1

EG33

April 3, 158442

ANDROMEDA GALAXY

T-6 System

Planet 4

“You will go to the Firchar-Nioni System,” Thrawn’s holographic message said, standing full size before the Arbiter on the bridge of the Paladin warship in parking orbit above the planet. “There you will find a blockade of a significant trading world. The Nirvu and Varski races are in conflict over the possession of the planet. The Varski have blockaded it but refuse to attack. The Nirvu do not want a war and are tying to negotiate with other powers to interdict the blockade. It is a quagmire that you will remedy. Take all available ships, troops, and resources on T-6 and honorably conquer the system. With an ongoing war that could consume the entire galaxy, petty squabbles between greedy parties cannot be allowed to interfere with the flow of resources. Warn them off, but when they refuse, take the entire system by force.”

“It will be done,” the Arbiter said, knowing only those on the bridge could hear him as the hologram disappeared. He turned to his side and glanced at one of the other naval variants of the Paladin. “Show me this system.”

The thin lizard, whose body was based off the 2nd Triad complied immediately without any unnecessary talking. Paladin ships were among the most quiet in the Star Force Empire, though most were said to be calm save for the Irondel, who apparently could not handle an idle moment without filling it with their chittery little voices. Most professional communication was handled through messages from one part of the ship to another, or via telepathy in other races. Paladin were not telepathic, but they were immune to mental control, just as Humans were. Other races were telepathic, and their ships could function without a single word being said aloud, but for some reason they also had a need to vocally fill the silence from time to time. Paladin had no such problem with silent work.

“Here,” the bridge officer said as a galactic hologram of Andromeda appeared where Supreme Viceroy Thrawn’s image had previously been in the center of the windowless bridge. A tiny dot far from the Asferja war zone was highlighted and zoomed in on. It was some 18,903 light years from their current location, which would make it approximately 3 months distant. The Arbiter would not be able to summon help or communicate with the rest of Thrawn’s growing empire. He’d be on his own for this operation, which was undoubtedly why the Supreme Viceroy had ordered him to take everything guarding the T-6 system with him.

And when he said ‘resources’ he meant supplies, for this was not going to be a hit and run operation. They had to stay and claim this system for Thrawn to use later. The Arbiter did not need any further orders. This was going to be his 18th assignment after being spawned on the world of Jugali in the Milky Way galaxy thousands of years ago, and he knew well what Thrawn wished of him. He was to take the system as ordered, then he would receive further instructions as to what to do with it.

“Comm, get me the planetary Administrator,” the Arbiter said, using the individual’s title rather than name…for Paladin had none. His title of ‘Arbiter’ indicated he was a veteran who had progressed past his spawning assignment, and likewise the planetary Administrator was simply a description of the position the individual held. Both of them had ID codes, but they were rarely used verbally. Everyone was referred to as their current station or assignment. The Arbiter was currently a Fleet Commander, now that Thrawn had given him possession of a fleet. Previously he had simply been a Captain onboard his ship after another assignment was completed. That was how things worked in the Paladin. There was no rank, only responsibility and biology.

A realtime hologram of a much smaller Paladin appeared that mimicked the Arbiter’s physiology mostly. They were both of the 2nd triad, but there were small differences. The naval variants had a more stout body and musculature on the same skeletal frame, as well as skin that was designed to suffer short walks in the void of space. They actually had nodules in their body to store excess oxygen and collect carbon dioxide until they could take their next breath, as well as clear flaps that would slide down over their eyes and eyes holes like a second lid that would keep them from decompressing.

It was short term only, just enough time to get through the airless confines of a damaged ship to a rescue area. But all naval variants had these upgrades, while the Administrators had additional brain capacity and a metabolism that allowed them to sleep very little and handle tasks at an almost constant pace without growing fatigued or brain fried.

“What do you require?” the Administrator said graciously, recognizing the Arbiter’s seniority despite not being under his command.

“I have been given orders to take the fleet and all available resources to conquer a system far from here. I need appropriate logistics for a three month journey and indefinite stay.”

“Time of departure?”

“As soon as prepared.”

“Any special considerations?”

“This will be a pacification. As such we will need ample stun rounds for all weaponry. I also require a team of Mind raiders.”

“Before you leave?” the Administrator asked, knowing they could spawn more Paladin on site once they arrived.

“I want them training during the journey.”

“As you wish. Will you be waiting for additional ships?”

“No. I will take what we have available.”

“Then the limiting factor will be the Mind raiders. 22 days.”

“Schedule it thus.”

The Administrator nodded. “Good luck, Arbiter.”

“To us all, or we all may fall,” he said, quoting a common Paladin proverb as the hologram ended.

“Inform all ship Captains in the system that they are now under this fleet command, including the cargo vessels,” he ordered as he began pacing back and forth before his notched chair. “I want status reports on all vessels’ readiness for both combat and a long mission into the frontier. Order them to start stocking up accordingly…”

And-T6-MW-003 woke from his mind haze in a fury as he tasted air for the first time. The process of being spawned was an odd one, for his mind was telling him things that conflicted with his senses. He had never experienced anything before, and it took several minutes, as well as a pair of strong hands on him to keep him from thrashing about and destroying anything in range as the pain of waking slowly diminished and his senses started to calibrate with his genetic memory.

Once calmed, he went through a series of quality control tests and basic training to both make sure he was not defective, as well as a way to proc various memories into use. By the time he emerged from it, there was a dropship waiting to take him and 7 other Mind Raider variants up to orbit.

He had never seen them before, but he knew who they were. They were like him, and they were also ordered not to use their telepathy yet in an active sense. Doing so could damage it. They had to passively observe for several days, preferably longer, before attempting to reach out to another mind to influence or search it. So he exchanged some subtle nods and finger flicks with the others, a code also programmed into his memory, as they silently boarded the dropship and slid into seats that all had a hole notch in the back to accommodate their tails that they then curled around the stump of their seat to avoid getting in the way of others.

The flight up to orbit was short and predictable, yet he’d never actually done it before. Others had, and their knowledge and memories were a part of him now. It was how he was able to function when other races required years or decades to get to maturity. All Paladin were spawned fully mature, but it would take time for the person inside the body to fully adapt with the memories.

That said, he was combat capable now if needed. Just not as well as he would be later given a few weeks to further adapt to his new life.

He knew all Paladin went through this, and that there was much to learn beyond the memories. They were an impressive starting point, but only that. To become an Arbiter meant surviving your first mission and becoming worthy of reassignment to another world. And that required going beyond the memories and adding some knowledge and experience of your own to what you’d inherited from your predecessors.

He and the other Mind Raiders were flown up to a waiting ship in orbit, then escorted to private chambers where they stood inside a mirrored hexagonal cubical. Holographic images with instructions began to appear before them, and they each followed an individualized training program that would test their readiness. It would take two days before the program would allow the first of them to start telepathically linking with the equipment in basic training drills, and from there the progress began to accelerate rapidly…for the process, which was less defined than other Paladin variant programs, was still well honed at this point after going through countless other individuals in the past with the scientists making adjustments based on the data from each individual.

And the data from these would also be included in a message packet brought back to the Milky Way, for the Paladin were always tinkering, monitoring, and refining where possible. Though this case, many later years, would be reviewed more than any other…

3 months 8 days later…

“Neoro, what’s happening?” the Nirvu commander of the Commerce Station in low stellar orbit asked his sensor officer as numerous ships began entering the system along a single jumpline in close packet formation…too close for safety, and he’d never seen such tight formations operated successfully before.

“I don’t know. These ships are not known to us.”

“Are they allied with the Varski?” the Commander asked, referencing the huge amount of enemy ships already in the system and surrounding his station in an economic blockade that had been going on for far too long and was already causing severe shortages of vital goods on the planet of Tarchiss, which the Nirvu owned but the Varski wanted. They hadn’t yet escalated to full out war, but they were on the brink of it, and any ship trying to access the planet, or even pass through the system, had to get permission from their fleet.

And they were granting only a few that permission, meaning there was a blockage of traffic arriving in the system and having to go back out on their original jumpline, for the Varski would not allow them to take any other. Then they’d have to find a way around the nebula cluster to get to their ultimate destinations. This star system was the choke point where the three safe routes through the nebula cluster intersected then diverged again into two other paths. A massive amount of cargo moved through this point because of it, and had made this planet and system insanely rich. Now the Varski were trying to wheedle their way into part, or even full ownership of it, and were blocking everyone else in the galaxy who wasn’t their personal friends from coming through.

A few had tried anyone, and had their ships disabled and boarded. The Commander didn’t know if there were any casualties or not, but everything here was at the tipping point. They’d tried to take his station too, on three separate occasions, but their boarding parties were always stopped. He had considerable troops onboard, and the winged Varski were not a match in hand to hand combat with his leaping amphibians. The hallways here were too low for them to get any height, and as such they were grabbed and grounded almost immediately upon entry.

He'd lost 4 Nirvu to those assaults, with another 139 injured, but he had over 2,000 onboard specially trained for combat. This Commerce Station was critical to the Nirvu economy in this sector, and as such it was well defended internally, though its external shields could not stand up to the Varski fleet pounding on them. As such it was a standoff. They could get their boarding parties in, but they couldn’t claim the station.

And thankfully they hadn’t gotten to the point of trying to blow it up or invade the planet. So at least some decorum was remaining, but the arrival of this new fleet was both unexpected and concerning.

“Commander,” Neoro said, his large eyes flicking three times as he studied a small, orb-like holographic ball that he rotated around with webbed hands to view it from different angles. “The new ships are engaging the Varski.”

“What!?”

“I see weaponsfire, and most of the Varski are repositioning into defensive formations.”

“Sir,” another amphibian said from a station higher up the hillside that was the command center infrastructure with their leader in the pool-like depression in the middle of it. “I have a request for communication from the newly arrived ships.”

“I accept,” he said, turning to face the comms holographic transmitter on his left, and raising his wide orange/yellow chin in preparation to greet whoever this new ally was.

An image of a reptilian appeared, and the Commander immediately recognized the individual as one of the foreigners that had come to this galaxy to fight the Asferja.

“I am station Commander Bri’ta,” he announced cautiously.

“I am Paladin Fleet Commander,” the blue lizard said in the Nirvu language, dressed in some form of combat armor, though Bri’ta could only see him from the shoulders up. He wore no helmet, but the white/blue battle plates were obviously not standard clothing…or so he assumed. Maybe garments worked differently in another galaxy. “By order of Supreme Viceroy Thrawn I am here to lay claim to this system. We will be assuming control of your station as soon as we deal with the blockade.”

“Lay claim? Are you not here to help us?”

“We’re here to help everyone, Station Commander,” he said slightly out of lip sync. “The Paladin will reopen commerce through this system.”

“But we’ll reopen it as soon as the Varski are gone!”

“I’ve been told otherwise. Neither of your races can be trusted with such a key system. Thus we are taking stewardship of it.”

“By what right!” he declared as a large holographic map of the battle going on outside finally made its way to the main display, and Bri’ta wished he could have sucked those words back inside his wide mouth. The Varski ships were being disabled at an alarming rate.

“The right to save your galaxy from the Asferja. This petty bickering between your races endangers others. The full economic power of this galaxy must be brought to bear to defend it. Anything less could see its fall. The Asferja are far more powerful than you realize.”

“But they are far from here. How can you possibly justify taking this system away from us?”

“The systems that are not under attack must support those who are.”

“None of our systems are under attack. You want us to supply others who cannot pay! This is ridiculous.”

“Yes you are. But you will learn. The Paladin will show you the proper way to handle commerce. I am about to send troops onboard your station. You can either surrender it peacefully, or we will take it by force. Regardless, we will soon possess it. How do you wish to proceed?”

“We’ve defended this station against three separate Varski boarding attempts. You will not find us an easy prize to claim.”

The blue lizard grinned. “That’s acceptable. We like a challenge. If you change your mind and want to surrender, you may do so at any time. We will be visiting soon. Please do not do anything drastic. My orders are to take you and everyone else in this system alive. We’re not here to kill anyone. We’re here to save you from your own stupidity. So don’t attempt anything suicidal.”

“And if we refuse to surrender this station intact?” he said with more bluff than real conviction.

“We take it, intact. You cannot use your own lives as shields against our actions. We will possess your station and the nearby planet shortly. I suggest you make this transition as easy as possible for yourselves, but if you wish to fight, we will show you the proper way to wage a bloodless war.”

“Wars are never bloodless.”

“Then you have a great deal to learn. We will be arriving shortly. I suggest you record images for later study,” the lizard said with a cocky tilt of his head just before the transmission cut off.

“Prepare to repel boarders,” Bri’ta said loudly across the command deck. “We will not hand this station to the Varski or the foreigners.”

“Commander,” Neoro said, pointing up at the battle hologram. “They’re using boarding craft to take the disabled Varski ships.”

“Magnify.”

The thousands of vessels engaging each other as more continued to come out of the jumpline shrank down to a single ship. It had multiple scorch marks on its hull, including a few pinpoint holes near the engine compartment billowing out clouds of smoke that were beginning to obscure the ship in its own small nebula. But what Neoro further zoomed in on were several small objects attaching themselves to the hull.

“Those are not airlock points on the Varski ships. These foreigners must have the ability to burn through the hull at a point of their choosing.”

The Commander growled, which for his race came out as a series of low chirps. His entire defense was predicated on defending key positions where the thick hull plates allowed access to space. If they could burn through wherever they liked…

“Do you see any of the ships decompressing?”

Neoro looked to his left and another Nirvu answered. “None yet. I would guess they are installing their own makeshift airlocks at the burn points. Though none of the vessels has detached yet, so I cannot be sure.”

“Then prepare mobile teams. Once we know where they land, it will take time for them to burn through. We set up and meet them there before they can get their first troops onboard…”

2

Abnel knelt on his hind legs, squatting so low that his stubby tail nub almost touched the floor as he held his rifle pointed at the end of a corridor. More than two dozen other Nirvu were in similar positions, lining either side of the hallway and smashing themselves up against the walls to give them some sort of cover as they watched the sparking burn marks of a cutting device slowly carve a doorway through the sealed wall of what was an emergency airlock still covered with thick battle plates. Those plates would not be ejected until the airlock was needed, but the invaders were burning right through to create their own entrance.

Abnel’s feet were bare, but he wore a chest plate and partial helmet that would offer him some protection. Over his exposed face, arms, and legs he had a thin force field generated from a nubby pack on his back. It’d block a few shots, but not many, and he felt very nervous about standing in the open waiting for the enemy to come through. They hadn’t even had time to erect any barricades, getting here moments ago to see the end of the blue cutting device already poking through and beginning to carve a rectangular doorway into the otherwise hexagonal one that was still locked down.

Beads of skin-moistening sweat dripped from his nervous face, but he wasn’t the only one. They were all guards on the Commerce Station, not line combat troops. And while they were seasoned after the recent battles they’d won, what was happening outside defied the imagination, for the invaders were taking over all the Varski ships without losing a single one of their own. The technological power of these ‘Pal-a-din’ was scary. Even more scary than the tales being told of the distant Asferja, which Abnel had assumed had been heightened to induce the necessary panic for the government to take more drastic endeavors to counter the threat they posed to their economy.

But now, seeing the carving blue energy beam nearly complete its circuit, he was sweating profusely, and for an amphibian that was a very bad sign. Giving up one’s water meant an almost complete failure to regulate one’s internal temperature…but he couldn’t help it. For he was sure whatever was about to come through that door was going to kill him and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

A large ‘clunk’ sounded as the door plug dropped microscopically as the cut was complete, then the blue energy withdrew a moment before the door burst forward, moving out almost a body length before tipping forward and making a thick carpet for the invaders to leap up onto and over.

Abnel started firing immediately, throwing small golden orbs of destructive energy at the invaders the same time his fellow guardsmen did. They peppered the first few to come through, but none of them exploded as the bits of wall behind them did from the missed shots. Instead their shields held up through numerous hits before the white with blue trim armor began to absorb the rifle shots with blackened creases. The first few invaders were actually stopped, but not killed, as more of them moved around to interpose their bodies between Abnel and his target before he and the other Nirvu could break through their dreaded personal defense technology.

The guardsman just ahead of Abnel took return fire and dropped to the floor, leaving the area ahead of him clear and even more exposed than before. Abnel fired as fast as his rifle could manage, but after two shots of the blue lances from the invaders hit him in the chest, his shields went down completely. A third hit his battle plate, but it didn’t explode. He didn’t have time to register what was happening as he kept firing, but his chest went numb for a moment, then two more shots hit him, one directly to the face.

He spun backwards, death imminent, and crashed sideways into the floor, unable to move more than a few twitching muscles, but still able to think as his eyes were locked open and he could see the flow of armored troops moving in and soon rushing right past his position.

