The Powers That Be Page 5

  “I do not believe you understand the magnitude of the threat you face. Only Essence power coupled with conventional warfare can defeat the Hadarak. Conventional warfare alone is doomed to quick failure.”

  “Not if you have enough troops and are willing to fight bloody. I and the V’kit’no’sat learned this primitive form of combat well when we did not have the weapons necessary to face the Hadarak…yet we did, and defeated many of them, despite it being impossible. If the opposition grows large enough, even the Hadarak’s Essence will not save them.”

  “The reproductive rate of the Hadarak is extreme. It is unlikely you will find a faster means to produce reinforcements.”

  “We already have,” Mak’to’ran said, feeling the first shred of confidence after seeing that dreadful spark in the sky and realizing what it meant. “But our leadership won’t fight that way. I didn’t understand why for a long time, but now I do. And mark my words, Responder. We will not fall to this purge, inadequate as we are now. I taught them too well in my foolishness, and now the galaxy will be rewarded for it. The Archons will outgrow the enemy, as they did us. I do not know how, nor do I know how long it will take, but I will ensure they have the time they need…and when they are ready, this galaxy will be ours, not the Hadarak’s or the Founders’.”

  “That is highly unlikely.”

  “So is the heresy of Terraxis rising to dominance over the V’kit’no’sat, then rescuing us from our self-inflicted demise. I have seen the impossible done, Responder. And it will be done again,” Mak’to’ran said, staring defiantly at that spark. “No matter how long it takes.”

  5

  November 22, 128885

  Solar System (Home One Kingdom)

  Earth

  “Hello, Esna,” Davis said as Ard Ri Esna-58321JOR-18 walked into the small briefing room last out of the 8 guests to arrive.

  “Director,” she said with a curt nod of her head adorned with neon red hair pulled back into a tight bun with a comm stick braided into it. Behind her the door closed and the lights dimmed as the single waist-high pedestal in the room glowed to life with a basic hologram of the galaxy approximately two meters wide…which was far too zoomed out to see anything of worth, but the ambiance was still nice.

  Around the room Esna saw multiple uniforms, none of which were Archons or Mavericks, but rather two Grand Admirals, a Monarch Lord, a Master-Level tech, an alien that wore no clothes and was of a race she was unfamiliar with, a Paladin Viceroy, and lastly a Golden Knight that towered over the rest of them.

  “My apologies for pulling you off active assignments,” Davis began. “The Archons have enough to deal with, and they’re already working the problems in their spare time. I decided a fresh set of eyes from those not so familiar with our ongoing difficulties could possibly yield different results. That’s why you’re here. I want every good and stupid idea you have, because we’re all stumped and we don’t have time to piddle with.”

  Davis expanded the hologram out further, shrinking the Milky Way down to barely a visible swirl as additional galaxies popped up around them, with one highlighted in particular.

  “For those with eyes to see Essence, there’s been a constant consternation visible in that direction,” Davis said, pointing down into the floor at a sharp angle. “It’s coming from the Core of the galaxy, and the Temple database has identified it as a Hadarak Colony Spore the size of a star. It’s designed to carry the Spice Lords along with an invasion force to another galaxy. It’s using so much Essence to get the necessary propulsion we can see it all the way out here, and I’m told it will be visible for at least a year as it speeds up to coast velocity. Apparently the Temples are also designed to track such large Essence phenomena, and when combined they act like a detection array that has determined it is going here.”

  Davis highlighted the Triangulum Galaxy, located some 2.8 million light years away, but it had a different tag label on it.

  “We haven’t had reason to rename stuff beyond our galaxy before, and the Founders have names for many, but this one they’ve just got an ID number for. Hence I’m calling it ‘Yoshi,’ and you’ll see many of the other galaxies have similar names now…at least the bigger ones. I’m still working on the small ones.”

  “Why has ours not changed?” Lord Daegan asked.

