Gauntlet Wars: House Phoenix (Star Force Gauntlet Wars Book 3), page 10
And it was here that the enemy was not prepared to fight. Not as much as they were going to give them. Already the Caretakers were producing a wide array of items, some already in their databanks, some new ones Paul-024 had designed for the Reignor, particularly warships that did not require Essence, or those that could be upgraded with it, but not require it. Some had crews, some were controlled remotely. Jiynalen had been given an order of battle to implement in raising this army, and it did include a navy beyond the Olopars and other old designs to face only the biological Hadarak. Fighting the Asferja was going to require a different type of ship, different weapons. Even the smallest alteration, when replicated millions of times over across all the Temples that were soon to be manufacturing the materials, could escalate into dramatically different results.
His Reignor had told him Paul was a genius and to trust in the designs. Jiynalen’s job wasn’t to tinker with them. He was to train the Vargemma to use them, including the giant battle suits called ‘mechs.’
It was a task that the old Neofan was embracing with newfound joy. He had not known joy since being exiled. It was such a long, long time ago…yet his memories and skills were still there, waiting in dormancy to be reactivated, and some things now felt like they had occurred mere days ago.
It was odd, for his exile had been washed away with the promise of battle. As if all that time he too had been dormant and waiting to reassert himself. The exile had saved him from the Mev. Now it was time to return to the battlefield and face the foe he had been unwittingly serving long ago.
His anger at that was not old, but still fresh and raw. This was not just a war for survival, but a war for vengeance. He had been used as a toy…never again. And this young new Reignor had not made the mistake of asserting himself in an egotistical way. He acknowledged Jiynalen’s experience and skill, and had simply given him his assignment and thrown him into it. No coddling, no micromanagement. He had simply told him to go to war, and regardless of what the outcome would be, to fight with honor.
Better to die an honorable death than achieve victory by becoming the enemy.
That quote was a new one for him, but he understood it intimately, and not just because of the partial graft. It was something he had always known outside of words, which was why many of his past missions had bothered him. But now it was crystal clear in his mind, and he’d never accept a dishonorable mission again.
And he didn’t think Vikarathe would ever give him one. The Neofan was a warrior himself, and only elevated to Reignor status because everyone else had died. The last ruling House was Mutavi, and Vikarathe didn’t try to restart it. Instead forging a new one from all the scraps.
Jiynalen thought that appropriate. The past was not going to save them now. They had to build a new future with their new ally, but their past had left them the building blocks to do it, and right now across the Temple, but underground, on the surface, and in space the Caretakers were busily constructing not only new ships and vehicles, but new factories and new shipyards. It would take time, but soon this Temple would be able to produce more equipment than it ever could have in the past, and pulling on its reserves of raw materials carefully hidden in the ground over millions of years, they would forge the army Jiynalen needed in short order.
Replacement materials would also need to be gathered, and the Caretakers were already ordered to begin searching the galaxy to increase their collection efforts, but for the near future everything he needed was here. He just needed more of them, which was why he would be traveling to 6 other Temples in total to raise the army that would be under his command. He would have to train them first, up to his satisfaction. He knew not to take ill-trained servants into combat. It would be a disaster, so he would have to show some patience.
But after millions of years in exile, patience was something he’d reluctantly learned.
He would not move too soon, but when he did, these Asferja would not know what had hit them…and the worlds where they were growing new troops would cease to do so, cutting off their flow to the Milky Way and to their fleets carving out even more breeding grounds in Andromeda.
For a warrior like Jiynalen, this is what he lived for, and the stakes had never been higher.
His exile no longer mattered. He was where he was meant to be, and there was much work to be done before vengeance could be exacted.
But it was coming. And coming soon.
9
EG29
September 29, 158438
ANDROMEDA GALAXY
Kli’nok System
Main Asteroid Belt
It had taken a while for Paul’s expedition ship to get through the Temple Network near to the destination of the first nightcrawler, then they had to bounce their way through normal gravity jump travel from star to star until they arrived in what was known as the Kli’nok system…which was a major nexus of traffic in the Andromeda galaxy.
Why a nightcrawler would be here seemed odd until you looked at the starmap and saw that this system wasn’t centered on a star, but a black hole. The traffic used it as a springboard to travel between four others that were in most people’s jump range, but the system also had 28 different asteroid belts around it, some of which were slowly being eaten up, but most were very far away.
The main belt was huge and situated far away from the jumping ships, though none could jump through the area of the asteroids and be sure they’d make it out alive, thus there were dead zones that limited traffic lanes, but the nearby black holes happened to not be in the ecliptic plane that the asteroids were…though with some erratic orbits, every now and then there would be a story reported about a ship being destroyed during a jump and logged by the local Chi’mas surveillance stations that sought to give ‘weather’ updates on the path of the rogue asteroids. Still, sometimes it wasn’t enough, and if your avoidance programming and sensors weren’t up to snuff, you’d run into something large enough to destroy you in the blink of an eye.
