by Aer-ki Jyr
“You’ve been the most immediate threat for a long time, but you’ve never been the biggest threat.”
“The Nexus?”
“No. Not even close.”
The mastermind stared at him for a long moment. “Something towards the core that you do not want to encroach upon? That’s why you will go no further?”
“I have known,” Paul began, knowing that what he was doing was a calculated risk, “since the first day that I chose to begin training to become an Archon that a war was coming. I didn’t know when or how, and I still don’t, but it is going to happen. A war that will make the conflict between Star Force and the Li’vorkrachnika seem inconsequential. A war that I could not win, and one that I have worked every day of my life since to close the gap to the point where we might just be able to survive…not win, but survive when it comes to pass. That has been my purpose. It is our purpose. Most of Star Force does not know of this, only the leaders, but it is the reason we created the original organization that then grew into an empire.”
“What is this threat?”
“They are called the V’kit’no’sat, and are a conglomeration of races that dominate the core of this galaxy. My homeworld was once on the furthest edge of their empire. They do not conquer and consume every system like the Li’vorkrachnika do. They pick and choose their targets, then ignore the rest so long as they do not get in their way. They do not conquer those who are pathetic and inconsequential, so they have come to dominate half this galaxy…but a rebellion occurred from one of the member races and the empire contracted. My homeworld was razed in the fighting and subsequently abandoned.”
“I am descended from Zen’zat,” he explained as the mastermind listened intently, lots of lingering questions about Star Force suddenly being resolved. “They are a servant variant of a race called Ter’nat. Ter’nat are the lowest members of the V’kit’no’sat and are kept as breeding material to spawn Zen’zat. They are individuals who prove themselves worthy and swear their allegiance to serve the other races. They are given powers Ter’nat do not possess, and are forbidden from reproducing.”
“When my homeworld was abandoned, somehow there were a few Zen’zat left behind. We don’t know how, but they were my ancestors and the knowledge of the V’kit’no’sat and the abilities given to the Zen’zat were lost over time. Until we made a discovery that opened our eyes to the truth and the potential within us.”
“Your technology…you are not developing it, you are rediscovering it?”
“Yes, though that is far harder than it sounds. The V’kit’no’sat are extremely advanced in all categories. If they came back today we would not be able to defeat them. We might cause them some damage, but it would not be a fair fight. And understand when I say that the penalty for Zen’zat breeding is death…for those that did the breeding, and all their offspring.”
“Your entire race is under a death sentence?”
“Every Human within Star Force, yes. We are all descended from those original Zen’zat who were left behind. If the V’kit’no’sat discover we still exist, or simply come back to reclaim their lost colony world, we will all be destroyed. Most likely the other races within Star Force would be as well, perhaps even our allies. They will purge us from existence, for all the races within the V’kit’no’sat cannot leave. You are part of the group, or you are destroyed. There is no middle ground. No rogue factions. The V’kit’no’sat do not suffer rivals in any way, shape, or form. If we are discovered, we are dead.”
“Why entrust me with this knowledge? If I were able to get word to the other Li’vorkrachnika they could simply find these overlords and bring them down upon you, then they could reclaim all the worlds you have taken from them.”
“You have no transmitters here, but it is possible you could find a way to slip something away when outside this system. Do you want to do that?”
“I believe you already know the answer to that question, otherwise you would not have told me.”
“You said you needed a purpose. Everything the Li’vorkrachnika have built, conquered, and expanded into is for naught if the V’kit’no’sat mark them. Grow too powerful and they will take you down. Granted, they’re a long way from even poking up into their vision, but the Li’vorkrachnika will never conquer this galaxy. Not even close. The templars may be ambitious, but there are other races out there beyond the V’kit’no’sat that they will not be able to touch. If they simply want to expand to expand they will not be able to do so indefinitely, and should they be stupid enough to attack one of the greater powers they will do to them what we are doing, only far worse. They will not fight honorably. We have the means to generate biological weapons that could easily wipe out the population of your worlds without us having to invade, but we don’t fight that way. Others would.”
The mastermind regarded him quizzically. “You have weapons that could easily destroy us, yet you do not use them? For what purpose do you have those weapons?”
“We have the ability to create them, but have not.”
“Still, why risk your own troops, a few of which have died, when you could have prevented it, let alone the massive amount of resources you have expended?”
“Do you not already know by this point?” Paul asked.
“No, I do not. You have regarded the preservation of your own troops as your highest priority. Why lose some of them and give us time to grow and spread when you could more quickly defeat us?”
“Not defeat. Destroy. Why did I not kill you?”
“I still wonder about that. I know your stated reasons, but something about them never fully rang true.”
“We do not kill you because we want to. We kill you in order to stop you. If we can do so via other methods, then we will.”
