Star Force: Ysalamir (Star Force Universe Book 54)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  “Now that’s just low fellas,” Arren said, knowing that he wasn’t going to be getting any training done for weeks as he limped back to a Star Force system on only 4 gravity drives. He was monitoring the ship’s sensors through his armor’s link, making sure he wasn’t being followed, as well as closely watching the ship’s systems. Sometimes when something broke, other systems would go down too in a cascading effect as damage increased during operation. So far it looked like the rest of the gravity drives were functioning properly, as was the reactor and three of the fuel tanks. The fourth was leaking, and he needed to get it fixed and salvage what he could.

  Arren extended his Pefbar out and searched for the damage, feeling it out and using his Lachka to being pulling bits apart and putting them back together, but that wasn’t going to be enough in this case. He needed a toolbox, but there wasn’t one in what used to be the workout room, so he extended his Pefbar in the other direction and picked up one through the walls, flying it through the corridors until it got to the locked door. He extended his bioshields again to keep the air inside, then opened them and got the small backpack full of tools into his hands.

  He grabbed two items and clamped them to his back, forming a small rack there on mental command, then he climbed up the wall into the gash and out onto the hull after passing through the meter-thick armor layer.

  Arren clung to the outside via the grip pads on his armor wherever his fingers or knees touched. The ship may have been moving at millions of miles per hour, but since it wasn’t accelerating it was basically sitting still from his point of view and the reforming shields were extended up enough that he could crawl under them without risking getting hit by a floating rock and killed, or knocked off the ship by a lesser impact.

  He did a spiderman over to the side where a crack in the armor layer was spewing out a few jets of liquid Neydan, which was a custom molecule Star Force had created and synthesized regularly for second grade fuel. Larger ships required the premium grade, but a little puddle jumper like this was so light it didn’t need as much bang for the buck. There was actually equipment onboard that would let him create more Neydan in the field, whereas Neydak could not be due to the extra complexity.

  Arren wasn’t going to have to make more fuel, but he did want to lock this down so it didn’t detonate. The fuel tank was compartmentalized to reduce such catastrophic events, but he didn’t want any more damage than he already had, so he used his Lachka to divert the stream away from one side of the crack and used a molecular aligner to melt the material and pull it across the gap, thinner than before, but thick enough to seal the breach.

  That worked up until the last bit, with the stream being too strong for Arren to block it with his Lachka. He had to use his bioshields instead, then he got the last leak sealed and crawled over the hull looking for more little bits of damage or anything that could be a future problem, eventually circling back to the main hole and using his other tool to cut free some jagged pieces that would prevent his shields from pulling within a few inches from the hull perimeter. He tossed the pieces free, seeing them float away through the shield perimeter, then he saw one of them disintegrate out of the corner of his eye.

  “What!” he said, seeing some spray on the front shields. He linked in to the ship’s sensors and his gut tightened as he hurried back inside the ship and got onto the bridge. He sat down in the pilot’s seat, seeing he had plenty of time before he passed into the thickest section of a thin asteroid field that he didn’t know was out here. That was another downside of traveling using passive sensors only. You didn’t get a wide map of the general area.

  Arren checked his 4 operational gravity drives again, then seeing everything apparently normal, used them to divert to the left around the asteroid field and into a horseshoe-shaped orbit that would bring him around to his desired jumppoint.

  Never during his three quarter journey around the star system did he have any additional contact with his shooters. He’d half expected some sort of interceptor to come out after him, but then again maybe whoever was out there wasn’t used to dealing with races that had the advanced sensor technology that he did…then again, it wouldn’t matter unless you flew out close to that point, for their cloaking field was good enough to protect against long range scans. If Arren hadn’t followed the ship out into that region, then guessed correctly that it was staying on a straight line trajectory to the site…which was a mistake if you really wanted to be secretive…then nobody would have ever found that transit site.

  But he had, and they clearly didn’t want him surviving the encounter. That probably meant it was a station and not a ship, for his own scout ship had no cloak now. Not with that hole in the hull disrupting the slip-style cloak his ship used. It wasn’t the most robust version, but again, it worked best for a ship as small as his.

  So if his would be killers wanted to follow him, it would be pretty easy to do so as long as they had a ship fast enough to follow his at 2/3rds power. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they did and just chose not to. He had no way to know for sure as long as they remained cloaked, but his ship should have seen something when that beam was fired.

  He checked his sensors again, making sure nobody was coming towards him, then he pulled up the logs and studied them in detail surrounding the moment the beam fired. Most of the object was still cloaked…which was not an easy thing to do technologically…but around the beam point there was a disruption that allowed him to see inside. The brightness of the beam had to be filtered out, but inside there was definitely a visible hull…or rather a sliver of it.

  Arren triple checked he’d done the filtering right, then just accepted that whoever owned this actually had a bright red hull, and it wasn’t paint. It was actually bioluminescent, meaning it was creating light, and that was damn weird when you had a cloaking device meant to clamp down on all forms of radiation emitting from the target.

