by Aer-ki Jyr
That gave them more data on how many ships Star Force had in the DZ, making Paul wonder just how many scout ships they had out there equipped with that sensor. The fog of war had lifted a bit for them and now they sensed an opportunity. Had Paul and the other trailblazers not been the strategic masterminds they were Star Force would have been destroyed long ago, but now it seemed they were finally about to get overwhelmed and the rolling tide of losses not seen since the beginning of the war was going to resume in a gradual wave of destruction that would consume all who didn’t turn and run for the deep rim as fast as they could, then lose themselves in the wilds where the V’kit’no’sat would never find them.
Paul knew it with certainty now. There were a lot more V’kit’no’sat ships on the way, and rather than waste them to eliminate the Grid Point or attack the Preserve, they were going for the mass of weaker targets that were the industrial strength of the empire…but they weren’t going to get them. Paul still had two tricks up his sleeve, and he appropriately sent two message out now, for it would take time to assemble them all.
He didn’t know if it would be enough, but at the very least the V’kit’no’sat were going to get a worthy fight…and if they did end up winning it, they were going to have to earn it the hard way.
12 days later…
One of Paul’s messages made its way across the Devastation Zone to a Ghostblade fleet, one of many that were in the DZ and ranging far beyond into systems that had no Star Force or V’kit’no’sat presence doing their nomad thing and staying away from everyone as they sought out unclaimed resources. Harvesting them and moving on, they grew their fleets and assaulted a few V’kit’no’sat ships when they had the chance.
Kara’s fleet was in the Devastation Zone, for she didn’t want to get too far away from the action, but she only had a few hundred ships with her. Not a battlegroup but another of the civilian/warship combos that most Ghostblade fleet groups were comprised of. She was onboard her flagship, the Yi, which was a modified Melee-class command ship rebuilt in Ghostblade fashion. It’s design was unique, for nowhere else in her widespread fleets was there another, and Kara spent 99% of her time onboard the vessel bouncing from system to system organizing her Clan from afar and camping out in the onboard sanctum working her way towards Goku rank, for which she was only 3 levels away.
When the message came in from Paul it was relayed from a Ghostblade scout ship sitting next to a stationary relay and sipping off the data it collected, then the specially designed scout ship transmitted the data in a burst to the systems where it knew others would be, essentially creating a link to wherever Kara’s command ship was. The scout ships didn’t have a lot of range, definitely not what the relays had that could send signals in excess of 43 lightyears, but put enough of them in a string knowing where Kara was and was going to go, and she had her data link into the grid while maintaining her clandestine roaming status.
That meant Paul’s message got to her right away, but it wasn’t a hologram. Rather it was a simple text message containing only 4 words.
The beacons are lit.
A chill ran through her the moment she saw them, having waited for this day since her Clan was founded in secret so the V’kit’no’sat would not know of its existence even if they penetrated Star Force computer systems on captured worlds, for there was no record of Ghostblade anywhere. It was the Clan that did not exist…until now.
Kara bolted from the terminal in her quarters where she read the message and ran through the ship straight to the bridge.
“Everyone listen up!” she yelled unnecessarily, for the crew of some 128 individuals there were almost whisper quiet already, but the adoptive trailblazer was so pumped with adrenaline they all noticed immediately by the tone of her voice. “We’re being recalled. All of us. I don’t know what’s happened, but Paul just signaled for us to come out of the shadows. Issue immediate recall orders and get couriers moving ASAP. Bring them to the rally points and tell them to move at maximum speed. The front is already under assault, and if I’m right it’s about to get a lot hotter and we’re going to be needed.”
“Geez,” her ship Captain said under his breath, with the Bsidd standing well taller than her on its spindly, insect-like frame. “If he’s calling us in it must really be bad. He let the ADZ fall and still didn’t activate us.”
“And it was the right call to make,” Kara said firmly. “Otherwise we would never have grown as large as we have. Everyone get moving. Now!”
8 days later…
Paul’s second message wasn’t meant for the Devastation Zone, but rather headed rimward past the original Rim Region and into some of the more lawless areas that Star Force had been working to build up the infrastructure in and wrangle into new annexes of their empire. It wasn’t the rimward front, but somewhere in between where the message landed on a planet named by Paul himself.
It was on Csilla that the message found its recipient, a planet of enormous size and a gravity of 3.2g mitigated down to the Star Force norm of 1.0g in the cities that covered nearly all of its hot surface. Originally it had been uninhabited and barren, but now it was a Paladin world and home to the original mastermind that Paul had turned to the Star Force side long ago.
Aptly named Thrawn by the trailblazer, the 7 foot tall lizard was unique in that his body was a mix of the original green scales and the Paladin blue, for he hadn’t been born Paladin as almost all others had. There were still a few originals left, but they’d made the full conversion to the Paladin genome, having pure blue skin in addition to other minor internal alterations.
The trailblazer Paul had given Thrawn a unique honor of the binary coloration in addition to a peculiarity in his eyes. They now glowed red, like a Protovic’s, but when asked why Paul has simply said nostalgia. In later years Thrawn and his superior intellect succeeded in digging through Human records and identifying his fictitious namesake who also had red glowing eyes and whose homeworld was Csilla.
