Star Force: Resurrection (SF84) (Star Force Origin Series) (10 page)

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 of 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 Humans 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.

It took several more weeks before he got a full report
back from the scientists, who had been delayed by lack of necessary equipment
to do the tests. The engineers had either repaired broken pieces or fabricated
new ones out of varied components, after which the tests didn’t take long at
all.

When he accepted the results from them he saw at a
glance the summary.

The standard variants matched perfectly. The other two
did not.

The mastermind dug through the minutia of the results,
seeing which regions had differences, then asked the scientists many questions
regarding those areas before eventually dismissing them back to their original
tasks…which in their case were not many given the current state of the planet.

He immediately tasked the librarians to send a runner
to one of the intact databases and do a thorough search looking for genetic
template updates and the dates to which they occurred and to see if the current
samples from himself and the engineers matched any, during which time he had to
abandon his command center and relocate to another trashed area to avoid
detection from approaching troops.

He traveled almost exclusively below ground where
there was a sensor interfering layer built into the lizard infrastructure. The
invading ships could scan the surface buildings, but not what lay beneath them
until they breached that barrier…in theory. He had been assured it would
interfere with their sensors, but without having access to Star Force
technology he had no way of knowing for sure how effective it was.

But aside from his admittedly accidental capture, he
had always been able to stay at least one step ahead of his enemies, though the
available areas to run to were gradually diminishing on this planet and it
wasn’t going to be long before he had to make do with much more limited
options.

He had many thoughts running through his head, most of
which had to do with troop placements, available resources, foodstuff and
ordinance factories, and everything else required of his supreme intellect to
keep this planet in the fight and hurt the enemy as much as possible, but there
was a bit of his mind that kept running through possibilities regarding the
genetic programming. Almost like a low priority task, he kept occasionally
analyzing it from all possible angles up until he got back the results from the
librarians.