Star Force: LITrpg (Star Force Universe Book 64) Read online

  I am here, Cal-com said telepathically so the Les’i’kron could identify him in the busy hangar full of hundreds of tiny people moving about from his point of view.

  I must speak with you alone, he replied.

  Follow, Cal-com commanded, turning about and leading the large dragon down a hallway that had been built just high enough for the tallest of the Star Force races to move through. Not all passages were so large, for they were a waste of space if you didn’t have the larger body sizes residing here, but all Star Force facilities of decent size had at least limited areas built to accommodate everyone, and it was into one of those sections of the city that Cal-com led the courier into a park-like area with a high dome as he used his armor to signal all within it to clear out.

  It took a couple minutes, then security doors shut off all the entrances to give Cal-com and the Les’i’kron the privacy they needed.

  “We’re secure now,” the Voku said, looking up at the giant blue snout above him.

  “I bring news from Thrawn. He has succeeded in locating one of the primary control centers for Alpha Temple and has fought his way inside. Paladin techs have successfully hacked their way into the Founder mainframe and taken control over a sector of the Temple. All Caretaker units in that location now operate under Thrawn’s command.”

  “How was this achieved?” Cal-com asked, realizing what this could mean…especially with the limited Founder contacts Jason had made out in the Shadow network.

  “Founder technology is not wholly superior to ours beyond Essence. Thrawn has been working on this for a long time, and his people now have a firm understanding of their computer technology. Sufficient safeguards were not put in place, probably due to the fact the Founders never expected anyone to reach the control rooms alive. They were extremely well guarded and many Paladin died to take the one. The rest of us provided support and were spared most of the casualties.”

  “You fought the Caretakers?”

  “I did. And now I bring the codes required for you to access much of this Temple. Thrawn does not know if they are unique to Alpha, but hopes they are not.”

  “Where are the control rooms?”

  “They migrate through the magma layer periodically and rise up along docking stations that the Caretakers build where necessary and then backfill after they move. In this way there is no one location that can be discovered and assaulted, but each control room only migrates through a specific region of the Temple. Within it, no remote access can override its sector. Thrawn now has a safe zone inside Alpha, and is using the Caretaker drones built and deployed there to fight those being dispatched from other sectors.”

  “Can he not assert command over the others once they enter his sector?”

  “Unfortunately no. When it was determined that a control room had been taken, the Temple reconfigured all Caretaker military operations to zonal command. Other functions have not been affected and maintenance duties are now being taken over by foreign zones when Thrawn redeployed his sector’s drones to other tasks.”

  “And if his drones leave his sector?”

  “They are still under his command. The war for Alpha has taken a turn in our favor, and it is only a matter of time until Thrawn conquers it all.”

  “What about the orbital facilities?”

  “They have their own sector protocols which operate differently. We have not figured out how yet. There is much work to be done, but Thrawn wanted all other Temples to have the knowledge to do the same, though in your case you may not want to risk it. Regardless, I have the Founder codes for many installations that you should be able to input locally before you find a control room.”

  “Is there a procedure for locating them?”

  “There is, but with a randomized function to it. They are not meant to be found easily, even by the Founders.”

  “Does Thrawn have access to the Essence wells?”

  “Within his sector, yes. Including the mega turrets. He has the Caretakers repairing them while continuing to snipe the repair efforts of others. The Vargemma don’t realize it, but they will be powering Star Force’s own weapons soon.”

  “Any response from the Founders?”

  “None yet. And Thrawn’s people have found no automated alert sent to them. The control rooms have autonomy while other systems are automated with alert flags. He believes this is the backdoor method for them to override any incursion or to make alterations to the Temple without revealing themselves to the Vargemma. Either way, there is no known oversight on the control rooms themselves. They are the High Ground, and now Thrawn has seized one of them.”

  “How many in total?”

  “There are 2048 sectors.”

  “That’s a lot of fighting to do.”

  “He is up to the task.”

  “Is there any indication of a master control room?”

  “We believe there deliberately was not one created, due to the size of the Temples. A single weak point would be too much of a security risk.”

  “Agreed. Are you the only courier?”

  “I will travel to many Temples, but not all. That would take too much time. Thrawn wanted the information and codes dispersed quickly,” the Les’i’kron said, reaching out an armored toe on his front right leg.

  Cal-com extended the armor over his left arm and reached out, making armor to armor contact and allowing the most secure transmission mode possible, downloading the message packet onto his own system and keeping it secure there without transmitting out into the wider battlemap, or even the city database.

  “Packet received,” Cal-com confirmed.

  “Use it wisely. Kappa is the shining example all other Temples wish to follow. I would not wish to see the Caretaker War rise up here.”

  “Nor do I. What is your name?”

  The Les’i’kron smiled, then began to turn away. “I was never here, Reclaimer.”

