Star Force: Bahamut (SF86) (Star Force Origin Series) (7 page)

“We had no idea even one was still out there, let
alone where to look.”

“Where did you recover the knowledge of the Chixzon?”
the Sety asked.

Riley gave him a mocking stare. “That’s something
we’re going to keep to
ourself
.”

“That data cannot be allowed to die with you.”

“Who’s dying?”

“We must earn their trust,” the Yisv said viciously,
the animosity surviving the translation. “I suggest we each provide an
independent account of the Hamoriti to them while the aperture is being
revealed. If they know of the Hamoriti then they know of the danger they
possess. No sane being would engage one without the knowledge of how to
neutralize them, and from what the Sety have told us, this civilization is a
wise one.”

“Thank you,” Riley said, but he was looking at the
Sety when he said it.

“Please do not harm yourself,” the Yisv implored.
“Keep away from this one as far as necessary. But you will have access to it in
whatever form is needed short of compromising the god’s slumber.”

“Before we go down to the surface, the Li’vorkrachnika
are to leave it. I don’t want them around.”

“That can be arranged. Will their fleet in orbit be an
issue?”

“Make sure they don’t fire on or try to ram us. They
have a habit of doing that.”

“We will make sure nothing of the sort happens. They
rely on us for…compensation. They will not defy our orders. Nor could they gain
anything from such an assault given the strength of your fleet. An ambush on
the ground would be another matter, so you are right to request they be
removed. They are finalizing the last of the digging. Once it is complete they
will be withdrawn from the planet. I will make sure of it personally.”

“Adequate,” Riley said.

“Do you truly have a means to stop the Hamoriti?” the
triped
asked.

“Who are you?”

“We are the
Dati
.”

“Well,
Dati
, yes we do.”

“What can you do?”

“Give it orders. The complexity of which will be
determined by which Hamoriti it is, but at the least we should be able to
direct it to whatever system we wish and keep it from wrecking inhabited ones.”

“Whatever system you wish?” the Trinx asked ominously.

“They are weapons,” Riley pointed out. “And yes, we
could use them as such if we wanted, but if you study our history you’ll find
that we’re the safest people to hold the leash that you’re going to find. And
to be blunt about it, if we wanted, now that we know it’s here, we could wake
this one up remotely, so you don’t have a means of stopping us if we wanted to
unleash this one. We’re not going to do that, I only say this to make you
realize you have no leverage on us. Regardless of your tampering with the
Li’vorkrachnika, we do not want the Uriti running free and destroying worlds,
and we will do what we can to stop this problem before it gets any worse. On
that I give you my word. But there will be no sharing of control, so do not ask
about it. You’ve already shown that you are unscrupulous. We would not trust
you with such control, even if it were possible. And given the nature of the
technology required, I can assure you that it is not. The Chixzon were very
cautious about their control mechanism. You would not be able to use it.”

“How then can you?” the Yisv asked respectfully.

“That’s a secret for another time.”

“Then let us not delay. We will get you the data you
require,” the Yisv said with a nod, then cut its transmission. The others
followed suit, the Sety last of all, almost reluctantly.

What are you up
to, Paul?

Trying to hack
the lizard fleet
comms
and find what ship that
templar is on.

Any luck?

He’s not on the
dreadnaught. Best guess is one of their jumpships.

You going to
board it?

I’d like to, but
he’d kill himself before I could get to him. I’m going to try and hack whatever
information he might have with him.

I thought they’d
configured their
comm
systems to keep us out?

They keep
trying, but Thrawn gave me some information to help with that. It’s outdated,
but allowing me a little access that I’m trying to wiggle around with. If I’m
careful and lucky, I can get one of their cruisers to do the talking for me and
use their current codes to get access.

We could still
get a tissue sample off a dead body, if that’d help?

It would be
something, but I’m more interested in finding some links back to their coreward
territories. Nice work with those guys, by the way.

Think I told
them too much?

No. But when
Nefron gets here we’re going to have to decide how much to let them know. These
guys aren’t dumb.

