Maty Read online

“No. There is one more inefficient.”

  Junobu frowned, then caught on. “The Grand Border was seen as comical in theory, but is now the very thing that keeps us all alive. Efficient it is not, I agree. But it is effective.”

  “Perhaps they are testing how effective.”

  “You suggest they play with us for knowledge rather than go for the kill?”

  “Is that not what they have done to us the entire existence of the V’kit’no’sat?” Mak’to’ran challenged.

  The other Era’tran growled. “You state the obvious that I have forgot. I barely remember our time before Star Force.”

  “You did not live as much of it as I did, but I too have grown accustomed to the new order. I like the superiority of it, but I do not forget the past.”

  “Then perhaps they have never fought us at full strength…but why pull reinforcements from other galaxies for a partial effort?”

  “Not partial, but perhaps targeted in a way we do not yet understand. It is clear that this PanNari discovery is more important to them than us.”

  “We may need more than this fleet to hold it,” Junobu noted.

  “That depends on what we find, and how many PanNari remain.”

  “If any.”

  “Regardless, there is a mystery here to solve. Only then will we know what future deployments are necessary.”

  “We are nearing the brake point. How do you wish us to enter the system?”

  “High. We do not risk encountering combat immediately. We need information before we proceed.”

  “The deck is yours,” Jumobu said, retreating to an auxiliary station where he would oversee the primary command duties for the ship, but not the fleet.

  Mak’to’ran stepped forward and his feet made contact with the silver circle beneath them, allowing him full access to the tactical grid where he issued final alignment orders for the fleet when it came out of its jump…but they were going to have to slam on the reverse thrust hard to come out as high as he wanted.

  Their capacitors were fully charged after more than a day of coasting, but most of the larger ships would have to nearly drain them to get the necessary leverage on the gravity well…meaning their combat capability immediately after arriving would be limited by approximately 40%. The active generation of power would sustain the rest of the ship’s functions, but for maximum effect the capacitors were needed for the more energy hungry functions.

  Limited sensors of the road ahead were coming back in the negative for obstructions, so when the fleet decelerated it came out into empty space with the pair of central stars being two orbs in the far distance backlighting multiple swarms all across the system…including several large objects that were not planets, nor Wardens.

  “What are those?” Junobu demanded of the crew, but the passive sensor analysis came back with similarities and nothing affirmative. They were not in the Hadarak playbook as far as Star Force knew.

  “Now we see some of their true might,” Mak’to’ran said, looking at the spindley corkscrews that were thousands of miles long and made the DinoThunder look small in comparison, though most of their internal structure was empty space.

  “A support ship,” the lead Era’tran analyst said a few moments later. “I’m seeing numerous docking cavities. Perhaps industrial.”

  “They can’t grow what they need here,” Mak’to’ran mused. “So they have to bring it in, and a Warden isn’t suitable. Why?”

  “Surface area,” the analyst said immediately. “That design isn’t meant for combat, but maximum docking capability.”

  “What is docking with it?” Mak’to’ran asked, knowing that their minions were expendable and the Mainline ships and Wardens could feed on their own.

  “Unknown at this distance.”

  “Mak’to’ran,” Junobu said, adjusting the main tactical hologram to one of the planets in the system…around which there was a carpet of minions so thick you could not see the surface.

  “A blockade?” he said, barely comprehending the numbers he was witnessing as the comm system activated and another smaller holo of a squid-like ship appeared before Mak’to’ran.

  “Identify mission,” the Elloquim Vetrava said flatly in V’kit’no’sat, with its position now being registered not too far ahead along this jumpline…though a moment ago it had not been there. At least not on passive sensors, and their active ones were still on their way out and yet to return except for nearby objects…and there were many in the form of tiny debris in a carpet that was continuing to stretch in towards the star as the active bounce-back continued to register, but not the Elloquim until just now.

  “I am Mak’to’ran, leader of the V’kit’no’sat. We have come to investigate why you are holding onto this system, and to assist you with combat operations against the Hadarak.”

  “Be warned. Danger level of operating in this system is beyond anything encountered before. Your assistance is welcomed due to the gravity of the situation, but do not be lulled into a false sense of superiority. These Hadarak are not fighting the same way as previous encounters. These are far more ruthless.”

  “Explain the tactical situation.”

  “We possess critical infrastructure on the planet, buried below the surface. An ongoing assault via ground is occurring despite several Elloquim having physically attached to the planet in a defense ring. The remainder of us are scattered across the system attempting to draw their forces away from the planet or succumb them to devastating counterattacks. They have not budged from the planet and are accepting the massive losses we are dealing them out here in order to keep maximum pressure on the surface.”

  “What is on the surface that you hold?”

  “Something very ancient that the Hadarak have only recently possessed and used against us in extreme limited fashion. It is called Maty, and has the ability to fabricate surveillance drones with near perfect cloaking devices. The Hadarak have them deployed along a portion of the Grand Border. We backtracked the efficiency of their visible forces to this location and discovered the facility. It was built by a race of machines that have long since left this galaxy after a cataclysm. We have laid claim to it, V’kit’no’sat, and we will not relinquish it to the Hadarak or to Star Force.”