  Davis raised an eyebrow. “You think it should? I thought we’d keep candy bar names for the major galaxies, and I was always fond of Milky Ways.”

  The Protovic Monarch squinted as he tried to make out some of the other galaxy names. “I stand corrected. I had thought it was an ancient reference to the thicker band of stars in the sky over this world that outlines the galactic disc.”

  “It was, but I ‘changed,’” he said, using air quotes, “it to the candy bar version, in my head at least.”

  “Very well, as long as the name is rooted in coolness, I am content,” the Protovic said deadpan as his visible skin competed with the hologram for illumination dominance in the dim room.

  “They can really jump that far?” Esna asked.

  “Not always accurately, I’m told. It seems the Temples have been a bit more forthcoming with information now that the phenomenon is visible to the denizens,” Davis said, highlighting the distance marker between the two galaxies, as well as showing the distance to the dozens that were closer, though smaller in size. “The Hadarak don’t bother with the smaller ones, and it’s suspected but not confirmed it is due to their lack of sufficiently-sized Tethers to brake against, the same way we can’t jump from a black hole to a small star at full speed.”

  “Are the Founders in the small galaxies?” Grand Admiral Lucin asked, with his Kvash head barely being tall enough to see over the holo pedestal.

  “Unknown, but they’d be stupid to avoid them if they have another means of intergalactic transit besides the Core Tethers.”

  “Toad,” the Golden Knight said, referencing the closest galaxy to the Milky Way, formerly known as Sagittarius Dwarf that was about 1/5th the diameter and only 78,000 lightyears away…less than the full width of our galaxy that ran 100,000 lightyears from tip to tip. “Is it closest enough for the Hadarak to travel to conventionally?”

  “I don’t know, but if they don’t even scout these smaller galaxies, then we may have a fallback point as you suggest. I for one am rather attached to the Milky Way, and have no interest in fleeing it. That is not why I have brought you here, Bren. I need your help to find a way to do the impossible while others ponder the possibilities of intergalactic travel and how the Founders manage it, because there’s no way we’re getting access to the Tethers in the Core soon enough to matter.”

  “Which impossibility do you refer to?” the Golden Knight asked, staring down on Davis and the group from his 8ft height with purple-irised eyes.

  “The Hadarak are not just fighting us. They’re launching an invasion of another galaxy from here…while fighting us. Either they are stupid to waste such resources, or we’re so much of an underdog it doesn’t matter. Add to that we have the Founders knocking from the outside as they send resources and personnel through their infrastructure network that we just happened to have pirated. I expect a war with them eventually, and even if that doesn’t happen I don’t want to just hope that it doesn’t. We have to figure out how to level up Star Force enough to be on the same playing field with both these threats. Right now we’re heavily inadequate and just trying to keep our head above water. I have confidence the Grand Border will hold once completed, so long as the Hadarak don’t bring in reinforcements from another galaxy. I have no such confidence against the Founders. I need options, people.”

  “You need weapons,” Mastertech Tennisonne grumbled.

  “More than that,” Davis said. “We need a strategy other than scrambling to catch up. I’ve been over this time and again, so have the Archons. Tell me you can see something from your various points of view that we’ve missed. We’ve got the weight of the galaxy on our shoulders right now, so we’re no
t able to look at it from the outside in. What are we not seeing?”

  “Do we know what combat between the Hadarak and Founders looks like?” Viceroy Vintra asked, standing slightly shorter than the Golden Knight, but with a posture that put him even lower as he typically held his Godzilla-like body tilted forward and down slightly to counterbalance his large blue tail.

  “Only pieces. The Temples will not show us full combat, and what we got from Eldorat wasn’t very thorough with regards to other galaxies. We don’t know how they’re fighting, but we can somewhat guess. The popsicle Jason woke up has provided a great deal of anecdotal information, but we have no actual battle records. In general they fight with Essence and drones while the Hadarak fight with Essence and minions.”

