Star Force: Baron (Star Force Universe Book 43) Read online

  Paul and the other trailblazers and elite Archons were the ones who had to make this all work. And without them…Paul didn’t even want to think about how bad it could get, for everything that he had encountered so far, he knew it could get worse. Far worse. As bad as the collapse of The Nexus was, and how angry he was at them dropping the ball, if they hadn’t been here at all, this section of the Rim would have been a very different place. They weren’t good guys, but they had been keeping a lot of bad ones in check for a long time. They were just no longer able, or perhaps willing, to continue in that regard and all the threats they had suppressed but not eliminated were now rearing their ugly heads.

  The Ziviri were one of them, but Star Force had just solved that problem at the cost of lives and a hell of a lot of equipment. This planet was the last to fall, but in truth Paul would have been at this for another 20 years if he hadn’t hit the hardest ones first, for in the last 6 years most of the remaining little ones had decided to surrender rather than fight. Bujom was one of the few that chose otherwise, but they didn’t have much to stop Star Force. The fighting here had lasted only 18 hours, but there was mop up work left that Paul was helping with personally.

  He was flying around the planet looking for pockets of resistance in his personal skeet, then going to ground and hand to hand trying to keep another person from dying. Right now he was perched atop one of the Ziviri buildings that looked like fins or knife blades sticking up from the surface in menacing fashion. It was totally undamaged, as most of the buildings were, and from here Paul could get a good view of the surrounding city as he monitored the battlemap for activity while his skeet was parked 20 meters behind him.

  There was nothing to do at the moment, so he just sat on the edge with his armored legs dangling over and monitored the feeds while letting his mind drift. His problems weren’t over yet, for he had captured 87% of the Ziviri population across their entire empire. He didn’t have to do that. He could have killed those that fought him, but there were always people that got born into a race or empire that they did not like and they were forced to go along with a lot of crap because of it. Those people he needed to rescue, not kill, so using stun weapons and just bagging everyone was the best way to do it.

  However, that meant he now had a very hostile captive population that had to be babysat and Paul wasn’t going to stick around here forever to do it. Duke Yani was expected to arrive within the year to take command of the restructuring efforts whenever Paul chose to left, but he knew he was going to have to stay around and troubleshoot along with the Duke. Ziviri territory was beyond the Star Force Frontier Region, and as such everyone here was stuck in the middle of nowhere and somewhat vulnerable to an attack by someone other than the Ziviri. Paul couldn’t take his fleets elsewhere, for they needed to roam this region as a deterrent and put down anyone who tried to take advantage of the lack of system defenses.

  On top of that Star Force had to feed everyone, utilizing Ziviri production initially then replacing it with their own facilities as soon as possible. Paul had both Kiritak and Bsidd workers spreading like wildfire across the new Ziviri Region, but they had to train their own people as they expanded, so most of the workers Paul was getting were not local born but shipped in from Star Force territory. Even Paladin could not reproduce fast enough for the needs here, so this post war annexation was drawing down a lot of resources and experienced personnel, but it had to be done.

  There were so many Ziviri, estimated at 9 trillion survivors, that Star Force had to come in and take control of it now, not grow into it over time. And the longer the conversion took the more the highly experienced personnel would be tied up in babysitting operations. Star Force only had so long before the V’kit’no’sat truce expired, and by then the Ziviri had to be fully capable of supporting themselves, if not exporting. They couldn’t be allowed to be sucking resources from the rest of Star Force by then, but there was a long, long way to go to get to that point.

  Right now there were constant convoys running all the way out here and back delivering personnel, cargo, and raw materials that couldn’t yet be harvested on site. The might of the empire was now supporting the Ziviri, and Duke Yani and Paul had a significant problem on their hands…for the maturia system was not going to work here.

  Ziviri were basically rock monsters, and they reproduced by mitosis. Previously Paul had thought that was impossible for a person, and it turns out he was right. When the Ziviri split in two the person in the body stayed in half of it and a new person was born into the other…with all the memories of the original. They had the same mind structure, same body, same everything except a different Core, and that made them look identical. Detailed study had been able to determine a slight variance, allowing Paul to see who was the original and who was new, but they both behaved the same.

  That meant there were no younglings to confiscate and raise in a maturia. That also meant all the bad habits the Ziviri had would be passed on to their duplicate, for there really were no younglings. Adults reproduced other adults, though half the size. Both would have to eat a lot to regain their original mass, but there was no maturation process in the Ziviri, so Paul was going to have to do something different.

  And he wasn’t waiting for the Duke to get here to start. He’d been confronting this ever since the first system had fallen, for when they’d taken possession of that population they’d first discovered that there were no younglings in the population. What he had learned since then was that there was another way for the Ziviri to reproduce, which involved spawning a tiny new one with no memories, but they had to choose to do that and they never did unless they were too small to do the regular split. Ziviri were asexual, so there was no driving force to reproduce other than growing to such a size that they became too large to move around adequately.

