Star Force: Resurrection (SF84) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  Greg waited for it to slit its own throat, but to his surprise it didn’t try. Merely snarling as it rolled its thick legs off the bed to free its cramped tail, then it walked up to the energy shield and looked down at the trailblazer and others, standing as tall as the Knights behind Greg and massing considerably more. The lizard looked like a tiny version of Godzilla minus the back spikes, though he got the feeling this guy could move a whole lot faster if he wanted.

  “Do you speak?” it asked in its native language.

  “Somewhat,” Greg answered, reforming a piece of his helmet to cover his right ear. “My armor will translate the rest.”

  “Why am I not dead?”

  “You know we offer surrender options.”

  “What do you demand of your prisoners?”

  “I’m here to talk.”

  “More likely to scan my mind.”

  “Why aren’t you trying to kill yourself?” Greg wondered.

  The mastermind stared at him with black, glassy eyes. “You have forcibly taken prisoners before?”

  “We tried. They all killed themselves, and we couldn’t get any to do differently. Eventually we just returned those we had left.”

  “Returned?”

  “We sent them back to you. We’re not interested in killing you, only defeating you. When you don’t surrender you leave us with no other option. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”

  “Archon,” one of the medtechs said in an alarmed voice. “His vitals are crashing.”

  Greg dug into his mind deeply, searching out the cause, but it was on the lizard’s conscious thoughts and therefore easy to access and trace back to the knowledge he needed.

  “He has a mental kill switch. His body is shutting itself down.”

  “I can’t treat him when he’s awake!”

  “You cannot stop it,” the mastermind said, staggering a step as his body began to self-destruct from the inside out. There was no toxin of any kind involved, simply his mind triggering his body’s hardware to shut down.

  “Like hell I can’t,” Greg said, the air around his armor shimmering with distortion as he walked into the shield between them. His body passed through and he froze the lizard in place, extending a hand towards it and peeling back the armor covering his pale flesh as he pressed it against the lizard’s thick green scales.

  The medtechs flinched when they saw him go through the shield without lowering it, not knowing how that was possible, but they forced themselves to focus on the task at hand and brought a few of the scanners back out from their wall niches, waiting for the Archon to lay him back down but he didn’t.

  “Get the Kich’a’kat now. It’s the only thing that will work,” he said as he could feel the status of the lizard’s body and his feeble attempts to heal it failing utterly. There was no damage involved, simply a shutdown, and he didn’t know how to override that so he tried to force his heart to keep pumping and a few other organs functioning but it was a losing effort. He could drag it out only so long, then the body parts simply ignored all further input.

  “Hurry,” he demanded.

  “It’s coming,” the medtech informed him, referring to the one original regenerator that each trailblazer kept with them when in the field, though Star Force had many lesser copies made from their own tech. But everyone knew they were mere toys compared to the real deal, and he really hoped there was something in their automated programming that could fix this internal sabotage.

  By the time an Archon outside his armor came running in carrying the small shiny silver device the lizard was already dead, with Greg telekinetically holding his body upright in a standing position. Greg shut the energy shield down so he could pass him the Kich’a’kat, then he put the device on the lizard’s chest.

  For a moment he thought it wasn’t going to activate, but then it melted down and extended out its little rivulets until it covered half his body. Greg had withdrawn his hand, but without a functioning mind to access he no longer could monitor what was happening inside, so he glanced back at the medtechs who were monitoring their own sensor equipment.

  “Nothing yet,” one reported.

  Greg could see inside the lizard with his Pefbar, watching the tiny tendrils continue to spread out, but it wasn’t until they reached the mastermind’s brain was there any reaction…but it came from the Kich’a’kat rather than the lizard. The branches it had extended into the body quickly withdrew and the material extended up into the brain with thousands of tiny, thinner than hair-sized extensions accessing bits and pieces without damaging them in ways that still boggled Greg’s mind.

  He did note that some tendrils still remained, connecting to the heart and lungs, and soon those organs began to function minimally, with Greg guessing that the Kich’a’kat was manually working them in a way that the trailblazer couldn’t.

  With that blood flow resuming at a creep, something else happened within the mind…

  “It’s bringing him back,” the medtech said with a measure of awe.

  Greg smiled. This bastard wasn’t escaping them after all.

  But the Kich’a’kat didn’t let go of the lizard.

  “What’s happening?” he asked. “It’s still working on something.”

  “I’m not certain,” the medtech said with a frown as the lizard woke back up and Greg froze him in place physically but didn’t alter him mentally so in order to not mess with the Kich’a’kat while it was working.

  “I’ve never seen this happen before,” Greg commented.

  “Neither have we,” another medtech answered. “The work is always quick. It looks like it’s stuck in place.”

  “It’s got to be doing something…is the kill signal still active?”

  The other medtech snapped his fingers, realizing Greg was right, and extended some more equipment out from the walls and did a specific scan. A few moments later he had his answer.