One might have saw those references as an insult, but Thrawn knew it was just the opposite. To be named for one of the legends that the trailblazers idolized was an enormous honor, especially amongst the Li’vorkrachnika, for Thrawn hadn’t even been given a name in that civilization. None of the ‘lizards,’ as Star Force had called them, had anything more than an identification number, for they weren’t expected to survive long enough to need one. Even masterminds like Thrawn had been bred to fulfill a specific purpose and were deemed disposable so long as their deaths benefited their civilization.
Thrawn had learned everything he needed through genetic memory, literally being born ready to lead trillions of Li’vorkrachnika into battle much like the legendary Thrawn had. Thrawn was smart, cunning, curious, but also cruel. The Li’vorkrachnika were worse, and he kept that part of the legend as a reminder as well, for it had taken centuries for Paul to instill in him the necessity of compassion and the reasoning why even the simplest of personnel were not expendable.
Years of combat experience told him otherwise, for the Li’vorkrachnika had grown a massive empire based on expendable personnel applications and had never faced a true challenge until they attacked Star Force. They had almost beaten them, but Star Force’s growth rate was so astounding that they actually surpassed the Li’vorkrachnika even as they were losing, then turned the invasion backwards against them and succeeded in conquering all of their original territory.
The Li’vorkrachnika had emigrated coreward during those losses where Star Force would not go, but Thrawn had been captured and interrogated by Paul as he fought to hurt Star Force as much as possible before he died, covering for the Templars as they ran and let trillions to perish.
But that’s how the Li’vorkrachnika lived and died, serving their civilization and the Templars who led it. Now Thrawn knew otherwise, for Paul had taught him much, even overcoming his genetic memories and tendencies. Now he was Paladin, through and through, and those that were left to die while the Templars ran were mostly destroyed, bu
t not all. Star Force, with his help, had converted many over to their side and they eventually were transformed into Paladin…but no matter how much Thrawn wanted to treat the Paladin as expendable Paul and the others wouldn’t have it, with many arguments over even the simplest application as the trailblazers gradually opened his eyes to the truth.
Now Thrawn fought as they did, preserving his troops as long as possible, but when battles turned bad and Star Force was defending locations they couldn’t abandon without leaving people to die…that was combat that Thrawn knew more about than anyone in Star Force, including the trailblazers. No one wanted to fight like that, but as the mastermind of war that he’d been bred to be he knew that one did not always have a choice in the fights they faced. And the Li’vorkrachnika, for all their flaws, knew how to turn losing situations into victories using ugly tactics.
For the longest time Paul had told Thrawn he wasn’t ready to face the V’kit’no’sat, and that his skills were better put to use out here against enemies inferior to Star Force but needing to be fought just the same. For centuries Thrawn had been fighting and helping Star Force grow its empire while the trailblazers and others fought the largest, toughest enemy ever seen. It felt wrong not to be in that fight, but over time as Thrawn had analyzed the battle records he realized Paul had been right. The Li’vorkrachnika methods were insufficient against an enemy such as the V’kit’no’sat, and only Star Force, born of V’kit’no’sat legacy, could stand toe to toe with them and survive.
So Thrawn continued his assigned missions leading segments of the Paladin while other Viceroys, which were the upgraded version of the original ‘masterminds,’ worked with Archons to grow massive numbers of combat troops on location where needed, taking a single Paladin ship to a remote world and using it a like a seed to produce armies of workers and troops with full genetic knowledge, forgoing the typical Star Force maturia phase of growth and putting Thrawn’s kin directly into field work.
That was the purpose of the Paladin, and because of it they were very useful against equal or lesser opponents. Even superior ones so long as they didn’t greatly outscale them. But the weakness in the Paladin was their lack of expertise, with individuals living for thousands of years having skills far superior to the genetic memory of Paladin just coming into existence.
That meant the Paladin were ill suited to fighting the V’kit’no’sat, which was why Thrawn was genuinely surprised at Paul’s holographic message.
“We are at a turning point,” the blue haired Human that Thrawn had the utmost respect for said calmly. “The V’kit’no’sat are finally taking us seriously and mounting a widescale assault that I believe is designed to trim away our fleets so they can assault systems without reinforcement, overwhelming them and minimizing their own losses as they sweep up hundreds of systems before attrition ends them. If they receive additional reinforcements they could push the assault to our total eradication.”
“If we are going to fight this, we must counter their numbers initially to bleed them further and reduce our own losses. I can only be in one system at a time, and this fight looks like it’s going to be very widespread. The V’kit’no’sat have a new commander, identity unknown, and he’s playing this very different than in the past. Less ego, more intelligence, and far more dangerous.”
“We have to hold the front more or less where it is, or our industrial strength will be weakened to the point of diminishing returns. I don’t like giving this order, because I know what it will mean, but we have to go all in without abandoning the far rim. You wanted a chance to fight the V’kit’no’sat, and now you have it. We have to fight sloppy, but without going to the darkside. I trust you know the difference, and now and I need your intellect and your race. All of them. Now. We have to push back against this as hard as possible and make them fear us to the point of uncertainty.”