Star Force had shields capable of running into small asteroids and still surviving at those speeds, and sensors with enough range to pick up the bigger ones ahead of them and slightly alter their path to avoid them. Lesser civilizations didn’t always have that luxury, and apparently they still wanted to use the convenience of the speeds this black hole afforded them. The cost was the occasional lost ship.
That was a tradeoff the Empire never would have made, but apparently the locals did.
So while there was a huge traffic flow in and near the black hole, the main asteroid belt was far away and quiet, long ago plundered for any obvious material wealth, with an array of abandoned mining stations on now hollow asteroids. But most of it was just floating rocks, big, small, and ample amounts of dust that made some sections of it appear as a feint nebula.
And in all of that, one of the nightcrawlers was hiding.
Paul brought their ship, the aptly named Easter Basket, into the asteroid field piloting it himself from a standing station. He didn’t use his hands or make any movements as he stared out at the main holographic display, for his mind was linked to the ship remotely, and the telepathic connection provided him enough data transfer for this task, else he’d have had to connect via his armor or physical contact with the command nexus he now stood within.
While the ship could have plowed through the smaller asteroids, Paul didn’t want to make a ruckus as he approached the nightcrawler’s position tucked up against one of the larger chunks that was the size of a small moon but jagged and looking like it had been broken out of a much larger planetoid long, long ago. Sensors couldn’t see the nightcrawler, but Paul’s tracking dot said it was there, and he shifted the Easter Basket into low emission mode, for bright lights of any frequency were harmful to its exterior in most cases, which was why you wouldn’t find them hanging around stars. Only in dark places where they could feed off of natural resources floating in space, which typically meant nebulas since their primary food source…the Progarren civilization…was no longer around to supply them.
Star Force had inherited their data on the nightcrawlers, including what they ate, and Saul had made sure to bring along a huge supply in the ship for multiple rescuees and a long journey to find them and bring them back ‘home,’ though since the Progarren had been destroyed, home was little more than a camaraderie with similar lightside badasses…at least that’s how it had worked when the first and only other nightcrawler the Empire had found responded to Amir-060, who’d made the first telepathic contact with it.
As they got close Saul began reaching out to it, and like a cannon going off a huge telepathic presence appeared behind the big rock…but not a happy one. It was as if Saul had just woken up a big, angry, grumpy bear that had been hibernating, and the response he could sense…the response everyone could sense…was not a pleasant one.
“Is this something you’ve…” Paul began.
“No,” Jinni answered as Saul continued to try and start a mental dialog with it. “I think this one is broken,” she said with a bit of sarcastic humor that was probably all too accurate.
“What do you expect after all these years?” Saul said as he was mostly distracted with his now heavy-laden interactions that everyone could feel the telepathic pressure from, despite it being directed at a single individual and not widespread.
“Has it scanned you?” Paul asked.
“No. It’s very cranky…almost…almost like it’s broken to a point of no return. I’ve never felt this in any of the Uriti.”
Saul immediately felt a battlemeld prompt from Paul and accepted it, with both their minds now able to view each other’s thoughts and work together. Paul extended one to Jinni as well, and soon it became a three-way meld as they tried to help Saul work through this.
The other Archons chipped in with some suggestions, but mostly stayed out of the way and the meld as Paul was still steering the ship around the large asteroid chunk and avoiding the smaller ones. Eventually they got into sight of the nightcrawler…and saw that there was a huge chunk of it missing as well.
“Oh shit,” Jinni said, seeing the damage. “What the hell did that?”
Paul brought the ship to a stop a respectful distance away, but the presence of others was throwing the nightcrawler into a fit. It would have tried to run if it wasn’t mentally predisposed to just hold one spot and not go anywhere…a typical defense mechanism that Humans and most other races had as default when they didn’t know what to do. The other one was to keep moving and never stop until you figured something out, which was usually referred to as ‘panic,’ but was a bit more complicated than that.
“It’s in bad physical shape,” Saul said aloud as well as in his mind. “Malnutrition in addition to the damaged areas. This is not what I expected.”
Paul kept the ship stable as he turned his attention inward, and both Saul and Jinni were able to see something they never had before as he kept the battlemeld active. Paul began to glow in the Saiolum…which was almost non-existent out here…and increase his own production of it. He then pulled what was coming off the crew and a little from the nightcrawler…which was both Saiolum and Darklight…and pooled it around him for a moment, altering its matrix, then sending it out in a gentle stream towards the nightcrawler as he simultaneously boosted his own telepathic ability using Essence to address it with a much larger ‘presence’ than Saul had been.
Hear me, lost one, Paul said mentally with Saul and Jinni using their experience with the Uriti to help him translate into concepts that the heidoor could understand. I have come to reclaim you and bring you back to your kin. Your former masters are gone, destroyed, but we have arisen in their place to carry on their legacy, he said, sending a flood of images, feelings, and memories that had been the calling card for when Amir had made contact with the first nightcrawler long ago.
