by Aer-ki Jyr
But his fingers slid across his throat with no resistance.
The mastermind looked down at his hand, seeing that he no longer had his claws. They’d been removed, and done so with such finesse that he could see no surgical damage. He simply didn’t have them anymore.
Clever, he thought, glancing around and hoping for a weapon but seeing none and not expecting Paul to have been so careless as to leave one in here with him.
He stretched his body, testing to see if he was restricted in any way by their invisible machinations, then touched his chest, finding the device gone and his movement no longer hindered. He walked up to the cockpit, finding it empty and damaged, with the front of the ship smashed and mostly buried in the ground.
He returned to the small cargo bay, pressing his shoulder into the gap between door and wall, then used his considerable strength to pry it open a bit more, enough for him to crawl out the bottom of and onto the burnt rubble of the outside ground. His thick skin didn’t cut against the abrasion as he crawled out nude through and around several large chunks of debris that had once been lizard buildings, then he finally got out into the open and stood up, looking around to try and see where he was.
The view of the sky overhead showed the tiny specs of warships in orbit, and from the size and position of them he knew they were Star Force. He was on a world under attack, for he could hear distant sounds of weaponsfire, but what world? What system?”
Looking around he sought out something he could use to kill himself with, but then pushed that thought aside. If Paul had returned him to a world already under assault what would be the point? He would die when its defenders fell, and Star Force didn’t need subterfuge in order to take Li’vorkrachnika worlds. If they had wanted to contaminate them with a biological agent they could have done so long ago through a variety of means, and had they wanted to they would have returned him to a fully intact world and let the disease ravage them. Putting him down on a world that was already falling to their assault had no logic in it.
The mastermind walked a ways, trying to find a perch of higher ground, or in this case rubble, where he could get some better visibility. It took him more than an hour to find one, but when he finally climbed up the wall of one building…which was very difficult without claws…he was able to see for several kilometers in all directions.
Not all of the landscape was wrecked. Only select areas that he immediately knew held key structures. The rubble of a shield tower lay behind him, and the ship he had woke in had obviously been crashed into the rubble afterward. How he survived that crash he didn’t know. Maybe it was a plant and not a real crash, but Star Force didn’t hold this region yet. Damaged as it was, it was only softened up for their ground assaults yet to come. He’d seen the routine so many times, and been unable to do anything about it, that he could get a sense for just what stage of damage this city was in and about how much time it had before falling within only a few seconds of visual inspection.
The sound of weaponsfire was coming from a city to the west, and he could see occasional flashes of phasers and the Star Force plasma. None was coming from orbit, which meant that the full ground invasion was present there. Paul hadn’t put him down in a region of safety as he had planned, so what was his purpose in this?
Before he could think on that much he heard a whistle. Not a mechanical one, but one that was used by troops to identify themselves to each other.
He turned in the direction it was coming and saw several standard variant lizards creeping through the rubble in his direction. Conflicted between trying to find a way to kill himself or rejoining the others he hesitated for a moment, then seeing the warships overhead and the inevitability of the oncoming ground assault he figured he would die soon anyway and he might as well use his skills to try and take some of the enemy with him.
The mastermind whistled back and began to climb down, wondering if that was what Paul had intended. Giving him a circumstance where he would be disinclined to find a way to kill himself after the most obvious routes had been denied him. Perhaps he was true to his word about not wanting to kill prisoners and was affording him a death via battle rather than a suicide.
If that was the case then he had made a mistake, for his kin would fight more effectively with his leadership and they would succeed in destroying at least some of his precious, long-living troops…or at the very least some of their mechanized craft. If Paul’s ego was so large he thought returning him here was inconsequential then that was a philosophical contradiction for him.
He finished climbing down as the smaller lizards scrambled to get to him with most of them encircling and forming a perimeter around the most valuable asset they had on the planet. Exchanging glances with them they waited silently for him to give them orders. They did not view him as an enemy or potentially contaminated, though he couldn’t rule out that last possibility completely. He’d need a scientist variant to check him over, but any thought of killing himself was now gone.
If Paul had returned him to this world untainted, then him killing himself would be denying the Li’vorkrachnika on this planet the leadership they needed to hurt Star Force before they were all destroyed, and mistakenly weakening themselves would be a sure sign of the inferiority that he had spoken of. Was he trying to win the argument with him by putting him in this position? If he killed himself he’d be proving the Human right?
Paul’s deviousness had depth, to be sure, so he was going to work this problem from his current situation. His former captivity no longer mattered other than the bits of information he was able to glean from them.
“What world am I on?” he asked the lizards, getting some curious looks that immediately transitioned into obedience.
“Michra,” one of them said.