“But be warned. They have a new weapon. A sensor that is undetectable and can locate gravity drives and artificial gravity generators. It’s how they’re finding our bases in the Devastation Zone, and with this new technology they are emboldened. They believe they know approximately how many ships we have and how many it will take to break us. I don’t believe they know about you, and it’s time to make your presence known…en mass.”
“A lot of us are going to die in the coming days, and I do not like bringing the Paladin in to join us, but we either fight this together or we risk being conquered entirely in the coming centuries. And you know well that the V’kit’no’sat do not take prisoners. I also know that you want to be here, so come and give the V’kit’no’sat reason to fear the Paladin. Use these waypoints,” Paul said, with holographic map locations popping up beneath his full body image. “The rest you can work out for yourself, old friend.”
“Old friend,” Thrawn repeated in English, a language that he had refused to learn for a long time. “You do me more honor with those two words than I deserve, but perhaps after the coming fight I will be worthy of them.”
“We will come,” he told the now static hologram. “You will not have to face their might alone. And if we should fall, you will not have to die alone. The Paladin are with you and forthcoming,” Thrawn said unnecessarily as he stood up from his meditative pose, tail spinning around behind him as he walked quickly towards the door of his private chambers and into the control center a hallway down.
“It is time,” he told the other blue scaled lizards. “The trailblazers have called for our aid, and we shall respond in full force. We go to war against the V’kit’no’sat,” he said, seeing the gleam of anticipation and danger that was still encoded into their genome. Li’vorkrachnika never wanted to run and hide, and neither did Paladin. They were ready to go even before he said the words, so he added the only bit of importance necessary before they snapped into tasks genetically mapped into their minds before birth.
“It’s time to earn our position in the empire with their blood.”
13
October 1, 4813
Karthus System (Star Force territory)
Requiem
In some 113 lightyears from the front, Requiem was a world that was not expecting to be engaged in battle, but one that had been designed specifically to fight the war when it got here. There was almost no industry on the planet save for foodstuffs and small scale replacement parts, ammunition, and other maintenance necessities.
There were no shipyards, no heavy mining, and no wall to wall cities covering the planet. Rather there were clusters of inhabitation spread out in strategic locations with long stretches of grassy plains, high mountains, and a variety of other terrain absent oceans. A few lakes were the only visible bodies of water from orbit where 2,943 Sentinel-class defense stations guarded the world that was slightly larger than Earth and the only inhabited planet in the system.
The others were small, rocky, and barren with a scattering of mining facilities and outposts used to service Requiem, but they were expendable and built as such, with the primary planet being the stick in the mud for when the V’kit’no’sat ever got this far out.
Information on Requiem was available to the public, so it was quite to the surprise of Duke Barrington when he received word that a massive V’kit’no’sat fleet had pushed past the front, bypassing the numerous systems in easy striking range, and were apparently headed for this region of space.
Barrington watched over the following days as the intelligence reports on the enemy movements brought them closer and closer to Requiem, then he got the final report from an uninhabited system with an observation post that the V’kit’no’sat had exited on a jumpline directly for the Karthus System, with the signal traveling faster than the ships and giving him approximately a 14 hour head start.
The Duke wasn’t sure if they were going to attack or try to just transition through to another location farther in, but he definitely wasn’t going to let them pass through cleanly. 14 hours wasn’t much given the size of the system, but it would be enough time to get the Wall of Pain
erected.
“Darren, looks like they’re coming here,” Krevin-11895 said via holo from across the planet where he had been training.
“You sure? They could be headed through.”
The Trunks-level Archon shook his head. “I don’t think so. They’re bypassing a lot of targets and are going to have the defender fleets on their ass before long. They’re blowing their element of surprise to push this far in, and I don’t think they’re coming here for any reason other than to hit us where we’re strong.”
“I know that’s a shitload of ships, but are they stupid? They have to know we built this system specifically to fight and be a spur in their side if they tried to push past us.”
“You’re missing the point,” the Archon said seriously. “That’s why I think they’re coming. They don’t want the weaker systems first. They already took Tarric-3 and have distraction blockades running up and down the front. They could take any of those systems but haven’t. They’re coming here for a bigger challenge, then they’ll sweep up the other systems in the aftermath.”
“Why fight us where we’re strongest? That makes no sense.”
“V’kit’no’sat ego…and if they pull it off, they’re essentially in the driver’s seat.”
“How do we stand?”
“I already ordered the Wall of Pain erected. They’re going to regret not scouting first.”
“They’ve probably accessed our information grid to some extent and know there’s nothing here to worry about on entry,” the Duke said with a smirk. “Good thing we kept it off the official records.”
“It won’t be enough. We need the Defender fleets. With at least two of them here I think we’ve got an even fight, and if we can delay them long on the ground to get more here we can maintain the system.”
“So why are they coming?”
“I don’t know. This is definitely a hammer fleet, but bringing it here is risky for them. Expect some surprises. They’re not that reckless.”