It had responded to his ‘lightside badassery’ that was apparently similar to the way the Progarren were, though he had lacked a tail. That hadn’t mattered to the nightcrawler, and it had been eager to find someone again after all this time.
However, this one responded in a totally different manner.
It asked Paul to kill it.
It had accepted him as the same as the Progarren, and the brief flash of recognition was drowned out by its despair. It had lost the will to live, and while it wouldn’t allow itself to starve to death amongst the asteroids that it could eat, it had nowhere to go, nothing to do. It had been abandoned millions of years ago and left to die or survive on its own merits when the food at their deep bases out in the dark between galaxies ran out. They had stayed there as ordered as long as they could, then they had to return, violating their orders, or they would have starved to death.
They found the Progarren gone, their previous bases destroyed or a few that remained were abandoned. They’d had to find food on their own to eat, and the pack that this one had been surviving with…a total of 16 of them…had been hunted by numerous entities with light weapons that the nightcrawlers had no defense against. The enemies were in the dark places beyond the Rims, they were in the galaxies themselves, and the nightcrawlers could not go to the Galactic Cores…there was too much destructive energy there.
That left the only source of food amongst the outer stars, in the dark places where the sunlight could not hurt them. And in those places there were hunters. Spacefaring creatures like them for the most part, that sought to kill and eat them.
This one had been the last to survive, for they had no way to defend themselves against starlight creatures. They had only been designed to fight against darklight if necessary, so they were totally helpless except that they did not have to travel via gravity jumps, and could go places others could not. Still, they had been caught, over and over, until this one had been the last survivor.
The damage to it had not been done to it by a fellow heidoor, but rather a mining ship here that had mistook it for an asteroid in a belt closer to the black hole The tunneling laser had caused a massive explosion that had ripped out a chunk of the nightcrawler’s body, with it fleeing instantly and never having gone back to that belt. It had limped out here and remained, nibbling on the rock and dust and just hiding.
And in all that time and torment, it had lost the will to live. Even accepting Paul as its new master, just like the other one had, it was not interested in healing and serving again, or even in seeing another nightcrawler. It simply wanted the agony to end.
The anger in Paul rose immediately, and he didn’t hide it from the nightcrawler. The anger wasn’t directed at it, but at the universe that had done this to it…and the T’fen who had had the Progarren killed, which resulted in these nightcrawlers being abandoned as they were ordered to run to the one place the T’fen’s servants could not go.
He was also angry that the Progarren hadn’t left some of their people behind to care for them. They probably had not expected to be wiped out entirely, and the orders they’d given for the nightcrawlers to wait for them had been well intended, but ultimately ill-advised, for no one had ever returned to rescind them or give them new instructions about how to survive or where to go or anything.
They’d simply been abandoned.
Drawing on Saul to translate as needed, for he had far more experience with heidoor minds, Paul summoned up as much Essence as he could to amp up his telepathy. He cut off the Saiolum current, which apparently wasn’t having much, if any effect, on the huge nightcrawler, either due to its dual nature or the fact that Paul simply had too little Saiolum to work with.
You will not die today, he commanded. I have seen this before in many others. Your vision is dark and numb. You see no hope, only suffering, and you want it to end. It is an illusion. There is a pathway to recovery, but you cannot find it. You cannot see. And your suffering blinds you to the fact that it is even possible. You forget what it was to be healthy, vibrant, and thriving. I do not. I will see for you. I will guide you back. It will not be quickly, for you have taken massive damage of body and mind. But you will soon see your kin again, for we are on a mission to rescue the other survivors. That will change quickly, but your damage will not. It was slowly gained, and it will be slowly healed. I know how to heal it. All you need to do is survive a little longer. We will take care of you now, and as things have been getting worse and worse, they will begin to get better and better and you will gradually crawl out of this deep pit you have been forced into, Paul said, with Saul translating ‘pit’ in stellar terms of a massive nebula so deep it had become lost in it.
Other alterations like that were needed, for the nightcrawlers lived in space and not on planets. As such, their mental frameworks were different, and Saul had a great deal more experience speaking in that manner, though he could tell through the battlemeld that neither him nor Jinni could say they had ever fully managed to ‘translate’ a language. All the heidoor were still a bit of a mystery in the way their massive minds worked, but they knew enough to establish a bridge between them, and Paul was drawing heavily on their experience now to edit his ‘words’ into something more intelligible for the nightcrawler.
NO HOPE LEFT. END ME NOW.
Paul didn’t need the others to translate that. The feelings and emotions the nightcrawler had just sent painted a perfect picture in his mind that he could easily translate into words.
Let me show you what has happened to you, Paul said, drawing heavily on Saul and Jinni to translate the War Within principles and the 10 rings, which were based on an island that the Wranglers immediately reconstructed into the depths of a star…which wasn’t great, because a nightcrawler had never been in a star, nor could be, but they worked constantly to refine what Paul was able to explain into useable metaphors and just let the trailblazer speak it as if he was speaking to another Human that was walking around on planets the same as him.
