Lurker Read online

  “Not yet. Maybe we can track this thing down to a certain area and drop sensor beacons in the neighboring systems.”

  “Get eyes on it then poke it with a stick? I’d prefer that, but if it’s got a cloak and only uses it part of the time, then it means it doesn’t want to be found. It wants to pick the battlefield.”

  “Wonder why?”

  “Not the typical Hadarak MO, I’ll give you that. It doesn’t have tentacles, so maybe it’s weaker than we think and can’t get into a prolonged battle. It could be their version of a Ysalamir.”

  “My gut says no. I think it’s far more powerful and the Hadarak are meant to be obvious to draw out the threats, then the Lurker quietly goes after and assassinates them.”

  “Little black holes roaming the galaxy…oh, you don’t think…”

  “No, but they can easily hide in orbit near them.”

  “Yeah, but what if in the Deep Core there is some mother Hadarak the size of a star that spews these things out?”

  Paul cringed. “Please no.”

  “Come to think of it, what does this whole invasion do for the Core?”

  “Keeps our focus away from it,” Paul agreed. “We’d have to build something stupidly fast to get in there and out again.”

  “I’ve run the numbers too. It would have to be almost all gravity drives and fuel pods. And it would be chased the moment it entered a system. It couldn’t snoop around, and something that size would not be missed on entry even if cloaked.”

  “We need to wait until we get better engine technology…but we can’t,” Paul said with a sigh. “Knowing is half the battle…and as long as we’re in the dark, we’re going to lose more like Riona.”

  “One of us has to go,” Kian said somberly. “With a crew of anklebiters.”

  “I need to be the one,” Paul said with a sneer, “but I can’t leave. Especially not now.”

  “I’d volunteer, but we’re all needed now, and I don’t trust any of the second gens enough for this. However, there is one obvious alternative.”

  “Who?” Paul asked.

  “Kara.”

  Paul flinched. He’d written her off because she wasn’t that good at naval and had gone more of the commando route after achieving Neo level, but then again she had the most experience sneaking around the galaxy unseen. Actually, next to Paul, Liam, or Roger, she was the best possible alternative.

  But a part of him didn’t want to let her go. He’d just lost Riona, and Kara…

  “Afraid you’re losing your Harem?” Kian said with an extra bit of snarkiness.

  Paul glared at him, but quickly took his meaning. “Don’t tell me losing Riona doesn’t hurt you too?”

  “It does, but I know she was closer to you, and Kara probably even more so. But Jason’s your best friend and he’s off looking for the Lurker not knowing what it can really do. There is no safe space here, Paul, other than you going first and taking the hits yourself.”

  “You read my mind.”

  “Easy, because we’re all of the same mind. Probably Kara too, if she really is a trailblazer.”

  “That Lurker went right through Riona’s shields, Kian. Shields and armor. Do you have any idea how much worse it could be in there?”

  “Kara will find out, as safe as can be done other than you going. And right now we need you, Liam, and Roger to figure out how to kick a Lurker’s ass. And we need me and the others to make a profession of it. We can’t go scouting.”

  “It’s not like Kara is useless.”

  “She’s not a battle mistress, Paul. Not like we need now. And she can spend a lot of her down time working on how to undo her genetic sabotage. I hear that’s what most of her Essence training has been geared for.”

  “Sold,” Paul said, letting it go. “Now you go and convince her.”

  “It won’t be hard. She’ll throw herself at the head of the column the same as you.”

  Paul reached out and flicked the tiny head of the hologram. “Jerk.”

  “Just a friendly poke, Paul. When we’re hurting we have nothing to strike back at. Nothing to focus our attention on. We just sit and take damage, which is not what we’re geared to do. We need a purpose. And sometimes being a jerk helps accomplish that end.”

  “Harem?”

  “If it doesn’t sting it doesn’t draw ire.”

  “I’ve got plenty of ire,” Paul said with a sneer. “I just have nowhere to put it.”