  “As you wish,” Cal-com said as the large quadruped left the park and headed back to the hangar, apparently leaving immediately to travel to the next Temple on his list. He let him go and turned around, heading for a different hangar where he would hop on regular transit elsewhere and bounce from place to place until he landed at a new location. His possession of this information made him an even more high value target, and while he didn’t think the Vargemma had any way of knowing about the message packet, he wasn’t going to get careless.

  He had to wait a while before a dropship carrying supplies came in and he hitched a ride on its way back, taking a seat in the small passenger compartment while the pilots and crew carried out their duties.

  Cal-com sat back in the cushions and triggered his visor to double as a viewscreen, pulling up the message packet and beginning to carefully go through it and all the valuable nuggets of wisdom and code that Thrawn had packed inside…and the Supreme Viceroy did not disappoint in quality or quantity.

  This was the key to wresting control of Kappa away from the distant Founders, and one he would have to wield carefully, but in the end he and the other Temple overlords had to take control of these massive fortresses before their builders returned to evict them.

  That war was coming, hopefully later than sooner, but based on the actions in Itaru by Eldorat and Jason’s work, at least some of the Temple builders were not to be trusted. And Cal-com didn’t want to be sitting inside a giant death trap when they returned to take control over it…for as Thrawn’s information was now showing him, there was a lot more Temple weaponry buried under the surface than anyone had ever imagined.

  Enough to destroy every single person inside the Temple in a matter of hours if triggered.

  The Vargemma were literally living inside a giant death trap at the mercy of their benefactors, and now large numbers of Star Force personnel had joined them. Too many to evacuate quick enough to matter. Cal-com had to take control over his Temple before a Founder had a chance to use it. That was the only way to protect those inside, for most would never leave the Temple even if they wante
d to. The Essence costs were simply too high to transport that many people, and he couldn’t use the spatial tap to transport people without the Essence barrier shield coming down first.

  He’d always known how dangerous the Vargemma and the Caretakers were, but Cal-com had never realized he had taken up residence inside a weapon of mass destruction. One that could eliminate everyone inside and then remake the landscape over again as needed. It seemed the Founders didn’t trust the Vargemma as much as he thought, and now it seemed clear that this wasn’t so much a training ground as an Essence farm for the Founders. And if the herds got too much out of control, there was a mechanism to wipe the slate clean and start all over again.

  Cal-com froze as he realized something. Had the Vargemma fought to protect their own and triggered an eradication order against them as well as Star Force, then that would leave no one inside Alpha Temple and the others to be salvaged. That meant the unscrupulous Vargemma might be the only thing preventing the other Temples from eradicating Star Force with a single, all-encompassing attack.

  Cal-com deactivated his visor and looked out one of the fake windows in the transport, seeing the gently sloping distant landscape that rose to fill the sky where stars should have been. He’d almost forget what they looked like, but now he wished to see them again. Stars meant safety. This never ending landscape meant a foreign power had him and everyone else in Kappa living at their mercy.

  That could not be allowed to stand. Either they had to abandon Kappa Temple or conquer it. And there were too many people here to evacuate.

  That meant there was only one resolution to this, and a potentially very deadly one at that if Cal-com made a misstep…or if the Founders returned before he gained full control of this Temple.

  6

  November 4, 128690

  Stugarrata Nebula (Tovok Kingdom)

  Kappa Temple

  Puar dug into the ground next to a tree, shoveling the dirt out between his rear legs as he exposed a metallic hatch, then had to stop for a moment as he telekinetically crunched a flying drone that started to pepper his rear with tiny stun shots. When it stopped he returned to digging, knowing that the rest of the swarm would be soon to follow. This wasn’t the first time he’d uncovered this hatch, and knew from experience that he had to be fast.

  When he got the dirt off he grabbed the bar on top and pulled with both paws, getting it up a few inches, then added a telekinetic shove to get the stubborn thing all the way open…which was only up to a vertical position. It wouldn’t fold over the other way, and if he let go it would slam back down again, for it was on a spring.

  Puar got shot again, this time from multiple targets, but he ignored them as he dove down head first, tucking his tail so it didn’t get caught as the hatch slammed back into place as he slid down a tunnel for several hundred meters before being thrown out into a small alcove with two tunnels leading out of it.

  But in the center of that alcove was another white obelisk, which was his real objective. He’d found 4 so far amongst his training courses, and each time he finished with one it would not allow him to try again until he left. Puar never remembered what happened, seeming to touch the crystalline surface and speak the word ‘Lightside,’ then blacking out for a second.

  But in the space of that second 8 hours passed, or so he was told. The clocks didn’t lie, but he had no idea if he was making progress or not, only that he had to hunt for more obelisks because he couldn’t repeat the same challenge course over and over again. His trainers determined which ones he used and when, so the more of these obelisks he could find the more time he’d have for this LITrpg testing, which had no definition in any of the Star Force databases he had access to. As far as those databanks were concerned, such a thing didn’t exist.

