by Aer-ki Jyr
“That’s all you’re practicing?”
“Mostly. We’ve got you for the big stuff, right?”
“Working on it, but Strovok is so far beyond me it’s crazy.”
“Is that true?” Morgan asked as the Mek’tal ran into view, hopping over one of the toppled trees and towering over both Humans.
“I can give you a demonstration if needed,” he said angrily, but Kara waved him off.
“It’s alright. My ‘Mom’ was just pointing out a flaw in my defenses,” she said, using Ginsi’s favorite insult for her Master…because Morgan really hated it, and the glare she gave Kara confirmed it.
“Do not hit her again,” Strovok warned.
“I’d normally say something pithy right now, but I get the feeling you could crush me pretty easily,” Morgan said, with a little variance in her normal poise that Kara recognized was real fear, though she was masking it well. “You’re Strovok I assume? My name is Morgan-063.”
He looked to Kara. “She is one of your warlords?”
“Yeah. The best hand to hand fighter we have in the Archons.”
“After Ginsi,” Morgan corrected.
Kara gave her an annoyed look, standing there wearing nothing but mud and one tattered shoe. “We all know you can take her.”
“Her levels are higher than mine, and she’s better against a crowd than I am. I trained her well.”
“She is tiny,” Strovok said, unimpressed. “I thought you had larger warriors.”
“We do,” Morgan said, not offended. “The ones that are better than me are called the Golden Knights…some of them, anyway. They’re specialists. Archons have to be good at everything. We just happen to be better than most of the specialists too.”
“You were using a version of Dark Sheath on approach?”
“I didn’t know it had a name, and I didn’t realize it was something other people had. We figured it out on our own since the Temple wasn’t being very helpful with what we needed.”
“It is called Dark Sheath, and it absorbs the weaker Essence flickers your body naturally makes, as well as those sent out to detect Essence users. Do you seek to become an assassin?”
Morgan chewed on her lip for a moment. “If that’s what you call getting into punching range before I’m obliterated, then the answer is yes.”
“It is worthless if you do not have a quick kill skill. Do you?”
“Not in Essence.”
“Then you will waste your life uselessly against an Essence wielding opponent, or do you seek powers to deal with others?”
“I’m not here to be trained, though I’m always interested in free pointers. I’m here to talk with her about…stuff.”
“Do you normally begin conversations with unprovoked attacks?”
“You don’t?” Morgan said deadpan.
“Not usually,” Kara interrupted. “Its fine, Strovok. I won and that’s what matters.”
Morgan raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.
“Are there others coming?”
“Not that I know of. We’re busy fighting a big war in the Core while the Vargemma sit here on their asses refusing to do anything other than try to kill us.”
“My allegiance is not with the Vargemma.”
“I know. Otherwise I wouldn’t be within Essence range of you,” the trailblazer admitted.
“You interrupted my sleep cycle, and there is little point in returning to it. You may observe as we spar, but do not interfere in any way,” he warned.
“I promise I’ll be a good girl and just watch,” she said, slapping Kara on her muddy butt. “Get in there, Jinxie.”
“Thanks,” Kara said sarcastically, not having expected another sparring session before she got to sleep, but she wasn’t going to argue with Strovok, who was visibly upset by the unannounced visitor.
Both she and him flew up into the air well above Morgan, with Kara kicking off her useless shoe as a summoned drone came with replacement clothing, then after getting dressed again they began going at it in a lot of new ways as the trailblazer watched with her Essence-enhanced vision. Both of them were far beyond her Neo abilities, so much so it almost made her comically naïve, which was what she hoped to gage the level of here.
If you were outmatched, you still had some options if you knew how you were outmatched. Walking into a fight against a superior opponent whose power was unknown was an easy way to get yourself killed. Morgan needed to understand as much as she could how these stronger Essence fighters fought if she was going to have a shot at a single penetration in their defenses.
It was either that or run on sight…and right now, looking at the two of them go at it, ‘run’ seemed like the wiser option by a long shot.
10
May 18, 128888
Neontrix System (Home Three Kingdom)
Shipyard 825
Esna stood onboard Seda KOEN, looking out the 4 story tall holographic windows on the observation platform that covered more than 2 miles within the space station, arcing around the perimeter yet being well inside the armored hull. Her mind was elsewhere, but her eyes were on the spider frame of a new seda being rush built by the H’kar at Davis’s request. Neontrix wasn’t in their original territory, but was one of their expansion colonies elsewhere in the Empire, of which they had many, and this one had one of the largest shipbuilding industries within Star Force.
There were 2033 Scale 2 shipyards here, which meant they were capable of producing warships of any size, but Neontrix also had 82 Scale 1 shipyards, which meant they could produce anything in the Star Force catalog with speed. You could build anything anywhere if you wanted to take your time and bring in resources, parts, and specialists, but if you wanted to do it with alacrity you needed a full-fledged shipyard with a crew that knew how to use the massive industries within to produce from blueprints at maximum speed without compromising efficiency.