Abnel felt no real pain, and it took a moment to realize he was still alive. Those weapons must have been some sort of stun weapons. Was he going to be taken prisoner? Did they eat their prisoners as the Asferja were rumored too? At the moment he didn’t care. His face was still there, not blown off as he’d expected…then one of the armored invaders walked up directly in front of him, leveled his compact and very thick rifle at him one more time, then rendered another shot that fully shook Abnel from his conscious state.

His vision blacked, but he didn’t seem to completely lose his brain…until his eyes cleared and he realized he’d been moved into one of the cargo bays. How had that happened after only a few seconds?

Abnel’s muscles were working again, though with protest, and he picked himself up from the floor only to see hundreds of his fellow guardsman all around him in a similar discombobulated manner.

So he had blacked out, and they’d carried him to this holding facility. He could see vertical pillars outlining the perimeter of a shield wall and at least one Paladin outside standing guard. Everyone else was waking up the same time as him, and that couldn’t have been a coincidence. They must have all been moved here and woken up at the same time…and that meant the battle must be over.

“This is ridiculous!” the Nirvu Regional Governor said to the Paladin known only as ‘Ambassador’ and refusing to give any other name as the orbital fleet pounded the planetary shields over his continent. “You have no place here!”

“Nor do you,” the Paladin answered calmly. “Only the fit should rule, and the Nirvu have shown themselves to be incompetent. You can personally assist us in the transition or step aside. Those are your only options.”

“We will fight you,” the Governor pressed, unconsciously glancing sideways at the shield statistics as they dropped precipitously fast. The return fire from the surface batteries paled in comparison to what was coming down, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out they couldn’t hold. “We will oppose you every step of the way, even if you get to ground.”

“It is sad that you cannot see that we are here to help. Never the less, we will soon possess this planet. You can choose to be part of the future or step aside and be a spectator.”

“We will die before we surrender this planet.”

“No…you won’t,” the Ambassador said with a smirk. “I’ll be speaking with you in person shortly.”

The hologram cut out, severed by the ship in orbit that had been transmitting it.

The Nirvu smashed a webbed foot onto the floor with a waterless smack in frustration, then turned to his military advisor. A retired warrior he held in great esteem.

“What can we do?”

The old master visibly gulped. “We are outmatched, Governor. We can slow them at best. We cannot stop them. At this point, your negotiating power may be more effective than our weapons. I see no way to win. Perhaps you should focus on securing us a future in defeat rather than pursuing the impossible to our destruction.”

“You mean surrender?”

“If this can be won, I do not see how. The extra-galactic invaders are even more powerful than the Bond of Resistance races are reported to be. And if they have come to fight the Asferja, as they claim, I can see why they think they have a chance to defeat them.”

“What is your recommendation, specifically?”

“They are not just removing us from power, they are lifting the blockade. This helps other worlds where we cannot. I recommend you consider the bigger picture and how it may help our race beyond this one system.”

The governor lifted his large amphibian chin, suddenly seeing a different angle than before. “You are saying they are inadvertently helping us?”

“If they reopen trade, that is something we could not have done. At least not so soon.”

“Get me the Triark,” he said to another Nirvu standing nearby silently.

The Regional Governor took a few more breaths and composed himself as a hologram of his kin appeared from the capitol city on the planet.

“How close are your shields to failing?” the Triark asked immediately.

“We have some time left, but we cannot hold. What are your thoughts?”

“Bluntly, I am at a loss of how to proceed. They have captured the entire Varski fleet without destroying a single vessel. How can we stand against that type of power?”

“I have been advised that we might gain more standing through surrender than continual fighting.”

The planetary governor’s eyes narrowed. “Out of the question.”

“You and I might not have our positions very much longer. What can we do that is beneficial to our people going forward?”

“What would surrender gain?”

“Less casualties, and perhaps some good will with the invaders.”

“You are not authorized to surrender. Your troops will fight until they are defeated. Anything less will see severe punishment.”

“What can we do then other than wait for their troops to arrest us?”

“I do not know, but we cannot betray our station. Is that understood?”

“It is,” he said, glancing to the side as the shield status became critical. “I’m afraid this will be my last transmission. May you find another solution.”

The Regional Governor waved a hand and his subordinate cut the channel. He walked out onto a nearby terrace atop a tower and looked up into the sky with his own eyes, seeing the bombardment hitting the energy shield and stressing it so much it was turning yellow, which clashed with the rainbow bombardment coming from multiple alien weapon systems. He stood there watching until the first of those streaks and bolts punched through, hitting points on the surface and vaporizing the buildings there.

The return fire at the orbiting fleet was plucked away from the continent, as were the shield generators. But when they finally succumbed in massive explosions, the deadly rain stopped falling. In its place came landing ships. Thousands of them, pouring down through the bits of clear sky mixed with the growing smoke clouds from the shield generators and slagged anti-orbital weapon systems.

Smaller fleets of aerial craft rose up to meet the landing ships and another one-sided battle began, with the Nirvu fighters unable to stop the landings.

The Regional Governor just stood on the railing for hours, watching the gradual progression as the invaders systematically made their way through all the surface defenses as if they were barely there. By the time the troops got to his tower, he didn’t even bother moving. He stood staring out at the territory that had moments before been Nirvu, but now belonged to the blue skinned reptiles, as their armored troops rushed up behind him and his legs gave out as a shockwave hit him.

The second stun blast rendered him unconscious, and he was collected like common refuse along with the rest of his Regional Command staff.

3

The regional governor woke, oddly realizing he was laying down and staring at his own office ceiling from inside the hot water sha’nas along the inner wall. There was a particular chandelier above it that was programmed with multi-colored lights that would match a predesignated program…but it was now displaying blues and whites, a hideous arrangement to his amphibian eyes that he had never installed on it.

“You’re finally awake,” a voice said from elsewhere in an odd dialect, and the governor cranked a sore neck around to look at one of the Paladin sitting precariously in his own command chair, for his tail did not fit inside it. “I thought it best to let you come out of it naturally, and in the meantime I’ve been doing a fair amount of work. Come have a look.”

“Why am I not in restraints?” the Nirvu asked, climbing out of the pond and finding his arms and legs were weak but functional as he dripped his way across the soft, heated floor to the largest of the visitor stools and stepped up onto it, making as much of a show of restraint as he could. His despair was nearly overwhelming him.

“Relax, Governor. Or should I call you Ghangi?”

“If you are in control, then I am no longer Governor. And will you give me your name now?”

“I am simply called Ambassador. My race does not use names. We are referred to by our position.”

“How is that even possible? There would be mass confusion.”

“It works quite well for us, but we shall not be implementing it for your people here. Most of Star Force uses names. The Paladin do not, for the most part. Ghangi, then, I will ask you this bluntly. Do you wish to be a prisoner or help us remake this planet?”

“You ask me to betray my people?”

“On the contrary. The very thought of betraying my own people is abhorrent. No, we’re here to help your people on this planet, but we are taking control. I was spawned to act as an intermediary between you and the Administrators who will be reorganizing everything that is currently out of order or out of place. We won’t be returning the planet to your civilization’s possession, but free passage to and from will be maintained, so you can think of this as a little pocket of your race run by someone else. A friendly someone else. So my question is, do you wish to help transition that pocket, or do you wish to be held as a prisoner waiting to be transferred off world as soon as your government sends enough transports to accomplish the task?”

“You want me to accept the role as your slave or choose freedom?”

The Ambassador was telepathically inside the Regional Governor’s head, getting hints and tips about where to go next, and so far he wasn’t liking what he was seeing.

“We don’t enslave anyone. We free races and individuals. But this planet is now ours. You can stay on it and operate in our system, or you can leave. Slaves don’t get a choice. You and all of your people do. It’s just a matter of transport logistics as to when you can leave and how many your government will send.”

“And if they send none, fearing that you will steal them from us just like this planet?”

“Have we lied about anything thus far?”

“You haven’t been here for very long.”

“I’d think you’d be more grateful that we eliminated the blockade. Your trade ships are already starting to move through this system, as are others. They’re just keeping clear of the planet at the moment, though we’ve made it clear they can enter orbit to conduct business at their leisure. This is no longer a war zone. You slept through the last stages of it.”

“The ships are free to move?”

“Commerce is already being returned to normal. The blockade is over and we are not instituting one of our own. We came here to stop it. And we’re keeping this planet to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The fate of this galaxy is at stake, and you can’t expect the Paladin to do all the work for you. Petty differences, economic or other, will not be allowed to get in the way of a united front. Even if that front is only economic exchange of necessary resources. You stop the flow of resources and planets starve from lack of food, or lack of other things needed to defend themselves. We will tolerate no such blockages.”

“What of the revenue generated here?”

“This is a Paladin world now, but those doing business here keep their own earnings. We have no taxes.”

“No taxes? How is that even possible?”

“It’s the way superior civilizations operate.”

“So we may continue to operate our trade here?”

“Individual businesses may, but they have to operate under our code of behavior. It is rather specific, but our civilian code is rather lax.”

“You intend to operate this world?”

“We do.”

“But those living on it can operate independently?”

“Within our rules, yes,” he said, sensing bad omens in the other’s mind. He was going to agree to help with the intent on mounting some form of resistance. He wasn’t going to be helpful, just a hindrance, and that’s exactly why mind raiders had been assigned as Ambassadors on this mission.

“Then, if we can still operate for the sake of our race, we can cut a deal, perhaps. But it cannot be anything that conflicts with my duty to my race.”

The door opened and two Paladin skirmishers walked in, responding to his telepathic cue.

“I have other interviews to do today. Thank you for your openness. Please accompany them. You need some food, no doubt.”

“Thank you, Ambassador. I haven’t eaten since your ships arrived insystem.”

The Paladin watched him leave, then a few moments later another Nirvu was escorted in.

“You are Gha’nor?” he asked after pulling the name from his mind to confirm his list order.

“I…am,” he said hyper-nervous.

“Calm yourself,” the Ambassador said, walking up to the shorter amphibian. “You should know, Star Force has two rules regarding prisoners. We never execute them, and we never torture them. You are not here to be harmed. I just wanted to speak with you.”

“About what?” Gha’nor asked, rubbing his small hands together, which made slight squeaky noises on his waterproof skin.

“The future…”

It took 14 tries with different Nirvu before the Ambassador finally found someone who was willing to work with them without hidden motives. His name was Lar’ru, and he was an assistant to an assistant of the Regional Governor. After a thorough mental dive during their conversation, the Ambassador sent Lar’ru to a different location where he would begin to work with the Paladin Administrator assigned to this region of the planet.

After that there were more interviews, and the success rate was very similar. About 1 out of 20 were ‘approved’ to be put to work leading the natives, while the rest were all disasters waiting to happen.

Four days later, and some 98 interviews in, the Ambassador unexpectedly called a halt to his work. He sat in the Regional Governor’s office, now refitted with proper equipment and furniture, and simply stared at a wall for more than an hour, trying to sort through the garbage in his head that he’d collected while doing the mind dives. Nirvu culture was full of it, and he didn’t understand how they could function as a society with so much disorder.

His own genetic memories were selected and arranged properly, but these Nirvu had no such guidance…and unlike the Archons, they didn’t seem to be able to put themselves together over time. They either embraced the chaos or cocooned up into a defensive shell while the trash filtered in and poisoned them over time. They had no hope, no aspirations, other than petty local issues. This planet was a mental garbage heap, and it badly needed Star Force’s intervention.

When he finally cleared his mind using a technique also embedded into his genetic code, the Ambassador wrote out a report on the matter and submitted it to the head Administrator assigned to the planet. Then he summoned the next individual for an interview, making sure he wasn’t going to do a deep dive unless they showed promise. If he kept up as he was, his efficiency was going to tank despite him learning quickly as he got his own experience on top of what came with his genetic memories.

This was not the type of warfare he had anticipated, but it was a battle nonetheless. And he intended on persevering through the gauntlet of the mental trash in order to do his duty. One that no other Paladin variant could. If even one unworthy individual slipped through it could cause significant problems into the future for this planet, and he was not going to let that happen.

“Your name is Bro’han’ti, is that correct?” he asked the next Nirvu as it was escorted into the office.

A week and a half later he got a slight reprieve, for his duties became split between interviews and meetings with local leaders. In those meetings he was acting as a go-between for the Administrators so not to distract them from their duties. The Nirvu who came to him wanted to talk…and talk…and talk. It was a waste of his time mostly, but it gave him some telepathic rest for he wasn’t having to evaluate them every second of the conversation, only at certain points.

Mostly they came with complaints. Changes were being made across the planet, but the Paladin couldn’t change everything at once into a proper world, so it was being done slowly with the Administrators deciding what got changed first. As it was, the locals didn’t want anything to change, so mostly he was getting meaningless complaints along with a few reasonable ones. Occasionally someone would come to him with a proposition, all of which were denied save for one. That one seemed reasonable, dealing with the traffic patterns on the surface and how the previous government had refused a logical upgrade to them. The Ambassador didn’t make the call himself, but sent it on, only to later learn that it had been accepted as a temporary measure until Star Force traffic control could be set up…which meant a lot of low level infrastructure had to be built across the planet.

So that was one win amongst a lot of nonsense. He was the filter for that nonsense, but he was glad he had found something of use in it all. The bulk of his days were still doing more interviews and finding a handful of people that could be put to work running the local systems. The Paladin were not wanting to do that, rather waiting for proper systems to be built to replace them, and it had been decided to use those already accustomed to the inferior systems to operate them. They would then see upgrade after upgrade as time went on, improving their situation, while Paladin in those positions would have been continually burdened with the stupidity of it all.

A side project of the Ambassadors was also to analyze the culture and develop a better translation of their language and mannerisms. This Ambassador spent less than an hour a day on that, but he had already got feedback from the Regional Administrator that his observations were improving various communications notices. It wasn’t just that people used different words for the same concepts, but different languages had different concepts to deal with, and there were never exact translations for them. The closer the Paladin could get to the Nirvu, the less confusion there would be. And for that a mind raider was also best suited for.

What he was not doing was participating in combat, messing with or altering minds to achieve tactical goals. He would have preferred that to this endless sifting, sorting, and evaluating, but the work was necessary and he didn’t disagree with it. But the assault on his sanity was not something he could keep ignoring.

When it became more than his daily cleansing processes could handle, he accessed the Paladin mainframe for help beyond what his limited genetic memories could provide. In his quarters on a grounded Paladin ship, for other facilities had not yet been constructed for his use, he stood before an information terminal that lit up holographically at his touch…but then he withdrew his hand and decided to use telepathic commands. Something all the Paladin terminals were capable of, though there were so few mind raiders amongst his race to actually use them.

He sorted through entries, eventually finding the ‘help’ section regarding mental contamination. A holographic image of Aaron-010 appeared from the shoulders up and nodded in an understanding gesture that immediately made the Ambassador feel better for a reason he could not identify.

“Reading minds is not an easy or simple thing. Whenever you do, you share a bit of their mojo with your own. You have to learn to establish barriers between who you are and who and what they are, but even when you do some of what you see and feel still gets to you. Not the same as if you’d lived it yourself, but partially. When you get to know who you are, above and beyond your genetic memory, the ways of others will be less troublesome after you break connection. During connection there is no way to soften the blow of bad minds. Good minds are likewise rejuvenative to your own, especially those that are similar. Do a surface scan of your fellow Paladin as you pass them during your duties, and their available mojo should help counteract the ‘tipping’ effect of reading aliens. It’s not much given the Ikrid blocks, but you can still pick up enough to be of use.”

“If you are alone, then you won’t have that luxury. It comes down to a war inside your own mind. You have to learn your mind inside and out in order to know the battlefield. If you are newly spawned you do not have this advantage, yet you have a duty to do. There are ways to be found, do not think otherwise. But always remember that the antidote to the darkness is the light. Retreat to it when the darkness is too much to handle,” the hologram said, holding up his palm with a glowing orb in it.

“I anticipated this problem and created a template to use to help undo some of the nastiness you encounter out there. Download it into a wristband and use it in the field to realign your mind when needed.”

The Ambassador mentally sent the datafile to a ‘hold’ folder, then searched up the requisition manifest for the proper device. When he located it, a Paladin naval variant delivered it to his quarters a few minutes later without asking any questions. He simply handed it off and moved on to other tasks.

Taking the wristband, he downloaded the file into the telepathic relay and then tried to connect with it. Immediately a muted sensation came through that gradually grew stronger. It was like the essence of Star Force itself had been molded into a telepathic aura that quickly ate into the feeling of ‘wrongness’ inside of him. His natural self then seemed to realign and recover, with him realizing he hadn’t been damaged, but rather put out of alignment. And this device had helped fix the problem quite fast.

There was more knowledge contained in Aaron’s hologram, but he didn’t search through it, having found what he needed. The next day would be just as arduous, but with the wristband and a few moments between interviews, the Nirvu mental trash would not win out. Thank the trailblazers for once again anticipating a problem and finding a way to combat it.

