Star Force: Collaboration (SF90) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  As they walked through the corridors a crewer ran up to Riley and handed him a device he’d telepathically requested. He palmed it and kept walking, eventually coming to a set of quarters. He led Emon inside and closed the door behind them, with the Jartool fearing that another beating was coming his way.

  “Translator,” Riley said, holding it up in front of him before carefully attaching it to the side of Emon’s head over the small crater that served as an ear. The headband wrapped around in a tiny ring to keep it on, making it appear a bit ornate, and the gold coloration seemed to fit with his silver skin appropriately enough, though Riley wasn’t concerned about appearance, only function.

  “Can you understand me now?” Riley asked, checking to make sure the language download had been the correct one and if their limited files on the Jartool were enough to facilitate communication, for there was more than just simple switching of words involved in accurate translation.

  “Yes.”

  “I saw into your mind earlier. I know what you are planning, and I saw some of what the Knights of Quenar did to you. You do not have to worry about that kind of treatment here. We do not torture prisoners.”

  “What do you want from me?” the device said overtop his own words with a slight delay.

  “Not much. You’ll wait here until we arrange transport, then you’re going back to your people.”

  “The people on my ship are all dead.”

  “We don’t control the Knights of Quenar any more than we control you. Your fight with them is your own. They gave you to me to do with as I please, and I’m letting you go. Whether or not you come to understand it, we’re not the bad guys. We’re not going to use the Uriti as weapons against any of you. We’re going to keep them right here safe and sound, but we can’t do that if you keep attacking them. Sooner or later you might actually hurt one.”

  “Yet you maintain the option of changing that position.”

  “True enough, but we won’t. You can’t know that, but I do. All we can do to convince you is by building up a record of behavior for you to analyze, and given the length of time the Uriti have been around we’re very short on years to do that. Ultimately though, we don’t take orders from you and we’re going to do what we like. If you interfere with us, expect there to be repercussions. For starters, the Jartool are no longer welcome in this Preserve or Star Force territory. Same goes for the other races working with you. You will leave and stay out…else you’ll be dealt with, either by us or our allies. And as you already know, the Knights of Quenar are not concerned with your wellbeing. Only the security of the Uriti.”

  “So you use them to enforce while you remain blameless?”

  “They’re not taking orders from us, or vice versa, but they are a threat you have to take into consideration, even if we kicked them out of the Preserve too. With their cloaking technology they can come and go at will with few of us being able to detect them. And then you’ve got us to deal with. While we are honorable, we are not soft. Hopefully that’s not something you have to personally learn the hard way, though those at your base are going to get a lesson in reality. If they refuse to surrender there is going to be a fight, and one that we will win.”

  “There are many that oppose you. Do not think it will be that easy. And do not think that having the Knights of Quenar as an ally is that great of an advantage. Their presence here adds fire to many races they have crossed.”

  Riley sighed. “I wondered about that.”

  “Do not expect people to not try and find a way to protect themselves against the Uriti. Asking them to remain helpless is not a request that will be honored.”

  “That I can understand, but I can’t let you keep experimenting by attacking them either. And getting your own people killed in the process is…wrong.”

  “They were not my people.”

  “We care about all people, including the Uriti.”

  The Jartool’s face screwed up in either disgust or disbelief. “They are weapons, not people.”

  “They are people, albeit it very strange and powerful, but people who have been altered into weapons by the Chixzon. We are rescuing them from the fate of being living weapons as much as we are doing this to protect the galaxy from them, which is why we will not permit you or anyone else to attack them.”

  “You haven’t stopped anyone yet.”

  “We’ve stopped a few, and a few got through. Those that get through have repercussions, and a lot of races are getting banned because of this. We’ll deal with the fallout from that as it happens, but we’re not going to keep people around here that are knowingly trying to stab us in the back.”

  “Then we are at an impasse, because the races assembled here cannot allow you to continue on your present course.”

  “For curiosity’s sake, what would you prefer happened? Shared control? The Uriti released to go on a rampage? You all get a free shot at them and die trying to kill one of them?”

  “They have to be killed or rendered inert once again.”

  “That’s what you were doing,” he said as another Jartool memory strand clicked in. “Trying to find a way to neutralize them.”

  “Dead is preferred, but we must have some way to defend ourselves.”

  “The Ancients never found a way to effectively kill them. What makes you think you will?”

  “We have to try.”

  “No, you don’t. Not until one breaks free of our control and leaves this Preserve. It’ll take a very long time to travel to your worlds. Ours are the ones that are at greatest risk if we lose control.”

  “You can carry them elsewhere at far greater speed.”

  “We don’t have that much control over them. The sedate ones we brought here were kept sedate for that very reason.”

  “A problem that you may overcome with time.”

  “You still think they’re too powerful to risk anyone having control over?”

  “We do.”

  Riley nodded. “If our situations were reversed, we’d be concerned too. But I can guarantee we wouldn’t be running suicide missions to do weapons testing.”