It wasn’t a simple task, and the choreography had to be worked out well beforehand. But when it was put into motion it was a thing of art, and this system was churning out warships, drones, and even a new Borg vessel every now and then at such a rapid pace that there had to be constant convoys coming into the system to deliver the raw materials needed, for Neontrix could no longer supply them all itself.
Esna had gotten a priority slot in one of the Scale 1 shipyards, pushing back other projects that had been waiting in line for centuries, and the seda blueprints weren’t even finished yet…yet the basic frame was already being constructed. That much Tennisonne had already signed off on and sent ahead while he personally worked on the rest, promising to have the various pieces of it designed before the shipyard would need them, and so far he had been delivering.
The not yet finished plans were for a Voidcrusher-class Zeda…with the terms being Davis’s choice. ‘Sedas’ were defensive stations that could move slowly between star systems, but that wasn’t going to be good enough when Esna took her people across the Grand Border into the depths of the Hadarak-infested systems. Hers needed to be faster, more heavily armed, and containing no civilians. They also needed to have industry onboard and the workers to harvest resources from captured planets and even dead Hadarak.
That was going to require more than one type of Zeda, and right now there were 3 planned. Voidcrushers were for combat and would also be equipped with Essence defenses and offenses, to both kill Wardens and to defend themselves against Lurkers or whatever else the Hadarak showed up with beyond the normal minion swarm. Forge-class Zeda would be just as fast and well-armed, but inside where the hangar bays and barracks that the Voidcrushers carried their armies within, would be the extra industry required to create Yeg’gor, and to recycle it.
Tennisonne hadn’t even started on it yet, nor the third type of Zeda to be called an ‘Armory.’ It would have the same speed and defenses as the other two, but inside the bulk of its space would be occupied by ship and mech yards, along with large warehouses to store raw materials gathered that could not ye
t be processed. In this way the Armory-class Zedas were the treasure chests of the new force, yet they would look identical on the outside to the others, so the enemy would not know which was which.
There were many facets of the triad being included that had already been discussed, including the ability for 4 Zedas to combine into a fully functional shipyard capable of producing another Zeda inside their tetrahedral perimeter. Once Esna had enough of them…far more than 4…she wouldn’t be using existing shipyards to increase her numbers. She’d be making them inside enemy territory in orbit of planets her forces had already cleared of enemy infestation.
But that was long, long into the future. Right now she needed one to get started, and until she had it she would be running her operations out of one of the 7 Canderian sedas stationed in this system…but it would be for the last time, because once the first Voidcrusher was completed she would be taking command and leaving Canderous behind permanently.
Davis had not gone for her idea of giving Canderous enhanced powers to fight the Hadarak. Instead he had come up with something better…and the others in their short-lived group had expanded on his designs until she found herself involved in something far more grand than she had anticipated.
Canderous was a Human faction, and as such it could only pull on the very small Human population for recruits, even if it sought those outside Canderous itself. Only taking from Canderians would have meant Esna would be able to be an effective fighting force against the Hadarak, but not the monster she needed to become. To do that, she had to go bigger and draw from all the population of Star Force.
And suddenly she found herself elevated to the level of the trailblazers, for Davis had commissioned a new Clan to be formed, and he’d given it solely to her to build and lead, though she was no longer designing most of it. Even the trailblazers themselves were chipping in and offering ideas, which were all flowing to her now that Davis had bowed out.
Esna had wanted to become a specialized weapon to fight the Hadarak, and Davis had given her exactly that. She was in full command now, and she knew that being Canderian was not enough. She had to become more than that, and now she stood watching the beginning of her first Zeda being put together piece by piece as her body ached from the upgrades that she’d recently been given.
She’d accidentally been granted the psionic Fornax by a quirk of fate, developing it naturally from her dormant genetics in a time of great stress and pain. But now it was no longer alone. Davis had granted her the other basic 6 with a pathway to the higher tiers if she could earn them.
Esna had telepathy now, telekinesis, the ability to survive cold and heat and melt metal in her bare hand. She also had the ability to see through walls and enter a healing trance to greatly speed up repairs to her body. Her personal power level had now soared beyond her dreams, and yet she had a mere inkling of the power the Archons had, which made her respect and fear their prowess even more.
Yet now, ironically, she would be commanding Archons as many had already requested transfer to her new Clan. She didn’t deserve to lead it, and didn’t know what Davis thought he was doing. Lead Canderous, yes, she could do that. She understood them and already held a co-equal position with the Khans. But the Clans were superior to even the Knight races and their Esquires. The Clans were the best of the best…and now she was to lead one?
“Rammak what am I doing?” she asked the windows as the distant stars had to compete with all the little craft zooming around the shipyard and winking in and out of the direct sunlight coming from behind her. “I’m not ready for this…but I know you’d say I wasn’t ready for anything before, yet I managed to find my way with help. And I do have help now, a lot of it, but everyone is busy doing their things to help the empire and this…I know this the key. I can feel it. But why are they leaving it to me? I gave them the idea, why aren’t those better than me taking this? It makes no sense.”
