Star Force: Lost Destiny (Wayward Trilogy Book 1) Page 7

  “The one whose ruins we were just in. This planet belonged to a very large empire before it was attacked and bombarded into oblivion. It was part of the Calavari faction. That’s why so many of the current residents are Calavari. They’re the descendants of the few survivors.”

  “Forso was part of a Calavari empire?”

  “This planet’s name isn’t Forso, it’s Mace. Part of the Mordekaiser System. Do you understand what a star system is?”

  “Kind of.”

  “There are three suns in the sky, but two are at the gravitational center of this star system. Everything else moves around them in a circle, more or less. Every star you see in the sky during the night is another sun far away marking another star system, most of which have a few planets. Some have many, some have none. This system has seven, but the other six do not have people living on them anymore. I haven’t gone there to check, but from what I’ve learned there is nothing there. They do not have breathable atmospheres, so when they were attacked I assume everyone died.”

  “Do you have a spaceship?”

  “No.”

  “Have you traveled on one?”

  “Not since the bombardment.”

  “Why not if you know so much about what’s out there? Why didn’t you try to find your empire’s people or…wherever they went? You made it sound like some of them survived.”

  “I hope they did, but this world is not unwatched. I could leave, but I would be vulnerable if I did. I have not lived this long to risk myself on such a gambit. If our people are still out there they will come back for me. If they’re not out there, then I have no one to leave to find. Either way it is best if I stay here and stay hidden.”

  “If they haven’t come back after all this time, doesn’t that mean they’re dead?”

  “I honestly don’t know, but I wouldn’t put credits on it.”

  “What if they just forgot to look for you?”

  “They wouldn’t.”

  “How could you know?”

  “Because Star Force doesn’t abandon anyone…ever,” he said with obvious anger in his voice.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not angry with you, little one. I’m angry with our enemy and with fate.”

  “What’s Star Force?”

  “It’s the empire the Humans founded and brought the Calavari into. And it’s the only known enemy of the V’kit’no’sat that has successfully killed some of them…around here anyway. They own most of the core of the galaxy, so there’s probably someone else out there that can do it…if they haven’t already been taken out.”

  “Is that the same thing as the Viks?”

  “Yes. Viks is just a shorter way of saying it.”

  “Who started the war?”

  “There is no war. This is an extermination. Humans belong to the Viks, and those that founded Star Force were accidentally abandoned on a forgotten colony. They forgot who they were over multiple generations until one Human discovered the single structure left behind that hadn’t been destroyed. Did you notice how none of the ruins on Mace are above ground?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When the Viks eradicate a planet they don’t want any evidence left behind. They have specialized weapons that will vaporize and sweep away buildings, trees, mountains…everything. That’s why this world has very few plants.”

  “Why are some buildings buried then?”

  “Those ruins are the old foundations where the sweepers couldn’t reach without more effort. Rather than dig them all the way out they just skimmed off the top and the vaporized bits buried the rest.”

  Esna looked down at the ground that was zipping past them.

  “You mean all this dirt and sand is…”

  “Yes. Knowing that makes you look at it differently now, doesn’t it.”

  “This entire world is a…a corpse?”

  “Not just this world. The Viks did it to many others before they got here.”

  “If they’re that powerful how did you kill any of them?”

  “Remember when I said that Humans were from a lost colony?”

  Esna’s eyes widened. “You have their weapons?”

  “Star Force was built on V’kit’no’sat knowledge recovered from that one remaining building. We’ve worked hard to catch up to their level, but when they returned they still had an advantage. We could kill them, but we were still outmatched.”

  “Returned?”

  “The Humans were marked for death because they were unsanctioned offspring. When it was discovered that they existed an eradication force was sent and defeated. Then a much larger one came and the war began.”

  “Unsanctioned offspring?”

  “The Viks are made up of a group of different races, but those races are not allowed to leave. When they found out that there were rogue Humans that had founded their own empire, there was no negotiation or warning. The Archons knew they would come back eventually and prepared us, but it wasn’t enough to stop them from doing this to Mace and other worlds.”

  “Who are the Archons?”

  “The most elite of Human warriors. They lead the military while the Monarchs grow our worlds, and the Archons are the ones that figured out how to kill some of the Viks.”

  “Are there other Humans fighting you, fighting for the Viks?”

  “Yes, and I’m pretty sure that at least one is here on Mace.”

  That caused an icy chill to run down Esna’s spine. “He’s the one we’re running from then?”

  “I don’t know for sure. I spotted him from a long ways off a few hundred years ago and ran. They can read minds, and if I get close enough for him to take notice he will find me even if he can’t see me. My mind will look different, as will yours. Yours because you’re Human, and me because I’m so old and…not ignorant.”

  “Read minds? How is that possible?”

  “A great many things are possible that you do not know about. Just know that I think he and maybe others are here to track down survivors or to look for scouts returning.”