  Arren ran it through the basic database the ship had, but there wasn’t a match. That alone was odd, for with so many technologies out there you had a lot of overlap as various people invented the same thing but were geographically so far apart they didn’t know it. The fact that this one was new was ominous, and he wondered if it had to do with Essence technology, or maybe just another level of technology Star Force hadn’t achieved yet.

  Curious with that thought, the Archon began analyzing the damage to his ship and the beam that had done it, and the results were lackluster. It was a Bra’hem-type beam with some variations from what Star Force used, nothing special there. In fact, it was actually inferior in intensity when compared to width, and had it not been sustained longer than normal it wouldn’t have penetrated his shields.

  Though any other ship in the galaxy of this size would have been destroyed in the single hit, aside from some V’kit’no’sat ships. Maybe throw the Zak’de’ron in there too, but the bottom line was that shot should have destroyed him if he hadn’t had Star Force technology protecting him…and if he’d gotten away when they hadn’t expected him to, there was a good chance that ship or another might come back through the stargate effect and finish him off.

  That was not a pleasant thought, and he had no idea how fast that ship was beyond the track it had followed out to the cloaked station. If that was maximum speed he would be fine, but if it was just casually strolling along, then he was a dead duck.

  Arren watched the sensors all the way back into his beacon field, then used them to monitor the area as he slowed his ship along the outgoing jumpline, then slowly launched himself into interstellar space without any sign of pursuit or evidence of the encounter. That didn’t mean he was in the clear, for someone could be waiting for him in his destination system if they made the jump faster than him, but as luck would have it, Arren would make it back to the small Star Force colony of Lemmo’rotak five jumps away without any interference.

  He filed his report, along with all the data, then sent it off through the relay grid to Davis, confirming that he had found one of
the elusive hidden races…and that they were, in fact, hostile.

  9

  December 11, 128506

  Itaru System (V’kit’no’sat capitol)

  Wendigama

  Mak’to’ran boarded his personal Kafcha as Itaru rallied a significant portion of its defense fleet to action. The V’kit’no’sat leader had just got word that the first large scale prototype anti-Hadarak weapon, known as a ‘Ysalamir’, was complete and that Star Force was offering Mak’to’ran’s fleet the first series of missions. The weapon itself would have a Star Force crew onboard, but it would be escorted by, and fight alongside his fleet, and that was more than enough of a momentous event to warrant Mak’to’ran leaving the capitol.

  He rarely did nowadays, fearing what would happen in his absence, but the internal discord was not what it once was, and there was no way in the universe he was not going to be there when the weapon made its first strike.

  A smaller testbed had originally been tested against the Hadarak, just to ensure that the weapon’s energy mix actually did have the effectiveness against Hadarak Yeg’gor, which was similar but not identical to manufactured Yeg’gor, and Star Force wasn’t going to shoot their own Uriti to test it either. That test had been successful, putting a good scratch on a Hadarak with a single shot and collecting the necessary data from it, but now the real weapon had been constructed, at long last, though there was a caveat in the message from Director Davis.

  This was not the finished product, or rather this was a functional weapon, but not the end of the research…and by that he didn’t mean refinement. They were working on a variety of different weapon variations, and this was just the first they’d gotten working enough for a field test. It wasn’t expected to be powerful enough to kill even a level 1 Hadarak, but it should do far more damage than a fleet could over a number of hours of constant bombardment, and the Director thought that was sufficient to spend the resources to build the actual weapon and put it to use.

  Mak’to’ran agreed, and the V’kit’no’sat had been shipping a lot of resources to Star Force territory to help them get what they need as fast as possible. Convoys were running constantly to and from the system, and the same was true of Star Force cargo ships. Both empires were fully invested in this project and hundreds of weapon systems had already been built and tested, but that was only to collect data. None had been built to this scale, nor put into an actual ship, let alone one custom built around a weapon that was not conducive to such things.

  He’d received many reports and updates, but all were intentionally devoid of critical details. He had agreed to this blackout, because he did not want the Zak’de’ron to possess this weapon that could one day be turned against the Uriti. If/when the war against the Zak’de’ron happened…and he had to assume it would if the Hadarak could ever be defeated…he wanted Star Force’s prime strength to be in play, for he knew they would fight with the V’kit’no’sat. Their previous history was always lingering as a division between them, but the two empires were truly opposite sides of the same coin. Star Force was V’kit’no’sat, though they would never admit it, despite the obvious fact that this Ysalamir project was both of them honoring the V’kit’no’sat oath to battle and one day destroy the Hadarak…an oath that technically Star Force had never taken, but they were honoring it none the less.

  Despite the Hadarak being the impossible enemy that no one could ever defeat, Mak’to’ran did not wish to be sloppy and hand the Zak’de’ron a weapon that could be used against the Uriti at a later date. Mak’to’ran knew they could do far more damage than Star Force was allowing the galaxy to believe, and they were wisely saving them in reserve for the right moment to unleash them. Maintaining their health and mental stability was critical, and if forcing them to fight the Hadarak would drive them insane, then Davis was right to hold them back…especially when he had the Ysalamir project that promised to be far more damaging to the Hadarak than the Uriti could ever be, save for perhaps the one they called ‘Shen,’ for its recharge rate was astonishing compared to what the technological copy had.

