Star Force: Shame (SF59) (7 page)

“
It has its own
atmosphere then?
”

“
Short span, yes
.”

“
Tell us what your
native atmosphere is and we will make adjustments
.”

“
Unnecessary…I
will adapt. Tell me more of this request you have of us
.”

Hameen
turned away from the
trio, but it was only to loop his body around itself in a coil that he then
raised his head back up from before he spoke. “
It has become known throughout the Nexus that Star Force’s strategic
capabilities far outstrip your technological ones. Your efforts against the
Li’vorkrachnika and subsequent joint missions with the H’kar have shown that
your wisest warlords have a knack for finding ways to win battles that
statistically they should not. Are we to assume you are one of these warlords?
”

“
I am not only
one of them, but one of the top three regarding naval warfare. Which of us is
best is still an undecided issue
,” he said, referencing the little
rivalry/camaraderie that he, Liam, and Paul still had going on to date. “
What is it that you wish me to apply my
skill on?
”

“
Follow us
please
,” the snake on the right said, emanating a sense of satisfaction
before it twisted around and lengthened out, wiggling back and forth as it
headed for a wall.
Hameen
followed, but the third
snake telepathically gestured for Roger to go next and the Human walked off
following the other two snakes, feeling very out of place with his bipedal
movement. There were many others moving around the bay that he could visually
see, plus many more that he could sense in nearby chambers or behind the rows
of transport pods, all of which wiggled around with no apparent ability to
handle the tasks normal tech crews would.

The wall opened before them, exposing a hallway on the
other side, but it was the little tendril of Lachka that caught Roger’s eye. It
wasn’t the same, but close enough that his Rentar allowed him to detect it
stretch out from the first snake’s head and contact a control nub on the wall,
indicating that not only did the Dsevmat have telepathic abilities, they were
also telekinetic…which solved the mystery of how they were able to work with
technology without any limbs.

The snakes were able to move rather quickly despite
their trash can thick bodies, though their hallways were shallow ceilinged,
with Roger having to duck down in some of the more constricted segments when
his height was a few inches greater than the architecture. After a few minutes
they came to a brightly glowing tunnel that clashed with the dimly lit rest of
the ship that was illuminated from the walls themselves without the presence of
any individual orbs or fixtures.

Before him now was more of a tunnel than a hallway,
and as the first snake slithered inside it was whisked away in some type of
energy field and quickly disappeared into the distance.

“
A faster means
of internal transport
,” the one behind Roger said as
Hameen
likewise entered and disappeared. “
It is
harmless and automatic. Simply move inside
.”

Roger remained silent, but did as instructed. Suddenly
his forward foot left the floor and his center of mass quickly followed…then he
was moving down the tunnel of bright light suspended shy of any of the round
walls but likewise unable to turn his body. As he wondered what type of force
field was holding him the exit manifested itself ahead as he was drastically
slowed without any felt effects, meaning an IDF field was also in play.

He stepped forward back onto solid ground when the
field released him, then moved away as the third snake came through. From there
they ‘walked’ some more until another wall melted and they entered a chamber
with six other Dsevmat at what must have been their version of work stations.
They were coiled up inside clear bowls with a mess of holograms around them,
some of which appeared to be solid, for they were touching them with their
‘necks’ and it finally clicked that they were head rests.

“
Show him
,”
Hameen
said to all in the chamber, this time purely
telepathically and without any physical words, which made it hard for Roger to
understand given the mental dialect of the language he wasn’t that familiar
with.

In response to the command a star map of the Nexus and
the surround regions appeared, which included lizard territory as a tiny spec
on the periphery. He only noticed as his mind registered the geography for
there was another region that was highlighted, along with which came hundreds
of holographic schematics of alien bodies, warships, cities, weapons, and
everything else belonging to a single civilization.

“
They are known
as the H’bat’i
,”
Hameen
said with a tone of
disbelief in his words. “
And they are a
conundrum that we ask you to solve.
”

7

“
Explain
,”
Roger said, beginning to soak in the information around him.

“
They are a
violent race within the boundaries that the Nexus is tasked to pacify, one that
has fallen to us to deal with. Not long ago we mounted a major push against one
of seven strongholds, an assault with sufficient force to defeat and conquer
the planet in question. Instead we suffered a defeat and lost nearly our entire
invasion force. We have reviewed the assault thousands of times and brought in
many tactical experts from within the Dsevmat and other Nexus races. No one can
account for how the H’bat’i defeated our clearly superior force, and we are not
willing to mount another assault until we understand how we failed
.”

“
At the moment
,”
another Dsevmat said, slithering up on Roger’s left, “
we are engaged in containment protocols, preventing the spread of the
threat and limiting their actions outside their territory, but they are a
problem we must deal with eventually and containment is insufficient. We ask
that you conduct your own analysis, and are hoping that you can see the key to
the
H’bat’i’s
victory over us
.”

“
Do you have
full battle records?
”

“
Yes, a few of
our ships managed to escape and with them they brought the data logs from every
other vessel, which are transmitted automatically to nearby vessels when they
begin to suffer catastrophic failure. We have a wealth of data, but no answers
.”