Michra. Then he was still in the capitol system. Paul hadn’t sent him away after all.
The mastermind looked to the sky, knowing that Paul was up there somewhere. Maybe not in the ships he could see or even around this world, but he was in the system, and the mastermind’s death was all but a certainty now knowing how many enemy ships and troops opposed him.
If this was just a courtesy, one strategist to another, he could grant the Human that.
“Take me to the closest command center,” he told the shorter lizards, who immediately started reforming around him into running lines that would bracket him all the way to his location.
He took off running with them and they matched his pace, which was slower than normal given his stagnant period imprisoned. Adjusting into a stable pace, he moved erratically around the debris as the little lizards guided him where he needed to go further away from the distant, yet all too close Star Force ground troops.
If Paul had meant to return him to the fight, then he was going to do just that and kill as many of his enemies as he could before he finally died. If that was what the Human intended or he had another motive, it no longer mattered. He was back where he belonged and, despite whatever moral victory for them to have averted him killing himself, he now had a much greater purpose that silenced the directive to destroy himself. It no longer applied in this circumstance. His death was no longer a concern.
Killing the enemy was.
10
May 2, 3222
Krachnika System (lizard capitol/homeworld)
Michra
The mastermind picked his way over a half destroyed command center, utilizing a few still active display screens because he knew that Star Force had considered this area already destroyed and moved their orbital bombardment further on, meaning it would be safe for him to operate out of for a while until the ground troops got here, and they were a far distance off.
There seemed to be enough equipment still working, but he wanted more and quickly ordered his engineering variants to get to work making repairs and doing what adaptive field modifications were necessary to give him the command and control capability that he needed. They were the smallest Li’vorkrachnika variant, barely 2/3rds the mass o
f a standard variant, and not produced en mass. Standard variants could handle construction well enough, but the engineers were designed to troubleshoot new technology, weapon designs, or in a case such as this, rework existing equipment and potentially build new items or adaptations on the fly.
With so much rigidity in the Li’vorkrachnika to give them structure and clarity, they needed an addition to increase their adaptability in unforeseeable situations. Standard variants could adapt their existing weapons and tactics to use them in different ways to combat an enemy or overcome a problem, but designing new things was beyond them, hence the engineering variants had been created.
These few went to work with a lot of standard variants helping them to get the broken command center’s functionality increased as the mastermind studied what displays he had available. As predicted, the battles were going poorly and they were unable to inflict losses of personnel on the enemy…but they were causing them a lot of equipment losses and injuries. With their body armor it was very hard to kill them though, and their troops were trained to prioritize saving their wounded rather than pressing advantages against their opponents.
Was that because of illogical concern for their wellbeing or a practical matter? The Human leader Paul had said it was both. That keeping their people alive meant they could grow stronger over the course of years, and the mastermind couldn’t argue the results. The stronger Humans scared him, but he knew their weaker ones were not so impressive. The ones they called Archons marked their skill level with their color of armor, making it easy for him to target them…in theory. The ones they called Commandos and Knights were more difficult to measure, for their armor all the looked the same, but the Archon veterans made for bold targets, and unfortunately that wasn’t resulting in their deaths.
In fact he assumed part of the color scheme was to draw fire towards them and away from weaker troops that would fall more easily…but potentially eliminating those more powerful individuals was too important an opportunity to usually pass up.
The non-Humans were a different matter. Some were weak, some strong, but they all fought in the same manner to try and preserve themselves and their kin. He could use that against them, and had on numerous occasions, but their relative numbers and tech level were so much greater than his here that the best he could do is slow them down and cause them as much frustration as he could as they slowly took this planet from him.
Win or lose, the Li’vorkrachnika always fought. Paul had confirmed this more so than the mastermind’s own information, citing that no lizard had ever surrendered. The Human saw that as ‘limited thinking,’ but the mastermind knew it to be the solid rock upon which their race was based. They fought as one, without exception, and would not yield.
But as the engineers worked he found himself staring at them as his thoughts wandered. They too were known for their thinking skills, and while he did not doubt their loyalty he wondered if they had the genetic restrictions that the Humans had claimed existed.
Checking current situations again and finding them more or less stable in the immediate area, he sent several runners to issue commands that could not be traced nor interfered with by battle damage. At present he only had a tenuous link to his troops in this area, let alone across the third of the planet he still controlled, but maintaining the secrecy of his location was paramount, else he’d find a round of orbital bombardment dropped on his head.
Or would he? Would Paul spare him again if he discovered his location?
The mastermind huffed as he considered the absurdity of that. He has seen no hesitation from the invading army or navy since his return to the planet, and if they could find his command center, or even just him, they’d take him out in order to facilitate the rest of their invasion with less resistance.