  “You would still try to find a counter to them?”

  “Yeah, we would.”

  “So it is our methods you disagree with?”

  “If you ever possess a weapon to kill Uriti, we’re not going to come and take it away from you…unless you come here and use it first. As I said, we’re not going to use them as weapons, so what defenses you have against them aren’t our concern unless you bring them into the Preserve.”

  “We cannot develop them if we cannot test them.”

  Riley caught a whiff of another thought, and the Jartool reflexively pushed it down as soon as he thought it. The stupidity of that was obvious, but he couldn’t help it, for ostensibly the KoQ or Riley had already plucked out all his secrets, but in truth this was something Riley hadn’t seen before.

  The trailblazer chose to visibly ignore it, but inside him was a growing pit of fury.

  “None the less, you will not be permitted to. Abide by our restrictions or not. We deal fairly. The Knights of Quenar are another matter. Cross them at your own peril.”

  “I already have.”

  “And we will not be adding to that. Remain in this room until otherwise instructed. Food and other necessities will be provided until you depart,” Riley said, spinning around and heading for the door.

  “Thank you,” Emon said reluctantly.

  Riley half turned back. “We don’t torture prisoners. Ever.”

  “But you are releasing me?”

  “There’s no need to hold you,” he said as he opened the door and walked out, looking at the Knight that had been waiting there per instructions. When the door closed he looked up at him.

  “He doesn’t leave, but be nice about it. Our ‘allies’ worked him over pretty good and I don’t want to add to it.”

  “The Knights of Quenar?”

  “Yeah. On your list of potential good guys, scratch
them off.”

  “Add to the enemy list?” the Knight asked with a grim resolve.

  “Not yet, but they may get there eventually,” he said, tapping the man on his armored shoulder as he walked away.

  “We’ve got a problem,” he said when he eventually met up with Nefron in his private work area.

  “We’ve got several. Which are you referring to?”

  “Well, I’m taking this ship and calling for a fleet to help take out a base the opposition has quietly hidden inside our territory not far from here, but that’s not the real problem. I caught a bit of memory from the prisoner the Knights of Quenar gifted me. They’re intent on finding a way, any way, to stop a Uriti. Including creating their own Chixzon.”

  Nefron’s eyes burnt green. “How do they know?”

  “My guess would be a leak from one of The Nine, but right now that doesn’t matter. They’re going to go Protovic hunting, and I’m pretty damn sure there are plenty of them out there to find that we and our allies haven’t got to yet. Assuming they can trigger the transformation, how helpful would your twin brother be?”

  “You should know the answer to that. The risk is of forced memory retrieval.”

  “Will they be able to control a Uriti if he isn’t willing?”

  “Unlikely, but as you now know there is a way to do it. If they got hold of one of our gauntlets and reverse engineered it along with captured memories…we have a problem I did not previously anticipate. It is imperative that we don’t lose one.”

  “And?” Riley asked, sensing something more in Nefron’s thoughts.

  “You could read my mind, thus prevent me from any obvious duplicity. Had that not been the case I could have manipulated you into doing my will. If they create a Chixzon, they could unwittingly unleash them on the galaxy once again. I’ve anticipated that happening eventually, but I need more time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “To get Star Force to a level where we can beat them.”

  Riley frowned. “What exactly are you working on?”

  “A lot of things, and I’m a lot less worried about your coreward threat than I am the revival of the Chixzon. For all we know it could have happened already in another part of the galaxy.”

  “What exactly are you working on?”

  “Immunities…to a lot of their standard tricks. They can’t use the Uriti again, not against us, so their attack will have to come in another way. A subtle way. You’re set up to fight against naval fleets, not biology.”

  “We have regenerators.”

  Nefron shook his rock-like head. “They work off of your genetic profile, repairing it per instructions that can be altered. Change your genetics to something self-destructive and the regenerators are useless, correct?”

  “Yeah,” Riley said reluctantly.

  “Which is why you need me to out think them, and I need as much of a head start as I can get.”

  9

  November 19, 3337

  Entor System (ADZ)

  Arbiter (Clan Sangheili capitol)

  Paul walked with Jason through the main plaza of the capitol city, getting the distinctive feel of Star Force infrastructure but with a telltale Clan slant. The Sangheili color scheme was white/chrome, which wasn’t all that different from Star Force norms, but where it was a base in other facilities spread across the ADZ it was much more flamboyant here. A sterile flamboyance, with everything looking as if dust and grime could not exist, coupled with a lot of light coming from objects within the plaza rather than the walls, ceiling, or floor as most Star Force facilities were.

  It was odd, for as much time as Paul and Jason had spent together over the years he’d rarely visited one of his worlds, and vice versa. They usually met up onboard ships in war zones or at Earth. Paul had only been here once before, and that was only in orbit. He was definitely sure he’d never seen the giant statue of the original Arbiter from Halo in the center of the plaza. A lot of the illumination for the mile wide indoor/outdoor chamber was coming from the pair of covenant energy swords that it held in a combat pose that well represented his friend’s Clan.