There was no one around at the moment, at least not for a few hundred meters, so Esna had the view to herself and didn’t even bother to whisper. She often spoke to Rammak, knowing that wherever his Core was now it couldn’t hear her, but that didn’t matter. Speaking aloud what she was feeling helped her mind to analyze it better, and Rammak would always be the person she trusted and respected the most…even more than Davis and the trailblazers. Rammak is the one who had saved her from both death and the abyss of the wild. He was the one who had showed her what it meant to be Human, what it meant to be Star Force, and what the genetic legacy that her body held truly meant, and how it had been denied her by fate.
She owed everything to him, even though he hadn’t been able to save Teren. Sometimes Esna wondered if her brother would be beside her now if he’d lived, or if he’d have chosen another path in Star Force, but though their time together had been brief, Rammak was closer to her Core than her brother was…and that was saying a great deal, because Esna and Teren had been very close. They had to be in order to survive in the wild, and she still wished there had been some way to save him.
But not even Rammak had survived to make it back to Star Force territory, at least not to the ‘safe’ territory beyond the war zone…but he had set foot on a Star Force base again before dying in combat later on a worthless planet that Esna refused to set foot on again. It would always be the most hated place in the galaxy for her, and in a way that made the horrors of the Hadarak infestations a bit easier to face. Because she’d rather be there or anywhere else than on Darlek.
“The others are going to keep us alive…I know they are. But they don’t have a plan to win. I’m it, and the Director has given me the powers and responsibility of a trailblazer to make it happen. Did you see this potential in me back then? I don’t see how you could have, but it makes me wonder. I know with resources so stretched this wouldn’t be happening unless they had a great deal of faith in me, but I don’t see it in myself. But warriors rise to meet the call of battle as you taught me, and I will do so now. I just fear it may not be enough.”
Esna fell silent for a moment, wondering what Rammak would have said back to her, and usually she imagined something useful. This time she didn’t, and that hollowness only made her more convinced that she was going to fail. That the Hadarak were too big, too numerous, and too well entrenched to actually beat…and that the people who were capable of taking her idea and making it work were giving it to her because they didn’t truly believe in it, and that it was her idea to make succeed and they weren’t expecting to get anything out of it, but were so desperate they were willing to try anything.
Warriors are the most dangerous when their back is to the wall and they know they are about to die, his voice suddenly said from memory, because in that moment nothing can get worse. And when nothing can get worse you are free to fight boldly and fearlessly. Be fearless, little one.
“Fearless,” she repeated aloud as all responsibility and anxiety suddenly drained from her. No one was counting on her for anything. This was a long shot they had to take, because they needed something to work, but they weren’t counting on it. They were going to hold the line at the Grand Border without her help. If she failed, nothing would change…but if she succeeded…
And in that moment Esna was free.
There was no going back. No protecting others. No living a safe life. The Empire was in peril, and she had just been freed up from all responsibility for the lives of others. They had given her what she requested…to become a weapon. And weapons had only one purpose.
Esna used her new power to telepathically interlink with a control node behind the viewscreen and switched the local section over to a galactic map and zoomed in on the enemy-held center. She stared at them along with all the strength-level icons displayed from the most recent scouting missions overlaid on old data.
It was a massive fortification that had scared her up until this moment, but no longer. Now she saw weakness and vulnerability. Pathways to attack and distract. Supply lines to disrupt and Wardens to hunt. It wasn’t a pla
ce to fear…it was a place to be feared. It was the battlefield on which she would become the monster leading a Clan of monsters that had but one purpose, not above others, but exclusive of all others.
To hunt and destroy Hadarak…barring a time when negotiation became possible. Davis had made that clear just before he told her that he didn’t think it would ever happen, and that she shouldn’t pursue it unless it fell in her lap. Others would continue looking for a way to communicate and disrupt the genetic hold on the Wardens, the minions, and other Hadarak, but it didn’t look promising, and after the miracle Star Force had managed with the lizards, they had the experience going in to know what to look for…and they still thought it was impossible.
So Esna had her orders to become a hunter, something that Star Force was typically against, but the nature of the Hadarak made it a necessity in this case. They couldn’t be captured and contained…not with them choking the life out of the galaxy and the ability to reproduce so fast from so few. If they wouldn’t surrender then they had to be destroyed until Davis found another option, and he was assuming there was none.
The girl who came back a monster.
Esna had been born in the wilds, beyond Star Force, beyond anything even remotely like true civilization. She had left a very young, very naïve girl and found a home in Star Force…but now she was coming back to the wilds. To where she had always known in her gut that she belonged. Star Force was home, but warriors were not meant to live at home. They were meant to go into the wilds where the fighting was, and now that’s exactly where she was going…and it might be where she was dying, but that too was alright. Part of her had expected to follow Rammak down that path long ago, and still was. But if she died it would be in combat, and worthy combat at that.
The Hadarak had to be stopped. They had to be killed. This galaxy and many others depended on this. And if Esna had to show Star Force the way to fight in the wilds because she had been born there, then challenge accepted. Fate had been a bitch to her from the very beginning. Now it was time to return the favor, and she knew now that Davis had already seen this.
