Star Force: Ysalamir (Star Force Universe Book 54) Read online

  5

  August 18, 128497

  Nekoria System (Tetron Region, V’kit’no’sat territory)

  Jnmo

  Tar’ange walked along a trail on the grasslands in the middle of a shallow valley bracketed by tall forests along the slopes, lazily moving along as he rotated six boulders around his narrow neck like orbiting planets using his Lachka. It was a little training trick he’d learned early into his 2.6 million year long life, and one that few in the empire could manage for more than a handful of seconds.

  But for Tar’ange it had become a way for him to exert himself while freeing his mind to think, and there were many such boulders lining the path from past days as he worked on one challenge or another in his solitudes. The Pas’cha was long past the days of running his race’s faction within the V’kit’no’sat, and like many elders he preferred to work on elusive problems in isolation away from the distractions of the mechanisms of civilization.

  Those mechanisms were located on the other side of the planet, but he and a few other recluses had this small continent to themselves, with Tar’ange walking tens of miles per day lost in thought and casually orbiting various numbers of boulders around him, particularly when he had a problem that could not be solved. The blockage left him with no mental calculations to work through, so he needed something to preoccupy his mind while his imagination wondered into potentially bountiful realms.

  One recurring problem for him was the Hadarak’s resistance to V’kit’no’sat weapons, as well as all other weapons known to him. He had, long ago, helped to reduce that seemingly impenetrable protective wall when he had invented the Tar’vem’jic, the most powerful weapon the V’kit’no’sat had, and it had been so named after him…but it wasn’t enough. They could kill Hadarak, but only after lengthy battles that were far too costly to replicate en mass.

  But that’s what they were forced with now. Far more battles than they could win and weapons that were ill suited to the task. The invention of the Harthur had changed that for Tar’ange, and he had been working on improving the technology inspired by a weapon Star Force had created to cleverly deal with their Mach’nel. The Disruption Array was another idea stolen from Star Force, and it proved to do the most damage to the Hadarak if one could get in position prior to their arrival. Indeed, only a Disruption Array had been able to do any damage to a tier 6, and a considerable amount to two of them the V’kit’no’sat had been able to ambush, but neither could be fought directly and unless Tar’ange or others found a way to better engage them, they would eventually rule the galaxy over a field of V’kit’no’sat corpses.

  But that was long into the future, and the V’kit’no’sat had other needs as well, including faster engines, better shields, planetary adjustment technology, genetic alterations to resist minion poisons, and a long list of things that others had not yet been able to produce. All of them had Tar’ange’s attention, along with that of other Elders specialized in innovation, though Tar’ange’s proclivity was weaponry…both how to create it and how to defend against it. He hadn’t invented the Yeg’gor armor, but he’d played a part in its creation and that of many other high end items, but the Tar’vem’jic had been his crowning achievement…and now it was the only thing that allowed the V’kit’no’sat to do more than throw away their ships in exchange for victories.

  He was constantly reworking the schematics, trying to increase its power, range, molecular disruption, and every other possible tweak he could find, and many of them had gone into the field, giving small improvements and making the current Tar’vem’jic about 23% more powerful than the original model he’d created 1.2 million years ago, but it wasn’t enough. Not even close. So as he walked alone through the raw planet his mind wandered as did his body, with the orbiting boulders attesting to the mental power and coordination of this Pas’cha, putting him in a very elite peer group that even surpassed the Oso’lon, who were considered the more superior cousins to the Pas’cha.

  The quietness of the landscape, free of technological noise, was a soothing one, but it also allowed him to spot even the slightest non-natural disruption…such as the sound of an approaching drop pod as it raced through the atmosphere rather than coming down from space.

  Tar’ange stopped and twisted his neck around to the left, moving the orbit of the boulders slightly so they wouldn’t hit him as he got his eyes on the approaching technology. It wasn’t moving as fast as it could, but it was disruptive none the less. No ships were supposed to be this low to the ground over the continent except on special business, and when they did travel here they were supposed to maintain certain speed restrictions. This one was exceeding those, but not doing so as much as possible. It was as if someone was in a hurry, but didn’t want to exceed the speed limitations by a great amount.

  That made no sense to Tar’ange. If you had a legitimate reason to violate the limitations, then violate them. If not, then obey them. Trying to do both at once only meant you failed in both. Whoever it was didn’t strike him as the most intelligent person, but it seemed he was going to find out the mystery of the pilot’s identity, for the drop pod began to adjust its course when it got over the western ridgeline and angled for his current position.

  Tar’ange flew his orbiting rocks down to the ground one by one, depositing them parallel to the trail and walking off it, intending to draw the drop pod away from the trail that he did not want it imprinting on. He moved towards a level patch of grass and remained there as the drop pod suddenly became in far less of a hurry and respectfully undercut the speed limitations on the last bit of its journey, then it landed 120 meters away from the Pas’cha, leaving Tar’ange to look up at its more or less spherical shape as a boarding ramp lowered on the right side, set askew from where he stood.

