Star Force: Nexus (SF57) (6 page)

“The lizards will not give them that, they will be
patient and grow until the Nexus cannot defeat them without contributing their
full might…and at that time it might not even matter. The lizards might not be
able to defeat them, but in turn they will not be able to defeat the lizards.
They are like a
sotart
, soaking up damage that would
kill others because they can outgrow it.”

Paul frowned, searching his mind for ‘
sotart
’ and realizing the Voku didn’t know the word for
‘sponge.’

“I don’t disagree, I just don’t know where to look.”

“Ask anyway, and I will do the same.”

“Map search it is then. In the meantime let’s see if
we can’t nibble away at the
sotart
.”

Two months later a Voku courier ship arrived back at
their homeworld, delivering a personal message from Cal-com to
Yev-jat
, another
Renimar
, who
watched the brief but thorough holographic recording before traveling across
the planet to the most sacred facility the Voku possessed…that being the Elders
temple.

Yev-jat
had automatic access
to the exclusive facility, built on the location where the Elder had visited
them not so long ago. It was there that they maintained a gift of a specialized
interstellar
comm
device that allowed the Elders to
contact them from afar when they so
chose
. The Voku
were not to contact them unless absolutely necessary, but both Cal-com and
Yev-jat
agreed that now was one of those times.

The Voku stepped onto a simple pedestal, dropping to a
knee and touching the transmit button on the floor.

“Elders, we seek your counsel. The Humans you sought
us to protect are in peril. We have secured them for the moment but the enemy
they face from the Rim, which call themselves Li’vorkrachnika, pose a threat
not only to the Humans but to the Voku and all those you have tasked us to
protect. They are spreading and fight in a way that we have not seen before. We
believe if we merely defend the enemy will grow too strong and overwhelm us
with sheer resources, but we do not have the strength to strike out and
annihilate them. They will not communicate and it is believed no surrender is
possible. They will fight and spread and grow until they are eradicated, and we
do not possess the strength to undergo such a task at great distance.”

“I ask for instructions. We will do as you command,
but are at a loss as how to proceed in order to safeguard the future.”

6

December 7, 2639

Vengor
System (beyond
Delta Region)

Bobo

Nizzi
swam hard, knowing
that the enemies were behind him and the other Ollofan, and that they were
slightly slower on average. That might give him a chance to stay alive and a similar
sentiment was shared by the others around him as the little aquatic race pushed
hard to escape the infantry battle they’d just lost on the seafloor several
miles from the coast where the enemy was establishing another front.

Not that it mattered now. Most of his people were dead
and the planet all but in the hands of the Li’vorkrachnika after only 2 years
of fighting. At first the invaders had landed in a single location with only
three ships, but they were using technology superior to what the Ollofan had
and they’d been unable to remove them. After that it had all gone downhill,
with loss after loss as the enemy received reinforcements out of the void. No
ships arrived to bring them, they literally sprang out of their base with far
more than they could have possibly had on their ships.

That wasn’t the only thing that confounded the Ollofan
about the Li’vorkrachnika, and now it didn’t matter.
Nizzi
and the others had tried one last attempt to confront them head on, buying some
time at least for the last transports to load, but it had been a debacle. The number
of swimmers the enemy were grossly underestimated and soon their attack was overwhelmed,
with most of his unit dying while he and a few others swam for their lives.

Nizzi’s
little head tails
flailed in the murky waters around him as he clawed at the water with both
hands and feet, pulling himself through it while the enemy used their tails
mainly for propulsion. Their green scales also clashed with the bluish waters,
which the
Ollofan’s
skin matched, making them look
like an infection on the planet…and that wasn’t far from the truth.

The surviving Ollofan swam and swam until they reached
a tether line outpost, grabbing little handles on it and pushing the activation
buttons that sent each one individually zipping off down the line and being
dragged through the water faster than they could ever have swam.
Nizzi
held on tight and felt the water pull on him as he
accelerated through the ocean just above the sea floor, breathing a sigh of
relief, or the equivalent, given that he was using his gills right now rather
than his lungs.

He rode the tether with the others for nearly 90% of
the distance before it suddenly stopped, all power lost, leaving him and the
others stranded short of their destination. He figured the enemy had destroyed
the other end of the line, but at least it had given them a good head start.