  “Can you hold it?” Mak’to’ran said, dismissing the challenge inherent in that statement.

  “No.”

  “What’s the status of your fleet?”

  “Destroyed. Only the Elloquim remain. Their swarms consume everything else.”

  Mak’to’ran visibly winced. He’d seen the number of ships that had passed through the Grand Border. Losing all of them was a horrific loss, even if the most valuable Elloquim still lived.

  “And the surface?”

  “Blocked from their approach, but they are digging tunnels that we are attempting to seal in never-ending counteractions. Our forces inside the Maty have it secured, but the pressure is constant and our reinforcements minimal. We cannot hold it indefinitely.”

  “Why are you still here then?”

  “We will die before we lose it.”

  Mak’to’ran huffed. “What value is a suicide mission like that when the outcome is your total destruction? Do you have a short term mission of such great value?”

  “We are reverse-engineering the technology of the Maty, and every day we hold it we grow stronger. We will not relinquish it under any circumstances.”

  “How will you get this information back to the other PanNari?”

  “I am not trapped here. Only those on the planet are.”

  “Is this technology valuable for you to possess, or for you to solely possess?”

  “If possession of the Maty itself is not disputed, we are willing to bargain for your assistance.”

  There. That’s what Mak’to’ran had been expecting. Logic rather than blind fervor.

  “Why do the Hadarak want it so badly?”

  “It comes from an ancient power greater than them, and contains records of places and e
vents across this galaxy from before either of our races existed. There are more than one of these facilities in this galaxy, but none others have been discovered. They are places of great power, but also built to facilitate the education of lesser races and individuals who would travel here to learn. That knowledge the Hadarak have already partially assimilated. The real power is that of the Gahana, and the Hadarak cannot access it easily in their biological state. The Gahana were living machines such as us, only far more advanced. Their legacy will accelerate our development by millions of years at the minimum. Do you understand the significance for us now, Era’tran?”

  “Are the previous owners going to return for it at some point?”

  “They cannot. This galaxy became toxic for them, and the conditions of that toxicity are still present. It is a lost relic that we shall possess.”

  “Granted,” Mak’to’ran agreed. “And we will help you secure it in exchange for access to the relic and your promise of no discovery being hidden from us. We may not be living machines, but there may be useful upgrades for our non-living ones.”

  “We only agree to your terms because we cannot allow the Hadarak to possess this place again. We are willing to die to achieve this if necessary, and do not like sharing the dominance the secrets will provide, but the Hadarak response to our taking it from them has been more severe than anticipated. We require assistance for permanent possession.”

  “Then we are here to make our first contribution. Where can we best assist you in killing them?”

  The Elloquim’s response came not in words, but a datapacket outlining every weak point in the Hadarak positions across the system and on the 8th planet where the Maty was located, and some 18 Elloquim were partially buried in the crust around it, protecting it with their mass and weaponry, though the information showed continual damage they were repairing in a race against attrition as the Hadarak swarms above continually made attack runs at them to wear them down in addition to the overland assaults coming from much further away.

  Mak’to’ran saw a sea of minions around the location, moving across the ground and being destroyed so quickly it wasn’t worth effort…but they kept coming and coming, and the information on those support ships made clear the reason why they could keep up that continual slaughter.

  They were growth ships continually fueling the ground assault with new blood as harvesters were collecting resources from around the system and within the stars to produce a never-ending stream of them.

  Mak’to’ran waved off the comm channel and brought up the system map in more detail as he summoned over his top minds to the center of the command deck to help him plan the best use of their fleet amongst so many…too many…available targets.

  8

  September 30, 154959

  System 9923004 (Hadarak-Occupied Territory)

  8th planet

  Every day Kyra was in battle. Every day without exception since she had landed inside the great complex now known as ‘Maty.’ The others were known as Snoejy, Buenzy, and Teurty, and their locations had been determined by the numerous Craniem now located inside Maty that Kyra and many more QuipNari were fighting to protect. They knew they couldn’t win this war. They knew they couldn’t hold Maty forever. But the longer they did the more knowledge the Craniems would deceipher from the operating systems and database, and each day they held out their race would advance by leaps and bounds.

  It was the single most important task Kyra and the others had ever been a part of, and in truth, she knew that was also true of the Elloquim and every other PanNari in this system…including all of those who had died. Kyra had expected to join them eventually, for she’d been injured near death twice already, but that did diminish her eagerness to face the swarms of Hadarak sneaking their way into the Maty. It was her quest now, and fatigue was not an issue most days as she rode around inside a Kel’zat and went diving into the worst of the fighting.

  The sentries and other attack drones the PanNari had brought with them were also in play, but the Maty was so huge they couldn’t defend all of it, only certain sections, and the Gahana technology was proving to be far more battle worthy than their own…most of which had been reduced to trash that other teams were collecting and recycling inside Nevantha and the other closest Elloquim who had burrowed tunnels down to certain entrances and now had a direct linkage to them encased in Nam’sti’tri molded armor hundreds of meters thick.

