Star Force: Baron (Star Force Universe Book 43) Read online

  It was a mess out here, and the only reason why this station hadn’t been packed up and moved was The Nexus didn’t have enough super-huge ships to do the moving, nor did they have enough small ones to network together to transport the valuable pieces of their infrastructure elsewhere. Already 8 Grid Points had been relocated, stranding the local inhabitants as the more powerful races tried to reform their existing territory into a new, stronger network, but that meant hemorrhaging the lesser races that were in the wrong geographical regions.

  And they were hated for it, but when you were pulling out and running away from regions you never intended to inhabit again you really didn’t care what those that were being left behind thought of you. In the case of this station, situated well out from the star between the first and second gas giants in the system, it had become the defacto property of the lesser Nexus races that were trying to hold on to any shred of a link to the stronger races. A shaky trade route to the Anshala Grid Point still existed, and it was the last lifeline for the region that saw everyone with the ability to flee traveling down it in hope of finding someone elsewhere in The Nexus to take them in.

  David knew many were getting bottled up elsewhere, not permitted from going into certain areas where the Sety and others did not want them. The mismanagement of The Nexus had been having horrific consequences for centuries, but it was only getting worse with time and there was too much territory for Star Force to annex. They were taking on as much as they could and sending teams like the one David was currently on out beyond the annexed area to try and stabilize what they could, hoping to buy time for races that might be able to survive until Star Force expanded out to them.

  But already there more races than David could count who were imploding. They didn’t even need anyone to invade them, for without the economic ties of The Nexus that they’d foolishly relied upon their infrastructure was failing. Their factories grinding to a halt now that the specialists they usually hired to fix such things were long gone. Their food supply then suffered from the lack of machinery and trade that had been used to bolster it in the past.

  Entire planets were starving to death, some as bad as the Kiritas had been when Star Force first met them. Some even worse. David had seen a few planets firsthand that they’d gotten to too late, and more than 99% of the population was now dead with the few survivors having gone cannibal. More often than not Star Force would drop some supplies and leave them be, for they didn’t have the resources out here to take prisoners. Right now it was helping those who wanted to help themselves, without the luxury of forcing those who did not into sustainable frameworks.

  Outside the station David was on were two Star Force warships…the one he’d come in on and another that was just about ready to leave on another mission. They always kept one here, but only one, and so far that had been enough to dissuade the predatory races, pirates, and other groups out there taking advantage of the chaos from hitting this system. There was a small fleet of local warships, but none as powerful as a Star Force model, and the locals had begged Star Force to establish a permanent presence here in order to try and keep this tiny link to The Nexus intact.

  It made sense for Star Force to do that rather than try and establish a colony of their own this far out, so they’d claimed a small section of the station for themselves and set up shop. Now David and others were going out on missions using this station as a central hub to stockpile supplies and switch out personnel. As for David he needed a rest, having suffered an arm injury over a week ago that the regenerator had sucked the life out of him to repair.

  But he’d been exhausted before that, and not just physically. The sight of so many people suffering and dying wore on a person, so when his warship needed to return for fuel he went with it rather than staying behind and trying to pick a few small fights that would amount to little in the grand scheme of things.

  He had to recharge himself, otherwise the carnage would overwhelm him and cause greater problems later. Unfortunately that meant leaving some present fights hanging in order to insure he was fit to fight others down the road.

  When he got back to the station he headed straight for his temporary quarters there and crashed, but not to sleep. He disconnected himself from the region, the people on the station, and everything else. Mentally he had to get away from it all, so he retreated to his little quiet room and dove into the communications link Star Force maintained with the station. The relay network didn’t reach out here, but message packets were carried by ships and dealing with events back in the ‘homeland’ was a good way to get his mind off the sludgefest around him.

  He hadn’t checked in for months, and there many updates that he was curious in monitoring, but there were a handful specifically for him and they were all related to the Preema. Since he’d been the one to transfer over the Preema races to Beacon he’d been monitoring their progress and running an investigation into what exactly the Preema had been doing with them. Virtually no one had any information on the Preema from the inside, for they kept very closed borders, but Star Force had plenty of witnesses now and sorting out some kind of story from them was in the works.

  The Monarchs overseeing these races were gathering as much information as they could and syphoning it off to him to try and put all the pieces together, and with this latest batch of information some of his earlier speculations had been proven wrong, but he thought he was finally getting a handle on the Preema’s motivations.

  Fear is what motivated them. That was becoming more and more clear, yet they didn’t panic. Most of the fearful did, but these Preema were cold and calculating, working ten steps ahead to avoid problems before they happened, and they saw the V’kit’no’sat as a gigantic problem, for they had nearly expanded out into Preema territory before the Rit’ko’sor rebellion. David thought they feared a conflict and conquest of their territory by the V’kit’no’sat more than anything…but it was their territory that he thought they valued more than their lives.

