by Aer-ki Jyr
“A history for us to review would be helpful.”
The middle KoQ spread his hands wide in an accepting gesture. “Then that is what you shall have. Time is of great importance, but haste can be equally as destructive as hesitancy. I apologize for the altercation here and our lack of etiquette. We will provide you with sufficient data to appraise us and we will leave you to deliberate how you wish to proceed. Once we transmit the data we will wait until you are ready to further discuss matters. Your empire is far more powerful than we estimated and we do not wish to make unnecessary enemies. Had we known we would have taken a less direct approach. I trust in your wisdom in this matter, and bid you farewell for now if you would be willing to lower the barriers and allow us to depart.”
Davis sensed this was as much a test as anything else, so he quietly lowered the normally invisible barriers via a helmet command. The Knights of Quenar nodded respectfully and turned away, obviously able to see the shields go down via some unidentified manner…and that too was a bit of communication between the two parties.
The Archons stayed put until the KoQ had left through the airlock, then Davis tapped Jason on the chest twice and left.
Paul immediately felt a battlemeld prompt from Jason and accepted it, then with their combined senses scanned every inch of Davis’s armor as he departed as well as the chamber and the other occupants while technological sensors built into the walls did the same. In the end nothing was found having been left behind, but that wasn’t proof enough given how different this new race and their technology operated.
Eventually Paul and Jason found their way back to the observation deck absent their armor where Davis was already involved in an animated discussion with Riley and Nefron, both whom were transmitting via holo from the Zeus.
“No, they knew,” Riley insisted. “And I highly doubt they were scared off. They might have been spooked a bit by our psionics, but they didn’t act like they were at a disadvantage.”
“I agree,” Paul said as the pair entered the room. “They didn’t expect us, but they weren’t exactly overawed.”
“Nefron,” Davis urged.
“As I was saying,” the Chixzon reiterated, looking at Paul and Jason, “these Knights of Quenar are considerably different from the Traelix and not located in the same region. Genetic samples obtained from the air filters confirm this. I believe they are descended from Traelix, but there has been significant reworking of their genetic code since the war. At the time the Chixzon fought them they were traditional quadrupeds. This new configuration is odd, but biomechanically offers several advantages. I believe they have been upgrading themselves through deliberate alteration during the time when the Chixzon were waiting out the galactic ravages. It is precisely this type of enemy the Chixzon wanted to avoid, and the time spent stagnant locked in genetic code has allowed these Knights to advance greatly.”
“Is that good or bad for us?” Jason asked.
“Bad for the Chixzon, unknown for us.”
“Still think they want to talk to you?”
“Yes. Then perhaps kill me afterwards.”
“Which is why we are never going to allow them onto the same ship with you,” Davis said, laying down the first of many ground rules to come.
“I think we need to get you out of here,” Paul said in warning, referencing the Director.
“Agreed,” Riley echoed.
Davis held up a finger. “Not just yet, but long term I think you are right. Nefron seems to be their primary angle, but my being here might worsen matters eventually with regards to the Knights of Quenar or anyone else looking to hurt Star Force. Right now, though, I’m needed to deal with this mess. If we can get it stabilized I’ll slip away back to Earth so if this system blows up, metaphorically speaking, I won’t go down with it and will be able to rally the necessary forces to avenge you,” he said with a touch of sarcasm.
“We need to get a handle on their abilities,” Paul said, trying to get his head wrapped around this. “With the V’kit’no’sat we know their playbook so we’re not afraid of them, same with the Chixzon, but these guys are a blank slate for us and that causes a lot more problems by our simply not knowing what they’re capable of.”
“How did they pick me up?” Davis asked.
“Not with Lachka or any other energy I can detect,” Paul admitted. “But I am pretty sure that whatever it was required them to emit it from their hands or arms. When physically misaligned the effect failed, so I don’t think it’s mentally generated.”
“Some sort of tractor beam,” Nefron suggested. “Possibly biological, but I’m almost certain that shield is technological. None of you made physical contact with them, correct?”
“No,” Jason confirmed.
“Then we do not even know if their appearance is accurate. They could have been wearing full body armor underneath a mimic field to give the appearance that they were unarmed.”
“If it was a mimic field then it was a skintight one,” Paul commented, narrowing down the possibilities. “The mist corresponded to the dimensions that we observed.”
“But they were wearing loose clothing,” Riley added. “Still an opportunity for hidden gadgets underneath.”
“Or within,” Davis wondered. “Cleverly concealed cyborgs?”
“Possible,” Nefron considered. “Their minds were blank. Does that mean you had access to them and they were empty or that there was no presence to locate?”
“The latter,” Jason confirmed.
“Robots?” Paul asked.
“I don’t think so,” Nefron said, “but I can’t rule it out. They did have some genetic material at least.”
“Though that could be camouflage as well,” Riley noted.