  “It’s not done because it’s blocking the shutdown signal. That mechanism is part of the lizard’s genetic structure, not damage, but it’s causing damage. The Kich’a’kat can’t remove it because it’s supposed to be there, but it can’t let it order the body’s organs to shut down either, so it’s just blocking the signals.”

  “We have to neutralize that signal ourselves,” Greg insisted.

  “Anything we do the Kich’a’kat will repair.”

  “Damn,” Greg said, realizing he was right.

  “He’ll try to kill himself the old fashioned way,” the unarmored ranger that had brought the regenerator in offered. “Might as well let him go down this road rather than having him tear his own throat out…after we get the information we need. How long does the battery on that thing last?”

  Greg smiled grimly. He didn’t like the end result, but the other Archon was right. This guy was going to die by his own hand at some point anyway. Might as well get the information now and just use the Kich’a’kat as a stopgap against the self-destruct from doing its thing.

  “I don’t think it’s ever been run continuous,” Greg said, glancing at the medtechs.

  “They’re supposed to last several hours of continuous use. We always put them into a recharging container when they’re not being used so it’s never come up before.”

  “Get the techs down here to work up a portable recharger so that it can draw power while functioning and be prepared to camp out here for a few days,” his attention turned to the Archon. “Tell the other trailblazers to get their asses here on the double. If they argue they’re busy, make them understand. Go in person if you have to, but get them here now.”

  The ranger didn’t offer any response, not wasting the second that it would take as he ran out of the room. Greg could have called the bridge or any of the trailblazers directly using his armor, but he was going to be busy here and at least some of the trailblazers would either be sleeping or in battle and unavailable, so he needed someone on that task while he focused here.

  The mastermind regained enough consciousnes
s to begin to wonder why he was still alive, then looked down at his body and the alien piece of technology imbedded on his chest.

  “Sorry,” Greg said, increasing his telekinetic grip on him as he began to struggle, intent on ripping the thing off. “But you’re not getting off that easy. Your empire has been murdering trillions of people and doing a lot of other really disgusting things, and I want to know why, how, and what other things you’re up to that we don’t know about. You may not be a templar with all the answers, but you know enough to have a kill switch woven into your genetic structure, and you’re either going to tell us or we’re going to dig the information out of your mind.”

  The mastermind snarled a string of words that the translator couldn’t fully grasp, but Greg’s reading of his mind provided the context. He turned around to face the Knights with a wry look on his face.

  “That’s the lizard version of ‘Fuck You.’”

  8

  June 8, 3221

  Krachnika System (lizard capitol/homeworld)

  Trexklip

  Paul walked into the holding cell, seeing Greg, Jax, Ace, Taryn, and Dan sitting around silently on tables, most with their eyes closed, and an assortment of techs monitoring readouts while a giant lizard stood still as a statue behind a blue containment shield. The Archon raised an eyebrow and walked past the others, seeing that Dan had a Lachka tendril wrapped around the lizard to hold him in place and telepathically signaled to him that he’d take over.

  The telekinetic binds shifted from one to the other, with Paul loosening up the restraints a bit and letting him shift his fleet in place as he looked up at his pitch black eyes.

  “I am Paul-024,” he said without the benefit of a translator, for he wasn’t wearing any armor since transferring over to Greg’s command ship, though two of the others still were.

  The mastermind’s stance shifted slightly and all the trailblazers could feel the recognition.

  “You are known to me.”

  “I am curious how much you know of me. Most of the recent invasions haven’t let any ships leave to report, so how much intel do you have on me?” he said, making it a personal connection.

  “You are the most difficult spacebound commander to fight,” the lizard said with a mix of disgust and grudging respect.

  “Have you and I crossed paths before this system?”

  The lizard almost smiled. “We have.”

  Paul frowned. “Where exactly?”

  “You call the system Tyrannus.”

  Paul though back in recent memory, then one campaign clicked from over 200 years ago. “You were in the flotilla that escaped through the asteroid field?”

  “Your memory is sound.”

  “I took that system, but a small number of your ships got away. I knew one of you was there, but I could never locate you. You hide exceptionally well.”

  “Why do you bother to speak to me when it is obvious that you can invade my mind at will? These others,” he said with disgust, “have been doing so for hours while I am their puppet.”

  “I can do both, but prefer actually talking to someone of your skill. Were ships and technology even, you and the others of your kind would make difficult commanders to defeat.”

  “You assume dominance?”

  “I am well familiar with my own skills…though not overestimating them. I am slightly better at adapting than you are.”

  “Tell me then how you discovered my location.”

  “I’ll admit we didn’t. You were found in the rubble. We had no idea of your location.”

  The lizard’s face twisted up in a mix of rage and satisfaction, knowing that he had not been bested, only caught by bad luck. “And what do you hope to gain from me?”

  “Feel like changing sides?” Paul asked casually.

  “You do not understand us if you think there is even a chance of that.”