  If you were faced with an opponent you could not beat, then the only logical course was to run. The Preema were not running. Rather, they were treating this like having to weather a storm. They kept everyone out of their little corner of the galaxy and didn’t interfere with others unless they absolutely had to. David got the feeling they hoped to ride out a V’kit’no’sat expansion by playing dead and not picking a fight, but by having enough strength to defend themselves if needed.

  But they needed to know their enemy, and the fleeing races that had been marked for death by the V’kit’no’sat were assets, for if they weren’t why would the V’kit’no’sat bother with them? They’d gotten a handle on the fact that the V’kit’no’sat ran rough shot over the inner half of the galaxy without owning most of those systems. So they tolerated a lot while picking others for eradication…and the Preema wanted to know why and how they could keep themselves on the ‘ignore’ list.

  That was David’s feel for it, but he’d misjudged them when he thought of them as cowering. They were playing a very long term game, and in the long run the only way to be safe from the V’kit’no’sat was to destroy them. The Preema could not do that themselves, but they could help others take them down while sitting quietly in their own systems.

  Star Force had known for a long time that the Preema had diplomatic connections to a great many races and that they wanted greater links to what was left of The Nexus…especially now that it had collapsed, but they were not willing to expand their territory beyond their borders. David had initially thought this was out of fear of drawing attention, but now he knew he had been wrong.

  Information from the races that had lived and worked with the Preema was now indicating that they had not been good hosts, but not out of malice. They had to keep them quiet, but they were also not helping them in order to be generous. Everything they did had to have some gain for the Preema, so them putting these races to work for them in various ways in addition to the information they could provide made sense…as did turnin
g them over to Star Force now that they’d plucked all the information from them that they could.

  They’d imposed population restrictions on several of the races, and when some of them violated those numbers they had not responded by killing the excess as the V’kit’no’sat would have, but they had tightened their grip on their wards even further, which was why there was considerable animosity towards them. These races wanted to grow and the Preema did not want them to expand to other systems, hence there was an underlying problem that could only be solved by getting them out of Preema territory.

  But there was more than that going on, a great deal more, David thought, that he was just beginning to piece together. The small orbs the Tahm had brought with them, despite their penchant for lying, were evidence of resource gathering. Given the numbers of Preema, why would they even bother having these races work for them? The number of resources had to be so small to not be worth it on a grand scale, but the nature of the gathering is what piqued David’s interest. For it wasn’t just the Tahm that were collecting orbs and other organic droppings.

  There were now 5 different stories of races being used to collect organic discharge that was extremely valuable. Too many to be coincidence, and David now guessed that the Preema had been cultivating lesser races, perhaps even genetically altering them, to act as gradual resource collectors and refineries. The Tahm had been gathering on the ocean floor, as had the Itiumu, but the other three had been collecting on land from either roaming herds of hexpeds the size of dropships or stealing the inner lining of insect dwellings that were unusually plentiful in valuable raw materials that didn’t make for such great building materials.

  It all looked to David like the Preema had put together a primitive slave empire where they let races free roam unwittingly doing their bidding…and if other races stumbled across these uninhabited planets within the Preema domain, they’d interfere with their network and might even realize the natural resources available and try to steal them.

  So the Preema keeping people out made more sense now, but it was also this reluctance to do the work themselves that told David something about the Preema. They liked to sit back and direct rather than do the work, and that was an important datapoint. They wanted to be the puppet masters, not the battlefield masters that the V’kit’no’sat were, and their growing relationship with Star Force allowed them many more options without having to leave their own territory in any meaningful way.

  David had seen the plans for the Grid Point bridge they’d agreed to build, including with branches into areas Star Force wanted. The Preema would build them, but after that he expected them to sit back and let others operate the locations, swelling the economic presence and reshaping the geography around those locations. The Preema would gain great wealth from this over the course of time, but it was a huge up front expenditure that even Star Force would have trouble accomplishing if it had the luxury of attempting a project of this size.

  And that made David wonder how large the Preema stockpiles of resources were. He got the feeling that they just collected and stored the bioharvest until they needed it, and if that was the case they could be sitting on vast amounts of wealth the likes of which David couldn’t even imagine. Yet another reason not to let anyone snoop around to see how wealthy you were, lest they might try and take it from you.

  David also felt the Preema had tried taking in these races as an experiment and got burnt from it. He didn’t expect them to offer such assistance again now that they’d gotten rid of their burden, and the worlds those races had previously been inhabiting were now empty and offering more space for whatever the Preema wished.

  Then there was also the matter of the Ikrid blocks they’d negotiated for. He got the feeling those were not meant to fight the V’kit’no’sat, but to deal with other telepathic races. It also suggested they had secrets to keep more than battlefield considerations in mind, which made David wonder what else they were hiding inside their territory. The races that were now in Beacon had only seen small parts of it, forbidden to travel elsewhere, and the Preema’s prudence in fighting the lizards to keep them from getting to their borders was now in retrospect making greater sense.