“Whatever their abilities are, they are invisible to Pefbar, Rentar has no effect, and they can pass through our shields. I didn’t try bioshields at the time, but right now we need to figure out how they’re doing this.”
“Scans of the room detected nothing,” Davis said, having confirmed as much as soon as he got back to a terminal.
“We’re in a bit over our head here,” Riley said regretfully.
“Which means our first order of business is to catch our breath and start learning,” Davis said as calmly as possible. “If they want to negotiate I can handle that. The rest of you work on learning what you can and implement as many security procedures as necessary on the Zeus to keep them from sneaking onboard.
“Already working on that,” Riley assured them. “This ship is going to become the Alamo so long as Nefron is onboard.”
“That didn’t really end well,” Paul reminded him.
“But they did do a lot of damage before they were taken out, and that’s what they’re going to have to do to get to Nefron.”
“You follow up on that obsessively,” Davis ordered. “Paul, Jason…short of picking a fight with them, work on the psionic and naval angles for any tidbits of information you can gather. I don’t know how long it will take them to assemble and transmit their historical records but…what?”
Paul and Jason were both smirking, but waved it off. “You made a joke without trying to,” Paul told him. “Go on.”
“What did I say?”
“Historical records.”
Davis thought it through, with no bells ringing. “And?”
“Old movie.”
“Send it to me later,” Davis said, curious to see what was so hilarious. “In the meantime we play as nice as we can and stall. There might be a beneficial arrangement to be hammered out with regards to the security they offered. I’m not accepting that or anything else on a whim, but with their cloaking technology no one would ever know how many of them were here or not. That could be an invaluable deterrent against interlopers if word got around.”
“Or are they just playing nice up until they get an in to Nefron and try to either take control of the Uriti,” Riley warned, “or to destroy them.”
“They should be able to do that if t
hey’re half as advanced as they seem,” Paul pointed out. “I think we could, if we really gave it our all, and I’m not talking about using Nefron’s cheat. If they were really insistent about their Oath, whatever it actually is, they’d be killing the Uriti one by one in order to keep them from falling into the wrong hands. The fact that they watched this one while The Nine fought with it indefinitely feels odd to me.”
“Maybe they are as understaffed as they suggested,” Jason floated.
“And maybe they’re being honest,” Davis finished. “We have too many questions and too little data to work off of. So long as nothing is blowing up yet, let’s see if we can’t scrounge up some data or at least confirmations of our own while I ask a few direct questions and see if they’ll give us some freebees.”
9
January 23, 3258
Alamo System
Inner Zone
Davis sat in his quarters onboard the Sanguine Blade, sunk deep into a lounge chair as he stared aching eyes at a datapad trying to get a little bit more reading in before he went to bed. Per his request, the Knights of Quenar had supplied him with historical records. They were very shallow on detail, barely summaries of events, but there were over 6 million years’ worth of records and Davis was having trouble getting through it all. He’d already spent a couple weeks on it and was barely a third of the way through, but he was starting to understand these Knights a bit better.
The records dated back to before their founding, detailing the war against the Uriti from yet another perspective, as well as giving insight into the chaos and barbarism that occurred afterwards in the power vacuum. Those very dark times were what had initially forged the Knights of Quenar and part of their Oath was to never forget lest they allow such unbearable events to occur again. They felt, and rightly so, that what had happened to the galaxy in the aftermath of the Chixzon’s defeat was worse than anything their enemy had done. That was saying a lot, but seeing the pillars of galactic stability go down by the hands of those that had helped hold them up during the war was bound to make anyone start questioning reality.
The Traelix had lost contact with the other prime members of the Ancients after the war, but the KoQ had sought out their remains much later and were able to piece together the varying means of their demise. A few had survived, but none intact. All were weakened or destroyed to the point that the galactic landscape essentially lay barren as thousands of scavengers tore over it trying to gobble up what scraps remained, and then fought each other over those scraps.
Anything that shown the light of civilization was hit, as if there was a mob mentality that was targeting stability and order. Destruction was the appetite of the lesser races that backstabbed the greater ones, and after time passed there were so few building that the destroyers eventually bled themselves dry and the ruins of the galaxy finally knew a sickly peace as the barbarism was confined to local areas and a few bastions of sanity were allowed to survive through anonymity.
Davis could appreciate that, for it was such anonymity that had allowed Earth to survive to this day, but the KoQ hadn’t been one of them. While they did build, it was in the form of a roaming fleet that could not be targeted by the scavengers. Their resources were low, but they preserved and managed them wisely to set themselves up with a mobile base from which to begin striking back at those who had all but destroyed the Traelix in conjunction with the main spur of their civilization. Once the major fighting was over they split, continuing to seek vengeance where the other Traelix did not.
One group, the larger of the two, sought seclusion in order to begin rebuilding in the smallest of ways, hoping to create a new life for themselves and accepting the reality that their great civilization was gone and that they would have to become something else in order to survive.