4

EG33

December 9, 158442

ANDROMEDA GALAXY

Firchar-Nioni System

Tarchiss

“Go, go, go!” And-Tar-S-3982 yelled into his helmet mic as he sprinted along with his fellow Paladin skirmishers, firing sporadically as they went with blue stun bolts that looked like the Old Lore fiction known as Star Wars. These ‘blaster’ bolts, however, were fuzzy as they shot out, as if they were filled with static. And when they hit one of the Nirvu rebels they melted into them, with that static crackling out over a half meter of distance so they didn’t just affect the point of contact. That would render a muscle numb, and what they wanted was the whole person unconscious.

On the inside of his mostly opaque helmet he had a holographic view of the exterior, displayed a hair’s width over the armor plating making it appear that he wasn’t wearing a helmet at all. If for some reason it malfunctioned, there was an emergency override that could kick off two tiny pieces of armor plating to form eye slits, but those were rarely used. The Paladin, and Star Force in general, had fought so many battles they’d refined the technology of helmets to the point where they didn’t need to be able to see out of them, and even the body heat of the individual was enough to power the holographic field if main power was cut from the tiny power cell in the back of the suit.

That power cell, if hit, wouldn’t explode. It had been designed just to fizzle. And since Paladin armor was not nanite-base, even if it lost all power you could still use it by muscle strength alone…and doing that created a lot of heat, which the absorbers would suck in and transform into electricity to operate the base functions, just not the long range comms, shields, and other power heavy abilities Paladin armor offered.

Inside his heads up display he could see the other members of the Paladin infantry unit. Each one had their designator superimposed over their position, but whenever they were deployed as a unit they took on temporary markers. He was Diamond 4 at the moment, and the rest of his 26 reptile unit also had the Diamond moniker, while other units operating the Dakarsis Region of the planet had different temporary designations during this anti-rebel operation.

So ‘Four’ ran alongside three others at the head of the group as they breached one of the main doors on a Nirvu building where hostages had been taken…some of the family units of the Nirvu who were working with Star Force, and not even their immediate broods. Cousins, you would call them, had been taken as leverage and punishment against those few that were actively working with the Paladin to make the planet better.

And the Fleet Commander was not going to tolerate that one bit.

Diamond unit was hitting this building, while Emerald, Topaz, and Saphire were going after other targets within a few kilometers of this location simultaneously. Paladin skeets were stationed nearby in the air for assistance when called, but so far the Diamonds hadn’t encountered any resistance after coming of the dropship four blocks away to distract from the location of their actual target building.

The locks on the doors didn’t hold more than five seconds to the cutter in the group, then they were running through hallways following a map superimposed over their holographic vision in a way to minimize it as a distraction. Nirvu all over the building were scurrying out of the way as they ran past, heading for the series of circles that they used for stairs. The locals hopped from one to another in a spiral path to climb between levels when they didn’t use the lifts, but the Paladin had no trouble doing likewise with the strength enhancement in their armor. Each jump was a meter and a half high, and the reptilians made good speed upward towards the floors where they suspected the hostages to be held.

No demands to the Paladin had been made. This was an attempt to terrorize the locals into not working with them anymore, and it had taken a stealth scout known as a ‘Ranger’ snooping around the city to find them. That report had come in a few hours ago, and more Rangers had gone in to locate other sites in conjunction with this one. They’d even managed to sneak one of the mind raiders in to pry information out of a few prisoners. Then this operation had been put together and launched immediately thereafter.

Rangers were from the 2nd Triad of body types, and were the smallest of the Paladin. Originally, when the trailblazers had reworked the Li’vorkrachnika race they had settled on three basic body types, then modified each of those accordingly into three different variants. So what had started out with 9 variants in three forms had eventually added on new ones, but the term ‘triad’ still held.

The 1st Triad contained the Skirmishers, and Four’s body type was a muscular, stocky version but nowhere near as large as the Viceroys, which were the 3rd Triad. Mind Raiders were also 3rd Triad, and not easy to sneak around given their size. The Rangers must have had quite a time getting one in undetected, given the low ceilings in the Nirvu buildings. What the locals considered ‘vaulted’ ceilings were barely 3 meters high, and the doorways were such that you had to duck down to go through them if you were any taller than a Skirmisher.

Four had to duck anyway when he was running, or his bouncing would catch his helmet on them. And when they got to the appropriate level and got off the ‘pads,’ he did have to duck as he pushed into a stuck door. It jolted once, then the cutter came up and sliced through whatever had locked it, using a torch modification to the left forearm of his armor.

“Split,” Four ordered, with his Diamond unit going left and right towards different targets marked on his HUD as he got a ping from another unit on site. It was a cloaked Ranger and he was modifying the target locations to include a hostage already recovered…as well as marking the site where two others had already been killed.

The Ranger must have broke cover to save one of them, but now was pinned down protecting that individual beneath an extension of his armor’s cloak, which was referred to as an ‘umbrella’ and could mask one or two people if they were close to him and stationary.

“Eight, Ten, go secure that one,” he ordered over his comm, but not externally. The Paladin were all but silent moving through the hallways, with their armored boots covered with a soft sole that was both grippy and nearly quiet on the hard floors.

Two of his troops broke off and headed for that location while he pushed on to what was a main holding area on the map. Before he got within view of the door a pair of the amphibians hopped out into the hallway from decorative side niches and opened fire on them from backpack weapons that required them to bow even lower to the ground to fire.

Four flicked on his right arm gauntlet and a second shield materialized in front of him. It was a fixed shield and took the hits from the two a moment before stun shots fired from beside his right and left and took down the two with hits to their faces, for that was all that was visible given their low profiles under the backpacks.

“New toys?” Seven asked as they passed.

“Modified old ones,” Four said, having seen similar ones used during the invasion on recordings. He hadn’t been spawned at that time, but he’d reviewed them thoroughly. “They increased the output. Those two shots…” he began to explain as they rounded a corner and got into another firefight. “Charge them!”

The Paladin didn’t slow down, rather increasing their run speed and taking hits on their armor shields or on forearm shields for those who carried them. Within seconds they were jumping over or onto the Nirvu, some of whom jumped out of the way themselves and were caught by stun blasts or a leaping Paladin. Once they got in close, the punches, kicks, and tail slashes knocked the two dozen or so Nirvu senseless as those in the back of the Paladin formation stunned the ones with their weapons that were suffering from concussive blows.

Punching through a shut but not locked door, Four came into the holding area…which was submerged in shallow water. Two more gunmen were located and taken down, but not before a third in the back turned his small wrist weapons on the hostages.

Three were shot before he was stunned unconscious, and the rest of them were hopping every which way in panic.

“Five, get the medpacks on them!”

“Roger, roger,” he said, using a term from his genetic memory that meant total agreement. He ran up to one of the wounded that was hopping around and bleeding profusely, grabbed the Nirvu and slapped on an automated healing patch from a special backpack that he wore. It adhered quickly, then he stunned that one unconscious and moved to the two that were on the floor and still as rocks.

He flipped one over, splashing around the 4 inch deep water that was becoming red colored and located the wound…which was in its forehead just above one of its large eyes.

“Damn,” he said, pulling out his regenerator instead and attaching it to the head while moving on to the other. It had a throat wound and he applied another healing patch to it, then watched as both devices worked to revive the injured.

The healing patch didn’t have omni-tasking nanites in it, but it did have some basic ones that got the heart restarted and helped seal up the burn mark on the throat. When that Nirvu blinked its eyes open and took a few breaths he knew that it would make it.

The other, however, had probably suffered at least some brain damage, and the regenerator was taking a long time to work. Five linked it to his HUD and watched the progress, not liking what he was seeing.

“Five?” Four asked.

“Two of them will recover, but this one took a head shot. It’s going to need rehab.”

“How did one of those little pea shooters do that much damage?”

“These guys have very thin skulls, and they’re somewhat flexible. Damage goes right through, apparently.”

The rest of the Nirvu prisoners had either fled the room or were now quieting down, with the chaotic chirps not something that Four was going to miss.

He opened a private comm. “Fleet Commander, this location is secure, but we have a prisoner with brain damage. Requesting immediate evac to a proper facility.”

“We’ll have to build one,” the Arbiter replied, with Four seeing a small flat holographic picture of the Paladin in orbit. “Dispatching a special mission transport now.”

A dot appeared on Four’s battlemap, indicating a transponder signature that was coming from another section of the planetary infrastructure rather than from a ship in orbit.

The comm cut off, and the ETA on the arrival was counting down from 7 minutes and 38 seconds.

“Get that one outside. Transport incoming. Are the others good?”

“They will be in an hour or so,” Five said, seeing the Nirvu with the shot throat picking at the healing pack. He reached out an armored hand and pulled the tiny aquatic paw away from the device.

“Leave it on,” he said, using his translator. “It is healing you. It will disconnect on its own when it is finished.”

“Will…you take us…away?” the small female asked.

“You can go back home now,” Four said, looking down at her. “We’ll give you a ride wherever that is.”

“But, won’t they come for us again? Can we go with you?”

“If you want relocated we can arrange it, but these guys won’t be bothering you again. It’s sad we have to spend resources to build a proper prison this early when they could be used on other things, but we already have. They’ll be confined there and no longer a problem. If others do the same as them, we’ll pick them up too. Eventually they’ll get the idea that they have to behave.”

“Can you really revive the dead?” she asked in a meek voice.

“If they haven’t been dead too long, yes.”

“Half a moon cycle?”

The Paladin shook his head. “I’m sorry. Not that long,” he said, pointing to the other one with the Regenerator finally kicking off and Five retrieving it. “This one will take some more help, but he’ll live.”

“They killed my mother before this. They will kill me too. Please take me with you.”

“Alright, you can come with us now,” he said, switching back to his secure comms with his unit. “Sweep the building and make your presence known. Draw out anyone else that might be hiding here. Does anyone know where the runners went?”

“Out to the streets,” the Ranger said, picking up on the proximity transmission. Paladin only used encrypted messages in select circumstances. Normally their comms were set with designators that would sift out who they wanted to talk to and hear from, but other Paladin could listen in to other groups if they were in range. “I’m trailing to see if they attract attention, but they’re going different routes. No interference as yet.”

“Tagging incoming transports as medical, prison, and evac,” he said, sending off a request for the other two that been arranged previously and were on standby a few minutes away. “Get everyone to the street,” he said, adding a landing zone to the battlemap for both his unit’s use and the approaching transports while the one they had come down on was waiting in a flight pattern around the target building to be recalled.

Diamond unit used the lifts this time to get everybody down to ground level, including a couple more new prisoners that had attacked the sweeper teams. There could be more in the building involved and were keeping their heads down, but that wasn’t his mission at the moment. This entire planet was full of Nirvu who didn’t like the Paladin, and there was no way to ensure who was safe and who was not. So if they weren’t shooting or otherwise interfering, he was to leave them alone.

That said, during the process of getting everyone down and out to the landing dropships, seven more Rangers popped up on his battlemap for only a second, checking in and announcing their presence before disappearing again. And all of their locations indicated they were following the runners and the Nirvu who didn’t want to go on the transports.

Star Force wasn’t just going to let them roam free and get killed a few minutes later. If anyone tried to make a move on them, they’d have a nasty invisible surprise waiting for them…even if the Rangers were a bit lacking in the muscle department. But they knew well how to engage targets from their blind side and disable them with a single strike or two. Unless there was a pack of them, they could handle the clandestine cover work.

And if there was a pack, Four would be getting another call quickly enough. His unit was going to stay active for the next few hours as support if needed, then they would disband and he’d lose his ‘Four’ moniker, only to be given another one on the next unit he was assigned to. Between then and now he’d recycle back to the main base and be put in ‘standby’ mode, which meant rest and training until he was needed again.

If this had been an active combat zone his unit would not be disbanded for months, perhaps even years, but on a ‘peaceful’ world like this, they only needed such units occasionally…though the growing resistance on this planet was starting to become a worry. The lack of executions, and the stopping of the Nirvu ones for various crimes, had seemed to encourage more resistance once word got around.

Being the good guys did have its drawbacks at times, but a successful raid like this should invoke a bit more fear into the populace. The invasion was too much a distant memory for them now, he figured, and they were going to need some combat-level reminders to keep most of them in line while the Administrators did their work restructuring and retraining the planet.

Four didn’t expect less action going forward, and in the months to come he wouldn’t be disappointed.

5

EG33

January 19, 158443

ANDROMEDA GALAXY

Firchar-Nioni System

Tarchiss

“You cannot deny us all our livestock!” a Nirvu merchant by the name of Far’gha yelled while a group of 6 others chirped agreement in the Ambassador’s office. “It was bad enough when you started taking some of them from us, but now you’ve claimed them all! Our people are starving!”

“No,” the Paladin said, his eyes glaring intently enough to make a few of the little amphibians quiver. “They are not. Foodstuffs are limited, but nobody on the planet is starving. Including those so-called ‘livestock’ we rescued from you. And as more bioharvest facilities come online, the foodstuff supply on this planet will increase. If you’re going to make complaints, do not lie, or I will not admit you to make them anymore.”

“We have a right to our livestock!” Far’gha went on, unphased. “Our culture demands we consume the Jin’ko’na insects at least once every moon cycle. You have on right to deny us this!”

“We have every right,” the Ambassador said firmly. “And if your culture is darkside, then it is our duty to destroy it. Not just for those currently living, but for those to be born into it later.”

Even Far’gha went pale when he said that.

“You said you wouldn’t kill us?” another merchant asked in a meek voice.

“I said destroy your culture, not your people. The foodstuffs we are beginning to provide you are more beneficial to your bodies than corpse could ever be anyway. But even if they weren’t, it is dishonorable to kill and eat others.”

“It is the way the great universe created us! It is our nature!”

“Do you want us to protect you against larger races that would claim you as a food source?” the Ambassador asked. “Nature is not our ally. Star Force has declared war on nature itself. Where it produces an endless string of carnage and reproduction to replace the losses and repeat the carnage, we protect, enlighten, and break the cycle. Our populations have the potential to live forever, as will you if you would listen to us. But even if you do not, the foodstuffs we produce will lengthen your lifespan simply for lack of the toxins your current supply has imbedded in it. The same is true of your water and your air. You will benefit even if you do not understand or agree.”

“No one is meant to live forever,” Far’gha argued.

“Shall I kill you then? If you’re destined to die, why wait? Better to get it over with now,” he said deadpan.

Into the following silence he continued.

“But if that wasn’t the purpose of life, then what is? We are all structured to learn, grow, and improve beyond the maturation cycle you have. I was spawned as an adult form and was never a youngling. I was given a vast amount of genetic memory. Far more than any of you will likely attain during the course of your lives, no matter how long they are. But we Paladin are not ‘complete.’ We are meant to take what we have been given and build upon it, as are all others. We are meant to level up. It may not be the full purpose of our lives, but it is a part of the great mystery of the universe the Archons have unlocked. And when you are on the path of advancement, other things begin to become clear. Likewise, stagnation will cloud your vision and make it appear life isn’t worth living and that death would be a release. We will not have your future offspring caught in that cultural trap. They will learn to value and protect life. Not destroy and eat it. And we will protect your race from others trying to kill and eat you. We protect everyone, including the less advanced races you wrongly refer to as your property. You will not be getting them back.”

“We will not stand for that! It is unnatural,” another one said, repeating and not learning a damn thing. But then again, his genetic memory taught him that sometimes you have to deliver the lesson to the stubborn, only for it to sink in much, much later. So maybe his words would not be wasted. There was never a way to know for sure, so you delivered them anyway even if you were chasing a 1% chance of understanding.

“You operate your businesses here because we allow it,” the Ambassador clarified. “What leverage do you think you have?”

“We far outnumber you,” Far’gha answered for the group.

The Ambassador stood up, nearly hitting his head on the low ceiling. “If you wish to wage war on us, then go. We will deal with you like we have the others. I will waste no more time on you if you choose to be an adversary. I will work with those who wish to ensure a better future for this planet,” he said, pointing a finger at the enlarged door.

“At least give us a few of our livestock,” one of them pleaded.

“We will not betray a single one of them, nor a single one of you. Be grateful for that, for if the Asferja reach this world, they will eat you.”

He flicked his wrist to emphasize his thick, pointed finger, and the small merchant delegation slowly hopped their way out, only to be replaced by an even larger group coming in.

“Bru’shen,” he greeted as he sat back down in his chair. “Here to complain about your livestock losses as well?”

“The decision has been made,” a slightly larger and less fit Nirvu said as he made short hops to enter with a phalanx of others arraying themselves behind him, a few of which took up spots in the shallow pools in the office. “I no longer challenge it.”

“Then why are you here today?”

“We are losing our off planet contracts,” he said regretfully. “An economic blockade by our fellow Nirvu. No official announcement has been made, but it’s happening piece by piece. They are isolating us. Combined with the losses from our lack of livestock revenue, many of us will shortly be going out of business.”

The Ambassador frowned, for this was the first he was hearing of it.

“Nirvu contracts, or others as well?”