  “Your people coming back to look for you…” Esna said, starting to put it together.

  “There is no other reason for them to be here that I can think of. They do not want this world or they would have claimed it and eradicated everyone here. The only reason there are people at all is because the Viks do not think of them as anything more than vermin. They know nothing of those they descend from or their association with Star Force. The Calavari here are not important, but a Human such as you, who knows nothing, still has to be destroyed. The Calavari were killed because we were part of Star Force and we wielded the technology derived from the Viks, but it was the Humans they were truly after.”

  “So you’re risking exposing yourself to save me?” she asked, feeling even more indebted to him than before.

  “Humans are worth saving. They gave us everything and rescued us from certain death.”

  “I didn’t do any of that.”

  “And if nothing else, saving you spites the Viks…and that is worth doing.”

  “You really hate them?”

  “Yes,” Rammak said pithily, but that single word carried a weight behind it that Esna could not fully fathom.

  They spent the next 4 days traveling away from settlements and trade routes, trying to stay out of sight and leaving those that they did come across in their dust...literally. As they headed for the location where Rammak said they’d disappear, Esna continued asking questions and the Calavari answered them. Questions regarding what Star Force was, who the Viks were, and what had happened since the destruction of this world.

  It was still hard for her to imagine. An entire world of people erased in such a complete fashion, and even more surprising was that some people managed to survive that hiding in the rubble or regions without cities. And how could they forget? Why did only Rammak remember? Why did the other Calavari not tell their children what had happened? You’d think something as important as Star Force and the Viks would
be worth mentioning, but all she’d ever heard were distorted rumors of the cataclysm that destroyed the world…and almost none of it was true.

  Rammak told her that a few others had survived with him, but that in those first few years after they had been killed. The Viks could sense their minds and hunted them down while they were busy cleansing the planet of everything and everyone in sight. The four of them had split up when they’d gotten caught, knowing that the two Zen’zat that came after them couldn’t chase them all at the same time. He managed to get away, but he’d never seen the others since that day, though he’d looked tirelessly from a safe distance.

  Rammak told her he’d been roaming the entire planet looking for survivors and refurbishing bits of buried buildings where he could find them. That meant he now had a network of safe houses spread out across the planet that they could run to and from, and they were headed to another one now. He said that the Viks could watch them from the air if they were looking and that it was possible that their entire route from the settlement had been traced or waiting in some database to be discovered later, hence they had to get underground and transition that way in order to lose the pursuit that he didn’t even know for sure was coming.

  Rammak obviously had no doubts, but he’d been running for so long that he never even thought about sticking around to try and find out if someone was on his tail or not. He’d gained a reputation in the various settlements that he visited as a ghost warrior. One who would come and go and could not be bested in a fight. He went by several different names in different places, but people learned not to mess with him quick enough when they observed someone trying to rob or kill him and failing.

  He also explained to her what a Commando was. He was part of the Star Force military tasked with ground combat, specifically hand to hand, which was why he’d been able to so easily rescue her. Not only was he a Calavari, which was muscle on top of muscle anyways, but it turned out that when one attained ‘self-sufficiency’ that was the key to gaining super strength…but that strength was gained from simple training exercises repeated over and over again for hundreds of years. The strength built slowly, but since you didn’t grow old you had unlimited time and compared to Calavari that were only 30 years old his 1,204 years of experience made it no contest.

  He admitted he hadn’t been able to train as much as he once had, and because of that he hadn’t gained much strength since the fall of this world, which had happened a little over 800 years ago, but that meant he’d had 400 years before that to train to learn how to fight…and that blew Esna’s mind away.

  And she was really glad that he was on her side rather than on one of the hunting teams that were promised to be pursuing them. They’d been traveling so fast there was no way for them to catch up, but Rammak assured her that if they lingered long enough word of a Human being sighting would catch up to them and people would be on the lookout, meaning that even if those in the settlement didn’t find them others would. They had to stay ahead of the news to keep from being spotted and trailed, but that was a minor threat compared to who Rammak was afraid would hear of their presence and come after them.

  Zen’zat was the word, and whenever he said it there was an extra layer of contempt in his voice. They were Humans sent to kill the Humans that had created the Star Force empire to which he belonged, and she guessed that reserved an extra level of hatred from him. As big as the Vik empire was, which she couldn’t even begin to wrap her head around, he said that Star Force had owned thousands of star systems like this one that spread out around their capitol. He called it ‘Sol’ and whenever he said the world there was something special about it. Like it was sacred or something. He didn’t say much, but Esna knew it was the first one the Viks hit and took from them.

  They’d hit Star Force at their strongest and defeated them, though they’d paid a very high price to do it. After that the war front moved outward as the Viks went about attacking and cleaning out system after system until they got here. Where they had gone afterward and how much of the Star Force empire was left was something Rammak couldn’t know, for the information systems they used to send messages from one star to another were long destroyed, leaving only gossip traveling on the few ships that bothered to visit this world as his only source of information…and none of them had spoken of Star Force or the war against the Viks for a very long time.