I’m not so sure
about the Sety. Why are they so damn annoying?

We’re starting
to challenge The Nexus, Davis thinks. I had a long talk with him about it
previously. We’re small compared to them, but several of their member races are
making inroads with us and the possibility of defections is unnerving them.

So they’d prefer
to throw their weight around?

And keeping us
out of here under the guise of protecting this Uriti was the perfect excuse
with their buddies. We shut that down real quick and
outstaged
them in a far greater way than they’d ever thought possible. How do you think
they’d feel?

Grateful, if
they’re really that committed to keeping these things from running amuck.

I think we’ll
find out soon how dedicated they are, if each race files an independent report.
Good call on that. What did you make of that warning about telepathy?

I’m going to
find out myself. You stay up here in case I get fucked up. Not sure how well
our blocks will work against something of that magnitude.

Alright, but
play it safe. If this thing twitches the ranges might alter.

Recklessly safe,
as always
, Riley joked, though the description was quite accurate.

7

July 5, 3254

Unnamed System

(Uriti/Hamoriti
location)

Paul sat in his quarters reading through the files
that he’d acquired from the lizard ships. It’d taken some time, but he’d
eventually been able to work his way into their
comm
system and hack into enough ship databases to find which one the templar was
on, then downloaded his full set of files before being detected and having a
hardware solution imposed on the tap. He’d managed to leave a ‘thank you’
message before the plug had been pulled, but as of now there was no way back
into the lizard fleet systems for they were only transmitted what amounted to
brief text messages between one another.

But he’d gotten what he needed. The templar was on one
of their cargo vessels that had been reworked from the inside out to become a
mobile fortress. It didn’t have additional weaponry, but was coated with so
much armor and packed with additional, often redundant gravity drives, that the
cargo carrying capacity had been reduced by 21%. From the exterior it looked
like all the others, but this was definitely intended to be his personal,
inconspicuous ride around the war zone.

Paul was sitting in a cushy chair that he hardly ever
used, but for the moment he had some reading to do and might as well sit here
to do it rather than standing in the command nexus or sitting at his terminal a
few meters away. He’d already skimmed the information previously, but this time
he was going to go through it line by line, in Li’vorkrachnika, and not rely on
the translation programs which could occasionally make a mistake.

The full plans and history of the deal with the Trinx
were spelled out, as well as the timetable for technology ‘payments.’ It galled
him that these bastards had been feeding them tech all this time, no matter
what their reasons. This wasn’t so much an emergency panic as it was a complete
disregard for the wellbeing of others. The Trinx and their allies were far
superior to the lizards and the payment schedule wasn’t going to have them
catching up in a very long time, and it seemed that so long as their priority,
being the Uriti, was met they didn’t give a damn what happened to everyone
else.

The threat of the Uriti was real and significant, but
Riley was right. After all these years the economies of these races could have
been
regeared
into production necessary to supply the
equipment they needed to combat the Uriti minions in sufficient numbers…but why
do that when they had a much cheaper and easier method of obtaining what they
needed? And with the lizards’ disregard for their own people they had an
unending supply of suicide-willing troops to trade away.

What was important now was that they got no more tech
from them. The next payment was due in two years…a modification to sensors that
would upgrade their range and response time. Following that could come a
specialized missile suited for ship to ship combat, then yet another shield
upgrade. On and on the list went, apparently hammered out long ago, and
extending some 5,483 years in length. After that they’d either have found a
solution to the problem or have to renegotiate another contract…but at that
time the lizards would be so damn strong it wouldn’t have mattered.

All of the lizards’ tech upgrades in recent years were
on this list…all of them. They hadn’t created a single improvement on their own
in all that time, or stolen one from someone else since the Kvash plasma
streamers. They were relying on the Trinx and this deal to feed them what they
needed. No wonder they wanted to play for time and stall Star Force’s advance.
The longer it took the more tech they’d get, so why push the issue with a
massive invasion of the ADZ?