“Nirvu, plus a few others.”

“The traffic to and from this planet has been increasing steadily. How are you losing contracts?”

“Most of that is you purchasing raw materials. Local commerce is flourishing on that, and hides the diminishment of traditional business transactions.”

“Why not trade with other races to replace your losses?”

“They no longer need to trade with us to avoid the tariffs. You allow free transit through this system, so there is little reason for them to trade with us when others will pay better down other ends of the trade route.”

“I see. Your business model was based on a captive market, and now you are having trouble adapting.”

“No, it is not just that. We are being deliberately prevented from adapting. Our government will not tolerate your possession of this system, so they are slowly cutting us off, and I would expect them to be leveraging others to do exactly the same. The trade route will remain open, but this system will become next to worthless as it is ignored as little more than a pass-through system.”

The Ambassador reached into his desk and pulled out a pair of datachips compatible with existing Nirvu computer systems. He slid them to the far side of his desk while remaining seated.

“The Planetary Administrator foresaw the latter problem and is offering to facilitate a restructuring of the private business market, beginning with the following opportunities should you wish to utilize them. As for off-worlders refusing to do business with you, I will pass along the information. The Administrators will know what to do. They will not allow this planet to become an economic debris field.”

One of the Nirvu hopped up and grabbed both datachips, then retreated and handed them to Bru’shen.

“We can’t leave anymore. We’ve been marked by the other Nirvu as traitors. Some who left voluntarily were accepted back, but other more recent departures have been executed. If we cannot restructure our businesses here, we have nowhere to go.”

“How do you know of the executions?”

“Private messages carried by couriers. Our people want us to know we cannot leave now. Even those of us who did not assist you in any way.”

“The unjust do not typically follow rules, let alone have scruples,” the Ambassador said angrily. The people they let go should not have been killed. If this story was true, the Paladin would have to deal with the Nirvu government harshly. They’d probably lose at least another star system, perhaps more. “Can you give me a copy of those messages?”

Bru’shen gestured to the nearest Nirvu on his left, and two quick hops later had him landing on the edge of the Ambassador’s desk and dropping a data crystal on it rather than reaching up in a stretch to the edge. The desk had been built sunken into the floor so not to dwarf them, but given this one’s smaller size, it seemed the desk was still too tall.

“These are copies of most of them,” Bru’shen said as the Ambassador pulled the tiny cube across the desk and slid in into a depression that matched, producing a holographic inventory of what was on it. “I want to work with you, but doing so has made us all outcasts of our race.”

“Do not worry, merchant,” the Ambassador said confidently. “You are already on the winning side. We have restructured thousands of worlds more challenging than this one. Patience will see this planet prospering. Transitional difficulties always occur and sometimes give the impression of hopelessness. It will not last long. The more we build, the faster we are able to build. And the imports are helping us increase that pace further.”

“This is a depleted world, unfortunately.”

“Not completely. We have mining techniques that you do not. We can harvest material from the magma layer directly. Once those facilities come online, we will not need to acquire most raw materials from the galactic markets.”

“You can?” he asked, bewildered.

“Our technology is far more advanced, and we inhabit worlds far more depleted. We know how to manage resources well, including recycling. As your old buildings are tore down, we will reuse the materials. We are only buying from others to speed up the initial transformation process.”

“What does that mean for the buildings we already possess?”

“We’ll get you new ones eventually, but we need to use what’s here for the time being. Rebuilding an entire planet is a lengthy process.”

“Exports were 70% of my business. It’s down to 23% now.”

“Then I suggest you review those offers carefully. You’re the first I’ve given them to, but you won’t be the last.”

Bru’shen looked down at the flat chips in his small hand. “I will review them carefully. Thank you, Ambassador.”

A chirping sound of agreement from the others was followed by them all leaving, after which another delegation was showed in, shouting angrily the moment they got through the door…

The Ambassador retreated to his quarters at the end of another long day, using his telepathic mediation to clear his mind of the Nirvu mental trash he was still picking up. Interviews occupied less of his day, but they were a constant necessity to establish a core group of Nirvu who could be trusted. Some like Bru’shen in the merchant community had started to come onboard on their own merits, but the revelations of the executions offworld rattled the Ambassador. They had arranged for those people to be transported back to the worlds they chose, either on Nirvu craft or other charters.

And what had the Nirvu done? Executed the more recent ones, citing they were ‘contaminated.’ No edict had been given denying them entry to their systems. So when they arrived they were ambushed and publicly executed. All existing charters had been immediately cancelled and all Nirvu ships in the system were given 40 hours to depart. After that, any showing up in the Firchar-Nioni System would be seized and confiscated for use in the local economy.

The Ambassador knew the Paladin would win eventually, but the losses of the evacuees still rattled him. How could the Nirvu turn on their own people that were returning to them rather than staying on the new Paladin world? They were being loyal, and that loyalty was rewarded with death.

It showed a culture that didn’t care about justice or truth or honor. They were barbaric primitives who couldn’t handle not being in charge, and since they couldn’t kill any Paladin to salve their egos, they were killing Nirvu who had come into contact with the Paladin. It was an act of rank cowardice and begged for an invasion. He didn’t know if one would come soon, but the Paladin did not forget such things. Right now, though, the galaxy was burning under an Asferja invasion and there were probably other higher priorities.

But these Nirvu had to be taken down eventually. Every fiber of his Paladin existence demanded it.

The images of the executions were difficult to get out of his mind. At least he hadn’t felt their deaths, but the injustice of it all demanded one response…combat. And this was happening on other worlds he had no access to, so he was unable to strike back at it. That left him feeling a peculiar type of wrong.

He’d gotten his first taste of combat when helping locate the hostages a couple months ago, using his abilities to dig information out to help save people. That was righteous work, but sifting through the minds of the Nirvu day in and day out to evaluate them left him with too much knowledge of the way they thought and felt, so when he saw the executions and the propaganda surrounding them, it cut deeper than it should have.

He retreated to the information database again, looking for answers.

“You’re not supposed to like bad things,” Jason-025’s holographic recording said bluntly. “But there’s only so much we can take and still remain ourselves. When the darkness becomes too much, we start to numb it out so we can’t feel it. This is the natural reaction to keep it from contaminating us further. Others, rather than fight it, they embrace it, hoping that becoming one with the nastiness will protect them from it…but it doesn’t. Unscrupulous people do not hold to scruples, and while those who give into it might live longer, they often find themselves turned on eventually by the same people or beliefs they thought would protect them. Bad guys are bad guys for a reason, and they’re never trustworthy. Only the lightside is.”

“There is no good way to deal with the bad things you find in life, because they shouldn’t exist. It’s not ‘all right,’ and telling yourself it is only confuses you further. But you need to see the distinction here. Someone else suffering or dying is not you suffering or dying. If you are empathizing too much you start to simulate their pain so you can feel it too. That’s not what you want to do in high carnage areas. In some small scale situations it can be useful, but it’s like turning up the volume to hear a whisper, only to have a battle alert come through and blare so loud you lose your hearing for a while. You have to learn how to adjust your empathy settings, and there is no perfect level. It’s always going to hurt you to see others hurting, but you can’t let yourself feel so much that you become hindered by it.”

“We don’t want to numb up, and when we do it’s temporary. Sometimes we get stuck numbed up because we have to use it so much. But other people get stuck fully open and feeling everything. You have to be able to adjust up and down, knowing you’re still going to take hits to your sanity, but you manage the hits in a way that you still keep pressing forward. Just because someone else is feeling horrible doesn’t mean you should as well.”

“That said, I can never let it go completely. My job is to help and protect people, and every one I can’t get to wears on me a little bit. But I keep it in check. I never numb up completely, but I can’t let myself denumb all the way. The galaxy is too messy, even as we keep cleaning up chunks of it. If I open up too much, I’d get hammered. So I have to keep my emotional armor on, not so thick I can’t recognize when someone else is hurting or needs help. The only time I do that is when I’m overloaded and, for the sake of me getting back in the fight, I have to tune everything out and focus on healing. It goes against my nature as a warrior to do that, but if I get in too deep that’s what has to happen to pull yourself out.”

“Your mind is like a garden. You grow useful plants in it, but if it starts to be taken over by weeds it can choke the life out of you and twist your thinking. You gotta keep weeding your own mind, and when you encounter injustice and carnage in the galaxy, it’s like you get a basket of weed seeds thrown into your garden. If you don’t deal with them, they’re going to grow and could potentially choke out the plants you’ve cultivated. When that happens you lose yourself in all the mess. If we get to that point, we have to shut out everyone else. Throw up so much emotional armor that no more seeds, good or bad, can come in, and focus on weeding out the stuff in your head that doesn’t belong there.”

“Assuming you know how to do that. People who don’t, if they get to that point, are essentially trapped in a torture chamber of their own mind. Don’t let it get that far, but if you do, and can’t find help from Star Force, then remember this above all else.”

“No matter how many weeds you have in your garden, it can always be cleared out. Do not let yourself believe it is permanent.”

The Ambassador listened on for more than two hours, soaking up wisdom from multiple Archons and gaining some new knowledge about his situation. He was getting weed seeds from the Nirvu every time he looked into their messed up minds. Minds that were so overgrown some of them were to the point of killing each other and thinking it was a good idea to do so.

That meant these ‘bad’ people might not be as bad if their minds were cleared, though Kimberly-134 had stated clearly that not everyone was a good person. Some were rotten to begin with, and only with rotten people could a culture go bad. If good people were born into a bad culture, they would start to diminish the badness even if they didn’t understand what they were doing. It would eventually, generation after generation, cease being bad as they made small adjustments or simply didn’t indulge in the worst parts of it.

In order for cultures to go the other way and get worse, there had to be individuals driving it further into the darkside. Good people didn’t do that, so aside from misguided and weed-infested individuals, there had to be rotten ones pushing a culture the wrong way. If everyone was a good person, no matter how encumbered, at least tiny progress would be made over time.

So that meant the Nirvu were a mixed bag. People who needed to be rescued from their own mental trash, and those that were actively creating it and making it worse.

Knowing that somehow steadied him more than anything else. They weren’t all the enemy, but some definitely were. And Paladin knew how to deal with enemies.

You fought and conquered them.

And while he couldn’t do everything, that wasn’t really an issue for him. Paladin were always part of a team, and each individual had to do their part. So if he could keep his own garden weeded while doing this Ambassadorial tasks, then that was enough. He could tune out the suffering of others, knowing that he was doing his part to end it…and knowing that the other Paladin everywhere across two galaxies would be doing the same.

Individually they couldn’t do much. Together, they could do a great deal that many people thought was impossible.

So when the Ambassador when to sleep, he did so without running the execution scenes through his head over and over again. He couldn’t help the dead, nor any others on those worlds, let alone everyone else across the galaxy. But he could help those who were his assignment, and if he had the strength to endure it, then he would have done his part and he could sleep easy.

Taking on the entire universe’s problems would crush even an Archon, Jason-025 had said, so they only tried briefly then had to back off. Part of them would never accept ignoring problems, but even they could only handle so much. If they had to compartmentalize, then it was probably wise to follow their example and stop demanding he fix this galaxy single handedly.

But still, he didn’t like bad stuff happening. Nor did the Archons. It was a mutual problem not shared by the rotten people. Rotten people didn’t care about others, so his internal struggle against this was a sign that he was a good person. That also put him and his subconscious more at ease.

‘Clear’ wasn’t the right word, for it never would be on a planet as messed up as this. But he could rest for a bit and recharge, then get back into the fight. The never-ending fight of the lightside against the darkside.

Fortunately, Paladin were spawned to fight, and he didn’t want peace. He wanted clear objectives, targets, and a means to fight back. It was when he lacked one of those three he began to lose his way.

But not tonight. The words of the Archons on his mind, he rested and his subconscious began weeding his garden with the ample fervor of the lightside in a dreamless sleep. He would awake the next day refreshed and ready to reengage in his unique battlefield as a Mind Raider.

6

EG34

November 9, 158443

ANDROMEDA GALAXY

Firchar-Nioni System

Tarchiss

The Ambassador was still working out of the old Regional Governor’s building that had been slightly modified. Resources were needed across the planet for other projects, and as long as this structure was still useable the Paladin were going to delay replacing it.

He hadn’t yet reached two years old, but so much had happened that he was already feeling like a veteran compared to the newer Paladin being spawned on planet. The Nirvu rebellion was still active, but diminishing with each month as more and more of them were rounded up and put into an increasing number of prisons. Eventually they’d run out of people willing to actively attack the Paladin and their supporters, but they weren’t there yet.

But today that changed, for word came in via trade couriers about what the Ambassador already knew. The Paladin at struck at another Nirvu world and seized it in retaliation for the executions…and as a result the Nirvu had declared war on them.

The locals here were likewise emboldened to act, and the sweeper teams across the planet were overloaded picking up Nirvu who were assaulting their facilities or the residential areas reserved for Nirvu workers. The planet was going into a much higher level of resistance than before, but the Paladin were managing it one attack at a time.

The number of stunned bodies being transported out was staggering, and the current prisons could not hold all of them, so temporary facilities were being set up at a rapid pace as the Paladin tried to drain the loyalists from the population as they identified themselves. And even a few of those working with the Paladin had changed their minds after they heard their race had declared war, so some sabotage had been happening behind the first security perimeter.

But those problems were being dealt with. Had this happened 6 months earlier it would have been a much bigger problem, but the number of Paladin on the planet had increased significantly since then, as had their facilities. Most spaceports on the planet had shut down for lack of traffic wanting to get caught up in the attacks, but there were two freshly built public ones that the Paladin kept open and secured…with a long line of merchants waiting in orbit to get access to them to exchange cargoes with the Paladin planetary market, fearing that trying to deal with the Nirvu directly could see their ships seized or blown up by the rebels.

And that wasn’t pure fear. Some had been attacked on the ground as Nirvu zealots declared no one but Nirvu should be allowed on the planet. Idiots that didn’t realize the necessity of logistics transfer, or the fact that Paladin facilities were feeding a significant portion of Tarchiss. The previous shortages were not so far in the past that they had a lot of wiggle room, and with the rebellion starting to take over things just to do so, a lot of the distribution of the foodstuffs was being intercepted and people were going to start starving unless the Paladin could put this rebellion down quickly, for the Nirvu still greatly outnumbered them.

The Ambassador still had a large amount of meetings and interviews scheduled, but an alert on his datascreen indicated the ones he was currently meeting with would be his last and all others were canceled. He was needed for combat.

He calmly finished the meeting with a group of lowland farmers who were pledging their loyalty to the Paladin after being shown ways to honorably grow crops at a rate 7 times greater than they previously were. They said the rebellion would not change that so long as the Paladin kept to their promises, and the Ambassador sensed no deception in them.

Once they left so did he, traveling to a Paladin facility and stepping into battle armor that encased his large body head to tail tip. He joined up with a group of Dragoons, all of which were the same size as him with some small differences in frame and musculature. That said, they were all vastly stronger and faster than him, but he blended in completely once they were in armor.

They moved silently to dropships and took their cramped positions inside, then were flown across hundreds of miles of city and countryside until they came to an existing firefight around an industrial complex that had been overrun by the rebels. They weren’t of much threat to the Paladin, but they were killing other Nirvu and the Paladin could only be in so many places at the same time…meaning losses were occurring. The Ambassador’s orders had his designation change for this mission, with him being identified as ‘Amber 17.’

When the dropships spilled out the 42 members of his unit, they immediately headed for the mechs the Nirvu used to work in this metal smithing plant. They were large suits encasing a liquid cockpit, and while they didn’t have conventional weapons on them, they were dexterous enough to be able to punch, kick, and squash other Nirvu…and there were already several gore spots visible on the tarmac outside the largest of the structures.

The battlemap in his amor told Amber 17 that the rebels had taken over this location and several others in the complex, and the skirmishers on site were trying to deal with the infantry but didn’t have a good way to handle those mechs without blowing them up…two of which they had, out of necessity to stop them from killing others, but the rest were now defending their territory and most of the workers not associated with them had already been evacuated from the area.

Or been killed previously.

Amber 17 knew his mission here was to assist the Dragoons and get what intel he could out of prisoners. Intel that would lead them to further strikes. This is what a Mind Raider was meant to do, and he relished the chance to take some direct action. Meetings might be necessary, but they were not the Paladin way.

There was no idle chatter between the Dragoons, which was typical of Paladin in a war zone. Even when back in standby status the conversations were few. If they had a purpose to talk they would, but there was no such thing as Paladin small talk. They never felt the need to speak just to be speaking. And the less one talked, the less it would interfere with their hearing.

Footstomps of the Dragoons were muted compared to the stomps of the mechs on patrol around the main building, and when one of the mechs spotted their approach the others quickly moved to assist…which suggested they also had communications in them.