But then why had he been returned in the first place?
More than two days later his couriers returned with additional variants in tow. They were librarians and scientists, to which he assigned several tasks, the first of which was for the librarians to brief him on whatever they knew of these genetic restrictions. They were the keepers of knowledge within the Li’vorkrachnika, and if they didn’t know something themselves they would know where to go to find that information.
With adequate computer links established to other parts of the planet they got to work after informing him of no personal knowledge of such things. With them dispersed through his still rubble strewn and increasingly improvised command center, he instructed the scientists to take tissue samples from the engineers, the standard variants, and his own and compare them to the records on file that the librarians would provide and to look for discrepancies.
They took to their tasks without question, leaving him to continue his never ending oversight operations of every Li’vorkrachnika left on this planet, for he was the only mastermind remaining here. There were others on the capitol and one other world that had yet to be killed, but they had their own tasks to attend to and did not communicate with each other unless there was a matter of mutual concern, and never on a direct link in a combat situation where the enemy might trace the transmission to both ends.
Normally there wouldn’t even be two masterminds in the same star system, but this was the capitol and he’d gotten used to the presence of others here, though they never strayed beyond their own dominions that were laid down by the templars. As for the sovereigns, he knew of their existence by rumor only, for all his communication came from templars, who in turn wouldn’t deal with the lesser Li’vorkrachnika unless absolutely necessary. The masterminds were the go betweens, taking care of strategic tasks and insuring that others took care of theirs while the templars attended to foresight and the interconnection of their vast empire.
One couldn’t micromanage across the lightyears, so masterminds would often be placed to oversee a star system, or perhaps managed a small region, but they did not know what was happening elsewhere. The templars did, and that task division had well served their race as they spread out and conquered all in their path.
At least until these Humans had found a way to resist them. And from what Paul had told him and he had verified by asking, there were other small races out there that had defied the Li’vorkrachnika and still lived within their borders. Had he not sought out that knowledge he never would have known, and it made him wonder what else was going on.
Not in a questioning of the templars, but in him having an accurate assessment of the Li’vorkrachnika’s true strength and position in the galaxy. Misjudgement based on inaccurate or incomplete data could be fatal, so he had been digging into their records for a while now to try and confirm or deny things that Paul had told him, but it hadn’t occurred to him until now to check on the assertion that there were controlling genetics placed in all of them.
He knew the standard variants were very regimented, constructed that way to ensure they followed orders and made the most out of their brief lifespans. Other weak races learned by experience rather than genetic memories, and often had to develop for many years after birth. The Li’vorkrachnika did not have that weakness, but if there were constrictions implanted along with those memories in more than just the standard variants it could have a negative side effect.
His own mind was designed to consider all options, to be able to outthink any opponent, and the engineers were likewise so designed, only their opponent was the physical structure of machines and physics itself. If they had restricted thought he needed to know, because he might need to nudge them in some different directions if they truly did have blind spots.
But then that begged the question of whether or not he did. If he had a blind spot would he even notice it?
The Human had said he could, given enough time to think, and the mastermind had never been able to forget that brief snippet of conversation. He hadn’t dwelled on it, but if it wasn’t true he should be able to discover that for a fact and put this matter to rest. If it was true, then he would have to make strategic adjustments to not let the H
umans take advantage of such a blind spot.
The information on the genetics came back to him first, though they’d had to access one of the few remaining deposits of information on the planet. Typically those were destroyed by the librarians themselves before an invading assault force could get to them, but there was still a good chunk of this planet that was untouched. The trick was getting a connecting subsurface comm line to those databases. A lot of the orbital bombardment had punched into the substructure across the planet with every anti-orbital battery having been taken out, but the engineers always found ways to make reconnects through other systems and the mastermind knew that when comms went down they wouldn’t stay down for long.
But the protected databases had to deal with potential intrusions from Star Force, who knew their own computer systems very well, no doubt from analyzing captured equipment. Getting past that hurdle had almost required a physical runner, but the librarians on the other end eventually were able to make positive identification of their peers and allowed the data link.
According to the genetic database, which was massive, there were restrictions in place on the minds of the standard variants and heavily so. The engineers were also showing some, but far less. It took some time for the scientist variants to explain several aspects of it to him, but it seemed that with regards to the engineers their constrictions were limited to loyalty programming. That made sense, given the wide range of responsibilities they had and the abundant opportunity for sabotage if they so desired.
And with regards to his own genetics there were none. He’d suspected as much, but why had the Human told him so if it wasn’t true? He could have lied, obviously, but so far ever bit of information given to him from Paul had checked out and Star Force’s methods centered on fixing the truth rather than blurring it.