  They couldn’t stop their growth rate, so the only way to diminish their size was to reproduce. Eat less and the population rate diminished. Eat more and they grew so damn fast that they could double their adult population in remarkably little time, all of which would have cloned memories of the originals. That wasn’t exactly the same as experience, but it was so close the difference almost wasn’t worth mentioning.

  So the only way Paul had been able to set up maturias was when the Ziviri cooperated and spawned a tiny new version with no memories…and most of the conquered Ziviri hated Star Force, so they weren’t helping them.

  That meant Paul had a tiny, tiny, tiny little piece of the Ziviri that was now learning the Star Force ways and beginning to reproduce on their own and copy the Star Force ways when they split, but 99.999997% of the population refused to reproduce the way Star Force wanted and with the new ‘clones’ having the memories of the originals, teaching them new things was extremely difficult.

  The flip side was, if they ever did convert, they’d be like the Paladin starting off with genetic memory…only they’d be adults. They couldn’t reproduce as fast as Paladin, for it was a split rather than growing separate individuals in artificial pods, but it meant that certain bloodlines would all essentially be the same person from a memory sense. Individual experiences would alter it over time, but this bonding factor kept the Ziviri extremely unified and the only reason a lot of them had bothered to surrender was the fact that Star Force had kept their communication network intact so they could see how badly their other systems were getting their ass kicked.

  They’d surrendered knowing that their worlds would take unnecessary damage, so they’d decided to spare themselves that and resist in non-military ways. They were being very stubborn, and that was something that Paul and Yani were going to have to deal with.

  That was why Paul wasn’t going to be leaving anytime soon, but he had already sent Rioni and the Mach’nel back. It was no longer needed here, but there were plenty of other warfronts where it could be put to use punching through planetary shields. In fact most of the elite Archons were already on their way out, leaving Paul as the sole badass remaining, and not
for his combat skills. What was required now was empire building, or empire wrangling in this case. He wasn’t sure what the final solution was going to be, but the existing population wasn’t going to die out over time if they failed to reach self-sufficiency.

  That meant he had to find a solution, otherwise this problem would persist forever.

  7

  April 6, 4870

  Maokai 19 System (Protovic territory)

  Lighthouse 4

  Kena Verris was Human in a system of Protovic, one of a handful of elite wranglers who had been given both Ikrid and Lachka/Pefbar in order to do her job. Normally those psionics were not available to citizens, but her work in the Sanctuaries required it. The telepathy of the Protovic was the number one reason why they had been tasked with the care of 68% of the Sanctuaries within the empire, but there were some tasks they just couldn’t handle without having the ability to take control of the minds of those under their care.

  She could do that, as well as push and pull things with her mind. That was very helpful when dealing with less advanced races and allowed her to avoid most injuries. Kena had devoted her life to working this little, often overlooked corner of Star Force, and had been rewarded with the trust that came with the bestowing of such psionics on a citizen.

  1,289 years old next month, Kena had worked in many different systems as Star Force evacuated the ADZ. She was in her final year of the maturia when the V’kit’no’sat returned, never having known what Star Force civilian life was like before that time, but during the evacuation more than just Humans, Protovic, Calavari, and the other advanced races were saved. Those that could not talk or defend themselves also were, at least as much as Star Force could manage. Little critters like insects that free roamed Earth’s atmosphere had been left behind, but anything of decent size that could be saved had been saved.

  And not just from Earth, which was Kena’s homeworld. Races from all across Star Force territory had been rescued and moved, most of which had already been in Sanctuaries prior to the invasion. On the less inhabited worlds there were more free roamers, and she’d helped capture and move them, which was not an easy process in some cases, especially for the aquatics.

  They’d been bounced from Sanctuary to Sanctuary as Star Force lost territory, with new ones having to be built further and further rimward. This one was located in the Lachre Region and far from the V’kit’no’sat warfront, but not so far from the myriad of other smaller wars being fought on the rim. With each decade that passed that fighting got further and further away, with them now being in a mostly civilized area.

  But one couldn’t rest on the defense of others, so there was one world in this system, named Tatania, that was a full Protovic colony. The other 8, labeled ‘lighthouse’ as all Sanctuary worlds within Protovic care were called, each had a Protovic city or small continent colonized, but the vast majority of those worlds were housed by Sanctuary races with armies of wranglers taking care of them because they could not take care of themselves…at least not in any civilized way.

  And the newest addition to their ranks where the Nioti, a small hexped race that stood about shoulder height to Kena. They’d been rescued from being the food source of another race that Star Force had just annexed called the Hanisva, but unlike the Hanisva the Nioti could not talk and had been kept in pens their entire short lives until they were eaten. It was horrific, but at least those that had been saved would not meet that fate.

  Kena was on her way to them now, in a grassland area that was still partially under construction. All Sanctuary habitats, referred to as ‘paddocks,’ were indoors. There the wranglers could design the living environments however they liked with optional outdoor parks to be made use of whenever appropriate, however the indoor facilities often were constructed as parks, meaning there were grasslands inside the buildings on the grasslands, but there were too many Nioti, some of which were still being transported to them from the Preema, who apparently wanted to rid all their worlds of the Hanisva’s foodstuffs, for they’d had to colonize several with the race just to provide adequate amounts to the huge furry avians.