All this time he’d wondered why the lizards were doing
what they were doing, and this little tidbit brought nearly everything into
crystal clarity. This deal was the cornerstone of their plans for galactic
conquest going forward, and it was no wonder they were punching the Skarrons in
the nose and literally daring them to come out and stomp on them. More than the
internal Skarron conflicts with their Consortium, it was the knowledge that
these upgrades were coming that was going to turn their seemingly suicidal
charge to their favor.

When it looked like they were outmatched and going to
get the axe coming down on them soon enough, all they had to do was not cross
that line and hold onto the massive gains they’d made into Skarron territory
and digest them for a while until more upgrades kicked in, then before the
Skarrons realized what was happening they’d be pouring over their borders and a
lot harder to repel than they’d thought.

And even if the lizards were pushed back, as time went
on they’d get stronger and stronger and the war of attrition would swing in
their advantage. Damn them, this was so clever and devious that he was a bit
envious. Star Force was the main technological threat to them, so they pivoted
to attack the huge empire that was less of a challenge ship for ship.
Neutralize the more toxic one and let them chew away at one piece of your
territory while you knock off the much bigger one in a massive play for time.

Paul was beginning to think the lizards now never
intended to come after Star Force, simply keeping them at bay with as many
sacrifices as necessary while they moved their capitol elsewhere and far away
from his encroaching invasion forces.

Unfortunately its location wasn’t in the ship’s
database, but a navigational map was. No other ship had one this filled out,
and while it didn’t give strength or population numbers, it did give the
location of every system the lizards currently held…or at least at the time
this ship’s map was updated.

They’d spread farther than either Star Force or the
Voku had estimated…including sending small startup colonies beyond their
contiguous borders and off into very distant regions to begin growing isolated
empires thousands of lightyears away. Those were noted as being very outdated,
with the most recent one being 22 years old, but two of them were actually behind
Star Force lines and beyond the Voku, out past what was referred to as the expanded
region, or even the backwater region which was dotted with map references and
little data whatsoever.

The lizards had leapfrogged it all and sent ships on
ahead to plant the seeds and begin growing new worlds far from Star Force’s
knowledge, far from the Skarrons and everyone else that knew about them.

Paul was going to make sure they sent some of their
own assets that deep on a lizard hunt. They couldn’t let these guys get another
foothold on a weak region where they’d have next to no resistance. At least
that’s what he assumed. Star Force didn’t have any information that far out and
there could be stronger factions, but if the lizards had set up camp and
expanded out to dozens of systems in each of the two ‘seeds’ then they hadn’t
attracted much attention yet and wouldn’t if they were smart about it.

No, Star Force had to go hunt them down and do it now
before they sent more seeds out even further away. It was curious though, how…

Paul’s question was answered a moment later when he
found a listing of trade routes the lizards were using, and all the seeds were
lined up on them. They weren’t sending these rogue civilizations out to operate
on their own, they still wanted command and control of them,
thus
they were restricting them to lines of slow, but workable communication.

Maybe that was more paranoia on their part, for if
this was Star Force’s work he would have put the lizards into ships and told
them to run in every direction possible and find a nice quiet corner of the
galaxy to spread into then meet up in a few thousand years for a reunion and to
see who made it, then they could start consolidating power and taking over
everything in between.

That would be a nightmare, but then again they
couldn’t ship out the tech upgrades if they didn’t know where everybody was at
either. The lizards were taking a clever strategy here, and it was just via a
stroke of luck that Paul happened onto a lizard fleet that wasn’t running or
dying and that happened to contain a templar with his personal records.

But why weren’t the lizards running or fighting? They
thought they were protected by the other races? Or was this deal so important
to them that they were willing to see how this played out before deciding what
action to take.

But then maybe this had been discussed before. In the
records, the two systems that the lizards had devoted to the construction of
ships and the growth of troops to supply to the anti-Uriti alliance were
detailed as well as their agreement with the Trinx that those locations would
be protected against outside influence. That influence would most likely be
Star Force, so the Trinx and maybe these other races were already willing to
put themselves in between Paul’s advancing fleets and the lizards.