  It was having an effect though. He couldn’t remember it, but he was building new skills that would suddenly appear when he was doing something else. Puar had to have been practicing them a great deal, but to him it felt like they were being gained for free. All he had to do was find the obelisks and he would come up with better mental and tactical skills…but not physical. If this was a computer simulation then it would only affect his mind, which, he assumed, was why he was still doing the physical training regimen.

  Puar liked it. He was probably working his tail off in these simulations but he couldn’t remember it. It just felt like a time skip for him, so now his objective was to find more obelisks in new courses and to return to the ones he already had discovered whenever he repeated those training cycles. Fortunately they didn’t move, but the cover on the hatch to this one was always reburied when he came back through again.

  The Trigorma sat and put his paw on the obelisk.

  “Lightside,” he spoke, then a moment later he blinked and that was it. Physically he was a little stiff and his mind groggy, but that’s all there was to it. Puar stood up and stretched, then took one of the two tunnels out towards what would be another water course…but that was better than the mountain climbing on the other one.

  Normally he would never have made that choice, so he wondered if there wasn’t simulated water training involved. His fear of it appeared to have lessened, though he still hated it. It was, however, the shorter route to the end of this challenge course, and the more time he had to hunt for other obelisks the better…

  Puar stood on the battlefield along with several other Trigorma, and he felt a heavy hatred shared by the others. Before them stood an Archon, one of the leaders of the Star Force military. He was leading them through the jungle to a position behind the Hadarak main assault so they could get at one of the subsurface tunnels that was spewing up more and more minions to attack the far off city where Star Force was holding the line as evacuation ships buzzed overhead moving to and from orbit.

  They were far away from them. Too far to get help if they got in over their heads…and too far for anyone to stop them if they finally wanted to take revenge for what Star Force had done to the Temples and the Vargemma. Puar and the others had been patiently waiting for their opportunity, playing along and doing everything Star Force wanted them to do until they had a chance to exact the revenge that they could not do inside the Temples with all Star Force personnel safely hidden in their own cities or orbit.

  They were wise to do so, for there were many who would gladly sacrifice themselves to Caretaker punishment in exchange for taking down one of their people, let alone an Archon…and there were no Caretakers here.

  When I say, I will jam his communications. We must act instantly, for he will know, one of the others said telepathically to the group.

  Puar felt the hatred for the Archon, but something wasn’t right. He sensed the opportunity and the need to act as one with his pack, but attacking from behind in a surprise attack was hardly the act of a warrior.

  The others walked up closer to the Archon, who was scanning ahead while trusting the Trigorma to watch his back. They had to catch the minions during a pause in their reinforcements, or they’d never get to the tunnel entrance in time to block it before being met with overwhelming numbers. They had to time it just right…and the Trigorma had to time this just right as well.

  Puar twitched, not liking the others doing his thinking for him. He moved with them, but mentally ran what they were going to do through his logic circuits…and it came out all wrong. He was a Varkemma, and suddenly the words Reganno had first spoken to him came to mind.

  “…before we trust you to fight alongside us, we must know you are trustworthy. You and the other Vargemma have many Essence skills, amongst psionics and natural abilities. You could easily kill one of us who was not paying attention, and there are many Vargemma who would gladly do so once they were beyond the realm of the Caretakers…”

  Stop, he told the others, but they ignored him as they set themselves to pounce. He could see it in their stance as well as feel the telepathic connection they made just prior to a strike so they would all act with the same timing.

  Puar snarl
ed and tackled the Trigorma to the right while throwing an Essence-enhanced telekinetic wall into the one closest to the Archon. When he did all hesitation and confusion in his mind ceased, and he wondered why he had ever been tempted to help these traitors.

  The Archon snapped around the moment Puar attacked, just in time to defend himself as the two cats twisted and slashed at each other with glowing cutting claws. Their shields went down quickly and Puar had to waste a good amount of Essence to finally push his kin off him through the air, allowing both to reset their footing, but in that moment an Essence attack from the others was thrown at him before he could raise an Essence shield against it.

  The Archon stepped into view and blocked it, turning his back fully on Puar and giving the Trigorma a second chance to blindside him, but the thought didn’t even go through his mind. He set himself and jumped over the Archon, coming down with full Essence powers enabled and ready to kill his kin if necessary as he put himself in between them and their prey.

  “Stand down or I will kill you myself!” he declared.

  Before he could act he blacked out, and suddenly he was pawing the white obelisk again, feeling a little drained but having no memory of what happened. Yet he had a swelling of pride in him for some reason, and he hoped that was because he had been successful.

  Puar broke contact with the obelisk and moved on up a nearby trail towards the swamplands that lay between him and the tower assault this course required him to make before finding and pressing the finish pedestal, but he never got that far. A few minutes up the trail he stopped as he sensed someone else on the trail ahead.

  That shouldn’t have happened, for the only others in the training courses were machines, but as he cautiously approached around a bend he saw Reganno sitting on a boulder waiting for him.