  “And we have mimicked this, although unintentionally,” Grand Admiral Serren said, tapping on her Human chin with a lightsaber blue fingernail that was appropriately bioluminescent, indicating her inclusion in Clan Saber.

  “Should we not have?” Davis asked.

  “Both the Hadarak and Founders have experience and numbers on us. To fight the same way is almost a guarantee of defeat unless we can do it better. The quicker route to victory is finding another way to fight that they have no experience in.”

  “I know what I need to do, I just don’t know how to do it,” Tennisonne said, visibly unsettled.

  “Do what?”

  “Create real Ysalamir. I know there’s a way. There has to be. I just don’t know how to experiment with what I can’t touch.”

  “What are you referring to?” Daegan asked the Mastertech.

  “He’s referring to the Force,” Esna said, catching the obscure reference. “The Ysalamir were small creatures whose defense involved creating a bubble where the Force supposedly didn’t exist. That turned out to not be true, in that it was merely hidden from view and without the control mechanism it reverted to its normal unweaponized state similar to how Pefbar is needed to control Lachka.”

  Tennisonne blinked. “I hadn’t even thought of a control mechanism,” he said, turning to Davis.

  “I don’t know what mechanism there is in formed Essence. It’s more of a fire and forget thing for ranged targets. Close in I’m touching the Essence and there’s a conduit of it that if broken I lose control over and it returns to the Essence realm.”

  “I was thinking about making it return to the Essence realm immediately upon passing a shield barrier…but I never thought about a control mechanism. There must be some sort of matrix holding it together that we can disrupt.”

  “I think not,” Daegan interrupted. “If the Colony Spore’s Essence Rush is visible out here, then that Essence is persisting for weeks in the void of space.”

  “Is that true?” the Mastertech asked.

  “I’m not sure how, but it appears to be,” Davis confirmed, for he was the only one in the room that could use Essence.

  “Then I’m back to square one,” Tennisonne said with a sigh. “I don’t know how to study something I can’t detect.”

  “You’ve given us the Avengers,” Grand Admiral Lucin noted.

  “I can study the Essence collected via those who can sense it, but I don’t have any mechanism that can do it on its own. That means I can’t poke around and blow stuff up to see what happens. That’s how most scientific discoveries work. I need to poke it with a stick, and I don’t have a stick to do it with, so I’m left dealing with whatever scraps the Archons happen to stumble across.”

  “I happen to like what you’ve done with those scraps,” Bren said. “Otherwise I’d be helpless against Essence users,” he said, tapping on the Ironman-like chest ornament that contained an automatic Essence shield that he could turn on with a thought…though it would only last a few seconds.

  “If not for Kara you wouldn’t even have that. I know there is a lot of hidden potential, Sean. I just can’t get at it…and it’s not a matter of time. I’m just not equipped for this. Unless you can give me a Tricorder that can study Essence, I’m not going to be able to give you anything the Founders don’t already have.”

  “And even if you did, we wouldn’t have the power supply they’ve got,” Davis said with an understanding nod. “We can’t cheat millions of years of training…although Kara’s breakthrough suggests there are ways to cheat the newbs. But if the Founders have Siphons and who knows what else, I don’t think even the Uriti are going to be able to keep us in the Essence race against them. We need another path. Kirritimin?”

  The beetle-like alien mastermind whom the lizards had conscripted into their service and upon which the lizard Masterminds, and subsequently the Paladin Viceroys, were genetically patterned on bobbed his shelled body upon which his ‘face’ was affixed, for he had no true head outside his torso.

  “I have studied this from afar for longer than any of you have existed. The problem is the same as has been faced by many civilizations. How do you defeat a superior opponent? You cannot face them in their strength, so you must find their weakness and make it your strength. What is their weakness?”

  “Swarm tactics,” Esna said immediately.

  “For the Hadarak this is true. And for the Founders?”