  That was a sign of an inferior pilot, who should have landed with the ramp facing directly towards him. Whoever this was…

  A Brat’mar stomped out and onto the ground in a hurry, one that Tar’ange was familiar with. He was a guest on the Pas’cha planet, and was helping with a variety of genetic research projects that didn’t involve Tar’ange, though he’d inspected their work out of mere curiosity and had met the Brat’mar earlier, taking an immediate liking to him…but he’d never given him permission to come to the restricted continent.

  “Tar’ange!” he yelled, unnecessarily running the few steps between them before stopping just short of the much taller Pas’cha and tipping his horned head up to look at Tar’ange’s much smaller head atop his long neck. “It’s happened! It’s finally happened!”

  “What has happened?” he asked evenly.

  “We have a weapon against the Hadarak!”

  Tar’ange flinched, with a snake-like wave traveling down his neck as his head moved backwards involuntarily. “What do you mean?”

  “Mak’to’ran has ordered us to the project immediately. You and I and many others. There is no time to delay. We have to leave this planet within the day to rendezvous with the vessel that will take us into Star Force territory. That’s where it will be built.”

  “Star Force? What do they have to do with this, and what weapon are you speaking of?”

  “Details have been withheld. I’m sorry. But the orders come from Mak’to’ran himself. He says Star Force has discovered a weapon capable of massive Yeg’gor disruption, based off a Uriti weapon. One that the Zak’de’ron had and Star Force has only now been able to analyze. They’re having problems replicating it, but it exists, Tar’ange! It exists!”

  “Have we seized this Uriti?”

  “No, no…Star Force requested our assistance. This is a joint project and Mak’to’ran is sending everyone that could be of help. If we can make it work, we will actually have an effective weapon against them. Think of it! We can finally take the fight to them rather than playing defense! We can actually win this war and take the Galactic Core!”

  “Be at ease, Lemo’at. We have nothing yet, and if Star Force cannot make it work, there is no guarantee we
can. Do we have confirmation that the Uriti can produce the weapon effect?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what is its effectiveness?”

  “I do not know. Mak’to’ran said it’s confirmed, he’s seen the weapon data himself. It melts Yeg’gor, Tar’ange. Mak’to’ran swears it, but we can’t get any data until we are on site. That’s why we have to leave immediately and quietly. He wants absolute secrecy until we are successful.”

  “He is certain?” Tar’ange asked again, not wanting to believe it only to be disappointed later.

  “He is. This is the moment we have waited for, and Star Force needs our help to replicate it. This is our chance to fulfill our oaths, Tar’ange. This is our chance for ultimate victory. What are you waiting for? Mak’to’ran to come here and drag you away himself? Get onboard.”

  “This had better be legitimate,” Tar’ange warned.

  “Mak’to’ran sent couriers. He did not trust the Urrtren. This is no joke.”

  “If it is someone will die,” he said, walking forward and following the Brat’mar onboard the drop pod that then took off and headed directly up to space and around the planet to the waiting Domjo that would take them to the rendezvous.

  The trip was a long one, eventually ending in a nebula that obscured those inside, but Tar’ange could detect the lingering paths of the vessels that had entered by analyzing the drift currents, some of which indicated larger vessels than Domjo. But it wasn’t until they moved inside and lost all sensor contact from behind that they picked up the faint beacon pulse leading them to the rendezvous point.

  The closer they got the more snippets of sensor images they received, with Tar’ange shocked to see hundreds of vessels encapsulated inside a hollow void within the nebula…including two Star Force vessels, one of which dwarfed the V’kit’no’sat ships.

  It was a Borg-class vessel, their largest and most powerful warships. The other was a transport vessel similar in size to a Kafcha, but the void was what drew his curiosity, and after some quick scans he realized that the Borg vessel was creating it with its own shields, expanded in a weak fashion far beyond the range V’kit’no’sat technology would allow.

  This was yet another indication that Star Force had exceeded them in some areas, and now they were asking for V’kit’no’sat help with the creation of this weapon? That suggested more than just a problem. It meant there was something they felt was unsolvable, and it was possible that there would be no weapon developed. Tar’ange set himself to that possibility, but if one of the Uriti had a real weapon that could damage Yeg’gor effectively, then that was enough for him. If it existed, then he would devote however many years of his life was required to figure out its secrets.

  After all these years he had begun to wonder if such a weapon could exist, but now it did. The trick was going to be in harnessing that power…but right now that didn’t matter. They had hope of a final solution, and give the V’kit’no’sat fleets a weaponry that was even remotely effective and the empire would fulfill their oaths. He had no doubt of that. Not one. Hopelessness drove wedges between them, but even the smallest scent of victory would cement their bonds of brotherhood.

  Destroying the Hadarak and freeing the galaxy from their reign of terror was why the empire existed, and if Tar’ange and the others could provide them the means to do it, the true power of the V’kit’no’sat was going to be unleashed, for their lifeblood was victory, and they had been starved of it for the length of Tar’ange’s long life. And if the rimward portion of their empire had discovered the key to destroying the Hadarak, the coreward portion would join them and, together, as V’kit’no’sat, they would fulfil the destiny they had both inherited.