“Surrender. This is all about giving us a chance to surrender. You’ve prolonged this war to give us a chance to live, one that we would never take. Are you insane or clever beyond my reasoning?”
“We are honorable. And we will not hold every Li’vorkrachnika responsible for the actions of the others. To do so would be…”
“Inaccurate.”
“Yes.”
“You kill those who deserve it, not their kin.”
“That’s another way of putting it.”
“Yet you sparred me when I was the one giving the orders opposing you.”
“Sometimes the past must be avenged. Sometimes it must be let go. Are you still a threat to me?”
“If I was you would have killed me by now.”
“Then if your threat has been eliminated, I have succeeded in my mission. Your destruction was never the goal.”
“But yours is, by these overlords of yours.”
“Yes it is, or would be, if they knew we existed.”
“And they are not honorable, so you do not wish to emulate them?”
“There is a mix of honor and dishonor within them. More of the latter, but they are not wholly degenerate. I have no illusions of negotiating with them. They are compulsively loyal and arrogant. More so than even you. When they place a death mark, they will not be swayed from it. And the more resistance given the more it will galvanize them…and they have far more worlds to draw power from than Star Force and the Li’vorkrachnika combined. Each of which is in itself wholly superior.”
“Your entire civilization exists under a mark of death, and yet you pursue honorable goals rather than mere survival. You compromise that which matters most in order to see to the needs of others?”
“Our survival is not in our power to control, but even if it was, yes, we will fight honorably.”
“Would you ever use these more efficient killing weapons if needed? Under any circumstance?”
“Honor does not lie in the weapons, but how they are used in the given situation. In theory there might be a time and a place for them, but never where we initiate the combat.”
“Defensive vengeance then?”
“Possibly. If we are to die, we will die honorably, but
that doesn’t mean we won’t take as many of them with us as possible.”
“Within the bounds of honor?”
“We won’t harm those who do not deserve it in order to strike at those who do.”
“Suddenly I find we have more in common that I allowed for. You will fight like us when the circumstances are correct, and you will not surrender?”
“Even if the V’kit’no’sat gave us that option, no, I would not.”
“And the others?”
“The average person might. The Archons will not.”
“You will fight to the death?”
“We won’t seek death, but we will not submit.”
“So in that, we are alike.”
“We don’t engage in suicide attacks.”
“If your death was assured, would you not ram your warship into your enemy?”
“If death is assured, then it’s not suicide. It’s a choice of how to die and to do as much damage to the enemy as possible before you do.”
“We have long assumed you did not have the fortitude to do what was necessary. Then when we began losing to you we tried to study you to determine why. Technological progress was evident, but there was always something else in play, tactics wise. Now I think I finally understand what it was. You were holding yourselves back rather than being incompetent. Reserving certain methods of fighting for situations you deemed honorable. I imagine that is a mistake many of your enemies have made.”
“A few. The Li’vorkrachnika found us when we were very weak. Had it not been for the Hycre’s intervention we probably would have been destroyed. We needed time to grow and they gave it to us.”
“And you have repaid them with the gift of weaponry and the return of their worlds?”
“Yes.”
“But you did not annex them?”
“We only forcibly annex those who are our enemies…if we so choose.”
“But that is not what you want from us?”
“No. Like I said, given access to your genetic material, we could have done that a long time ago.”
“Yet we have one advantage that you do not, as far as my information tells me.”
“And that is?”
“We are born with genetic memory and are functional immediately. Your young take time to develop, including your Bsidd. We can expand faster and more effectively.”
“You expand with inexperienced units. I will grant they have more immediate effect than our younglings ever could, but over the course of time ours will exceed yours.”
“But it’s an advantage you could have incorporated by annexing us. So why didn’t you?”
“There are many ways in which to fight. We prefer some methods over others, and your type of colony building, while effective, doesn’t suit our methods. You risk your personnel too much, but you gain from that risk in many occasions. We put our experienced troops in harm’s way while we protect the young long enough that they can become experienced. Your method is the reverse.”
“Given the threat the galaxy faces, weak units, no matter how many, are pointless. So you have engineered your combat forces to face an unbeatable opponent rather than tooling them to face more immediate threats?”
“Partly true.”
“And you believe our suicide attacks would not be affective against them?”
“Nothing you have will be effective against them.”
“If you were to implement them?”
Paul sighed. “They’ve been around for millions of years, and have grown quite accustomed to people trying to take them down. They’ve developed technology to block a lot of suicide attempts.”
“Which you have implemented.”
“They have far more.”
“Are they as concerned with maintaining their troops as you are?”
“No. But they find retraining new ones to be tedious, so they take care not to lose them unless absolutely needed.”
“They will still spend their lives if necessary?”