  When they walked near the giant feet Jason motioned for him to get closer, at which time Paul realized there was an internal structure to the statue…as well as the faint traces of familiar minds at the top.

  “You didn’t.”

  “Of course I did,” Jason scoffed as he and Paul ducked in the secret access door and began to climb a ladder that would take them several stories up to the top where the private den was located. Paul followed him up, making him the last of the ten 2s in the small but cozy retreat.

  “About time you two got here,” Megan said from the couch where she was laying with her feet well above her head. “How slow did you walk?”

  “Nice view,” Paul commented, seeing that the walls were clear all around them, similar to the way Davis’s office was structured, except that this was one-way material. Nobody could see in from the outside, but they could see everywhere in the plaza all the way up to the dome that covered it in holographic sky. The air outside was barely breathable, hence a true exterior structure just wouldn’t work here. Plus no one wanted rain, acid or otherwise.

  “Time to get brainstorming,” Brian said, putting down a datapad he’d been reading.

  “Not just yet,” Randy said, throwing Paul an annoyed look that the other trailblazer responded to with a knowing smile. “First we have to get in the proper frame of mind.”

  “He’s right,” Emily said, pointing in Megan’s direction. “Everybody get your butt on the couches. We’ve got some Halo to play first.”

  Morgan was in her personal sanctum working against robotic opponents the size of mechs when the alert sounded. She ducked out of the way of a massive metal hand and telepathically shut down the challenge, pulling a brief feed through the same mental interlink set into the walls and ceiling. It was a defensive alert, stating that the system was under attack by the lizards. More information than that she couldn’t get without a terminal interface or a physical connection to the planetary computer systems.

  The ViLord sprinted across the acres of training area and telekinetically pulled her jacket top to her from the spot on the floor near the door where she’d left it. As she ran out she pulled it on over her sweaty jog bra and zipped it halfway up to her neck, leaving a slit to help her cool down from her workout fury that she developed when probing her limits.

  It took several minutes to get out of her sanctum and over to the command center, with her bypassing the Clan Ninja Monkey staff and going straight to her command chair-style nexus set in the middle of the giant room rather than tucked off into a side nook. When she sat down force fields rose around her to quiet but not completely negate surrounding sounds while also dimming the light. Others could see and hear her, but her chair zone was faded out a bit to give her some privacy while in the crowded room. Her staff fed her updates and already compiled reports through the mental interlink, getting her up to speed faster than talking would have ever allowed.

  She was on her capitol of Sliced Banana in the DK System, the strongest system she had in her 39 system empire on the border with the coreward lizards. Morgan had been growing her territory steadily, but not aggressively. Taking time to develop her Clan’s population without having to accept slackers. When she decided to take a world the lizards couldn’t hold it against her, but they did try some probing attacks on the periphery of her stretched out knot of systems on occasion. More often than not they were just fortifying the nearest ones because they knew she’d be coming after them.

  While she didn’t take systems all that often, Morgan raided them all the time. Knocking down their ship counts and industrial facilities, hampering their ability to grow while giving her people more experience to learn from. Gone were the days where Clan Ninja Monkey and the lizards were going at each other in an even fight. She’d had the advantage for so long now it hadn’t even dawned on her that they’d be stupid enough to mount a straig
ht up attack against any of her systems…let alone her capitol, but here they were, in far greater numbers than could have originated in the surrounding systems.

  They’d brought in reinforcements from another region, and while it wasn’t enough to take this system from her, it was still going to be a messy fight.

  “About time you guys got off your ass and took us seriously,” she whispered as she mentally linked into the orbit defenses and began rearranging things to her liking based on the enemy fleet disposition. They were being harassed in near the star and she was getting delayed reports, but all of them indicated that they were heading here. The lizards probably expected to lose this fleet to her, but they were going to send it at her strongest defenses and see if they could give her a bloody nose.

  With a flurry of orders she got her planet geared up for battle and aware of the lizards’ probable suicidal intentions, then watched as her people harassed and picked off ships from the formation flanks as they moved around the star to the jumpline for her capitol, as expected. When they finally got into planetary orbit Morgan was ready for them, with all hell unleashing when they unceremoniously dove down into the low orbit defenses and attacked them and her primary shipyard for all they were worth.

  When Davis got the attack report it set him back, not because of the fact that it had happened, but because of the sheer audacity of it. Here they were, sweeping up lizard systems in the rimward half of lizard territory, and their enemy had the gall to launch a major attack against Star Force territory. It shouldn’t have surprised him, but it finally dawned on him that the lizards had completely abandoned their rimward worlds.

  They were just expendable now, and had been expended to keep Star Force busy while the lizards built behind the line where they had to now at least suspect he wouldn’t cross. It was a glaring weakness for anyone who saw it. The mighty empire afraid to go any further towards the core.

  And he got the distinct feeling that the lizards were now sufficiently rebuilt enough to call his bluff.