“
How long ago
was this?
”

“
Approximately
40 years
.
Since that time other
threats have become emboldened by our inability to neutralize the H’bat’i,
making our typical peacekeeping efforts more problematic. We could mount
another assault, but feel that to do so without understanding what happened the
first time would be reckless. We did not expect that so much time would go by
without an answer, but the longer this persists the more eroded our reputation
becomes. That reputation is keeping smaller threats neutralized without us
having to commit ships, and without it we cannot oversee the territory assigned
to us with our current resources
.”

“
So you want me
to show you how to beat them?
”

“
No
,”
Hameen
said with a telepathic air of disgust at his
presumption. “
We are only asking that you
show us what they did. We will formulate our own battle plans.
”

“
I will need a
full history of their race and their conflict with you, as well as any
conflicts with others.
”

“
We have brought
along all information regarding the H’bat’i, and we are prepared to wait here
as long as necessary for you to complete your analysis
.”

“
Alright
then…let’s start with the battle itself
.”

Roger spent the next 7 hours onboard the Dsevmat ship
watching
holos
and asking a lot of questions, then
eventually headed
planetside
for a break with the
alien pod delivering him to the spaceport on the surface that he requested. For
the rest of the day he trained, pushing aside the challenge the Dsevmat had
laid out for him and clearing his head before getting some sleep and heading
back up to the ship, for the Nexus race wouldn’t allow copies of their data to
be taken with the Human for outside study. They were trusting him with a wealth
of information, but only him and within their own ship, meaning he was going to
have to do a lot of commuting in the coming days.

The way the H’bat’i had won was obvious, for the
Dsevmat did have the superior force even when you include the orbital defenses
of the planet under assault. Both races possessed tech currently exceeding Star
Force’s, and the Dsevmat more so than their enemy, but they’d been beaten
soundly when their weapons’ targeting systems malfunctioned. It wasn’t a total
malfunction, nor was it isolated to individual ships. Across their fleet
weapons batteries began to miss their targets, not with every shot, but on
average 73% misfired.

During the later stages that amount diminished to 32%
when the Dsevmat were losing badly, then it almost disappeared entirely as they
were being wiped out. Some ships had higher and lesser accuracy numbers, and
the same went for certain batteries. Some hit with every shot and others were
malfunctioning. There was no discernable pattern to be found, no computer
glitches or attack programing found within the computer systems, and no known
weapon system on the part of the H’bat’i that could interfere with the
targeting systems.

Sensor records had been gone over so many times by the
Dsevmat that they’d literally run themselves ragged with frustration in an
endless search. There was no energy or matter being emitted from the H’bat’i
ships that could account for this, and their weaponsfire showed no variations
from standard specs, nor was there any variation between what was hitting the
malfunctioning ships and those with normal accuracy rates…which for the Dsevmat
was 99.7%, and that included anti-fighter stats.

Roger resisted the urge to start forming theories, or
strong ones anyway, and used the opportunity to study the Nexus race and their
adversary, learning that this was truly a mismatch. The Dsevmat clearly
outmatched them, but as stated before the higher level empire was spread out
maintaining a vast tract of territory where other races lived. They couldn’t
focus their might into a single area and had to work with limited fleets and
resources while effectively being overstretched. What the reason was for this
within the political workings of the Nexus he didn’t know, but it did shed a bit
of light on why the Nexus wasn’t rushing to defeat the lizards.

If the other races were likewise as stretched, and he
wasn’t automatically assuming so, then they wouldn’t have the numbers to hit
the lizards on as many fronts as needed, and to be truthful the H’bat’i and
some of the other races they had fought against were clearly higher level than
the lizards, if not so widespread. It was a bit shocking at seeing the power
gap, but Roger was soaking it all in and getting up to speed with the ‘big
dogs,’ though they still didn’t fare well in comparison to the V’kit’no’sat.

That said, if the two ever went head to head it
wouldn’t be a total slaughter on the part of the
dinos
.

With no obvious mechanism detected for messing with
the Dsevmat weapons Roger dug into the construction and function of them with
his analysis assistants, learning that all Dsevmat weaponry was based off of
Ketara energy. The trailblazer played dumb, letting the snakes inform him of
what it was and how it worked, but he already knew from the pyramid database
that it was a cloying field that, rather than breaking the bonds of molecules
created new ones with a rabid appetite.

That meant that a burst of Ketara energy hitting the
hull of a warship would effectively condense whatever material it hit like a
mini black hole, forming a crater with a condensed nub of matter in it. That
meant whenever the Dsevmat attacked something there would be no explosions,
which made for odd battle
holos
because Roger was
used to at least a shrapnel spray, but these weapons were very tidy and oh so
nasty.

They had several versions from orbs, to beams, to
streamers and even some net-like fields they’d throw against a target. All were
Ketara-based and worked decently well against energy shields as well, enough so
that the Dsevmat had decided to go all-in on the tech and really refine it to
potent status. That said, Roger knew the V’kit’no’sat didn’t use the energy
because it had a glaring weakness, not to mention it was weaker than their
other available weapons. With a special shield modification the energy could be
completely neutralized to the point where virtually no amount of weaponsfire
could penetrate it, similar to trying to shoot fish in a barrel with a flame
thrower.