“Split,” Amber 3 ordered, with the other two leaders each taking a group with them. In Paladin groups you had a number of predesignated leaders, or ‘sub leaders’ with their numbers being the first 3,  4, 5 or whatever was necessary given the overall unit. There were three here, and the senior leader always had the highest of those numbers. So Amber 3 commanded the unit, and Amber 1 and Amber 2 took the lead of the pieces splitting off.

Amber 3 had designated who would go and communicated that via their HUD, with Amber 17 being kept in the central group under his command as they accelerated to full sprint toward the nearest mech, but kept themselves staggered and weaving back and forth making it hard for the Nirvu to tell what they were going to do. It also would have made it harder to target them if they had weapons, and the Paladin never completely assumed someone was unarmed.

Amber 17 moved like they did, taking longer to get to target than necessary, but at the last moment the leading few Dragoons split and ran around the mech. It started to turn to the right to step on them when Amber 3, in the middle of the group ran right towards it and leapt up onto the leg, sticking there with his armor’s grip pads.

More of the big Dragoons leapt up and started crawling to the top, with those that had bypassed curling back and encircling the single mech. With a few seconds there were so many Dragoons on it you could barely see the metal arms and legs…until one of them was cut free and clattered to the ground.

Amber 17 was signaled to move on past with the rest of the central group, and he joined them on jumping the next closest one that was coming to help his buddy. When he got on a leg the Dragoon above him reached down a hand.

“Relay Fling!” he yelled.

Amber 17 took his hand, and disconnected his grip pads as the other began to pull…and throw him higher. Another Dragoon there grabbed him and threw him on top, with the Mind Raider landing on the edge of the canopy and the opaque back section of the mech, staring down at the little Nirvu in the water-filled pod as the mech twisted and jerked, trying to throw off the Dragoons.

A giant metal hand reached up and was about to smack him flat, but he sent a telepathic jamming signal down into the Nirvu and froze him stiff. They didn’t have telepathy blockers like the Paladin did, so he was helpless as long as Amber 17 focused on him.

Soon that hand, which was stuck reaching up into the sky, fell off as the Dragoons cut it free using death saber mounts in their forearms. Normally they didn’t carry them, but when they knew they would be dealing with mechs they all swapped out components in their armor for the flat, noisy energy blades.

Holding the Nirvu frozen, Amber 17 activated his own flat blue blade and cut into the top of the cockpit. A badly formed circle that dropped the thick chunk of clear material down into the water. He deactivated the blade then reached down and pulled the piece off the still frozen Nirvu as it pinned him to the bottom of the small pod. He chucked it off onto the deck, then pulled out the pilot as one of the legs gave way and the mech toppled.

He cradled the little amphibian to his chest and rolled, pulling him clear while maintaining the mental link, then set him on the ground and began rifling through his frozen mind. Several minutes later he stunned him, then turned to look at Amber 3 who was coming back from taking down his third mech.

The Mind Raider didn’t explain in words, but rather sent the information directly into the Dragoon leader’s mind.

“New target,” he announced, even as another two mechs came around a corner deep inside the building to view the wreckage of 5 others. “Follow.”

All of the Ambers came together in a rough column as they ran, arms pumping and tails waggling side to side away from the building, ignoring the pair of mechs and heading off across the main loading plaza enroute to a specific building that had not seen any combat yet. But when they got close to it, energy blasts started hitting them from multiple points on the roof.

The Paladin began their weave running again, causing most of the shots to miss, then as they got close to the surface entrances a rocket launched from one of the windows and hit two meters in front of Amber 17.

He was thrown backwards, hitting the thick surface plates hard, but his armor protected him and he stood up and began running again, suffering only shield loss. A few steps later and a Paladin skeet flashed by overhead so fast he almost missed it, and most of the gunner positions on the roof went silent. The aerial fighter circled back and got the last of them, then held a hovering position over the building to guard it against any further attack on the outside.

That left the Dragoons to handle the inside. Their death sabers made quick work of the locked doors, and they flooded into the much smaller building, having to duck down to get through the low ceilings as Amber 17 scanned ahead of them and used his telepathic spotting to locate nearby minds that their suit sensors couldn’t detect.

Which weren’t many, but there was one well armored area no signals could get through…technological anyway. Telepathy was different, and he spotted four minds in there. From this distance he could only get some vague impressions off them, but it was clear they were both panicking and giving orders.

That was odd, for they weren’t picking up any comm signals of standard Nirvu variety. Amber 17 cycled through a program on his armor to see what else was moving through the air and walls, eventually finding a small, weak transmitter in the hallway nearby as he passed.

“Ground lines to multiple transmitters,” he said, pointing it out to the Dragoons. “Command and control here,” he added, putting a marker on the battlemap.

Amber 3 had them split up again, and it was a good idea, for they were all very cramped in the hallways and rooms meant for the short amphibians. Amber 17 was kept with the leader again, and they came to a wall that looked like any other wall, but when they started cutting into it they found multiple meters thick battle plates inside.

But that wasn’t going to stop death sabers unless they ran out of juice before they got through, so the Dragoons started cutting one access way through, tearing out small chunks of material that the others would move aside as two of them worked. Before they got through, both of them had their death sabers go dead, so they pulled back and were replaced by two more that continued the work.

It took 6 of them to get through, establishing a crude walkway big enough for the Dragoons to pass, then they came into a much larger room with plenty of head height to spare. It had stations to accommodate dozens, if not hundreds of Nirvu, but there were only four here currently, and as they tried to run towards exits, they were stunned into submission and taken prisoner.

Amber 17 grabbed one of them and pulled a destunning serum out of his pack, for telepathic interrogation when one was asleep was very difficult to manage. He woke him up in a matter of seconds and froze his motor control as well, then quickly discovered what this place was.

“It’s a military last resort outpost, designed to support rebellion against an invading force if the battle is lost. There are many of these across the planet, designed to be kept secret as a safe location to hide, store resources in, and train. The planet fell so fast to us they didn’t bother to make use of them until now. They’re expecting their fleet to show up eventually and retake the planet.”

“Are they dumb?” Amber 3 asked, “or do they know something we don’t?”

He searched further, then his head came up sharply. “There is an attack coming. They’re going all in with their fleet to remove us. Everything is coming here, and these rebels are to diminish our capabilities on the ground and distract until it arrives.”

“How many ships do they have?”

He searched for that answer, but couldn’t quote a number. “I don’t know, but they’ve got hundreds of star systems to draw from.”

“Idiots,” Amber 3 said with a sneer. “All they’ll do is get people killed if they succeed, then Thrawn will take it back again within a year. How soon is this attack coming?”

“He doesn’t know, but he believes they have to send a message quickly before we take a third world of theirs.”

“Some people just refuse to learn,” Amber 3 said, nodding his thanks to the Mind Raider. “Try the others. I’m calling in a tech team to go through all this,” he said, referencing the work stations, computer systems, and warehouse of supplies that was being reported in side chambers as well as below them as some of the Dragoons were exploring and mapping it out.

Amber 17 shot the one he was finished with and rendered him unconscious again, then woke up the second of four and continued to rifle through memories that were basically the same. Only a few tidbits of information were gained, and the same was true of the other two by the time he got through with them.

When he did, he handed them over to skirmishers who had come in to assist with collection and detainment of prisoners. Amber 17 sat down with his tail, combined with his outstretched knees, making a sort of tripod around his body as he removed his helmet and massaged his forehead.

“Problem?” Amber 8 asked.

“Their minds are full of garbage,” he explained. “Sifting through it is tedious and acts like a mild toxin. I have to flush it out before it accumulates and causes me too much damage.”

“Mental contact causes damage?”

“It can.”

“Software or hardware damage?”

“Software,” he clarified. “But if my mind starts malfunctioning, it’s possible it could create physical damage. The older I get the more resistant I become, but there is always some level of damage. And these Nirvu are borderline insane. I’ve found that zealots always are.”

“How long does it take you to recover?”

“Depends. I’ll be good in a few minutes. Just need to run through some cleansing procedures.”

“Take your time. I’ll watch your back until you’re finished.”

Amber 17 nodded, then closed his eyes and focused on removing the taint as best he could. If he could get most of it out, then his mediation aid would handle the rest later. Paladin records indicated this would essentially go away after a hundred years or so of experience, but he was far from reaching that benchmark…

7

EG35

March 2, 158445

ANDROMEDA GALAXY

Firchar-Nioni System

Low Stellar Orbit

The Nirvu hadn’t been quick to assemble their fleet, and by the time it arrived more than a year had passed. During that time the Paladin had slowly been bringing in reinforcements from other systems, as well as increasing the size and rate of ship production in the Firchar-Nioni System.

Normally a year wasn’t enough to build many ships, but this was the Paladin and their production rate made other races blink twice when they couldn’t believe their eyes. So mixed in with all the changes happening on the planet, an increase in ship production went mostly unnoticed…especially when they added another shipyard in the distant reaches of the system and away from prying eyes.

As it was, the Fleet Commander had 2,819 warships under his command to defend this system, which was about 80% more than he’d had on arrival, but not all of them were parked in planetary or stellar orbit for all to see. He had them scattered around the system in groups while his main force sat in low stellar orbit as an intimidating, or comforting, sight to those entering the system, depending on who you were.

When the first pings of Nirvu warships started showing up the Arbiter knew the time had finally come. There had been no combat whatsoever in either of the captured Nirvu star systems…fleet combat anyway…and he’d been expecting one big attack to finally come thanks to intelligence captured from the rebels on the planet here who were in courier-communication with their brethren in other systems.

The jumpline they were coming in on was not the most used one, but he had his fleet broken up into pieces around the spherical perimeter of the star so they were within easy striking range of them all.

“Hail them,” the Fleet Commander said, standing up out of his tail-notched chair before the holographic terminal. No response came in for several minutes, then a Nirvu in their version of a military uniform finally responded timidly.

“Greetings,” he said simply, then remained quiet, awaiting a response.

“I’ll give you this opportunity to turn around and leave on the same jumpline before we start disabling your ships.”

“We’re simply passing through the system. Is that not allowed?”

“Enroute to where?” the Arbiter asked.

“That is our business. You stated this system had free transit rights.”

“What jumpline will you be leaving from?” he countered.

The Nirvu hesitated. “We will be grouping here before departing. We don’t want our fleet formation to get too stretched out. I don’t know our next destination. You will have to ask our Admiral about that.”

“May I speak with him then?”

“He is on a ship further back in the convoy. We’re merely the vanguard.”

The Arbiter reached to the side and tapped on a map of the system, defining an area further out far from anything valuable, then sent it across the comm link. “Park your ships here until you decide to move on to your next system.”

“I’m sorry, but I have orders to the contrary.”

“These are my orders and we control this system.”

“I cannot disobey my commander,” the Nirvu pressed.

“And what are your orders?”

“To hold at the jumppoint for the rest of the fleet to arrive,” he said as few more ships were coming through every 40 seconds or so. Not a very dense formation, but given the technological ability of the Nirvu ships, it was probably dangerously close together for their navigation systems to handle.

“Of course they are,” he said, recognizing this ploy from his genetic memory. “You want most of your ships to already be in the system when you launch your attack against us. I will not allow you that luxury.”

“We have free transit rights,” the Nirvu pressed. “You have guaranteed that much!”

“Then transit to the parking area I’ve designated.”

“We can go where we please under free transit rights.”

“You can pass through the system, but you’re refusing to. You do not get to park your ships wherever you want. You want to hold the jump point to screen for your incoming ships so we don’t pick them off easily as they come in staggered. If you’re really just passing through, move to the parking area. Otherwise I will assume your intention is hostile and deal with you accordingly.”

“But we have free transit rights!” the Nirvu chirp/squealed.

“Those don’t allow you to blockade a jumppoint. Now move to the parking area or we will disable your ships and move them ourselves.”

“You cannot! We have free transit rights!”

“You have 10 minutes to decide. I will allow your ships to pool at the jumppoint no longer than that. Choose wisely,” he said, cutting the holographic communication and turning to his bridge crew. “Begin repositioning the fleet into attack formations. Designate towing vessels…we will have to move them out of the way or their own ships will run into them on entry. Remember, their interstellar navigation systems are inferior to ours, so don’t expect pinpoint decelerations. Right now the risk of collision is greater than them overpowering any of our ships.”

 The Paladin fleet immediately began moving out of their waiting formation, but kept clear of the Nirvu ships already in the system and those continuing to arrive in a sporadic manner. During the 10 minutes none of the new arrivals moved to the designated parking area, making it clear that they were not passing through and had hoped to catch the Paladin off guard after the bulk of their fleet arrived.

That wasn’t going to happen.

As soon as the countdown expired, groups of four Paladin ships each, moving in tight formation, picked on individual Nirvu ships, getting in close and pounding through their shields in a matter of seconds, then firing only at weapons ports. That required a far greater skill level, and some of the Nirvu ships bugged out. When they did, shieldless and damaged, the Paladin let them go. The ones that stayed and fought were plucked of their weapons systems then were doused with IDF goo, making their engines worthless.

One of the four Paladin ships would then attach a mooring beam to the Nirvu vessel while extending its own IDF around it before the goo effect diminished. Then it towed the disabled ship away from the jumppoint and the rest of the fighting. With so few Nirvu ships here, they didn’t stand a chance and the fleet began picking off new ones as fast as they arrived, towing them out, ironically, to the designated parking area the Arbiter had previously indicated with little damage to their ships other than their weapons.

But there was some. Not all shots went where they were supposed to as the enemy ships dodged, but none of them were destroyed. The problem was, with more ships coming in, the Paladin were not in a position to do any rescue operations.

This continued for 8 days straight without any letup. The Paladin fleet was having to shift out ships to get resupplied, and they were quickly running out of IDF goo cannon loads, so their ships were having to get in close and ‘capture’ the others with their own IDF fields…and already some bumping had occurred, with the Nirvu ships taking the hits against the intact Paladin shields. That damage wasn’t light, but all the enemy ships had at least some livable sections in them afterwards, though for how long nobody knew.

The Paladin did run a few rescue ships out to those most badly damaged, but on day 9 another jumpline opened up with Nirvu coming from a different system, and suddenly the Paladin had to split their forces.

And worse than that, the Nirvu were starting to have assault ships show up full of ground troops, along with some cargo ships. And once those were disabled, they couldn’t resupply the disabled ones with anything…including food for the tightly packed assault transports.

The Arbiter was pleased with how his ships were fighting. This nonstop battle was something they knew well from their genetic memory, for Star Force had a lot of experience with battles larger and longer than this one, but the worry of losing some of their prisoners for lack of being able to take care of them rankled him. He didn’t like just letting them drift, but with the numbers the Nirvu were sending in the Paladin simply didn’t have the resources to deal with processing the disabled ships, most of whom could still maneuver but were without weapons, but the assault ships and the cargo ships could not. Their gravity drives had to be taken out, and rather than try to poke holes in the ship to get every gravity drive…for most of the Nirvu operated on a cluster of 16 of them spread across hardpoints on their crescent-shaped ships…the Arbiter was having those ships boarded and the gravity drives disabled from within.

And the assault ships, loaded up with troopers, were proving a challenge for his teams…as was screening those vessels from Nirvu ships that had not yet been disabled.

So far he wasn’t having to destroy any of them, but another 18 days later a third jumppoint opened up with another flow of Nirvu ships.

The Arbiter stood on the bridge, looking at a slightly tighter-packed convoy coming through and decelerating against the star in clumsy fashion typical of lower level engine and navigation technology, but it was still effective in getting them here. His genetic memories held knowledge of races acting stupidly, but this was the first time he’d experienced it on this level. They had no hope of beating the Paladin like this, and what they had just done with the third jumppoint was force him to stop taking prisoners.

He could split his ships…which had been recalled from everywhere else around the system…to three points instead of two and start firing to disable the ships gravity drives, which meant pounding through their hulls in not so good places, but there was no way to tow this many ships now. Not without endangering his own. So if he continued to fight at the jumppoints, it was likely the ships they disabled would be rammed by the incoming Nirvu who were going to stack up the jumpline to the point where arriving ships couldn’t slow down or divert fast enough.

The Arbiter could see it happening before it did, and knew he had to adjust. If the Nirvu were willing to die to get the jumppoints, then they were going to get them. These weren’t enemies to be annihilated, they were to be conquered, and there was a big difference between the two missions.

“Begin orderly pullback to the following waypoints,” he said aloud so all the ship handlers would hear him simultaneously. They were organizing various duties so the captains of the ships could focus more on their individual movements and combat rather than on the bigger picture, though the Arbiter’s flagship was not any differently designed than the others.

He tagged two points on either side of the star that the three enemy jumppoints would have to go past to get to the current location of the primary planet, and made sure they were far enough out to also cover the various orbital infrastructure save for one low orbit platform. He sent a group of 24 ships to safeguard it, but also using it as a lure. If the Nirvu went after it, one of his two new formations could get there in time to intercept. But if they tried to escort the assault ships to Tarchiss and ignored that platform, he couldn’t leave too many ships stationed at it.