A few aquatic chirps sounded and he swam to meet up
with the others, then as a group of 18 they swam on, following the dead line
until they finally got to one of the last of their intact cities, swimming
inside through portholes in the otherwise smooth surface and passing through
containment shields that separated air from ocean.

Nizzi
slapped damp feet down
on the floor and ran with little squishy sounds through the empty halls with
the others en route to the hangar bays, hoping there was still a ship left.
Everyone else that had been here was gone, which was partially a good sign
indicating that they’d had time to leave before getting overrun, but if they
hadn’t left any ships behind then he and the others would have to take to the open
water and try to survive in the wild and avoid attention as long as they could,
with no ultimate hope of rescue.

When he got to the hangar his chest was tight with
worry, then relief flooded through him as he saw a single ship left. It was old
and looked to have some battle damage, but he could tell from the patchwork
done that it was flyable. He and the others ran to it, with one of them
swinging by the control booth and opening the upper shield door.

The physical barrier retreated, leaving only a shield
holding back the ocean above. When
Nizzi
and his
fellow soldiers got onboard one of them with flight experience took the
controls and rose the transport up and into the water, heading for the surface
at a slow and ponderous speed, seeing distant enemy water ships on approach to
the city. They wouldn’t reach them in time to stop them, with
Nizzi
and the others watching the sensors intently as they
rose.

When they transitioned into the atmosphere they picked
up speed quickly, avoiding the pesky enemy fighters which were luckily nowhere
near their position. The old ship burned hard for space, getting there and
running for the stellar jumppoint that at the moment had no enemy ships. The
Li’vorkrachnika never had many to begin with, but the few they did have were
true terrors. The up side was they couldn’t blockade orbit very well, only able
to track down and kill a few ships if they were close enough.

Luck was on the
Ollofans
’
side today, for they made it to the jumppoint and accelerated off towards the
star where their people’s jumpships would be waiting to pull the last ships out
of the system. But when they arrived they found only three ships…all enemy
ships. They immediately redirected towards the tiny Ollofan transport, intent
on hunting it down like several others that were now little more than debris
fields showing on the sensors.

“
What do we do?
”
one of them asked the pilot.

“
There are no
jumpships. We have to go back to the planet
,” another one said.

“
We can’t.
”

“
We have to jump
,”
Nizzi
said, watching the enemy ships coming closer on
sensors and realizing they didn’t have a lot of time to decide.

“
You’re crazy!
”
the little blue guy next to him said, eyes wide.

“
If we stay
we’re dead. We have to try
,”
Nizzi
argued, hoping
someone else would have a better idea.

“
He’s right. We
have no other options
,” the pilot said, looking for the shortest jumpline
out of the system and scratching it immediately, for it was on the other side
of the star and there was no way they’d get there before the enemy got to them.

“
We’re not rated
for a jump
,” another said.

“
It’ll be slow
and inaccurate, but it’s possible
,” the pilot argued, looking hard for a
useable jumpline just to get them out of here. It took far longer than he liked
but eventually he got a half decent one not far off and set course for it,
though the distance was going to be problematic. The destination system was
twice again as far as the shortest jumpline, with there being a chance that the
inaccuracy of their navigational system could mean they would miss the
destination star entirely and be lost in space for a long, slow death.

But they were dead if they didn’t try, so he set
course and hoped they’d get to the jumppoint before the enemy did.

“
Go extra slow
,”
Nizzi
said. “
Save
fuel
.”

“
Right
,” the
pilot agreed, beginning to revise his jump calculations.

“
I’ll see how
much food we have
,” another said,
trodding
off.

Nizzi
cursed silently. He
hadn’t even considered that.

The rest of the Ollofan waited in the cockpit, crammed
inside so they could watch the sensors as they transitioned across stellar
orbit to their jumppoint with the Li’vorkrachnika cruisers racing hard to catch
them, but once again
Nizzi’s
luck won out and his
ship got to the jumppoint before they did, holding there to align as precisely
as they could, then the underpowered gravity drive launched them out through
the system on a very slow interstellar jump, out of the reach of the enemy.

“
3 months, 2
weeks
,” the pilot said, studying his readings intently and making a minor
tweak in their trajectory as they passed a planet on their way out, trying to
keep them on the jumpline as much as they could. Once they got out into
interstellar space the gravity would be so low he’d only be able to get a touch
of movement in any direction, and the same went for the backup maneuvering
thrusters.