“Their collective ego is more valuable to them.”
“Yet you have never met them?”
“We recovered extensive records, so we know them well enough to be certain of their response.”
“Why not abandon your world and travel far from it so they will never find you? If their empire is in the core, flee to the rim and be rid of them.”
“That option was discussed, but before we had the industrial muscle to make such a move the Li’vorkrachnika became a problem and we needed every asset we had on the homeworld just to survive you.”
“Once you finish conquering this half of our territory, you will begin to move your people away?”
“No, we won’t.”
“Why stay?”
“You tell me.”
“You won’t abandon the races you’ve annexed into your empire. You’ve taken responsibility for a large number of star systems and you won’t relinquish it for fear of what would happen to them if you did. But why not evacuate them all with you?”
“If the V’kit’no’sat learn of our existence, they will not stop hunting us until we are found and destroyed, no matter where we go. We could hide, we’re smart enough to do that, but we would lose so much of our powerbase in such a transition that it would put our efforts to upgrade our empire so far behind that we would lose too much. If the V’kit’no’sat come back tomorrow that logic will seem stupid, but we’ve been operating under it since day 1. We don’t know when or if they’ll find us, and we’re using all the time we have to try and grow strong enough to survive them.”
“But you cannot?”
“We have fallback plans, but if it comes to that, we will not go quietly.”
“How long have they been absent?”
“Oddly, it was right at 100 millennia when we discovered our true history. Add another one on since then.”
The mastermind grew more serious. “This is a very old empire then. Why do you think they have not returned in such a span of time?”
“We don’t know how badly the rebellion hurt them…but there is another matter. What the V’kit’no’sat was originally formed for. There are massive creatures that inhabit the deep core known as Hadarak. They are themselves warships and prefer to live within deep gravity wells. They are a plague on the galaxy and continually push outward to devour worlds…not whole, but they do massive damage. The V’kit’no’sat were created to oppose them and hold them back within a containment line. They never figured out how to destroy them within the gravity wells, so all they can do is fight and kill those that come too far out, and it is a task they have never shied from. That duty, along with the outcome of the rebellion, is probably why they have not pushed the boundaries of their empire back to their heights.”
“Do you know where their border is now?”
“The other side of Skarron territory.”
“Far from your homeworld then.”
“Thankfully, yes.”
“For my entire life I have thought we were superior. I knew there were races beyond us, but it was assumed that given enough time we would achieve their level of technology and surpass it. Even before then we would be able to overcome them with numbers and tactics. And now you tell me that we have been fools this entire time? We are not dominant…we are not even relevant?”
“No, you’re not. And even Star Force’s technology level wouldn’t draw their attention if it weren’t for our death mark.”
“How many more years do you require before you can attain what they had in their past?”
“It’s been uncertain from the beginning. We relearn some aspects quicker than others. A few hundred years, perhaps another millennia.”
“And then it will still not be a fair fight?”
“We have no way of knowing how much further they have advanced, but even if they did not, they have numbers that we cannot contend with.”
“Some of which much contain these beasts?”
“Some, but they would have no trouble rousing enoug
h to overwhelm us.”
“If they knew your strength. If they underestimated it, they would send too few and you would stand a chance of a short victory. Over time they would send more, then you would be in an untenable position. Evacuation prior to their discovery of you is your only long term solution.”
“That’s what the reality of the situation is.”
“And yet you stay.”
“The only way we can best them is to best them,” Paul said dubiously. “Not with numbers, but with quality. We have to be better than them, and we’re not going to get better by hiding out and running. As you well know, war experience is extremely valuable. Theoretical simulations can only take you so far.”
“And?”
“Doing the right thing can’t be postponed. There are people here, now, who need our help. We won’t sacrifice them in the short term to extend the long term concerns. If we are to die, we will die with honor as protectors…not fleeing survivors who would abandon others to grim fates to preserve ourselves.”
“Your affinity for death over dishonor is the same as our own, except ours seems to have been twisted.”
“And yet you are untwisting it.”
“With your considerable assistance.”
“You needed a nudge. But only you could decide to think and not slit your throat as all the others have done or would do.”
“I tried, but you took my claws.”
“And after you grew them back?”
“By then I had time to think.”
“And what are you thinking now with regards to your honor?”
“It has been vested in following the orders of the templars, but it has always been to our civilization. The templars are the embodiment of it. Through them we grow, defend ourselves, and bring order to a chaotic galaxy.”
“By killing all of the people in it?”
“I would blame the blocks, but in truth I should have seen the futility of that long ago.”
“That’s what the blocks are there to do…keep you from seeing things.”
“We are meant to be protectors. I can feel it now. As you said, untwisting that which was in us all along. We are meant to fight. To fight for a purpose.”
