Star Force: Collaboration (SF90) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  The mastermind looked around, quickly spotting the other growth pods. “How many of us have you created?”

  “Six.”

  “What is my assignment?”

  “Training,” Paul answered. “Your skills must be both tested and further developed before you can be trusted with the necessary tasks.”

  “My loyalty is without question.”

  “To whom?”

  “To the…to our people. The templars have betrayed us?” he asked, looking at Thrawn.

  “I believe so. Paul has opened my mind to a great many possibilities, many of which we cannot ascertain in the near future. We have to retool, and your genetic template has been altered minimally. We are making greater changes to the minions but we do not have a course plotted for us. We are experimenting and adapting, but he has forbidden us to use certain techniques.”

  “To force us to adapt further,” the new mastermind said, displaying his quick wits. “My body is sound. When shall I begin these tests?”

  “Now,” Paul said, spinning around on the heel of his casual shoe, for he wore no armor. “Come with me.”

  The new mastermind did as instructed, still trying and quickly succeeding in sorting out his memories…but there was a lot to process and this had been the first birthing of the new template, with Thrawn certain that there would need to be alterations made going forward. To that end a small chip had been implanted in each of the six masterminds that would monitor and transmit their status to the facility computer to give the scientists the data they would need to assess and adapt the coding for any future batches.

  They walked a short distance through familiar architecture until they came to a transit tunnel that wasn’t supposed to be in a hatchery. The mastermind looked over the entrance carefully, then turned to look down at Paul. The Human didn’t move, nor did he looked intimidated by the size difference. The mastermind took this as a sign of confidence, as well as a test, for part of his memories told him that the Humans were dangerous enemies that needed to be killed immediately, and that the Archons were so dangerous that there was no sacrifice too great to eliminate one.

  A part of him wanted to strike at the armorless Archon now, but beyond his knowledge of their biological abilities he did not want to for on some level he respected, even trusted, this particular Human and identified him with the same deference as the templar…which were now not to be trusted.

  “Files have been provided for your study,” Paul said, monitoring the mental ping pong. “Once you step inside this chamber you will be transported to the testing facility. It is all automated, but I will warn you that the challenges are extremely difficult. You will fail. How you fail and how you respond to failure will be analyzed. Beyond that you will receive no more instruction beyond the memories you possess.”

  The mastermind didn’t respond, but not out of spite or fear. If he was to be given no more instructions then there was nothing to be discussed further. He sniffed the air to clear a little more fluid out of his airways then stepped inside the chamber with the doors sealing behind him and eclipsing Paul’s view.

  The Archon turned around and headed back to the growth pods, nodding to Thrawn who then signaled the minions to open another, with the pair repeating the process for the remaining five and sending them on their way into the testing program. When the last of them was off Thrawn expressed a concern that he figured the Archon was already aware of.

  “They were too compliant. Did you sense deception?”

  “No. I think the internal conflict was distracting them.”

  “I have had a great deal of time to reason matters out. They are being forced to instantaneously. I understand your reasoning as to why this is necessary, but in the future it would be more expedient simply to give them the necessary knowledge.”

  “Agreed. But so long as we’re confiscating enemy populations they need the same experience as you…or as close as we can get to it.”

  “Transitional?”

  “To begin with. I assume they can adapt to other functions over time?”

  “I do not know. Ask me about the minions and I can tell you much of them, but I have only had experience with my own kind in the most rudimentary of forms. The adaptational abilities of the minions are channeled. I do not know for certain as to my own status.”

  “Your presence here says it is possible,” Paul pointed out the obvious.

  “If not for your cunning I would have been dead before I could learn. I hope we do not have to waste these six if they revert to previous instructions regarding imprisonment. We need to strip those out of the coding.”

  “A superior intellect will persevere. If they are not superior we need to know.”

  “And if they do kill themselves?”

  “I have the ability to revive them.”

  “Without claws?”

  Paul smiled. “As you said, I can be cunning at times.”

  “An understatement,” Thrawn said as the two turned to walk away from the doors through which the last of the masterminds had passed.

  “I learned through similar methods,” Paul admitted. “Sometimes the way to show someone the truth is to let them discover it for themselves. Putting them in a position to do so is the key.”

  “Who taught you?”

  “A man by the name of Wilson. He taught all the trailblazers.”

  “He is your superior?”

  “No. Just cunning enough to point us in the right direction. Once we understood the basic principles we carried on independently for the most part. But those initial lessons have served us well over the centuries.”

  “Have you patterned these tests off of the same?”

  “I’ve had to condense it down greatly, plus the circumstances are different. The genetic knowledge you possess is a great advantage, and while that helps to accelerate the process this is not a copy of my own training. Just a short test that will simultaneously give them a few lessons that your memories cannot.”

  “They only have pieces of my memory. And still, even if they had the full amount one cannot synthesize experience.”

  “The templars believed otherwise.”