“They can have the jumppoints,” he explained to his crew as some gave him odd looks. “I’m not going to force these morons into ramming each other, and we can no longer tow enough ships out of three separate jumplines. This battle is changing paradigms. Designate the jumppoints as Nirvu regions that they can retreat to if they wish. Any ships leaving those are to be intercepted and disabled, hopefully when they’re spread out. If any of their weaponless ships begin ramming maneuvers, inform me immediately. Hopefully they’re not that suicidal.”

“We still have boarding parties in action, Fleet Commander,” one station on his left reminded him.

“I know. Let them finish their work, but send no new teams.”

“Incursion #184,” another Paladin naval variant stated from the bridge station exactly opposite on the other side of the rectangular room noted, “is reporting the capture of a Nirvu Dregoni. They are requesting if there are any special orders?”

The Fleet Commander arched a blue-scaled eye ridge. The ‘Dregoni’ rank was equivalent of an army’s senior General.

“Have them transport him alone to the planet.”

The Paladin nodded and began relaying the instructions across a well encrypted battlemap communications net to the warship parked alongside the Nirvu assault ship that was 15 times its size.

The Ambassador was waiting at the landing platform within the Paladin-built structures of the capitol city as the dropship arrived, with a phalanx of skirmishers carrying out a single Nirvu in light shackles…which was the equivalent of three rings around the body squeezing it tight. Each glowed blue and squeezed the amphibian just below the shoulders, below the hips, and at the ankles while his arms were tucked into the hip shackle.

The Ambassador frowned. “Is all that necessary he asked?”

“This one likes trying to bite us,” a skirmisher said as the group set the captive down sideways on the ground like a piece of cargo. “He’s in some sort of fervor. The others were too, but we left them on their ships. They’re crazed.”

The Ambassador stared down at the amphibian, linking into his mind.

“Not crazed,” the Paladin stated. “They know most of them are going to die, so they’ve made the choice of full offense no matter what the risks. They’re not letting themselves be passive…it’s something their race has kept the potential for hidden from others.”

“Schirr…arkk!” the Dregoni swore, spitting some brown goo at the Ambassador that hit him in the leg.

“Compartmentalized thinking,” he continued, unphased. “Selectively stupid. They’re not expecting to return home. They’re filling themselves with hate of us to do what they’ve been told is necessary…they actually think they can wipe us out of this system.”

“No prisoners?” the skirmisher asked.

“They mean to kill us all, no matter how many of them have to die in the process. They think if they don’t we’ll destroy them,” he said, dropping silent for a moment. “They’ve got backup orders for kamikaze strikes if they can’t defeat our ships. They’ll ram the planet everywhere we have structures.”

“That’ll kill a lot of the locals too.”

“They don’t care,” the Ambassador said, suppressing his horror. “Their minds are twisting into thinking they’re in the right, and they’re not going to back off,” he said, eyes going wide as he activated his wrist-bound communications device, for he wasn’t wearing any armor and the Fleet Commander wanted updates as soon as possible.

A hologram of the Arbiter showed immediately when he chose to make direct contact rather than filing updates, though there was some lag involved given the distance out to the flagship, even with faster than light signal speeds. It amounted to about a 4 second turnaround.

“Do not allow any Nirvu to get on this world or transmit to the surface,” he warned. “They have a rage mode in their race that the attacking fleet has activated. They will not stop until we are all dead, and they intend to turn the population of this planet into weapons against us the same way. Do not let them communicate.”

The hologram remained still during the pause, then the Fleet Commander nodded. “Understood. Is this chemical or cultural?”

“Cultural. I don’t know how the Nirvu working with us will respond, but the malcontents will join in immediately if they are triggered to do so.”

“How many ships are they sending?”

The Ambassador took longer than the delay to find out that answer, then looked grimly at the hologram. “They’re stripping the defenses off every world they possess and seizing every civilian vessel in their race to transport troops, then average citizens. They intend to flood this system with bodies until we are overrun. The military ships will be in excess of half a million.”

The Arbiter remained silent for a long time, then raised his chin slightly. “Begin sorting through those Nirvu loyal to us. Find a way to test if this insanity will spread to them. The ones you deem clear, get into secure locations. Am I right in guessing that the enraged ones will kill collaborators?”

“They will remove all who are tainted with our stench,” the Ambassador repeated, using their translated terms.

“Protect the loyal ones and begin barricading the critical infrastructure. If we can’t save them all, we must save the ones that trusted us. We are not abandoning the planet. No matter how insane they are.”

“They have orders to ram cities if they fail to defeat our fleet.”

“Very well then,” the Arbiter said. “If they want to make us fight this way, they’re going to regret it,” he said, severing the link.

The Ambassador looked down at the hissing enemy military commander. He was literally seething with hate and had to find some way to defy his captors, so he was turning every breath into an insult.

“You made a big mistake,” the Ambassador said. “The tactics you’re using. We’re not just familiar with them, but we once employed them ourselves in a far superior fashion before our race was rescued by Star Force. If you want all out war, you’re going to get it, because mercy is a luxury of the dominant, and you’ve left us no way to defend this system and save you. And we’re not retreating.”

“You’re as good as dead already,” the Nirvu all but spat, for he was almost out of saliva and getting very dehydrated away from a pond for so long. “You will be purged from our territory, no matter the cost.”

“The cost will be your people’s independence. After this, there’s no way the Supreme Viceroy will allow your civilization to continue to exist as it is. You’ve guaranteed the death of the culture you sought to protect.”

The Nirvu tried to jump, managing only to get a few inches off the hard tarmac, then flopped back down, snarling at the Paladin while showing a row of very short, recessed teeth that had never been visible in any of the interactions the Ambassador had had with the locals.

“Stun him.”

The binders flared with stun energy at the press of a button from one of the skirmishers, rendering him unconscious.

“Take him to a holding cell,” he said, watching them drag him off as another of the shorter Paladin skirmishers walked up beside him. This one an Arbiter that was in charge of the defense of the planet.

“Am I to assume we will not be taking any more prisoners?” he asked.

“We won’t have the logistics for it,” the Ambassador said, regretfully. “Assume every Nirvu on this planet is an enemy combatant until we know otherwise. I’m going to be very busy sorting through them, and I’m not wasting any more time on that one.”

“Get the other Mind Raiders advised on what’s needed. I’ll handle the security lines.”

“Be subtle,” the Ambassador warned. “This population could flip at any moment, and the more time you buy us, the more of the loyal we can get to safety.”

The planetary defense commander nodded and walked off, with the Ambassador going a different direction a moment later.

This was wrong. Very wrong, and what he’d seen in that one’s mind was far worse than even the murderers he’d interrogated before. This was a blind, sickening rage, that was going to turn the Nirvu into soldiers…all of them, but at the same time make them so stupid and sloppy, that they’d be able to do little more than mass into groups and try to overwhelm the Paladin with large suicidal crowds.

As a Paladin he knew how to deal with this from a tactical standpoint, but something inside him was tilted, and as he walked off he failed to shake the sensation.

8

EG35

May 22, 158445

ANDROMEDA GALAXY

Firchar-Nioni System

Low Stellar Orbit

The Fleet Commander sat on the bridge of his inconspicuous flagship as it was attached to 5 others. The ‘plus’ shaped design of the ships allowed them to stack together somewhat, and they’d been engineered with hardpoints to do just that. They didn’t match up seamlessly, but there was a considerable amount of overlap in the 3x2 formation that allowed them to combine shields for far greater protection against the Nirvu ships that were attacking relentlessly at jumppoint #5 out of the 7 that were currently spewing ships into the system.

The rumors of them bringing their entire fleet here appeared to be true, and with the threat level what it was and the option of disabling and capturing these ships no longer viable given their numbers, pieces of the Paladin fleet were sitting off to the sides of each jumppoint in these ‘six pack’ configurations, effectively making themselves little battle stations that the Nirvu were drawn to immediately upon arrival. Some were braking against the star deep enough to come into firing range before maneuvering further.

Both of these things lead to a trash heap at the jumppoints.

A trash heap that incoming ships were occasionally running into before they could even get into combat.

The six pack formations were kept off the jumpline for just that reason and were mowing down the Nirvu only to be replaced by other Paladin ships as the ones who had been there for weeks cycled out and returned to the Paladin facilities on and above the main planet to refuel and restock. The Nirvu were no longer allowed to congregate their ships to a level where the Paladin would be vulnerable, and the stupid invaders weren’t even trying to break off and regroup elsewhere to counter the jumppoint foothold tactic.

They were just going after the first Paladin ship they saw…mostly.

Some were leaving and heading for Tarchiss, which other Paladin ships were intercepting and destroying, but when the 6th jumppoint opened up and there were no Paladin ships waiting there…for they had no idea where they would be coming in from…that group immediately went straight to the planet, got caught on the way there and were decimated, but not fully destroyed. Those ships weren’t trying to fight the Paladin, however, and some of them got by in the mess of that fight, for they did pool at the jumppoint long enough to get a good-sized armada assembled.

Surface batteries on the planet and a few defense platforms in orbit took out the rest of the ships before they could make it to the surface…but those ships had escape pods in them, and a rain of survivors drifted down through the atmosphere. And while the Li’vorkrachnika would have no problems with shooting unarmed escape pods, the Paladin would not do so unless they were believed to be carrying explosives or other unconventional weapons.

And in a sense that is what they were carrying, for when those pods reached the surface and the Nirvu in them met up with the locals, the ground situation went from bad to apocalyptic…

The Ambassador had been doing heavy interrogations of individuals to screen them in a matter of minutes each every day for longer than he could remember. His life had been so short compared to others that a few months represented a huge chunk of his existence to date. But as a good Paladin he lost himself in the work and lived in the moment, not worring about what was ahead or behind him, only what he needed to do right now.

Before the escape pods fell, there were riots and attacks by the agitators and those they could convince to help them. Strategic strikes by Paladin ground forces were eliminating some of them, but for the most part the bulk of the population, while not liking the Paladin at all, were staying out of the fight.

But when the escape pods landed something happened. The entire population changed save for a few individuals here and there. It didn’t happen instantly. It had to spread, like a mind virus, and even some of the Nirvu who had cautiously worked with the Paladin from a business perspective suddenly became feral around them. Any Paladin seen was attacked. Mobs formed hundreds of thousands strong almost instantly every time a Paladin strike team tried to locate and destroy agitators.

For now almost everyone on the planet was an agitator, and not by choice. This was something terrifying and elusive, and as every Paladin facility on the planet was swarmed by mostly unarmed Nirvu trying to throw rocks or push over barricades, climb walls, and do whatever it was they could to hurt the ‘invaders’ in any way, the Ambassador had a few taken alive so he could get inside their minds and figure out what was going on.

What he saw was something his genetic memories didn’t cover. It was like a mental control that was optional. It was there, available, and each Nirvu simply had to accept it to put them into a frenzied state. And it was being activated by contact with other Nirvu.

A genetic analysis showed that this was, in fact, a form of genetic memory that they had that remained dormant. A form of group defense mechanism for the physically weak race of amphibians. But it was not just combat. It was exceedingly cruel, and when the Paladin began getting reports of the Nirvu killing other Nirvu who didn’t take to the programming, the planetary defense commander decided to start withholding the food supply to select locations and only allowing individuals who behaved themselves to acquire the foodstuffs from facilities and stores that the Paladin had built and ran.

Simultaneously they began to sending out kill teams into the cities beyond the Paladin defense zones, trying to draw attention to them and not the ‘passive’ Nirvu who didn’t take to the mind virus. And it worked. As soon as they revealed themselves there was a never-ending stream of attackers which the Paladin teams simply killed on sight as they ran through the city streets, with the intent to thin out the most violent of the Nirvu.

But they kept coming, and coming, and coming.

Fortunately Paladin were just as relentless, and the lack of food began to tip the scales in their metabolic favor. After several weeks, drawing on foodstuffs from facilities the Paladin did not control, the mobs didn’t have enough energy to go as crazy as normal and a lot of them kept to the buildings, allowing the Paladin to lure out the worse of them and drop them dead where they attacked. The streets would fill with dead after every raid, and the Nirvu began eating the corpses rather than travel to a Paladin foodstuff distribution site.

Those that did travel there were targeted and killed, forcing many Nirvu to hide in their homes and try to wait it out, but without food they couldn’t last very long. The Paladin were not going to stand for that, so they began an even more aggressive search for the pockets of sanity out there and began making food drops to them in small amounts. Clouds of tiny packages would fall onto those buildings and in the streets, and when they hit the locals would emerge in a storm, grabbing them up and disappearing back inside as the Paladin kill teams continued to make hourly strikes out to draw the attacks to them while the locals grabbed up the gifts from above.

It made the attackers choose. Attack the Paladin or grab some food. This further split the populations and allowed the Paladin to weed out the worst of them.

The Ambassador went with them in many cases, using his growing telepathic skills to freeze individuals who were attacking them long enough for the skirmishers or dragoons to shoot them dead. It was the combat role he was primarily designed for, and while he preferred this to doing endless interrogations because he didn’t have to read their minds, only mess with them, it was taking an increasing toll on him. Something wasn’t right. He was off balance, but he had a job to do and he kept doing it.

For three years he did it. The kill teams would go out every day, draw the crazies to them to be killed, while distribution teams were getting food to those who calmed down enough to either come to them or those that refused to fight and food was brought to them via air drops. But they couldn’t save everyone that way. Many were killed by their fellow Nirvu in confrontations across the planet, whether it be large crowds or individuals. The Nirvu zealots were trying to eliminate any who did not accept the racial call to all-out war, and the Paladin were trying to eliminate those that were.

Some warships eventually made it to ground, delivering reinforcements that did little to help the locals. Those that tried to assault the ground bases were destroyed, and eventually the Nirvu started running out of warships. Cargo ships kept coming through the jumppoints in increasing numbers. Some with ad hoc weapons attached to them, others full of people to be deposited on the planet, armed with at least some form of hand weapons.

Most of those never made it down. The Paladin destroyed the ships with everyone aboard in space, but enough got through that they were able to make two large attacks against the Paladin infrastructure with proper weapons rather than pieces of trash laying around. Both attacks failed, but not for lack of trying. The Paladin had built well when they got on the planet. Lessons learned from previous wars, and that infrastructure was what allowed them to maintain the defensive perimeter around their own facilities and the residential areas for the Nirvu who were allied with them.

And over the course of 3 years, the number of Paladin on the planet increased greatly. The fleet did its job to keep most of the ships from reaching the planet, and the growth rate of both Paladin biology and infrastructure did the rest.

By the time the jumppoints finally stopped sending Nirvu cargo ships, 83% of the population of Tarchiss was dead, and a good portion of them from starvation and/or murder by their fellow Nirvu, for many of the crazed ones refused to accept food from the enemy, killing and eating each other in many cases, but they would not step foot in the distribution zones, and the Paladin were not going to send food to those populations via air drops. They reserved those for when they found holdouts who needed help.

The rest of the crazed population they left to come to sanity on their own schedule, and it was horrific to see that many of them never did.

And then one day after the ships stopped coming, the remainder of the planet suddenly lost its fervor and it was over. Those still crazed stopped being crazed as some sort of signal, intentional or cyclical, nobody knew for sure, went out through the population and ended the carnage.

The Nirvu had gone all-in to destroy the Paladin in one system, and they’d completely failed. Maybe this was the downside of that failure or maybe there was a trigger. It was currently unknown why it happened, but it had, and the Ambassador had to switch from doing combat missions to start doing interviews and piecing together what was left of the Nirvu on Tarchiss, recruiting individuals into certain tasks, screening out those who were unacceptable, not for rebellious sentiments but psychological damage and bad motives.

What was left of the Nirvu was a whipped race. They had no fight left in them. All of them were exhausted in a way that went beyond physical, while the Paladin continued to motor on as if nothing had changed.

Except for the Ambassador. Something in his mind had altered during the past few years, and he had never been able to account for it. Now that things had calmed down he worked harder to do just that as reports began filtering back to the Paladin over the next few months of what was happening on the other Nirvu worlds.

Sometime during the fighting, Supreme Viceroy Thrawn had landed individual Paladin ships in remote areas on every single one of the Nirvu worlds as they emptied them of warships, cargo ships, and a good chunk of their population to bring to Tarchiss to fight. Those Paladin ships had kept hidden and isolated as much as possible, rebuffing a few small attacks as they dug down into the planet and expanded unseen beneath it.

Now, they were coming out and taking control of the defenseless worlds, but they weren’t the only one with the same idea. Two other races, the Vorkor and Shatini, had each claimed a Nirvu world for their own, with their invading armies having no trouble defeating the anemic protection left behind.

However, when the hidden Paladin on those worlds eventually came out and demanded the invaders leave, the two races quickly complied…but not before hauling off as much loot as they could get their hands on. They were not going to go up against the Paladin, but they weren’t going to leave empty handed either.