  They did not want anyone or anything encroaching on their territory, and David felt it was not a territorial ego that was driving them, but rather a host of secrets they couldn’t afford to let be known to the galaxy. So they were hiding in plain sight, playing a guiding hand in regional events while staying on their perch unless absolutely necessary. The lizards had apparently scared them enough to get them to come out, but as of now they were tucked in there nicely and not bothering anyone, having relinquished all the temporary worlds they’d assumed control of during the war.

  The Preema were a greater mystery than he could figure out at present, and trying to analyze every bit of intel the Monarchs were giving him from the newest Beacon races was a suitable distraction for the Archon while he hid out on The Nexus station and rested his mind from the horrors taking place in this part of the galaxy.

  5

  March 3, 4865

  Axalon System (Pavana Region)

  Turok

  Sara-012 sprinted across an open field, staying ahead of the young Raptors that were now full grown but still not quite capable of keeping up with her. That would change with time and training, but the fact that they could almost run as fast as her was both disturbing and exhilarating for a biped. Scionate had always been faster than Humans, but they were quadrupeds and had the advantage of huge stride length. Raptors had more than Humans, but they were still biped too and had the same disadvantage, yet the genetic superiority of their now very refined design was damn impressive to see.

  All of these adults were new Raptors, not converts, so they were still learning about everything. If one of the adults that had not been born into Star Force were out here they’d run Sara down with ease, but right now she was still queen of the castle…or field in this case.

  The objective was simple, keep away from them and avoid contact. It was a giant game of tag with the Raptors learning to work together to track down a target. The pack mentality was still very present in them despite their new Ikrid blocks, and Sara needed to teach them to think when in a group rather than just pattern off the others…and in typical Archon fashion, that meant beating it into them through physical force or repetitive failure, the latter of which was appropriate in this case, for they weren’t landing a nose on her.

  That’s all it would take to end this game with a win for them, but Sara had such endurance now that they weren’t going to be able to wear her out. The reverse was true, knowing that they had about 22-26 minutes at this pace before they tanked. This was the 54th time they’d run this game, and they still could not touch her…despite her not using her psionics to evade. This was pure running and agility, with Humans having an advantage in the latter. Raptors could move fast, but turning on a dime with their leg structure and tails was not easy.

  They were still good movers, but they were better when operating off a straight line. A Human could spin in place with ease because of their vertical back, but the horizontal back of the Raptors meant a lot of momentum had to be redirected in both head and tail, and it was something that Sara was using to her advantage whenever one of the Raptors got close, as she did now with one coming in from her left while the others were trailing a few dozen meters behind her.

  They wanted her to go right, trying to herd her into a better position to surround her and she knew it, which was why she turned hard left and faked with her head. The Raptor thought she was pulling a U-turn, but a heavy foot plant launched her to the right at the last moment and the Raptor flew past her left shoulder, futilely reaching out a tiny hand that missed by a meter.

  Sara continued her right turn until she got back on her original course, but by then the other Raptors were only 4 meters back. She could see them with her Pefbar, so there was no need to turn around, but she had an urge to telekinetically trip them up and make
them faceplant, for they were running so hard they were having trouble staying on their feet every time they hit a little divot in the grass-covered ground. They were trying too hard, but her showing them that now in that fashion would be cheating so she resisted the impulse and eased up just enough to keep them close.

  The trailblazer was getting tired now, but they were literally falling apart. The only chance they had was the other group that had broken off and gone far ahead several minutes earlier. They were better rested and slowly drawing their lines in around her at a range of more than half a mile. If she kept running straight she would be near them very soon, and she knew she could get past them without too much trouble. That would effectively end this attempt, because the Raptors would be too tired to mount any more credible attempts, so she threw them a bone.

  Sara picked up speed, gaining a few meters on those behind her before turning right and running in a circle, dragging those behind her in a line like ducks as they just couldn’t make the catch. As she did the larger circle came in closer and closer, until all 40 of them were within a quarter of a mile. At that point Sara couldn’t cut them any more breaks and went evasive, plowing a line in the grass and leaving a dirt streak as her foot braked hard, then she redirected at an angle back past her trailing Raptors. Without that angle they would have got her, but she stayed just out of reach going almost the opposite way, causing the Raptors to try and follow at the same speed…which they couldn’t.

  Half of them tried the same skid stop and couldn’t handle it. Most Humans couldn’t either, but Sara was very good at it now after centuries of experience. She almost laughed as half of the Raptors rolled heads over tails as they lost control, but she was breathing too hard to waste the air. The others abandoned their hard breaking and instead ran through long, out of the way loops as the outer ring was now collapsing on her.