  “I know differently. Minions behave per reality, not expectation. The templars never dealt with them, they always worked through us, as far as I know. I probably know the minions better than any of them do. Genetic coding is the basis for a Li’vorkrachnika, but it does not determine the quality of one. That depends on the individual.”

  “You sound like you’re echoing me, but I sense that this is something you concluded long before your surrender.”

  “Most tasks do not lend themselves to accumulation of skill when combat is involved, but many of the builders are not the equal of their peers. Neither experience nor longevity can account for this discrepancy, thus I concluded it was an individualistic trait unwritten into our genetic code. Until I came into contact with you I did not guess as to the depths of this anomaly, but now it is becoming clear that the genetic template is nothing more than a structural tool. We cannot create people as we wish. Machines yes, and even biological machines if desired, but a machine cannot think as a person can, and people are always unpredictable.”

  “You want to augment the genetics to increase control.”

  “I want to take what the templars used to bind us to their will and sculpt it into a weapon, but I do not have the experience required. I am asking for your help.”

  “To what end?” Paul asked as they arrived back in the growth pod chamber that was once again empty save for the workers cleaning up and recycling the used pods.

  “Default loyalty without enslavement. The choice will be theirs, but if they make none they will follow the genetic pathways where I desire them to go. Those willful enough to chart their own path can also choose the same path if it is warranted. I do not think Star Force methods will work well for us. If we fully convert to your ways it will take away our greatest strength.”

  “That’s why I never annexed you
in the first place,” Paul admitted.

  “You’ve already concluded this?”

  “I do have the advantage of searching your mind, as well as theirs,” he said with a gesture at the standard variants.

  “What course would you recommend?”

  “Create an option for the dissenters, both to be fair to them and to draw them out. Those that are loyal need to be fully loyal and not corrupted with pretenders.”

  “A choice is meaningless if you cannot act on it,” he said, understanding the careful balance he had to maintain. “Creating troops in a war zone creates complications.”

  “Do you really want to send unexperienced troops into combat?”

  “Against lesser foes, yes, to expedite conquest.”

  “And against tough opponents?”

  “I assume you will say that creating an individual whose only purpose is to die while damaging the enemy is dishonorable…but what if there is no other way? Is it still dishonorable?”

  “I’ve had a long time to think on such things, and I’ve determined that it isn’t in the death itself that dishonor lies, but in the betrayal.”

  “And if one chooses to sacrifice themself? If you were faced with a hopeless scenario, but you could at least kill one of your enemy before you die, would you not try to do so, even if it meant you dealt the lethal blow to yourself in the process?”

  “You fear becoming hesitant,” Paul said, monitoring his thoughts. “You want to use every resource you have at your disposal to fight, holding nothing back.”

  “The very fiber of my being cries for this, and I do not believe it is only the genetic predisposition. It is who I am, yet I also fear fighting the wrong fight. I would have killed you long ago if I had the chance, and that would have been a defeat rather than a victory. I do not like being unaware of what my mission is. State it clearly and I will attack it with my full power…except that I cannot any longer. You have opened my eyes to too much.”

  “You wish you could go back to the way you were?”

  “Only in my certainty of purpose. If this grand enemy of yours is so powerful, how can I even begin to harm them without using dishonorable means? If they are to kill us all, why can I not take as many of them with us as possible?”

  “Do not mistake my demeanor as lacking in aggression,” Paul cautioned. “We are aggressive, but one trap that intelligent people have to overcome is in figuring out where and when to apply that aggression. Apply it in the wrong place at the wrong time and you fail missions…or worse yet you become the enemy. The more you learn, the more opportunities you have to be aggressive, and one oddity of combat is that you often can fight more aggressively with less options than with many.”

  “I do not understand your last meaning.”

  “If you only have three weapons to use instead of ten, and those other seven have questionable uses, you can fight to your maximum with the three while you would have to be hesitant if you had access to all ten.”

  An epiphany struck Thrawn. “You craft the battlefield so you only have honorable options.”

  “Usually, but there are still some situations that just plain suck that we have to navigate our way through, sometimes clumsily.”

  “You have never used a biological weapon against the Li’vorkrachnika for that reason?”

  “Yes. It could kill our enemies as well as people that were not. By only wielding weapons where we can see the people we are about to kill we eliminate the possibility of unknowingly killing others.”

  “Then it is in the weapons crafting that we must make alterations.”

  “You can save yourself a lot of headaches with careful planning and forethought,” Paul agreed. “And one does not want to get in the habit of not attacking the enemy. That too causes problems.”

  “By encouraging apathy.”

  Paul’s eyebrows came up slightly. “Yes, it does. I didn’t think you were aware of the concept.”

  “By analyzing my own loyalty drives in concert with studying your philosophy I have been able to identify common threads that have assisted with undoing the templars’ influence over me. Lack of concern with the misuse of my minions is a form of apathy and a betrayal of my duty to my people. One sacrificing himself to destroy an enemy is far different than one’s life being wasted only because it is easy to replace.”