“
We’re alive
,”
another said. “
That’s what matters. Let’s
see what’s left in the ship for us to use
.”

As it turned out there were more than enough supplies
for the 18 of them. The ship had been stocked with enough foodstuffs to last a
much larger crew, sad to say that not enough of them had survived to need it.
Those with
Nizzi
would, however, for the normally
quick transition between systems that a jumpship provided was going to take
them forever in their tiny transport, assuming they were able to goose the
accuracy enough to even arrive. The line they were drifting on was decent, but
some heavy thrusts had to be made on several occasions as they got closer to
their destination and found that they were veering off, not because of any new
movement, but of not being able to accurately measure it in the first place.

They had to use quite a bit of fuel to make those
adjustments, but when they got close to their destination and saw that they
would in fact make it a discussion was brought to a head…that being where they
were supposed to go?

None of them knew where the jumpships had gone, for
all they had been told was that they were evacuating, not to where. The enemy,
as far as they knew, had been heading towards their planet for some time with
many other neighbors having falling to their advance. The Ollofan had hoped to
go overlooked, given that they lived underwater, but apparently they too were
targets for the rolling mass of what had been called a galactic plague.

When they studied the maps they had a whole section of
space ruled out, for that was where they knew the enemy to be. Systems close to
their former home were also ignored, for the Li’vorkrachnika could be there
already and there was no one they knew of that could stand up to them. It was
either run or hope to be ignored. In that regard the Ollofan had not been so
lucky.

And to make matters worse they only had so much fuel
and not a lot of jumplanes short enough for them to try to make, giving them
few options. Eventually they decided to head for a known commerce planet and
beg for help…while hoping that they too hadn’t been overrun.

That planet was in a system four jumps away, which
would take more than a year for them to get to and exhaust their fuel supply to
the point that they could go no further, or perhaps one small jump after,
meaning they were going to be stranded if no one offered them assistance, and
given the state of the galaxy and the mass evacuations occurring ahead of the
enemy advance there were no guarantees. Problem was
Nizzi
and the others had no better options, with only hope to rely on, though they
did have plenty of time to think, stranded on their transport as they limped
their way across the stars.

When they finally arrived in the
Kattremon
System they nearly missed the star, hitting it off center and propelling
themselves laterally as they braked. Fortunately there was a gas giant nearby
that they were able to pinball off of, and from there to some other nearby
planets bleeding off momentum and keeping them in the system. That extra effort
bled their fuel reserves nearly dry, making them incapable of doing anything
more than some slow microjumps insystem.

Being very grateful to be alive and having dodged yet
another catastrophe,
Nizzi’s
ship headed to the
commerce planet and arrived in orbit just in time to witness a firefight
ongoing. His little chest tightened up when he saw the enemy ships chasing down
a much larger transport that was shooting back, ineffectively, with him
realizing that with nowhere to run they were going to die. It might be in an
hour or in a week, but they were stranded here and if the enemy had already gotten
to this point there wasn’t going to be any way to evade them.

As all of this weighed on his mind a small black
elongated cube moved into close sensor range and headed for the transport under
attack. The enemy ships immediately ignored their target and went for it, and
to the
Ollofan’s
amazement the smaller ship attacked
the enemy 1 on 3. At first
Nizzi
thought it was a
sacrifice play to save the transport, but as the big ship ran off leaving the
little one behind to fight he saw that it was beating the crap out of the
Li’vorkrachnika ships.

It wasn’t long before one of them had its shields
down, and when it happened a bright beam fired into it and the hull exploded on
contact. Whatever weapon it was repeated the attack many times until the ship
was inoperable, then it turned its attention to the other two that were
hammering it with plasma nonstop, including their potent plasma streamers, yet
the smaller ship’s shields held up until it tore the second enemy ship apart.

Finally the third ship got through the black ship’s
shields and began making hull hits, but it didn’t seem to matter. The resilient
little thing held up and systematically tore apart the enemy that never even
tried to run.
Nizzi
didn’t understand why nor did he
care, for never had he heard of anyone who could stand against the
Li’vorkrachnika, let alone dominate them in such fashion.

“
What just
happened?
” he asked in the stunned silence.

“
The Li lost
,”
another said, equally perplexed.