  “I don’t fully understand you,” Paul said in all seriousness. “You are misusing your skills and have become a threat I have to deal with. I would much prefer to be allies, yet the Li’vorkrachnika seem bent on exterminating all other life in the galaxy. Why must you expand in such a manner?”

  “We do not have much use for slaves.”

  “But why kill everyone else? Why not coexist with at least some of them?”

  “We coexist with those that we must.”

  “And kill all those that you can? What is your end goal? Even if you are able to conquer the galaxy and destroy every other race in it, what does that gain you?”

  “The galaxy.”

  “To do what with?”

  “Whatever we wish.”

  “Is there no purpose to your civilization?”

  “My purpose is to serve my civilization. Others set the direction and goals.”

  “But what are they? I’m not asking you divulge secrets…we’ll probably get those anyway with time, but just in general, why are you expanding? Is there a limit you wish to reach or are you going to continue expanding indefinitely?”

  “The larger we grow the more powerful we become.”

  “True,” Paul conceded, “and not without merit. How you expand matters greatly, which is why we’re presently in conflict. But is there nothing else driving you beyond expansion?”

  “You seek common ground?”

  “I seek an option other than having to hunt down and kill every last one of you.”

  “Submit.”

  “And what will that gain us, other than an eventual stab in the back? We’ve seen what you’ve done to former associates and slaves. And you’ve been eating the prisoners in this system. Is submission truly a valid option for us? If we agreed to a line that neither side would cross, would you always honor it, leaving each civilization to their own pursuits? Do not bother lying, I am in your head and know when you do.”

  “Why do you not eat other races?” the mastermind asked instead. “Why do you war and conquer those who do?”

  “Because we respect the sovereignty of life. Being dominant doesn’t mean you own the subordinate. They have as much right to live as we do. It is the place of the dominant to protect and guide the lesser, not to consume and exploit them.”

  “Do you find strength in that approach?”

  “Is that a genuine question or a veiled insult?”

  “You should already know that. Do you believe your victories over us flow from your philosophy, or do you succeed in spite of them?”

  “We make it harder on ourselves because of them in many cases,” Paul admitted freely.

  “Why do so if you have that knowledge?”

  “Therein lies the purpose behind our civilization, which is why I ask what yours is. Ours is not to expand, dominate, or even survive. Those are all lesser goals, but we will not pursue them if they conflict with the primary. And the primary is to do the right thing.”

  “Ambiguous at best.”

  “For you more than most. Are you aware that your genetic structure has been altered in order to assure loyalty and obedience, and that in doing so your sense of right and wrong has been at least partially suppressed?”

  “My mind cannot be suppressed. It would be counterproductive.”

  “We’ve never captured one of your kind before, but we created a genetic profile on you as soon as you were onboard this ship. I consulted it on my way over. I can assure you the blocks are there, same as with your other breeds. Curiously, we have failed to recover any detailed files on you or your leaders.”

  “Such knowledge of them is restricted to even me,” the mastermind said, but Paul could sense a twinge of doubt mixed with professional curiosity.

  “The blocks in question make it very difficult to consider options beyond what is mandated. How can you be such a good tactician despite those restrictions?”

  “I have no restrictions.”

  “Then you could choose not to kill yourself if you wanted? Out of all the Li’vorkrachnika that we have encountered, none have accepted surrender. And those that we di
d take prisoner anyway sought to kill themselves or each other without exception. How do you account for that?”

  “What is there to account for? Perhaps you are merely accustomed to disorderly races.”

  “Granted. But is your order achieved through skill and loyalty, or genetic manipulation that keeps you submissive to the group? Such a device might be effective, but it would also be a sign of inferiority. My kin and I need no such mechanisms. We are united in brotherhood. Other races may not be, but our Archons have never had a traitor. Have never conflicted with one another. We are solid. If the Li’vorkrachnika have to artificially create such a state, there will be drawbacks.”

  “You have seen our effectiveness. What ‘drawbacks’ have you noticed?”

  “Negotiation, trade, information exchanges, outreach. Your inability to interact with other races aside from killing them on the spot is a rather large inability on your part.”

  “Do not mistake our unwillingness as ineptitude.”

  “So you can make deals?”

  “We typically do not seek them out, but we can if needed.”

  “But do you honor them, or is it merely a tactic to manipulate your enemies?”

  “Whatever is needed.”

  “No, no,” Paul said, waving a finger in front of him, “there is a great difference. That is obviously a technique that you have not used before. One negotiates simply through your actions. By being honest and carrying through on established deals even if it turns out to be disadvantageous to you, you then generate reliability in the minds of others. That reliability can then be used as an asset. I do not believe that the Li’vorkrachnika possess that weapon in your arsenal, nor do I think you are capable of doing so with your current blocks in place. Perhaps your leaders are, if they do not have the blocks, but the rest of you cannot without being extremely strong willed.”

  “Strong willed?”