  “Yet,” Kian reminded him.

  “I can’t decide if I should cry or scream.”

  “The wall in my quarters has a hole in it,” Kian admitted.

  Paul looked down for a moment. “Thanks.”

  “Gives me something to do. I hate sitting helpless too.”

  “If it’s not Essence, what else could get through armor and shields?”

  “Telepathy, but that would require tricking the body to harm itself, which I doubt. If the Hadarak can sense Essence, then it’s a safe bet that somewhere in their ranks someone can use it. You can’t genetically engineer a detector for something you don’t know exists.”

  “But how are they managing it without the skills? You and I can see Essence because we know how to produce a Rush. We’ve cracked the case. Can all the Hadarak use it and are just holding back?”

  “Makes no sense,” Kian agreed. “But it will once we figure it out.”

  “Well that’s helpful.”

  “Just pointing out the obvious. I also wonder if someone who has Essence skills can wake it up in another. Maybe just enough to see it without being able to cause an Essence Rush.”

  “Hadarak are spawned in gravity wells. It’s possible they could pass it on to each other, but that would require them having that ability.”

  “Unless it’s a passive transfer.”

  “Mitosis?” Paul asked, referring to the splitting reproductive method that Human cells used. “Essence is bound to a Core. I don’t think you can split a Core.”

  “Maybe you summon a second one to you and develop it like an add-on…I don’t know. I’m just spitballing here.”

  “Regardless, the Hadarak can sense Essence and are tasked to destroy it. If the Lurker used it, the Hadarak there didn’t respond.”

  “Point. Maybe it’s just the ‘unauthorized’ use of Essence that pisses them off like the unauthorized Uriti existence.”

  “We need a defense, Kian. Without even a basic nullification Essence effect, we’re sitting ducks.”

  “The ones who know how aren’t in a mood to share. We’re just going to have to wait until Rio and Wilson can figure this out.”

  “We can’t get near the Lurker without one,” Paul said pointedly.

  “You’re pretty sure it’s Essence, aren’t you?”

  Paul shook his head warily. “If it’s not, we’ve got a whole new stack of problems to deal with.”

  “Yeah, it is a little too Raf.”

  Paul couldn’t help himself and belted out a loud laugh. “You’re one of only a few people who even understand what that means…but you’re right. We’re ignoring the obvious conclusion because we’re looking to cover all contingencies. Most likely, the Hadarak have Essence skills that the ‘Others’ are afraid of…”

  “Which means we’re wading into a very old, very complicated, and very massive level of warfare that we’re only just beginning to understand.”

  “Two sticks and a rock,” Paul said in agreement. “And we have to share the rock.”

  “So how do we get ourselves a tank before the galaxy is eradicated?”

  “I don’t know,” Paul said regretfully. “I really don’t know. And until we do, reckless are we.”

  “Maybe reckless, but no longer lacking forewarning. Riona took that hit for us, so now we know.”

  “We don’t know enough…other than to keep our distance.”

  “That would have been enough to save Riona, and it’ll be enough to save others.”

  “I don’t find that very encouraging,”
Paul warned. “I don’t think we’ve seen the full extent of the Lurker’s capabilities. And if they’re even faster than we’re expecting, we might not be able to stay out of range.”

  “Then you and me and the others have to go poke it with a stick and find out, sooner rather than later.”

  “We have to find it first. Then I’ll go and poke it with this mother fucking stick,” he said, pointing upwards to indicate the Excalibur that he was sitting in. “Essence may be able to pass through mass, but it can’t ignore it. It’ll take a lot more than one of those disruption blasts to take out a Borg cube.”

  “Unless it can be targeted to a specific area inside,” Kian warned. “But if it’s line of sight, then yeah, we’re not sitting in a little donut like she was.”

  “Find the bastard, and we’ll do this ourselves before anyone else gets blindsided.”

  “Jason’s on it, and the others will know soon enough what to look for. And I don’t think it came all the way out here to sit and wait. It’ll come for us, one way or another, Ysalamir or not.”