The KoQ were the smaller group that did not let go the past, but likewise transformed into an elite unit that would never forget their heritage while at the same time not trying to rebuild it. They were the last of the true Traelix, and they would remain true, carrying out their Oaths and insuring that, among many things, the Uriti would not be released or threatened for release in order to leverage others.
Over the millennia that followed they fought one battle after another, usually small, precise strikes, assassinations when need. The killing aside, they essentially became Batman in that they were a planetless force that could not be pinned down that came out of nowhere to strike the unscrupulous and created more stability through sheer intimidation than they did through actual combat.
There was honor in that, but not in some of their chosen methods…and the fact that they didn’t even hide them away in their records showed that their primary motive was in accomplishing the mission rather than a sense of right and wrong. Maybe that was something that originated from their race or was a side effect of the cataclysm that befell them post-war, but it was twisting what otherwise seemed to be an honorable group into savages when the situation merited it.
Then again, Davis had only got through a third of the records, so maybe the more recent ones showed a change in behavior. Right now he was just beginning to get to the part about them finding the need to augment themselves in order to balance the odds when in engagements where they were vastly outnumbered. Their population was small and they did not reproduce fast, though Davis thought that was more out of cultural bias than biology.
The KoQ housed their non-Knights in various facilities, some of which provided industrial support while others were in training to earn their status as Knights. Davis got the sense that there was a stigma associated with the non-Knights and for that reason that part of their pocket civilization was not developed further. After 6 million years they could have regrown to the size of their previous Traelix civilization but they hadn’t, rather focusing on advancement rather than repopulation.
And it seemed that the other surviving Traelix had so abandoned their past that they were now nothing more than a shadow of their former selves, fitting in with the other races of the galaxy and not possessing the technological or cultural heritage that the KoQ carried on…though heavily modified as the Knights pushed to make improvements and changes that ultimately led to the fulfillment of Oaths that seemed to have no end in sight.
There was a knock on his door, with Davis reaching out his limited telepathy to discover who was on the other side. He telekinetically flicked the open button and the narrow door slide aside to let Paul enter.
Davis sighed and tossed the datapad onto a side table. “I could say they swamped us with data, but in truth there’s very little here other than an overview. Please tell me you’ve got something.”
Paul pulled the chair from Davis’s comm station over to him and sat down on it in the reverse position, lounging his arms on the backrest. “I’ve been talking with one of them, remotely, concerning their naval abilities with regards to protecting the Preserve. They were considerate but careful not to give too much away, but I’ve got a nagging suspicion that they don’t fight much.”
Davis raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“I don’t think those are warships. I think they’re mobile field bases.”
“All of them?”
“They can fight if needed, and I’d guess they’re heavily armed. I did get out of them that they do have capture weaponry so it wouldn’t be necessary to kill everyone that came into the Preserve without a ticket, but the way this one talked was more like, and I hate to misuse the term here, but that they operated more like Jedi.”
“I can vouch for the Force choke part.”
Paul frowned. “Did they touch your body or your armor?”
“Actually,” he said, trying to remember, “I think it was my armor, but it got past my shields.”
“Could be intentional or a limitation,” Paul speculated, but moved on. “Their ships are powerful and when grouped together like this can really hurt you, but I think they’re used more for intimation and carrying around their Knight teams. More transports than anythin
g. I think most of their operations are infantry, with a good portion of them being diplomatic. They’ll reason first, apply pressure second, and fight navally last. I don’t think they’re used to having to go to that third option, and I don’t think they’re set up to replace losses. Have you found a size for their operations in all of that?”
“Nothing specific. I figured you had already gone through it, Sav and all.”
“I skimmed, but didn’t find anything too useful. Most of it is boring as hell.”
“I’ve got a lot left to go through, but I think I’m starting to get a feel for them. They’re used to getting their way and being the intelligent one amongst a galaxy of trolls, so if you consider that with regards to their meeting with us what does that tell you?”
“They don’t like wasting time.”
“I picked up on that too in conjunction with the ‘patience’ suggestion. It’s like they know the proper course of action and will allow us some measure of time to come to that conclusion. If we don’t they force the issue. Standard protocol, and not too dissimilar to the way you operate at times.”
“You don’t get out much then,” Paul lightly reprimanded him. “I got the vibe that it was a ‘do as you’re told or suffer the consequences’ theme rather than a ‘you can’t touch this’ one.”
“Is that what you use?”
“It varies, but I do agree that at least the big one was impatient…until we showed that we weren’t pushovers.”
“I think that altered events here considerably, and not just for diplomacy sake. They may be afraid of what you can do because they don’t understand it either, and even if they’re confident of this situation we have an empire that could hold similar skills. I think they’re treading carefully until they get a better grasp of who they’re dealing with.”