  Esna had just lost her brother, probably her adoptive parents too, and it was killing her. She was a walking zombie, but a zombie that was not falling any further. Rammak kept her going with stories and a firm hand whenever needed, but he had lost far more than her. An empire full of thousands of trillions of people. He’d told her the word for that but she didn’t remember. Even the word ‘trillion’ was one she’d only learned in lessons as a kid from her father. It was too large to visualize in her head, and to think there were thousands of them in people that might very well all be dead now was...beyond sad.

  He’d lost everything and everyone, but was still carrying out his mission as best he could. He’d never stopped fighting, and she got the feeling he never would no matter how bad things got. He was like a force of nature…and one that was committed to keeping her alive because she looked like his former masters, or teachers, or whatever the Humans actually were. She might have the same body but she knew nothing of them, though she wanted to. That tiny part of her was the only light left in her empty ‘core’ as Rammak explained it, and the more they traveled and talked the more it began to replace the pain that was numbing up so much she had trouble even remembering what her brother looked like at times.

  She hated feeling like that. Dead to the pain but also dead to Teren. More than once she’d found herself crying as his memories seemed to lose their color and fade away until something jarring brought both back with a vengeance. The duality of it was exhausting, but Rammak always kept her going and Esna knew he’d drag her on whether she liked it or not, so the only thing she had to worry about was doing what he told her and what new questions to ask.

  That was a small relief, but it felt like she’d already lost the war inside of her. This new Esna was but a shadow of her former self, though at least it wasn’t an ignorant shadow. The more Rammak told her the more she learned and the more dots she was able to put together concerning her past, this planet, and the phantom threat that was promised to be pursuing them.

  This wasn’t where she wanted to be, and a part of her still wished she’d died alongside her brother, but that part was now a minority and for the first time since Teren’s death she genuinely wanted to live.

  Esna didn’t know why. Maybe it was Rammak’s relentlessness wearing off on her, but she did want to see tomorrow. And to do that they had to stay on the move and ahead of whatever might be chasing after them now or in the days to come.

  8

  Esna was napping while she rode on the back of the speeder behind Rammak when his lower left arm shifted and suddenly there was the loud screeches of pistol fire right next to her head. She woke from her half sleep and nearly jumped off the seat, then saw that it was her guardian Calavari that was doing the firing as they continued flying forward through a canyon at dizzying speeds.

  His shots were headed towards another hovering craft, larger than theirs but also slower, that was pacing them and angling to block their path. Several individuals were on it and a few wild shots came back their way but missed…then they were past and angling around a bend with a big monolith of rock that blocked their view of those waiting on the other side.

  Rammak flew them right through their camp, dodging and weaving at too high a speed. Esna didn’t know how they didn’t crash, but the breakneck approached meant they didn’t stick around for long and after running a gauntlet for about 10 seconds they were through and continuing to zigzag through canyons before they emerged into a large, gently sweeping valley that was mostly sand and wind with no one and nothing visible between two low mountain ranges.

  “What was that!” Esna yelled.
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  “Pass privateers. Only those who pay their fees are allowed through, and we don’t have time to try and go around. Don’t worry, we’re too fast for them to catch now that we’re by them.”

  “What if they have friends that they warned?”

  “Then we deal with them. If we slow down and think, they can too. Our best defense is to not let people have a chance to react and remain as much of a rumor as possible.”

  “Why not just fly up over the mountains?”

  “Sensors. If there are any in orbit overhead they can still track us, but staying low will mean we disappear from lateral scans. The mountains protect us,” he summed up in lieu of a more detailed explanation.

  “This is pretty open,” Esna pointed out as their speed seemed to disappear entirely as they crossed the featureless gap.

  “The mountains still block for us unless someone is here…and if they are I don’t see them. When we’re across we’ll disappear in the rocks. Our destination isn’t far, just on the other side of those three low peaks to the left.”

  “What’s there?”

  “More leftovers that the Viks didn’t completely destroy. If there are orbital scanners tracking us, they’ll lose contact when we go inside.”

  “And then?”

  “We move underground. There’s a network hub here.”

  “Network?”

  “I’ve had a lot of time to explore the wreckage, and several locations I’ve lived in can be accessed through underground routes.”

  “So they see us go in, but not go out?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And you’re sure someone is watching,” she said, glancing at the bright sky above that showed no trace of any ships.

  “I’d prefer if they weren’t, but I’m not counting on us being that lucky.”

  “Is there fuel there for the bike? We have to be getting low.”

  “There is.”

  “And food? We’re running low on that too.”

  “I’ve survived here a long time, young one. I know how to leave myself caches of supplies.”