The Paladin let them go on the condition they didn’t take any Nirvu with them, and within a matter of weeks both of those worlds were under Paladin control…along with every other Nirvu planet, outpost, and star system in their civilization.

Thrawn had used minimal resources to conquer their entire race while they poured everything into retaking Tarchiss. And with the rest of the civilized galaxy watching what took place, nobody was going to move against those tiny Paladin colonies on the captured worlds. ‘Street cred’ had been established in a dramatic way, and everyone was quickly getting the message that the Paladin did not mess around.

Now everyone was in rebuilding mode, across all the newly acquired star systems, while the Asferja continued to chew up the other side of the galaxy in much more massive space battles than what had occurred here. The Ambassador was pleased with the victory, but something within him still wasn’t right, and as he persisted month after month into the restructuring of the Nirvu race into something honorable and stable, he searched the databases for assistance, finding nothing that quite fit the problem buried in his mind.

There was one icon in the database that no Paladin dared touch. It was a red triangle, taller than it was wide, with a large white dot attached to the top point. The red was to warn them never to use it except under the most dire of circumstances.

It was labeled ‘The Escape Claus,’ and after 8 months of trying to return his mind to Paladin normalcy, the Ambassador was out of options. He stood in his quarters and held his finger over the icon, looking for one last time if there was anything he had missed. Something he hadn’t tried. Something he’d forgotten.

But no. There wasn’t. He could go on being a decent Paladin like this, but he couldn’t be a good Paladin. And if he couldn’t do that, then he needed to step aside and devote his entire energy and time to fixing this unknown problem within his mind.

Finally, he pressed his finger to the floating hologram, feeling it soft to the touch as a chime sounded and a Human appeared wearing an odd hat that matched the icon…

9

That Human had a big bushy white beard as well as a quizzical look on his face.

“If you’re seeing this message, then you’re probably at a crossroads. Living the Paladin life is a great life…or so I’m told. Obviously I’m absent the blue scales, but the point is it may not be a good fit for everybody. Hence we have ‘The Escape Claus’ that you’ve just activated…actually not yet. There will be a button you press later. This is just a final check to see if you really want to leave or not.”

“A long time ago I used the Escape Claus, and it was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Almost as bad as setting myself on fire in that garage incident that shall go nameless. Anyway, take a moment to think it through. You’re probably wondering what you should do and can’t find any good answers in the database. Btw, did you check the database? That’s your first go to. If you didn’t, exit out of this prompt and do some digging. Lots of good wisdom stuff in there and you get to see the full face of the people giving it!”

“But let’s assume you’ve looked, did a real thorough job of it, and you still are coming up empty. Maybe that means there’s something inside you that you need to work on. Trick is, no matter where you go you’re still you, so maybe staying with the Paladin is the right track while you work stuff out. Then again, maybe not. Maybe you need a change of scenery, or a really long vacation. Whatever it may be, you need to be sure about this. That’s why the Escape Claus is not a single action you take. It’s one you have to make 60 times in a row, once a day every day. If you really want to leave, your mind won’t change in a few days. Often it does. We can be dead set on doing something now, but given time our thinking changes. It’s not a fault on our part, we just get new information or are able to look at things from new angles, and a decision as important as the Escape Claus isn’t something we want you making in a single moment.”

“There’s a lot more to Star Force than just the Paladin, and maybe your path lies out there somewhere. Who knows? Only you can truly know, and if you don’t, don’t sweat it. A lot of people can’t find their path, and when they do, sometimes they lose it again. Even the old guys from ancient Earth, like me. The important thing is you’re always looking for the path, so if you do lose it, you can find your way back again. If you don’t look, you’re not going to find it…except by accident. It’s like walking a trail in the desert, and a big old sandstorm comes up and blows you off it. You can’t see where it is and you wonder around trying to come across it. Not your fault you got blown off and can’t see, and therein is the point. Expect to lose the path again and again, and have to find it again and again. Life doesn’t play fair, and you’ve gotta be relentless in staying on and finding the path for you no matter how many times storms come out of nowhere and blow you off.”

“So,” the Human said, clapping his hands together in front of his white beard. “Do some thinking, and some more thinking. If you’re worried about the Paladin needing you, don’t. Everyone matters, but the Paladin reproduce like rabbits…” he said, squinting as he thought through that statement, then held up a finger. “Actually, you reproduce faster than rabbits, but you get my point. Replacements can be spawned, so this decision needs to be about you and only you. Is this what you need? Is this what you want? If you’re just lost, maybe staying put and working to find the path again is the best play. A change of scenery can help, but it can also make you even more lost, so plan carefully. Only you can navigate your path in life. You got a good start with the Paladin. Lots of interesting genetic memories, but I’m guessing they don’t hold the answers you’re seeking either, so if you really want to do this, pull the candy cane,” he said, pointing to a holographic hook with spiral red and white colors that materialized above the hatted Human’s head. “That will register for day 1. Tomorrow, if you haven’t rethought it, pull it again, and the next day and the next. If after 59 days you still want out, pull it the last time and you’ll be on your way.”

The Human disappeared, but the candy cane remained. The Ambassador took several minutes to think, treading over the same mysterious misalignment within his mind. He was missing something. Something that he had been awoken to while searching the minds of the Nirvu. Their hive mentality was messed up, but in it he sensed a truth. Something beyond the hive. Paladin had a similar hive mind, only one far more advanced and refined. And he just knew that he wasn’t going to sort this out within it. He had to get out on his own and learn rather than remember memories that were not his own.

If he didn’t, this would keep gnawing at him and distracting him from his work. The Paladin deserved better than that, so he wouldn’t hold up a position that could be done better by another. He didn’t want to be a weak link in the chain, but he also didn’t want to abandon his responsibilities either. That’s why he had waited until after the fighting was done to even consider this.

And now that it was…

His mind was made up for today. Maybe tomorrow would be different, like the Human had said. The Ambassador grabbed the candy cane and pulled, with it moving a few inches downward and triggering some odd chime-like music. A large number 1 replaced it, then shrank into a tiny candy cane of its own and flew up above the terminal and stayed there, even when he deactivated it.

A visible reminder of the countdown, and that he had a lot to think about the next 59 days…

Every day that passed, he would return to the same terminal in his quarters and rethink the situation. And every time he came to the same conclusion…he couldn’t figure this out here. So he’d pull the candy cane and one more would be added to the visible count that hung in the air just beyond the wall-mounted terminal.

When he had 59 decorating the air as if marks against his current situation, he had one more to go and spent nearly an hour analyzing the situation as he stared at the final one just above the dashboard. If he pulled it, he wasn’t sure what would happen, but he knew he wasn’t going to get his answers here. The Escape Claus was put into the system for a reason, he reminded himself. And if it wasn’t necessary for some people the Archons never would have created it for the Paladin.

Apparently he was one of those people.

He reached out his blue hand and pulled the final marker.

The candy cane appeared up with the others for a moment, then they all began swirling and coming together until they formed a super-sized one that seemed to indent itself into the keyboard like a sword in the stone reference. Then the hatted Human appeared again.

“Alright. You’ve just activated the Omega 13…I mean, the Escape Claus. What happens now is this. You’ll be given an exit vector out of the Paladin to an Axius world. From there you can make your way anywhere else in Star Force if you want. And if you ever change your mind and want to come back to the Paladin, there’s also a procedure for that, but I’m guessing if you made it through 60 days you’re pretty sure your path isn’t here, so good luck to you, my scaly friend. A new adventure awaits, and your sleigh ride out of here will be scheduled shortly.”

The hologram disappeared, and in its place an order came…to board a ship leaving the planet in 18 days from now. Until then he was being put on standby status and only used in missions as needed. And with the war over, there probably wasn’t anything that the other Mind Raiders couldn’t handle in his place.

So for the first day he remained in his quarters other than to do workouts. The second day he began walking around the Paladin-controlled areas, just thinking and reevaluating everything. By the time the 18th day came, he felt like a traitor to the rest of his brothers and wanted to get out of here as fast as possible.

The ship he boarded was a Paladin cargo ship that was bringing in rare supplies that the planet didn’t have the capability to produce yet, as well as functioning as a message courier until a comm network link was established all the way out here. The ship was returning to the bulk of systems Thrawn had already colonized, but it would take another 3 months to get there.

And in that time no answers came to him. He was stuck in his quarters or in the training areas on the ship. He was cargo, more or less, and the only thing that was certain in his mind was that he couldn’t go back. Other than that he was directionless and just going along for the ride.

When he got back to Thrawn’s primary base of operations, a planet called Wayland, he expected to get interviewed or some sort of quality inspection to determine why he had failed as a Paladin, but no such information gathering session took place. Instead he was assigned quarters and more waiting time…another 2 and a half months until an inter-galactic ship was scheduled to leave. By the time that waiting period was done, he was beyond depressed and unsure of what to do. Every tether of his life had seemed to become unfastened, and rather than answers he was getting more and more questions with no idea how to figure them out.

This was the first planet he’d been to other than his spawn world, but it didn’t elicit excitement as much as shame. Everyone else was going about their duty in efficient fashion, and here he was the dysfunctional reject waiting amongst them.

But he kept reminding himself, if the Archons had put the Escape Claus into the system, they had to have a good reason for it. And the hatted Human hadn’t said anything about him being defective, just that he needed to walk another path.

So that was the thread he clung to during the stagnant torment that even double daily workouts could not completely burn away from him. He was now in the best fitness level of his life, and while his body appreciated that, his mind required more. He had an abundance of energy, but he didn’t know what to spend it on.

This is what mental stagnation was. He knew it from an academic standpoint, but now, when the reality of it hit him in real experience, it took on a much deeper and sickening meaning. People were not meant to be stagnant. They were meant to grow and upgrade. Staying the same just felt wrong. Life was a progressive journey upward, with occasional setbacks the universe threw at you, but your aim was always to improve and move to the next level. When people stopped looking forward, stagnation would set in and bad things would happen, because virtually all lifeforms, despite their many differences, were all people and all had the same basic need.

The need to upgrade. When they didn’t, parts of them started to malfunction because they were designed to always be in motion forward. And even as his body was now, his mind was stuck in a recurring loop that was going nowhere, and he could feel its deleterious effects on him.

Going nowhere was actually going backwards. It didn’t make logical sense, but he could feel it. His mental vision was clouded, and he felt himself atrophying by the day. He pressed his workouts even harder and longer, which helped some, but he couldn’t train all day long. And the gaps between training seemed to suck the life out of his with the uselessness of it.

He needed a direction. A purpose. A mission. But all he could do was wait, and wait, and wait.

Finally the ship came to Wayland, dropped off a few passengers and messages, then it picked him up and went back to the nearest point of entry into the Temple network. Seeing it was fascinating enough to break him out of his stagnant stupor temporarily, but it wasn’t until he saw one of the giant coin-shaped structures in deep space did he begin to get a sense of direction.

He couldn’t understand what he was feeling, but seeing it from above and the star-less sky in one direction while the edge of the galaxy was on the other reminded him of just how tiny he was in all of this, and that somehow his path forward was to be tiny. Not part of a large team. Solitary.

Yes, solitary. He didn’t know why, but that felt right. He needed to be solitary, but right now he was confined aboard a ship with its crew, and while he had quarters to himself, that wasn’t what he was sensing. He needed to get away from the Paladin and lose himself out there in the vastness of the universe. He knew that now more than anything, and for the first time in months he sensed he was heading in the right direction.

He just didn’t know what that direction was, nor did he have a way to navigate it. But going back to the Paladin was now confirmed to not be his path. At least he was now able to rule that out, and that was progress.

The ship hopped through various legs of the journey through the Essence realm, coming out at increasingly spectacular constructions in even deeper space before finally giving him a glimpse of his destination galaxy above another coin-shaped construct.

The Milky Way. Home galaxy of Star Force.

Another pop through the Essence realm brought him into it, and then finally inside one of the massive Temples. His sense of tininess returned, and it felt right, as did his leaving the Paladin ship to head to the surface.

It continued on its mission, heading back the way it came only days later, while a Bsidd handler took charge of him and got him passage on another ship within this galaxy. It was one that was entering and leaving through the hole in the Temple that Star Force had torn to allow standard entry without having to use Essence to hop across the massive outer walls, and after only a short and very eye-opening stay amongst so many other races, he was back onboard a ship heading out amongst the stars.

It was a Calavari ship. A heavy transport so big it almost didn’t fit through the hole in the Temple, but onboard it was warehouse after warehouse with only a small crew aboard. They were transporting goods to and from the Temple, stuff that the Caretakers couldn’t make, or had never been programmed to. Luxury stuff, rather than necessities, as well as a passenger berth hidden amongst the cargo holds that carried some 3,580 individuals, and his was full. Apparently the waiting list was long to leave the Temple, but he’d gotten a priority spot on the first available ship heading out.

He made two other ship transfers on his way across the galaxy, the second one being a Kainet cargo ship, and the third a Protovic patrol ship. Being the only non-glowing person onboard was a bit strange, but also refreshing in a way. He was used to seeing Paladin faces everywhere, and now he was the only one. He was effectively out now, and that both confused and reassured him. Getting out was the part of his new path he understood. But now that he was out, what was next?

He was eventually dropped off at an Axius colony system containing 6 inhabited worlds. He was brought onto the 3rd world, and given a lengthy indoctrination process that lasted a laughable 5 days. After all the time he’d spent waiting, those five days passed quickly, then he was released into the multi-racial ecosystem and was finally free to do whatever he wanted.

And that terrified him.

During the transit there was at least the road ahead of him that was defined. Now that he was here, other than doing some basic recon of the area and getting his bearings, he didn’t know what to do.

So it was recon, recon, recon for several weeks, exploring the small pieces of the colony that he could get to on foot, for he didn’t want to travel too far from his quarters. Those were his basecamp, and right now the only grounding his mind had. But as he began to interact with the strangers around him and get his geography established, the sense of tininess returned and felt right, but he had no way of knowing what he was even supposed to be working towards.

And if he didn’t have a direction, all he could do was stay put and stagnate.

But he’d come this far, and he knew going back was not the right way. So he was just going to have to move around, continue training, and hope to discover something he was missing.

It was not a good feeling. But he was here and there was no undoing it, so he had to press forward. He just didn’t know which damn way forward was…

10

EG40

March 12, 1584450

MILKY WAY GALAXY

Chitoro Kingdom

Trivaro Didobo System

Bolo

The waterfall leading into a pool below And-T6-MW-003 helped in a therapeutic way as it transitioned into three more waterfalls that then led into more as they went lower and lower in the open air column. A force field a meter past the railing was invisible to prevent accidental falls, but his Paladin hearing could detect a slight hum when water droplets hit it. Too small to see, but the sound was still there.

He doubted others could sense it, and to be fair he hadn’t noticed until the third day here. He’d spent hours just standing, watching, and listening, as if part of the answer to what he sought was here. At least it felt better here. Elsewhere felt even more hollow, empty, and pointless. So maybe this wasn’t so much a place of answers but of less choking stagnation for his mind.

“Hello there,” a Human voice said from behind him, and the Paladin turned his head just as a red-haired male stepped up beside him and leaned on the railing.

“I prefer to be alone,” the Paladin said, turning his eyes and face back towards the waterfall in a gesture of dismissal.

“Wise,” the Human said, also looking forward. “Sometimes you can see more clearly alone. But in you I sense a great deal of confusion. You keep coming back here, and every day you do the same thing. And now that I’m here, I can sense some slippage in your telepathic signature. If you were calm, cool, and at peace, there would be no signature unless you wanted to project one.”

003 frowned and turned back to face the man. “Are you a telepath?”

He smirked, but kept looking at the waterfall. “All Archons are.”

003 stiffened out of reflex, then slowly melted in shame. “You’ve come to see why I am malfunctioning?”

“I’m Clan Saber. We keep an eye on the Paladin. Your case caught my attention, but I don’t think it’s a malfunction. Your genetic scans came through clean.”

“Then why are you here?”

The Archon looked higher up the waterfall near the apex that was invisible other than the lip of a higher pond. “When one senses something is not right, but they cannot identify the problem or how to begin remedying it, it’s what we refer to as being ‘lost.’ If we have a tremendous amount of work ahead of us and starting point, we have direction. But no matter how many skills we have. No matter how powerful we are. If we don’t know what to do, we’re helpless. We’re lost. So I’m here to help, if I can. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Is that an order?”

“Is that hostility? I didn’t realize we were enemies?”

“I left the Paladin, yet here you are. Do you ever allow us to truly leave?”

“Ah, that. You mistake our concern for enslavement. But to be fair, enslavement has always been a part of your race. When we annexed you and rebirthed you as Paladin, we loosened up the restraints a bit and provided a path out if anyone should want it…such as you…but everything else we left as is. Your genetic memory was modified by us, but it wasn’t created by us. Nor was most of your race. So some of your ire is due to the Li’vorkrachnika’s legacy, not our doing. Is there something specific we’ve done that irritates you?”