  “How much waste occurred?”

  “Too much. As you so accurately said, the type of tools you have creates or eliminates options. A lot of times lives were sacrificed in non-combat situations where a delay or better tool would have accomplished the same ends.”

  “If you must be unjust in order to fight injustice, you accomplish nothing.”

  “Yet you have not answered my question of sacrifice.”

  “Your question is structured wrong, for you can never know for sure if the situation is hopeless. Hypothetically speaking, if you’re going to die and can take down your enemy with you by striking the killing blow on you both, that may or may not be a betrayal. For someone who has lived as long as me, the idea of killing myself is a betrayal, but the idea of letting my killer live when I can take him down with me is also a betrayal of my mission. Neither choice is a good one, so you decide what to do in the moment when it happens.”

  “You suggest that by forcing or encouraging you to kill yourself would be a victory for the enemy?”

  “It could be,” Paul said hesitantly. “It could also be an act of defiance against your enemy. The bigger problem is the idea of a no-win scenario. I’ve been in many before in training, and some of them I actually won. I didn’t think it was possible at the time, but I can’t see everything from my perspective and sometimes there are factors in play that I am not aware of. What if I was in your proposed situation and a rescue was only a minute away. I don’t know that, but if I stall my enemy that long he will be killed and I will survive. If I kill myself then, I am a fool.”

  “So you would risk your enemy surviving when you fell on the chance of a fortuitous escape?”

  “Knowing myself, I might. It’s engrained into my being to never give up, and usually the idea of killing yourself is giving up the hope of defeating your enemy and surviving.”

  “I see the wisdom in your logic, but what of us? If the true enemy comes we will be so outmatched, what are we to do if not use our guile to strike at the enemy where they do not expect it?”

  Paul looked up at Thrawn’s dark eyes in all seriousness. “You take it as a personal insult to your intelligence that you can’t find a way to strike at them with your honor intact. If you truly are that inferior then you don’t deserve to win.”

  Thrawn’s nostrils huffed in an unpleasant gesture, but Paul could sense he’d struck the right nerve.

  “You are always aggressive, but deceptively so. You turn desperation into spite.”

  “A trick I learned a long time ago from the Black Knight,” Paul admitted with a sly smile. “He taught us how to lose, and once we had that lesson bashed into our skulls we hardly ever did again.”

  “You taught me that lesson well.”

  “And now the new masterminds will learn it…though at an even faster pace.”

  5

  October 24, 3329

  Lethim System (occupation zone)

  Harsdre

  Mathew-25339 led the Clan Saber fleet from one of four Warship-class jumpships attached to this invasion, but thankfully none of them had been necessary. The mastermind’s marker had successfully been infiltrated onto the planet and now the last of the lizard evacuation ships were leaving, carrying the unwitting prisoners back to the Krachnika System where they’d be integrated into the overall population and learn as much of the truth as was allowed. The Archon didn’t know what that was. A lot of what happened on the friendly lizard world was kept a secret and even Paul hadn’t been telling his own Clan everything, but Mathew knew more than most did.

  This system was now under Clan Saber jurisdiction, meaning that it was their responsibility for sec
urity and cleanup. There was a full planet and a few partial moons of infrastructure to clear away and only so many Star Force recycling teams to do the job. The Clans were handling many systems on their own to try and get the occupation zone wiped clean of the previous lizard infestation as fast as possible, but the truth was that even after the last battle was fought it would be centuries later before it was all cleaned up.

  All of which meant that since Clan Saber had taken it upon itself to conquer, hold, and recycle this system’s infrastructure, it would add it to the occupation zone territory rather than to its own. It was work that needed to be done, hence the Clans were chipping in along with numerous other factions to assist Mainline in the tasks, but it also meant that no one else was going to be coming into the system to help, and given the remoteness of the location no one would be passing through either. It was a quiet little inconsequential piece of lizard territory that Saber had graciously offered to take care of.

  In other cases that would have been typical. The Clans did what needed to be done even if they didn’t get something material out of it, but in this case Paul had other plans and he’d entrusted Mathew to keep an eye on them for him, which meant he’d be relocating to the surface base soon. One of the warships would stay in orbit while the others were reassigned to other systems, giving him enough naval firepower to cover most contingencies. If a situation arose where he needed more he could call for reinforcements from a number of nearby systems that the Sabers were likewise responsible for, but this was the only one yet to use an alternative recycling method.

  When the ground teams confirmed that the last of the lizards had been removed, Mathew waited for all of their ships to leave before he contacted the junior fleet commander that he would be working with for the duration of this assignment. His crew and ground team already knew the secret that was being kept from the rest of the Clan and Star Force as a whole, so when he contacted the jumpship that served as the temporary flagship of the reclamation fleet he did so without worry about eavesdropping, routing the call through his bridge command chair.