Star Force: Extirpation (Star Force Universe Book 56) Read online

  Into the cracks the beacon ships slipped and summoned the destroyers, and shipyard after shipyard was turned to ash. It wasn’t the same weapon the Lurker used, nor as fast, but it was far more effective with regards to total mass converted. Then one starburst was summoned in the middle of a massive fight with a fleet of Human ships. Its tips glowed red this time, and before the spikes were fully charged it detonated a spherical attack that didn’t affect shields or armor, but the drones suddenly started moving oddly. It didn’t last long, and an update informed everyone in the system that the crew of the ships had come under attack.

  They had all been bled to death, while those wearing regenerators were clinging to life and recovering amidst a pool of their own blood. The pilots of the drones had been killed, thus the machines had to revert to automatic commands in the lull. That was the change he’d noticed, but the manned control was back again, probably diverted to different ships or perhaps even a planet. There were too many remote pilots in the system for redundancy to fail, but that one burst had not attacked the ships, rather the crews, and killed almost all of them instantly.

  And Star Force had no defense against it. Tennisonne’s mind worked to suck up as much information as he could, knowing that he was going to have to design new technology to counter all this. He turned to the right as a pair of Kiritak ran by, ignoring him, then he looked back at the myriad of holograms and text feeds he was monitoring and adjusting at lightspeed as his hand was on an input node allowing him direct mental contact and control with the interface.

  Star Force had a lot of infrastructure in the system. Too much to be destroyed in this fashion before the fleets would take down the attackers…though maybe not those big ships. They weren’t sticking around for a fight, and even the one that showed up in the midst of one of the fleets had bugged out already, never using engines, just disappearing as if it winked out of existence.

  More were showing up, and he counted at least three other weapon discharges, bringing the tentative total to 5 new weapons that were horribly effective. They had to be Essence weapons, and now he knew why the Hadarak feared them. They bypassed armor entirely, and the Hadarak’s primary defense was armor and sheer mass.

  Yet Star Force’s defenses were superior. It was as if whoever these races were, they had developed their Essence abilities to an insane level but had neglected to improve their physical technology…and Star Force was punishing them heavily for that, but the enemy was getting their Ysalamir objectives none the less.

  Tennisonne saw several other targets…shipyards, warehouses, transit centers…that were not part of the Ysalamiri construction also being hit, and he wondered if the attackers intel was that bad or if they were going to stick around to do more than just take out their work. Several of these projects, new projects, were clear of the shipyards and out on the testing range, but they were being targeted as well, even when those with engine power ran they were hunted down and caught, either by the attacking fleets or the starbursts.

  Then he finally saw one of the big ships take a hit. It had emerged over the planet of Arcadia and had spent a very long time just sitting there taking hits from the Tar’vem’jic on the planet’s surface and those from Sentinel stations in orbit while its escort fleet tried to block shots from the sea of drones piling around it. Eventually it discharged a white glow, but nothing appeared to happen. The single cut on its hull was expanded by two more, with the dark orange beams slicing into easily once the mystery shield began to spot fail in places.

  Then the starburst disappeared with most of its fleet, leaving only a few sacrificial ships behind to be destroyed within moments.

  Tennisonne didn’t know what it had been doing, but he belatedly started to get reports from the planet that indicated a spot on it had been targeted with a heart attack weapon similar, if not identical, to what the Lurker had used. People didn’t bleed out, they just fell over as their hearts stopped pumping and they blacked out. He was wondering why they had bothered to attack the planet, for there was nothing there Ysalamir-related, then when he saw more warnings pop up on Arcadia he realized what had happened.

  Somehow that starburst had dropped an area of effect weapon that was spreading out from its point of impact, and people were falling over dead in a tidal wave that was spreading across a portion of the southern hemisphere and didn’t look like it was slowing down any. Tennisonne couldn’t see it, for sensors were reporting nothing other than the people falling over inside the cities and offering up alerts.

  The little alert flags were how Tennisonne was following it in a crude fashion. Minute by minute it spread, and when it had gotten to cover a tenth of the planet with no signs of slowing he realized they weren’t just here to take out the Ysalamir. They were…

  Suddenly another starburst appeared, this time in low orbit over Corneria, and Tennisonne saw the telltale white glow begin to form.

  He took off running as fast as he could, for he didn’t have a regenerator on him…

  Tar’ange was monitoring the attack with a mix of awe and disgust along with several other V’kit’no’sat and a few Star Force Pas’cha that worked as his assistants when the starburst appeared in orbit and began to charge. He knew it was here for them, for it had appeared almost directly over the research center. They were here to kill not only the Ysalamiri, but those who had created it, though he saw the flaw in their plan immediately once the white coloration began to charge.