How that would have played out he wasn’t sure. Would
the Trinx have talked or just bluffed? They didn’t have the numbers to fight
Star Force given their small territory no matter how advanced their tech was,
and Paul was fairly sure they weren’t all that far ahead of Star Force. Maybe
having gone down a different developmental tract, but in a fight he didn’t
think his drone fleet would be that badly outmatched ship to ship.

Would they have fought to protect the lizards? Of
course they would. They’re willing to sell out everyone else to get their
supply of disposable troops, so why wouldn’t they be willing to fight to
protect them?

But then, they’d be losing their own ships in the
process and they had to have at least an inkling how powerful Star Force was.
Maybe they were simply going to impose themselves in between the two sides and
make Star Force engage them. These records didn’t specify, but it was clear
that the Trinx were responsible for the protection of those two systems.

The other eight races weren’t even mentioned in most
of the records. It seemed they’d only emerged once this Uriti was discovered.
The Trinx had given them information about probably locations and
asked/demanded that they search for it as an addendum to their deal and to
insure that this one, if it existed, didn’t get free like the other had when
the lizards had stumbled onto it. There was no additional payment mentioned for
the search, so Paul assumed it had been an ultimatum.

But the lizards were still here and apparently
included in the search parties. That hadn’t been specified in the records, and
only a very small amount of information on the other 8 races were included, all
of which had been taken from
comm
intercepts and
observations. They hadn’t gone to the curtesy of even introducing themselves.
The lizards were apparently the
Trinx’s
pet project,
and the big boys had come in to defend the system when the Uriti had been found
and were tolerating them by all by ignoring their presence.

That was probably why the Yisv didn’t think that
removing the lizards from the planet was a big deal.

The templar here had been assigned to this search
project and had been down to the planet on numerous occasions, based off his
person notes which were structured as reports that would be sent back to the
other templars via courier ship. Too bad he wasn’t still going down, else Paul
might be able to snag him during transit. He had a feeling he’d be a little
hesitant to slit his own throat, but a stun pulse pumped into the hull of a
kirby
or slightly larger transport should be able to
disable everyone inside. No chance of that with a cruiser or any ship even
remotely that large.

Too bad Kara wasn’t here. She might have a chance of
sneaking onboard and grabbing him before anyone was the wiser. If she could he
wouldn’t give a damn about the Trinx or their buddies. He’d get to that ship
and extricate the bastard no matter how many drones he had to lose in the
process.

But would these allies fight to protect this lizard
fleet at all given Riley’s promise of a solution to their gigantic problem?
Maybe, maybe not. The lizards were still supplying the troops they needed and
so far, as had been stated, all Riley had given was a promise with no proof.

It was going to be some time before a ship got back
from Earth, and until then Paul was just going to have to burn time on workouts
in the sanctum and pilfering through the
templar’s
records. There was a lot here, but a good chunk of it was mundane gibberish
that apparently was important within the templar ranks. He didn’t get the
feeling that they were a separate race within a race, but rather an elite group
of leaders that had as many numbers as was needed for their tasks…though they
did seem to be highly interactive with each other socially, which was the total
opposite of the mastermind interrelations, which didn’t exist at all.

Also in these records were the visuals of the other
Uriti that had broken free of its bonds and the lizards’ pathetic attempts to
destroy it. From those records they’d been able to confirm that it was
Namishta
, the 78th Uriti produced, and one that had been
lost well over a quarter of the distance around the galactic spiral.

That suggested to Paul one of two things…either this
Uriti had traveled on its own after the Chixzon lost it, or those who had
captured it had moved it a great distance in order to hide its location. The
prison that it had been held within was a giant shell that the lizards had
breached, inside of which held the apparatus to keep sedate and feed the beast,
for starving it to death wasn’t an option. If it felt any pain, any sense of
emergency, or even the slightest physical stimulus it would begin to wake, so
the only way to keep it still was to keep it in pristine condition and the
shell-like prison was also a factory digging out material from the planetary
core to feed it indefinitely.