  “That’s not my impression.”

  “Trust me. If we keep killing Hadarak the old fashioned way, it won’t stand by for long, and I don’t think it will go back to the Deep Core. Not until it finds where we’re making the Ysalamir.”

  Paul rubbed his chin for a moment. Unless it backtracked supply convoys there was no way it could figure that out unless it had some sort of intelligence gathering capability. Putting that thought aside, it would probably wait on the front lines until another Ysalamir emerged. If one did not…

  “Yeah, you might be right. And if it does sit and wait, we can bring one out and bait it into a confrontation on our terms.”

  “So we have a plan?”

  “We have the beginning of one.”

  “What are we missing?” Kian asked.

  “A really effective stick…”

  7

  December 2, 128531

  System 339140 (Hadarak Zone)

  18th planet

  Tavoni was sitting in a cloaked scout ship in high orbit, monitoring the enemy minion growth on the planet below and distantly keeping count of the Hadarak that came into and out of the system. 339140 was one of only a few major transit hubs in the Hadarak network, with strands from 3 major routes all passing through this system. Six of the planets had been ‘colonized’ thus far, but it was this one that was showing never before seen growths, the nature of which Star Force was curious about, guessing this might be the precursor to another stage of warfare in their playbook.

  So far the 3-man Kiritak crew hadn’t been able to determine what the growths were, but they were huge…each more than 3 miles wide and dome-shaped. Passive sensors couldn’t see into the interior, and even a few active sensor blips hadn’t penetrated, but they had indicated that the shell was hard…not as hard as Yeg’gor, but it was dense and very thick. What it was protecting beneath Tavoni didn’t know, but it wasn’t going to be anything good for the galaxy, that much he was sure of.

  He and the others were going to have to wait and see what came out of the now 201 growth chambers. They’d been adding more each month, though they took a long time to get to what they believed was full size. A lot of resources were being funneled into them via subterranean pipes that acted a lot like blood vessels coming from processing centers where raw ore and other materials collected by ant-like minion armies would be dropped off and ‘digested’ by various means.

  A lot of that refined material was then being pumped underground and into the new growth chambers, as well as being supplemented by flying minions bringing egg-like canisters in and cracking them on the dome. Their gelatinous material would then stick on top and slowly absorb until it was gone. Tavoni had checked multiple time to see if it was evaporating, but it wasn’t. It was going into and through the armor, then disappearing inside.

  The Kiritak had a mystery on their hands, but an alert from the cloaked probes left around the star got Tavoni’s attention. Every time a mass the size of a Hadarak jumped in the scout ship would get a notification on such an odd frequency that the enemy didn’t recognize it as a comm signal. It was extremely low wavelength light that was barely distinguishable in the mass of stellar radiation, but it was just enough to get some very basic data through without giving away the probes’ location.

  Tavoni scrambled out of his seat and ran back to the bunks to wake his fellow Kiritak, shaking one so hard he thought he was under attack and punched Tavoni in the chest by habit, knocking the excited pilot back half a meter.

  “It’s me, it’s me!”

  “What…what is going…”

  “We found it. It’s here,” Tavoni said, stepping over to the other bunk and poking Nikkiti in the ribs as she was slow to wake. “It just jumped into the system.”

  “What is?”

  “The Hadarak that killed Archon Riona’s fleet. It’s here,” he emphasized.

  The other two Kiritak glanced at each other, then both of them scrambled out of bed and followed Tavoni to the cockpit where additional passive sensor data was being passed out to them on a considerable amount of lag.

  “Same shape. Am I wrong?” Tavoni asked.

  “You’re not,” Nikkiti confirmed. “We have to let them know it’s here.”

  “No,” Baddaa insisted. “We have to see where it jumps to, then we leave and tell them.”

  “We leave this planet now, right?” Tavoni checked.