  This first prototype, he was told, had a firing rate of once every 2.4 days. That meant they were going to get one shot with it, then they’d have to pull it back and let its massive capacitors slowly recharge. To many that seemed next to worthless, but the veterans of Hadarak combat knew otherwise. Being able to deliver all your damage in a moment then retreat to safety meant the escorting V’kit’no’sat fleets would not suffer much damage. The long, bloody exchanges for the few Hadarak kills the V’kit’no’sat had earned in the past would now be over. Losses would occur, but far less than what they had once been…especially if they could produce more of these ships and operate them in concert.

  Mak’to’ran had seen a few pictures of it, but schematics had not been sent. The ship was 528 miles long and 98 wide, longer than any Mach’nel and even larger than a Star Force Borg vessel in length, though not close to either in mass. Yet the weapon was encased in thick Yeg’gor armor, for they couldn’t risk it being damaged in the minion combat that would precede an attack. He’d been told the ranges involved were ‘short’ compared to the sizes of each opponent involved, but the distances required still measured in the thousands of miles.

  3,800 miles was the maximum effective range, whereas a Tar’vem’jic could hit beyond 200,000. That meant this was going to be medium range naval combat, and the fleet escorting the weapon had to be very careful, but compared to the short range combat they were experienced with, guarding the massive weapon was going to be highly preferred.

  But it wouldn’t be easy, which was why Mak’to’ran was personally going to lead the fleet he was assembling out of Itaru’s defenses rather than pulling ships off their current combat assignments. Itaru had so many defenders it could easily supply a single fleet, even one large enough to go Hadarak hunting with, and not leave the system vulnerable.

  The only thing he told his people was that they were going to escort his flagship as they went Hadarak hunting, and with that being a valuable enough goal no one questioned why he was accompanying them as they began their convoy jumps out of the system to a nearby transit node that led to three different nearby black holes that would expedite travel in multiple directions.

  When they got there Mak’to’ran informed them of their true mission…how they were traveling to the border of Star Force space to take possession of the anti-Hadarak ship and escort it all the way to the warzone where they would find a small Hadarak and attempt to destroy it. The morale of the fleet skyrocketed, but he ordered a comms blackout so no one could leak the information onto the Urrtren. For as important as this was, he wouldn’t put it past the Zak’de’ron to try and steal it from them during transit.

  He’d brought enough ships to make sure they could put up a massive fight to allow the Ysalamir time to escape, and when they arrived at the rendezvous point with an equally large Star Force fleet, he finally got to see the weapon in person.

  It looked bland, nothing more than a giant grey cylinder, but as he got actual schematics from the Ysalamir crew he saw that it was actually in travel mode and would unfurl upon reaching its target. Three large pylons would pull out of the front portion and rotate around until they faced forward like a claw. Inside the void between them the arcing energies would form and pool, holding there until they reached maximum saturation, then a conduit beam would fire just prior to the weapon energies being released in a precisely timed sequence.

  There were 6 different types of energy involved, but the bulk of it was what would collect inside the void, and that could not be interfered with by enemy fire. The ship had decent shields, but they had to come down to launch the conduit beam, meaning the ship’s Yeg’gor armor would be exposed along with the bits of the weapon that could not be armored over. Mak’to’ran had to protect it during the firing sequence and, more importantly, the charging sequence and cooldown period. The equipment onboard the ship was prototype, so they couldn’t replace it in the fiel
d. If it broke, they’d have to take the Ysalamir all the way back to Epsilon Eridani for repairs, despite the high number of scientists that were onboard the vessel and intended to stay there throughout the combat to come.

  A few of them were V’kit’no’sat scientists, but most of his people were still in the Star Force system working on other weapon varieties. Those here were necessary to troubleshoot any problems and to record data, but the biggest effort was going to be his getting the Ysalamir into firing position and protecting it against both the minions and the Hadarak, for if the Hadarak rammed it in desperation the ship may or may not be able to make an emergency microjump out in time.

  And to his horror he later realized it couldn’t, not when charging the void. The engines had to be shut down to the point they could only make a few orientation corrections. They couldn’t chase a Hadarak down with the weapon. The Hadarak had to come to them or hold position while they shot it.

  But the V’kit’no’sat scientists had given him the option of hard points on the hull that V’kit’no’sat or Star Force ships could dock with and then use their own engines to augment the Ysalamir’s. When he ran the numbers he saw that would give him enough maneuverability to chase down the slower Hadarak…as well as replace lost ‘engines’ with new ships, making a true disabling of the weapon much harder for the minions to accomplish.

  That and many other alterations were built in to the design, and Mak’to’ran was pleased to see that such forethought had been added to the first prototype. Star Force did their work well, and Mak’to’ran could see several places where V’kit’no’sat methodology had been added in. It was a worthy weapon. Now the only question was how well it was going to work, and they wouldn’t know that for months to come as they took the quickest route possible to the nearest edge of the Hadarak war zone to hunt down the closest tier 1 or 2 Hadarak assault group they could find, where they intended to join the fight and see how much easier they would be to kill with a Ysalamir involved.