  “Brace yourselves,” he told the others just before the invisible weapon fired. The Essence weapon hit directly onto the complex and began to spread across the planet’s surface, with Tar’ange feeling his heart clench up in terrible pain and his body began to go numb. His vision blacked as his legs could no longer find the strength to hold him up…then he fell along with the others, coming to sometime later as the V’kit’no’sat gauntlets that he wore snuck their Kich’a’kat tendrils throughout his body and quickly repaired his heart and the rest of the damage the lack of blood had caused before he suffered permanent brain damage.

  He woke with a jerk, for adrenaline was still pounding through him, and the other V’kit’no’sat in the room were either awake or waking as he was…but the Star Force Pas’cha were not, for they had not been wearing any armor.

  Tar’ange got to all fours and stumbled over to one of them, still weak as the Kich’a’kat was not finished with repairing him, but he mentally interfaced with it and told it to abort further repairs…then he stepped onto the chest of one of the fallen Pas’cha and his leg gauntlet melted down to cover his foot and part of the Star Forcer’s chest. From it the Kich’a’kat tendrils extended, and within a few minutes his Rimward kin also revived.

  The other V’kit’no’sat in the room were assisting likewise, with those not needed running out of the chamber to look for other Star Force staff that did not wear armor to revive before they suffered permanent damage. Even if their bodies could be repaired, data in their minds could not be replaced unless it was genetically locked, and that meant all the scientists working here would lose their knowledge if not revived quickly enough…and if there were too many without Kich’a’kat, they would not be revived at all.

  Tar’ange had to wait during the revival process, and as he did so he looked at the reports coming from Corneria. The area around their complex was devastated with dead bodies, and the reports of the effect spreading continued. Hopefully those further away on the planet would get enough warning that they could get to their armor or a med station, but those nearest here, those that were the most valuable scientists Star Force had, had no time to prepare.

  As soon as the Pas’cha revived enough to be out of danger, Tar’ange withdrew his armor back to his body and let it continue to repair him as he stormed out of the chamber to look for others. It was only prudence, or perhaps lingering distrust of Star Force, that had caused all the V’kit’no’sat here to constantly wear their gauntlets. Had they been on a V’kit’no’sat world safely away from the Hadarak most of the
m would not be…and that precaution against betrayal had ironically saved them from another threat so bizarre that none of them would have ever anticipated it.

  If the big ships came back and hit them with another type of weapon, such as they had used against the shipyards, they could still die, but Tar’ange immediately knew this was a vengeance strike as well as surgical, and their intention was to kill everyone on the planet…and he suspected the other weaponry didn’t have that kind of spread, for it took far less power to stop a heart than it did to disintegrate mass. Far less, no matter how this Essence truly worked. If it interacted with the physical world, it was bound by its rules no matter how magical it appeared.

  He knew that magic was simply ignorance of how something worked, and he hoped Star Force had some preparations in place for this, but as he made his way out into the complex he knew they had not, for there were bodies everywhere from every race, and he knew the V’kit’no’sat had to move quickly to save as many of them as they could.

  The others knew this as well, so he didn’t need to give them orders, and as he found a pair of Humans and telekinetically dragged them together so he could step on both of them…very lightly…and heal them simultaneously, he saw an Archon run out and immediately do the same to a Calavari. So at least the Archons had worn their armor as the V’kit’no’sat had.

  Good, that would mean a few more scientists would be revived, but he doubted they all could be…and even some of those that would live would be mind-wiped, and if the enemy wished to destroy knowledge of the Ysalamir, then that was just as effective as killing them.

  8

  Bzen was onboard a Raptor Warship remotely piloting a drone that had just been tasked for a kamikaze run against one of the starburst-shaped super ships the enemy was using, but when he maneuvered the drone around onto a jumpline that would intersect with the target and then made the jump…no collision occurred. He expected for the signal to go out when it collided, or to be constant with the ship sticking on dampening shields, but neither occurred. Rather, a brief blackout ensued followed by renewed contact with the ship on a very basic level…telemetry only…as it was speeding away from the planet.

  Bzen flicked his tail down hard in frustration. Somehow the drone had flown through the enemy ship and out the other side. A review of the data showed it wink out just prior to impact, then wink back in again far away from the ship on the other side…and it wasn’t the only one. Other kamikaze ships were behaving in the same way, and the Raptors didn’t know what to make of it.

  So Bzen summoned the drone back, which took a while, and when it reentered weapons range it unloaded on the target, trying to put another crack in its odd shields, but then it winked out along with most of the surviving escort ships around it, though there weren’t many of them left.

  He looked down at the planet of Corneria, trying to see what damage had been done, but no visible scars were left to say. The planetary shields were still up, and he had no access to other reports from his piloting pod inside the warship. All he knew was where the targets were, and his drone was being tasked elsewhere in the system away from the planet, as yet another fleet arrived out of nowhere and headed for a null orbit factory facility…

  Tennisonne had been within sight of a med station when he felt a stab of pain in his chest. He was so close, but his stumbling steps didn’t get him close enough and he collapsed a few steps shy of the entrance. His last few moments alive were filled with anger and vexation. All of the layered planetary defenses Star Force had should have meant they were safe here, and whoever this enemy was had just bypassed them all. Over 100,000 years of work, growth, and achievement only for it to end like this.