That type of shield matrix was well above Star Force’s
head at the moment, and Roger got the feeling like the Dsevmat didn’t know
there was a counter for the technology, which meant that probably no one else
in the Nexus or the region they dominated did either.

That counter hadn’t been in play here, for the H’bat’i
shields weren’t anywhere near as sophisticated…but they were extremely thick,
with more emphasis going into the shields than the hull armor, which was a
favorable place to stand when going against the Ketara weaponry, for like a
Ta’lin’yi they really racked up the damage when they hit solid matter.

That said, they were almost useless in atmosphere
because they’d hit and cause the air molecules to fuse together into solid
particles that became pebbles or dust depending on density of the environment.
That was going to be an issue during the ground invasion but the Dsevmat never
made it that far. They’d been routed in orbit and never even had a chance to call
in their troop transports waiting outside the system, which had fortunately
spared them from destruction.

As it turned out in a thorough examination of how the
Dsevmat military was constructed, they used an almost exclusively drone army
system given their lack of limbs. Control snakes would be inserted into the
combat zones and would then run operations remotely from outposts or large
command centers. They didn’t operate them from orbit, which Roger felt was more
tradition than function, but they had multiple variations of mechs and
infantry, some which he’d never seen before.

It was side quests like that where Roger was trying to
dig up more information, for the Dsevmat were quite correct in their initial
analysis…there was no viable explanation as to why the weaponry malfunctioned
the way it did, but as Sherlock Holmes had once said if you eliminate the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. With that
in mind Roger felt he knew what had happened, but he needed to know why before
he was going to say anything.

In addition to learning about the Dsevmat and a lot of
their battle history, for his assistants were very willing to let him peruse
the database even when it didn’t appear to tie in directly to the
investigation, he dug into the history, culture, and society that was the
H’bat’i and tried to get a feel for the way they thought and built. They were
triped
, twice the size of Humans, and very introverted.
They usually didn’t interact with other races outside of warfare and kept their
economy self-contained. They did seek to expand their territory, and that
expansion is what had got the Nexus’s attention in a bad way.

They had conquered several primitive worlds and
essentially turned them into a slave labor force, growing a small empire that
had crossed one of the Nexus’s minor spacelanes. The H’bat’i basically shut it
down, claiming ownership of the system and insisting that he traffic flow be
rerouted elsewhere which had sparked the first conflict with the
Nestaw
.

The
Nestaw
were a race
within the Nexus a bit higher level than the H’kar and they’d been tasked to
deal with the disruption in the spacelane and the freeing of the subjugated
worlds. When they failed horribly, finding the H’bat’i were far more resilient
and tech savvy than intelligence had estimated, the Dsevmat took over and sent
a proper recon team. They deduced the strength required and waited several
years until they could muster the necessary fleet, drawing ships from various
other assignments as they became available, then launching them at one of the
H’bat’i’s
main worlds, intending to inflict a crippling
assault that they could then dictate terms from afterward.

Such tactics were standard practice for the Dsevmat,
who liked to bloody an enemy’s nose then force them to submit out of fear,
though in most cases it was a bluff and the Dsevmat didn’t have the
reinforcements they needed to go a second or third round. Their opponents
didn’t know that, so they’d been getting away with and heavily favored the
tactic in a lot of their peacekeeping assignments, which also told Roger that
they were desperate to figure out how the H’bat’i had bested them else they
wouldn’t be sharing this and other things so openly with him.

But as he ran through the data something bothered him,
and that was the cultural fingerprint of the H’bat’i being introverted not
fitting in with their taking slave races. There wasn’t a wealth of data on the
subjugated and the
H’bat’i’s
activities there, for
the intel had come primarily from the
Nestaw
and a
few independent analysis teams prior to that, but there was enough geographical
and population statistics for him to see that on the conquered worlds there
were virtually no H’bat’i present.

That was odd, for usually when you conquered a planet
you moved in, but the H’bat’i didn’t aside from what looked like overseers and
some military personnel. The planet was shipping resources off it that were
going back to the H’bat’i worlds, but as for on-site occupation there virtually
was none. That made him wonder what exactly the circumstances of the conquests
were, but that information wasn’t available.

There were tidbits that Roger was slowly able to
string together, and with those he was able to conduct some searches through
other Nexus records and found two of the conquered races mentioned in survey
files that predated their annexation. Those records were the first concrete
data points that Roger had, and from there he began narrowing his search of the
intelligence reports the Dsevmat had available to them prior to the assault.

There was a lot of military-related data, for the
Dsevmat had been extremely thorough. That too was an additional data point, and
slowly Roger collected the bits and pieces of extraneous data, learning as much
as he could for Star Force’s purposes along the way, but needing to present solid
evidence of what had happened so the Dsevmat would accept it…if he truly wanted
to tell them.