  If…and only if, Tar’ange and the others could make this work. The fate of the galaxy now literally rested in their work. And the sooner their rimward cousins got him to the research site, the sooner they could begin climbing the impossible mountain towards a true anti-Hadarak weapon.

  6

  July 20, 128498

  Epsilon Eridani System (Home One Kingdom)

  Corneria

  Tar’ange had never been onboard a Star Force ship before, but the past few months had not been unwelcome. Their technology was very similar to V’kit’no’sat, given the fact that they had inherited it from them, but their methodologies were a bit different. That hadn’t annoyed him, for they were not just passengers during the trip. Some of the Star Force scientists had been onboard to get them up to speed with the subject matter prior to arrival, but the lead scientist was here in Epsilon Eridani working on the problem of getting the new weapon configured into a single discharge.

  Tar’ange knew that was where the problem truly lay, for Star Force had already replicated the weapon on a small scale, and they’d even tested it on a Hadarak without letting the V’kit’no’sat know about it! It had done considerable damage, but had not been a kill shot. Furthermore, it required so much equipment it couldn’t be mounted on existing warships. It was very inefficient and scaled poorly, which was why Tar’ange and the others were here. They had the experience not only creating weapons, but crafting them into efficient packages, and what Star Force wanted this one to be was of insane proportion. They wanted a weapon that could fire a single shot and kill, or seriously wound, one before it could retreat, and to do that was impossible with their current weapon design.

  And Tar’ange knew why. They were going about this all wrong, and he was going to have to convince them to abandon their current course and take a less instantaneous approach to the damage, trusting that the combined Star Force and V’kit’no’sat fleets could keep the Hadarak corralled long enough to inflict the necessary damage over time, which would still be far greater than anything they had at present.

  For the smaller Hadarak that would be easy in conjunction with a Harthur, but the larger ones were going to have to be targeted when they could still move unless they found a way to create larger Harthur. That was still in the works, but the physics did not look promising. There were simply range limitations on the inertial dampening fields, and the tentacles of the longer Hadarak would bring the emitters within striking range, hence the Harthur were only applicable against the ‘smaller’ ones.

  When their ship arrived in the system Tar’ange and the other 1,289 elite V’kit’no’sat scientists…all of them gathered from across the empire in the fastest possible ships…were transferred down to the surface of Corneria to a remote facility built to accommodate the larger races, and built specifically for this project. Their living facilities and research assets were combined into a large complex where the ongoing work was still occurring at a feverish pace and wasn’t stopping for their arrival.

  Tar’ange was assigned another Pas’cha, a Star Force one, to serve as his assistant and guide, as were each of the other scientists, so they could plug them into the existing work schedules at their leisure. Tar’ange got a tour and all of his questions asked without having to inhibit the Star Force scientists as they got up to speed, and there was a lot they hadn’t been briefed on during transit.

  This was not a small project, and the Star Force scientists…referred to as Mastertechs…were working on multiple different versions of the technology, and since it was a modular weapon there were literally thousands of firing combinations to be tested. They had a private firing range elsewhere in the system where all the prototypes were being vetted, but none were large enough for what Star Force wanted. They didn’t know what to build at that scale, let alone how to build it, so they were exhausting the small scale testing through trial and error and already had a decent catalog of weapon trials for him and the others to dig into.

  Tar’ange spent 5 days immersing himself in the project before requesting to speak with the project lead, a Mastertech called Tennisonne. Apparently he was responsible for a lot of Star Force’s technological breakthroughs and had been with them since the inception of their empire long before the V’kit’no’sat had invaded Terraxis.

&nbs
p; But he was a Zen’zat, and Tar’ange wasn’t expecting too much from such a tiny brain, though Star Force had certainly come far before incorporating the larger races into their empire…but most of their Mastertechs were Zen’zat, or what they called ‘Human,’ and that concerned him greatly until he finally met Tennisonne in a private meeting.

  “So, what are your thoughts?” the Mastertech asked respectfully, using V’kit’no’sat rather than their own inferior language. “You’ve had months to look over the basics.”

  “We have, and I believe you must take another path.”

  “How so?” Tennisonne said, standing underneath the huge Pas’cha as Tar’ange tilted his neck down as far as comfortable to look at him.

  “You will not be able to create a single discharge large enough to accomplish the damage you seek. You must spread it out.”

  Tennisonne shook his head. “No. We have to have a single knockout punch. All-in, one discharge, with as many days recharge as needed in between. We can’t let the Hadarak maneuver in between multiple shots.”

  “I am not talking about multiple shots, but a sustained beam effect.”

  “It’s not a beam,” the Mastertech said with a frown. “It’s an arcing weapon.”

  “I refer to time on target, which can be accomplished with an arcing weapon. You are also losing too much efficiency with the discharge of material. You must allow it to clear, or more preferably sweep it away from the impact site. Your weapon is indeed remarkable in how it dislodges the Yeg’gor molecular links, but the molecules still remain in the firing line. The more you destroy, the more there are to shield the others. You must allow time for them to be removed.”

  “Time for the Hadarak to make an emergency microjump away from the Ysalamir, and as big as we’re going to have to make it, it’s going to be too slow to follow in any effective way.”