  The other two nodded their agreement, then Tavoni began accelerating them around orbit towards a jumppoint that would lead them to the 2nd planet in the system, then a short jump in to the star in order to avoid the primary jumpline from the 18th planet straight there. “Why can we see it?”

  “Friendly system. It has no reason to hide here. They don’t know we’re watching.”

  “Maybe it takes too much power to hide,” Nikkiti suggested.

  “You can go back to sleep,” Tavoni offered. “I will wake you when we get to the star.”

  Both of them punched Tavoni in opposite shoulders, crunching him further into his seat.

  “We can’t sleep now, you idvrit.”

  “I had to check before leaving orbit. What did you want me to do?” he protested.

  “Wait 10 seconds for us to wake up,” Baddaa said as he sat down in the seat to Tavoni’s right and began compiling the bits of sensor data they had into a composite image a little better than an identification silhouette. This might be the same one that killed Riona, or it might be a similar one. If their hulls were slightly different, like each Hadarak were, then they needed to compare the ‘name-shape’ to what the data packet they’d been given contained.

  It took a few hours, but eventually they were able to confirm it was in fact the same one…either that or they were all identical…but as they got closer to the star they saw the new Hadarak veer away from its transitional orbit and make a microjump towards the 9th planet. The Kiritak decided to follow it there, while keeping a very safe distance, and see what it was going to do. And when they did, it turned their stomachs so much that Nikkiti had to leave the bridge.

  The other two watched as the ‘Lurker’ skimmed the inhabited planet’s surface and sucked thousands of minions up to it, where they were squashed into goo that then rained down on the surface below. It was killing them, its own minions, and the Hadarak on the planet didn’t seem to care one bit. The minions did, and those now immediately near the Lurker tried to flee, but it was too fast and whenever it got near the swarms of ground minions they would be picked up like a magnet, flying from the surface up to the underside of the massive Hadarak, then killed as they squashed against the Yeg’gor armor.

  “Why?” Baddaa asked.

  “I don’t know. I know they’re our enemies, but those minions don’t want to die. They’re trying to run away. Is it eating them?”

  “Their bodies are falling to the ground. It’s not eating them. Not all of them, anyway.”

  “What is it doing the
n?”

  “I do not know. We record and pass on to the others. They will figure it out. Our job is to alert. Do we stay until it leaves or alert now?”

  Tavoni considered that. “If it will be here a while, we should leave so the Archons can better track.”

  “I concur. How much longer? Do we risk active sensors?”

  “No actives. Riona already got actives on it. We need to sneak out. If we die, Star Force learns nothing.”

  “Drop a probe,” Nikkiti said as she came back, now about half a kilo lighter. “Let it record while we run. Another ship can download what it sees later. Archons want Riona’s killer. We should not delay.”

  “Let’s go then,” Tavoni said, prepping another stealth probe that would sit in orbit over the planet and watch what the Lurker continued to do, same as the others in the system. Right now their top priority was to report the position of the new Hadarak, so that the Archons could get on its trail as soon as possible. And that’s exactly what they intended to do, though it would take 13 days to get to the nearest Star Force outpost, meaning the Lurker would have around a month’s head start on whoever the Archons sent to chase after it…

  Morgan-063 wasn’t the closest to the Lurker’s last noted position, but she was in the area and immediately broke off her pursuit of a tier 1 Hadarak once a courier got word to her of its finding. She had her Borg-class vessel and a fleet of Star Force warships from the Lir’nen Knight race, giving her more firepower than most hunter fleets, and she wanted a crack at this thing before it managed to kill more Star Force ships.

  So she headed to the last known area and worked from there, using a small fleet of her own courier ships to keep track of what was going on in adjacent systems and using predetermined rendezvous points so they could swap out data and let her fleet actually hunt what she couldn’t see. Those couriers crossed paths with other ships, some from Star Force, a few from the V’kit’no’sat, and even a Zak’de’ron fleet that didn’t bother to respond. Apparently everyone was looking for this bastard, but no one knew exactly where it was yet, other than it had moved on from the last noted system.