  “We don’t know how they fight, but we do know who they use,” Grand Admiral Serren said. “They want large armies to assist them against the minions, so I would guess they can’t match swarm tactics with the Hadarak. They need to tie them up long enough to use superior units to do most of their damage.”

  “I had the same thought,” Davis agreed.

  “Yet the Hadarak also have their superior units to counter the threat of Essence, but only in a mitigating fashion. They persist by accepting massive losses to bleed the Essence reserves of the enemy dry. It is unlikely that we will be able to surpass the Founders in terms of Essence production, so we must counter the Hadarak in another way.”

  “We can spam smarter units than they can,” the Viceroy said with a note of pride. “The Paladin can match them with even starting resources if Essence is not a factor.”

  “We do not have even starting resources,” Grand Admiral Lucin reminded them. “We must fight uphill at all times unless we find another hill that they are not on.”

  “Meaning what?” Davis asked.

  “Meaning that if we do not change our tactics,” Kirritimin answered, “we will face a never-ending war of attrition that we will lose with a single lapse. We must change the game in order to win it.”

  “Not necessarily,” Esna said, not liking the tone of surrender that whispered of. “Our primary problem isn’t the minions on the ground. We can handle them there pretty well, and they don’t start out with a resource advantage when they’re invading our territory. The problem is their ability to get to ground, because the mass of the Wardens can break through planetary shields. If we have conventional shields capable of stopping that…”

  “No,” Tennisonne said flatly. “We can’t generate that much power everywhere, and if the Hadarak are smart enough to just kamikaze one ahead of the other, there is no way we can generate enough power to stop a single attack at sufficient speed.”

  “Even with dampeners?” Esna asked.

  “Can they stop you from doing the same with a Seda if you wished it?”

  “I would think so.”

  “Even at interstellar velocities coming off the star?”

  Esna frowned. “Then the only way to protect planets is to prevent the Wardens from getting to them. Can we sabotage the jump points somehow to prevent the stellar jumps?”

  “Not across the entire jumpline,” Davis added.

  “Then can we divert a jump in progress?”

  “Mass again,” Tennisonne said dismissively.

  “Which is vulnerable during coast phase,” Kirritimin noted.

  “Perhaps not the Wardens then,” the Viceroy said quizzically.

  Serren raised an eyebrow. “Peel off the free minions somehow so only the Wardens can pass.”

  “Then what?” Tennisonne aske
d. “It’s not the minions that take down planetary shields with a single strike.”

  “No,” Davis said, seeing the inkling of a plan. “But it is what prevents us from dealing with the Wardens much of the time. And shooting them dead after they jump doesn’t prevent the collision. We have to move them…”

  “Spaceball?” Lord Daegan said offhand.

  The Director nodded. “It was our solution to Mach’nel that we couldn’t destroy as well. If we can’t beat our enemy, we neutralize them.”

  “Essence weaponry is far simpler,” the Mastertech argued.

  “What about the replicator version?” Daegan continued. “It requires far less resources and can be delivered with a collision of our own.”

  “Mach’nel don’t have grapple fields,” Tennisonne said with a shake of his head. “To engineer in dampeners means a limited window of engagement. You can’t simply contain them, you’d have to kill them somehow before the power drain expired and the Warden destroyed the technology…not to mention they have tentacles to do that, and there’s no way to stop that much ‘muscle’ mass from tipping over and poking holes in it. Only a large Spaceball that the Warden cannot reach is feasible.”

  “So why aren’t we using those?”

  “The minions have to be removed first,” Serren explained. “And the Warden has to be more or less still, otherwise you’ll slam into whatever destination it was moving towards.”

  “But if we could neutralize the movement of the Wardens across the space lanes, what threat would we face?” Esna asked.

  “Considerably less,” the Viceroy said as he rubbed his scaly chin with one of his fingers. “The warships are not armored well enough to penetrate our lines, and their carry volume is limited. It is the Wardens that move the bulk of their forces, and provide the footholds to grow more on site.”