  The Elloquim produced it in a liquid state, then poured it down through the cracks in the bedrock around their burrow points, then hit it with a specific frequency of energy that caused it to solidify within minutes as a chain reaction took place. One exposure up top would eventually bind all of it together, and it was proving to be an effective means of keeping the Hadarak out of the comm and cargo links to the nearby Elloquim who were using their internal factories at maximum capacity to produce more ground units to supplement what the Maty itself was releasing from storage.

  But the Craniems could not yet get it to actively produce more than low level products. The Kel’zats were still beyond their reach, though those that were in storage were now prowling the Maty on their own for the most part and hunting down Hadarak…as well as a few of the PanNari attack drones when they moved into an area of the Maty that they didn’t want them in. Kyra was in full control of hers, up until it would get damaged or destroyed, then she’d have to operate on foot until she could find another to conscript in the field or have a Craniem recall one for her if they could manage to figure out how…for not all of them were operating under the same command codes, and none could be remotely controlled from afar, only given ‘suggestions,’ and even the now relinked Elloquim could not command all of them the same way they could PanNari machinations.

  Right now Kyra was between rides, for her last Kel’zat had one of its four limbs torn off completely, and eventually it decided to retreat for repairs even when Kyra told it to keep fighting. Some programming in it overrode the manual control and she couldn’t figure out where it was yet, but she did know that there were levels of ownership to a Kel’zat, and based on that level you could do more things with it. Initially all she could do was ride and point out what it needed to do, but the more she learned it…and the Craniems and Elloquim decoded the massively complex machines…the more manual operation was available, but whatever triggered the recall had been beyond her control, and in retrospect was probably the wiser action rather than lose the entire Kel’zat.

  But she’d had to leave behind two other QuipNari in the process, and so far neither of them had made it back. That didn’t mean they were dead, for there was a comms blackout now in place inside the Maty that hadn’t been there before. Every wall blocked it, and she’d been told that it also blocked the telepathy the Hadarak used, which was why they were fighting less effectively than normal despite their constantly regenerating numbers.

  Kyra spotted targets down the hallway and fired off her shoulder-mounted energy rockets, whipping the tiny glowing orbs down the distance towards the flying minions half as big as herself that were rounding a corner. As she did several sentries and gogorum attack drones fired off a series of beams and chipped energy blasts that looked like little bananas flying through the air if you slowed down the visual replay long enough to look.

  Either way, the minions took the brunt of the mostly accurate firepower, dropping to the floor in gory pieces as more came around the corner to replace them…along with some of the zerglings and a few larger varieties that had never been seen in combat before by the PanNari or Star Force. They were half as fast, but thicker and essentially walking bombs full of acid that would go off if you got close enough in numbers…but a single target wouldn’t trigger them, because the acid would also kill the minions around them.

  They were obviously tasked with hitting groups of enemies with the suicide explosion where it made mathematical sense…which was why Kyra sprinted ahead of the drones and started firing at the fat ones as she had to jump over and on s
ome of the zerglings to get past them, kicking one in the face and having to do a somersault as her foot stuck more in its mouth than she’d wanted. She shot another at pointblank range then launched herself over another pair as she continued to evade her way through the minion flow up towards the first of the living bombs and attacked it from range…but there were too many zerglings in the way and they took all the hits.

  Kyra gritted her teeth inside her helmet. Her shielding was already taking a lot of damage from the flyers, and the zerglings were getting bites at her legs every now and then with their single fang inside their mouths that worked as a shield drainer…while the rest of their teeth were meant for flesh and light armor. But the QuipNari didn’t care, for she had to get to the ‘pots’ before they got to the attack drones. Because the acid, if thrown onto a shield, would drain the shield and expose it to the rest of the minion weapons. So either way, the little pots were far more effective weapons than the rest of the minions so long as they had cover to get up to you…and this wave didn’t look to be a scouting party, but rather the head of another insertion column, coming from where Kyra didn’t know.

  She couldn’t communicate with the Craniems, let alone Nevantha, to find out unless there was a line of sight link back from drone to drone, and in some cases they maintained that, but the Maty’s own communication system was in lockdown mode since it went battle active to fight the Hadarak, and the Craniems didn’t know how to undo the procedure they had accidentally triggered…though the active defense of the Maty’s guardians was far more help, but it left those QuipNari and attack drones fighting in the complex without an active map to operate off of.

  Fortunately they all had downloaded ones of certain areas, but stray out of those areas into somewhere new that no PanNari had gone and you’d be navigating blind.

  Up ahead Kyra’s map ended, so she didn’t know where these minions could be coming from. The QuipNari just knew they had to be stopped before they got to one of the Craniems…which had to be scattered all over the Maty in order to access different parts of it, for the Gahana had not made infiltrating its systems and assuming control easy by any stretch of the imagination, even for another machine race, and the Elloquim only had access to areas near the entry points that could maintain full security at all times, otherwise their tethers would be cut and have to be rebuilt.