  The anger remained, saturating him as he blacked out, then an eternity later he woke, looking up into the face of a Kiritak in a medical uniform. He couldn’t move much, but his eyes pivoted enough to see the edge of a regenerator attached to his chest…and in that moment he knew he’d have a chance for payback. He didn’t know how many of the others would survive, but if he made it through this attack, and he figured he had a pretty good chance now if that weapon was their only attempt at destroying this facility, then he was going to dedicate his life to developing technology to defend against Essence. And there was no question in his mind that he would be able to do it, just a matter of time, energy, and resources.

  And after today, he’d have plenty of Essence capable volunteers to help him. It would be a long, slow grind, but it had to be done. He’d been caught off guard, thinking they were fighting Lurkers in the Core of the galaxy and gearing his thoughts towards that threat, not small people in starships.

  No longer. Star Force had to find a way to defend itself, or all the strongholds in the empire were worthless. They had to find a way…forget the Ysalamiri. Others could work on that. He had a new mission, and as soon as the regenerator finished and the Kiritak ran off to find someone else to revive, Tennisonne got to his wobbly feet and started walking. He had to get out of this complex, just in case they did come back and hit it with something more direct. He had barely survived this time, and now he had to disappear in order to make sure he lived to fight tomorrow.

  The medtechs would revive as many others as they could, Tennisonne couldn’t help with that. He had to make sure he survived, so he headed for the nearest exit he could find after checking the battlemap to make sure it was ‘safe’ outside and no conventional threats were out there, then he ran out onto the streets and kept running, putting mile after mile between him and the complex until he came to a small park full of trees and large grassy fields.

  He ran into one of the small forests and climbed a tree to get a good vantage point of the city, for he had left behind all technology. No comms whatsoever that could be used to track him, so he had no way to know what was going on except with his eyes.

  And as far as his eyes could see, nothing was wrong. Nothing was exploding, no yelling or screaming or even the sound of movement. Everything was quiet, save for a few wisps of smoke here and there, which he deduced were crash sites from vehicles or aircraft whose pilots were killed in transit.

  He didn’t know how many people were still alive, but everything was so quiet he assumed the worst. Most of the people in the city were probably dead, and the death ring was expanding across the planet just like on Arcadia. They would have some forewarning, but they couldn’t get regenerators to everyone in time. He knew they couldn’t. There just weren’t that many, despite the precautions Star Force had taken. They never expected everyone on the planet to suffer heart attacks within the same day.

  Tennisonne scanned the sky, looking for more attacking ships, but so far he saw none. The starburst ship was gone, probably having fled after it launched its attack in order to keep from being destroyed itself. If it had escorts that meant it was vulnerable in some way, and Star Force technology…technology that he had helped develop…was hurting them badly where they stood toe to toe with it. They’d attacked one of the most heavily defended star systems in the empire, and they were paying the price for it, but they were achieving their objectives…though not all of them. He was still alive and he intended to stay that way, so Tennisonne repositioned himself in the tree and made himself as comfortable as possible as he kept watch on the park around him and the sky above, ready to move if necessary as he waited out this holocaust, itching to get back into a lab and start work on this monstrous challenge.

  Star Force had to find a way to defend against Essence, or the empire would fall. Tennisonne was sure of that now, even if whoever this was was only going after the Ysalamiri production. Star Force had to have strongholds, otherwise people like him would be easy targets and the best and brightest in the empire could be assassinated, including the trailblazers and Davis, though he doubted this type of attack would work on them, because they had Essence skills. He wasn’t sure about Davis, but the trailblazers did, though he doubted they could survive a direct disruption attack.

  No, he had to solve this, and he
couldn’t do that if he let himself die today. The odds of them hitting the planet with the same weapon again were so low he didn’t consider it. So the best play he had was to pretend to not exist and stay away from anything that did. And a bunch of trees and grass was no threat to anyone.

  He was glad to be alive, but many others weren’t and he doubted the attack on the system was over. When it was, he didn’t expect much of the Ysalamiri infrastructure to be left, but that would be someone else’s problem now. They had the files safely hidden in other systems, so they could start over without actually having to start over. But he was going to have to start from scratch, and that meant finding some substances that could interact with Essence…and as of now, he had no possibilities to work with.

  He didn’t know how he would even begin to tackle this, but he was fully committed…and when he saw the final death totals it would cement that determination, assuming this wasn’t a prelude to a traditional invasion, in which he’d have to worry about staying alive until help arrived, but if this was a hit and run attack as he suspected, then this day was going to mark the beginning of a new era for Star Force.

  They had to learn to fight this type of warfare, or whoever this was that had attacked was going to deny them the weapons they needed to survive the Hadarak and let the galactic purge destroy Star Force for them.

  The fate of the empire was literally in his hands, and the few other Mastertechs that were truly his peers. They had to solve this, or Star Force was doomed, one way or another.