  The entire situation made Kena’s stomach turn, but at least she didn’t have to deal with those bastards out there. The Archons thankfully handled that, but she did have to deal with the aftereffects, and the Nioti were in bad shape. Even those that she’d been working with for more than a decade were slow to change, with their constant fearful and stagnant existence being encoded into their behavioral genetics. Such things didn’t change rapidly, so she had to work with each individual to get them into a better state, and when they reproduced little of that change went to the offspring.

  Right now the Nioti were separated into different paddocks, males in one and females in another, in order to control the population levels. That was standard practice for all bi-gender races in the Sanctuaries, with them allowing limited reproduction where needed. Because most of the races in the Sanctuaries could not maintain self-sufficiency their populations would eventually die out, the wranglers were not supposed to let that happen, but it did allow them to turn such a large population like the Nioti into a small one down the road. They didn’t want that to happen, for they tried to keep them all alive as long as possible, but they knew it was going to happen so they used it to their logistical advantage.

  There were small pockets of races across this planet and the other 7 in this system, plus there were many other Maokai systems that also held Sanctuary races, staffed primarily by Protovic that could read and interact with the minds of races that could not talk. That made such a huge advantage that no Human was allowed to work the Sanctuaries without having at least telepathy. Communication was essential if they were going to help these individuals improve, let alone help their races ascend.

  When Kena arrived at the Nioti paddock she wasn’t alone, for Trigger was with her. He was a member of one of the oldest Sanctuary races, but one not quite ready for ward status. Trigger already was, as an individual, which was why Kena used him as an assistant. He was a Kayna, which was an alteration of an older term that had similar pronunciation…Canine, otherwise known as a ‘dog.’ Wranglers, including a number of Archons, had been working with them for over a millennia telepathically and had established their own language, but they couldn’t quite pronounce English words. A slight genetic alteration to their vocal chords had solved that problem, so now, as odd as it might have sounded to the people of Earth when she was born, Kena was now partnered with a talking dog.

  Most of the time she just read his mind and communicated with him telepathically, but if he wanted to get her attention he would speak. Most of the time he was silent, save when around other Kayna. They were not telepathic, so they had to talk to each other the old fashioned way, but when he was with Keena he was always trotting near her legs and ready to act as needed, and he’d been a great help with the Nioti thus far.

  Part of that was because they were afraid of him. That fear was so ingrained in them that he didn’t have to do anything but walk in their direction and they’d flinch. They’d eventually gotten used to him, but when he barked the fear returned and that made him a very effective herder when they took the Nioti out of their holding pens for the most basic workouts they could manage…that being a cross country trek.

  The Nioti that had been here the longest had an extensive routine established, but these newer ones were having trouble adjusting to doing anything more than standing in place. Their bodies had adjusted to that over the years, and just walking across the grasslands was traumatic to them.

  Traumatic, but they were thrilled about it. Getting out and moving was so foreign to them it was difficult, but she could feel the exhilaration every time they left their confines…which were not so confining now. In fact, the internal facilities, even the temporary ones, were so big compared to what they’d been ‘stored’ in before that they had been congregating in various corners and packing themselves in so tight they were about touching each other.


  It was a sad sight to see, and with each group that made progress other wranglers would take them from there, leaving Kena with working with the ones that needed the most help, so this nightmare didn’t end so long as more Nioti were being brought in. She’d been told another 5-8 years of this before they got them all into Star Force Sanctuaries, and they had enough room here that they’d be taking them in right up to the end. Other Sanctuaries were basically full up, but this one was a newer one with plenty of open land space available for conversion.

  Right now that land space was being used for these cross country treks, moving them from one holding facility to another. Kena didn’t want them getting used to a single location and grasping onto it. She wanted them to free their minds and roam, both physically and mentally, which at this point took some prodding.

  Kena met up with a lot of lower level wranglers, all Protovic, two of which mounted speeder bikes and would follow from above and able to move around quickly while the rest of the wranglers walked. But first they needed to get the 4500 Nioti out of their pens, so Kena called out to them telepathically. She didn’t force them to move, as she could have, for there were too many to move like that, and when she released one it often just circled back to the others.

  “Trigger, get them moving,” she said aloud. “Vari, the door.”

  The Protovic she named jogged over to the release panel and a huge door three times as wide as high slowly rose up revealing the natural sunlight beyond that was mimicked by the overhead lights inside, but the smell of the natural landscape rushed in to replace the sterile air inside the Nioti living space that was a series of grassy paths and padded sleeping areas.

  “Moving,” Trigger said in an accent that was gruff and huffy, but clear enough to be understood. He took off running into the midst of the Nioti and disappeared between the legs as they scattered to get away from him…then a few moments later the main group began to move towards the doorway and away from the Kayna that was running around and barking on the far side.