, with specific internal organs spontaneously crushed to kill them as quickly as possible using Lachka. These two monsters were not going to be able to prey on anyone else, but there were probably many more of them out there if these assassinations were as widespread as these police seemed to think.

  Paul continued to walk, visibly calm but with his teeth clenched. This was within Star Force’s domain, though it wasn’t their territory, and that made it even worse. The Hadarak were the greater threat, but this darkside was playing out right here, plain as day, by people with skills and powers far inferior to even the youngest of Archons. Why was this being allowed?

  Paul knew the answers to that. Star Force couldn’t be everywhere. Star Force needed to fight the biggest enemies. Star Force had to p
ick and choose its battles, and in truth Paul knew of many histories that were far darker than this, but being right here and seeing it about to happen in his presence angered him in a way he hadn’t experience before in his entire life.

  And part of that anger was him having the power to stop it, as well as many others in Star Force, and nobody had. It had just been overlooked as an unimportant planet with an escape hatch for people to leave if they needed to.

  But they couldn’t leave if they were jumped and killed by the very police force that was supposed to be protecting people.

  The rage burned in him as he slowly walked and caught up to Cal-com and their rescuee who was still unaware of what was happening. It was better that way, because trying to explain would leave him freaking out and drawing attention, and right now they needed to get him away from here and to the embassy.

  They walked, using mental distraction as needed, until another group of 6 police officers…different from the first ones…spotting the Tri’meori and yelled out at him, attempting to arrest him before Paul did another quick mind wipe and sent them on their way.

  “We’re being tracked,” Cal-com noted.

  “I think you’re right,” Paul said, extending his Pefbar out and looking for surveillance equipment. The city streets didn’t look advanced enough to support such technology, but he found it numerous places. Tiny cameras set up where they were virtually invisible to onlookers. And through those they could see the streets and the faces of the individuals. With a little facial recognition programming they could track their guy wherever he went, with Paul wishing the Tri’meori was wearing a hood, though that wouldn’t matter if there was a continuous feed down the streets. If someone was watching they could just follow his silhouette, face showing or not.

  “Be right back,” Paul said, wandering off in the crowd as he blacked out three of the nearest cameras using his Po’letvo, which essentially put a dark bubble around them so they couldn’t see anything. Usually it was a technique used to blind an opponent, but it worked just as well on camera technology, though not holo.