“My incompetence irritates me. I can no longer function as a proper Paladin.”

“Why?”

“I am conflicted.”

“When did this begin?”

“On my first mission.”

“But not before?”

“No. I felt right when I was spawned. It was when I began sensing the minds of non-Paladin that something changed. I no longer felt complete.”

“You were just beginning. How could you be complete?”

“Something was missing.”

“You’re always missing things. You just rarely realize it until you are ready to upgrade. Then you sense the lack.”

“Upgrade?”

“I admit, it’s not something that we’ve seen happen before with someone so young. But the natural progression can sometimes be accelerated beyond what you can handle when you are given a glimpse of higher level abilities. That opens a crack in you…though maybe that’s not the best metaphor. The trailblazers are far beyond my ability levels, and on the few occasions I’ve been able to spar with Paul I see levels ahead of me that I did not know existed. Knowing they’re there, and getting some information on them, allows me to accelerate my development in that direction. It’s one way the trailblazers help us learn faster, as we help others like the Paladin learn faster. Though in your case, most of your learning is accomplished with your genetic memory. That has many advantages, and some disadvantages.”

“Why do not all races within Star Force have it?”

“Because we don’t like to tinker with stuff we do not fully understand. Not when someone else’s life is at risk. We’re much more willing to experiment and tinker on ourselves, figure something out, then pass it on to others. If we gave every race as much genetic memory as the Paladin have, it could cause many problems. Number one being that races like mine are designed to develop slowly. We’re born as infants, not fully functioning adults.”

“Do not the new Terrans have genetic memory?”

“They do, but it’s compartmentalized and released slowly over time. Only the Paladin have full genetic memory available at spawning. It wasn’t our creation so we didn’t remove it, for fear that could have just as bad implications for you as if we gave it to others. So we modified it a bit instead. Took out the urge to kill yourself when captured or die fighting pointless battles. There was a lot there you did not inherit because we altered it, but the base genetic memory is not our doing. It may have come from the universe itself, or you could have been altered into a weapon by others long ago. Some pieces of truth are lost to history never to be recovered. We live in the present and have to function without full answers, just as you do now.”

“Why do we not have names?”

“Because the Li’vorkrachnika did not. We added names for the Viceroys, but left the rest of you alone. We’ve never ordered you not to choose a name for yourself. Why haven’t you?”

“It never occurred to me until I arrived in Axius. Choosing one for myself seems wrong. I am what I was made to be.”

“No, you’re not. You’re living in an avatar…a body and mind…but you, the person inside, are not a creation. How you got in this specific body is still a mystery, but your Core was attracted to the spawn point and it will leave when you die and move on to another universe.”

“What do you know of other universes? That is not in my memory or training.”

“We know very little, and until recently we knew nothing at all. But we’ve always known about your Core. Pain and pleasure are a dead giveaway. If you were a machine there would be no reason for them. You’d simply do as you were programmed. But pain and pleasure are your avatar’s way of incentivizing the choices of the pilot to do something or not do something. This means you are not your body, you are simply inside it. Or, as some of our ancient lore stated, ‘luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.’

“Crude?”

“Well, the character in question had rather decayed, so his matter was crude.”

“He was not self-sufficient?”

The Archon smiled. “He lived a long time, but no, he was not self-sufficient. His culture didn’t understand the concept.”

“So they all died shortly after they were spawned?”

“Within a few hundred years, yes. That seemed long to them, but now that I’ve passed a hundred thousand, it feels pathetically short…and you’re even younger still.”

“What am I doing wrong?”

“Just because you’re lacking something doesn’t mean it’s due to a mistake. When we grow we will sense new needs. The lacking is part of the growth process. It means you can no longer stay on the level you are at. At least not comfortably. You wouldn’t understand that, for your body was full size at spawning, but mine grew slowly to this height. I couldn’t stay at the smaller sizes, so I was constantly in flux. We grow in other ways beyond the physical, and I would guess you are essentially outgrowing your Paladin shoes.”

“My feet have not enlarged, so I am assuming that is another metaphor?”

“Indeed. Our shoe sizes change until we get to full size at maturity. If we do not switch into new shoes, they will slowly begin not to fit and it causes pain. So let’s try to figure out how to get you into a new size shoe, for the Paladin one apparently no longer fits.”

“What options are there?”

The Archon shook his head. “In your case I’d guess you need to customize. Chart your own course. It’s more difficult and slow, but if nothing currently exists that fits you, it’s your only remaining option. Star Force has made a lot of premade stuff so people would have options, but we can’t think of everything. And I believe you have already hit on the method of your growth.”

“How have I done that?”

“Isolation. Not patterning off others.”

“I know of no other way of learning.”

“And therein lies the problem. Until you figure out how to customize, you will forever be conflicted.”

“Then what must I do?”

“Well, you can look for pieces of answers in others. A lot of the old lore holds such pieces for us, but if you try to take it in full it doesn’t work, because it’s only a partial answer. It sort of rhymes with the truth rather than being the truth. If you realize that you can search out the things that rhyme to give you a direction to follow. But when no one has walked your exact path before, only you can navigate it. I’m sure I can help out with some pieces, but others I cannot because they do not match my path. You have to figure out your own way, and if the Paladin path does not fit, then you were wise to leave it in search of another.”

“Axius has no path. It is chaos.”

“If the shoe doesn’t fit, the first step is to take it off before you find one that does. That way, at least, your foot no longer hurts.”

“But it is now vulnerable to damage.”

The Archon smiled. “A keen deduction. One that many would miss. You are unnaturally smart for a Paladin of your age. Normally they do not veer very far from their genetic memories.”

“My memories were compromised when they were mixed with the thoughts of others.”

“That…” he said regretfully, “you can rightly claim is our fault. We didn’t give the Paladin telepathic abilities for a long time, and even now only a rare few have them. When your mind is structured around such strong presets, having one with no presets or few presets introduced to you could destabilize your inner self.”

“Has this happened before?”

“In lesser amounts, yes. But no Mind Raider has ever left the Paladin willingly. So I’m here to learn as well to help future ones who may travel the same path you are.”

“I should want to aid you, but I feel so bad I cannot think of others as much as I should.”

“You can’t help others if you’re dead or incapacitated, so sometimes the first person you have to rescue is yourself.”

“Does it get easier with time?”

“No,” the Archon said flatly. “Whenever you are dealing with something new, you are unprepared for it. But the more skills you develop, the more options you have to deal with it. But when you’re lost, you’re lost, no matter how powerful you become. There is no map to navigate the new until someone first charts it. And even then, that map is only useful. It doesn’t travel the path for you. You always have to earn your way forward, though sometimes you accomplish things without even trying. But you always do it. And then there are times you try, and try, and try, and get nowhere. That’s what we call a ‘plateau,’ and it happens a great deal in training. You get so far, then you can’t find a way to go further.”

“That is what it feels like now. But I need to be further. I am incomplete until I am.”

“What do you lack?”

“A purpose.”

“Ah. That is not new. But from a Paladin it’s probably even more problematic than from a Human since your mind is so structured to service. However, as an Archon, we also have a need for purpose. So I will give you a bit of help.”

“Please do so,” 003 said, tilting his chin up expectantly.

“Before you can have a purpose, you must become an asset. You must have power in order to do whatever it is your purpose calls you to do. So perhaps the first step for you is in becoming an asset above and beyond what your Paladin heritage avails you. Use that as a foundation, then build upon it. Once you build enough, I suspect the purpose will reveal itself. Much how we, as Archons, are not allowed to go out into the galaxy on missions until we achieve a certain level of power. It is frustrating to us, because we feel the need to make a difference and we’re being held back, but in hindsight it was wise of our leaders to require it of us. We knew so little then, and we were so weak, but we felt the need to fight. The need to help others. The need to take action. The need to make a difference. We were frustrated by being held back, but we had our training to focus on. Right now you have nothing to focus on except your lack of purpose. That is why it is so uncomfortable. You have nothing to do, so you feel extra lost.”

“Simple tasks in the Paladin were not enough for me, but they did help. And now I no longer have them. I wonder if I made a mistake in leaving, yet I feel that I would never find the answers I seek if I had stayed. Either way I fail.”

“There are more options in life than we realize. Do not let yourself assume your senses can see them all. If you do, you will feel doomed to failure when the answer is just beyond your current reach. You only need to travel a little farther to find it. But if you stop moving because you wrongly assume there is nothing other than what you can see, you will never find it. So keep moving. Whether it be training or travel or watching movies. Keep moving. Don’t rewatch the same ones over and over again unless there is value in it. Keep gaining new experiences, and sooner or later you will probably find something, perhaps just a tiny kernel, of usefulness that you can grow into something more over time.”

“All that sounds wise,” 003 admitted. “But I do not know what to do next.”

“Yes you do. You just don’t realize it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Isolation. You need to get away from all the noise in order to find out who you are. That’s why you’ve stopped training.”

003 frowned. “Are you reading my mind?”

“Have I touched you?” the Archon asked. “Ikrid is the only telepathy we possess…well, it’s the only telepathy I possess. Who knows what the trailblazers have in their bag of tricks that they haven’t shared with us yet. But no, I haven’t read your mind, just picked up on visible clues. Your body is deteriorating. Your muscle tone is considerably lower than Paladin standard. You’ve stopped training in order to have a new perspective, hoping it will be something different. Something useful. You are looking wherever you can and finding no answers. But you are looking. You haven’t quit.”

“Quitting won’t solve the problem.”

“True. You need to figure out something. Not the whole puzzle, just a piece. Forget the Paladin. What do you know about yourself from experience rather than genetic memory?”

“War is necessary, but I do not like it.”

“Why not? Wars free people.”

“They are destructive.”

“Even with stun weapons?”

“We still destroy ships and buildings.”

“And why is that bad?”

“Both are meant to stand the test of time. Immobile, permanent parts of society. Something we can rely upon. War destroys them. It defiles them. It removes them.”

“Not a very Paladin point of view, is it?”

“I suppose not. I had never thought about it before I sensed similar thoughts in others. Then I could not remove them from my mind.”

“Are they truly yours?”

“They are now. I have purged the telepathic remnants as I was trained to do. The concept is with me, though.”

“The more you learn, the more you are exposed to. You don’t have to deal with problems you don’t encounter. So being naïve shields you from many things. You have come into contact with one of them, and short of removing your memory you cannot escape it now except to conquer it. If you wish it, I can arrange to have your memory wiped. Is that what you want?”

“No. I want to find the answer.”

“Good. You’re in for a rough time, but your attitude is right. Take some solace in the fact that there are answers, you just haven’t found them yet. Don’t fall into the trap of believing there are none.”

“How can you be sure if no one has walked this path before?”

“Call it intuition. To be an Archon is to be a problem solver. And we learn early never to let go until we find an answer. We just have to learn to pace ourselves, and sometimes set the problems aside for a while to take a breath or work on other things, but we always come back and keep working on them until we succeed. If you don’t take breaks you will burn yourself out, and that’s what I’m sensing in you. You’re tired, but it’s lack of action that is tiring you. You need results, not sleep or a vacation.”

“I have no results.”

“Tell me something about yourself. Not something you dislike, tell me something about you.”

“I am in pain, yet I am not.”

“No, tell me something to describe who you are, not your current condition.”

“I am loyal. I just no longer have something to be loyal to. I gave it up.”

“Why?”

“Because I sensed a greater loyalty. But I can’t find it. I can’t find the greater purpose. And I can’t go back. Because I will still lack it. And I don’t want to forget. I need to know the truth.”

“Then that loyalty does not come from your genetic memory. If it did, it would be to your service, for that’s the way the Li’vorkrachnika operated. If you cannot find the source, then it does not come from them. It comes from you…your Core. The person inside your physical avatar. You are loyal. You do not know what to, but you know you are loyal. So you can eliminate all possible paths that are not loyal ones. When you can’t find your path, knowing which ones not to go down should help stabilize the ‘need’ inside you. Because if you go down the wrong path, that need, that pain, will get worse. But if you feel you must explore all options, you will pursue those wrong paths just to test them. Make a choice not to pursue any loyal-less paths and it will save you a lot of additional internal conflict.”

“How can I be loyal to something I am unaware of?”

“It’s called a ‘fragment.’ When you grow, it’s not all at once. You can sometimes grow in pieces, and some pieces will appear before others. They make no sense until the other pieces arise and meld with them…then they make perfect sense. So this loyal piece in you has come first. Others will most likely come later. So take this piece and explore it. Test it. Figure out what its bounds are. Become familiar with it. Make sure it is solidly you, then you can count on it. It will no longer be a question mark. It's not a full answer, but it’s a place to start getting some results.”

“How?”

“Put yourself in different situations and see how you respond naturally to them. Don’t theorize all the time. There’s a place for that, but your imagination is only as good as the inputs you have. And those come from real life experiences…and fiction. Which is why fiction can really get your imagination askew if it’s bad fiction that’s not based on reality. So get yourself grounded by experiencing real things, and the best way to start is physical training. Use your Paladin workouts, customize them, but keep doing something physical each day. It will make your discomfort less bad, as well as giving you some positive things as well.”

“If this was going to be fixed with training, it would have happened by now, wouldn’t it?”

“Every mile you run is different, though it looks the same. Because when you run it, your body and mind are not the same. It’s always new, even when it’s familiar. Ground yourself with training, as well as other experiences.”

“Like what?”

“Travel. See new places. Develop new skills. Non-paladin skills. Non-combat skills. Find something you like, or just experiment lightly with many things until you do find something. Plus, you never know when something non-combat might have a combat relevance in a specific situation. So my advice to you is to grow, and not stop and wait for answers before you grow. Grow first, and it may provide the answer. If sitting still and thinking was going to solve this, you’d probably have already got your answer. So get moving. This waterfall is always moving, but you watching it every day isn’t a substitute for you moving…though it is better than watching an immobile object. That’s probably why you’re here.”

“Can you give me something to start with? A mission? A route? Something?”

“Choose a name. And everything you learn from here on out about yourself, attach to that name.”

“What is your name, Archon?”

“Drett-19920. I had a second name, but I lost it and got a number when I became an Archon. You need to lose your number and gain a name.”

“How do I self-assign one?”

“Pick a letter, then start adding other ones. The meaning comes later, from who you are. The name, in the beginning, has no meaning. It’s just letters. So pick some that suit you. And if none suit you, just pick some at random and keep them. They will suit you later once they become you.”

“And after that?”

“Travel to the Shengi System. They have 12 mountains that are scalable by the public. Climb them all. As you do, see how you react to them, and let that teach you about yourself. After that, keep moving, keep experiencing, and keep learning. The more you learn, the closer you will come to finding the purpose you seek.”

With a nod the Archon left, but the Paladin felt completely different.

He had a mission again.

As soon as the Archon disappeared into the crowd, 003 moved off and headed for his quarters. Immediately arriving there he dove into his terminal and booked passage to the Shengi System. Travel everywhere in Star Force was free if you were willing to wait long enough. If you wanted to go faster there were commercial lines of starships running that you could buy passage on. But he didn’t have any credits, so he’d have to go the slow route…but that didn’t bother him. He was no longer stuck in place. And every day that passed now was getting him closer to his objective rather than just having him spinning in place.

The system updated quite fast and gave him 18 different routes that were available. The quickest would actually depart later than the others, 28 days from now. After that he’d have to transfer ships at 13 different locations, but he would eventually end up in the Shengi System.

He hit confirm on that booking, and the system updated immediately for the first leg of his journey. A message was sent out on the comm network immediately to get him booked on the next leg, and the next, and the next down the line before he could even get there. The final arrival date was an estimated one due to the comm lag involved, but the departure date for the first leg was not.

28 days.

He spent that time training and researching the mountains the Archon was sending him to. They were actually located on 3 different worlds in the system, and all of them were a major tourist attraction because of how shallow they were. There were steep sections for the more adventurous climbers, but there was also a gradual, slow, tedious way up if you wanted to travel a long, long way. But you would still get to the summit the same as the other more hazardous routes.

And in that he sensed a message from the Archon. As long as he was climbing upward, no matter how fast, he’d still get to the summit. It felt right, though he didn’t know exactly what it meant.

More than a year later he arrived in the Shengi System, on the planet Varuit-shenga, which also had an Axius colony on the northern continent. He transitioned there, took up quarters and waited until his stipend reached enough units to obtain the necessary items from the discretionary list. It wasn’t the same as credits, but the equipment to hike the mountain was in the Axius list, and the stipend was automatic, so all he had to do was wait, rather than try to find some meaningless employment to earn credits from.

He had become good at waiting, and when the day finally came that he traveled to the foot of Mount Doomba with an equipment pack on his back and he stood before the ornate gates that marked the start of the climb where dozens of people were passing through each second, he felt this was a waypoint in his life. He didn’t know what was ahead, but he knew that right now he was on the correct path. He might get lost again later, but at the moment he was not.

Climb this mountain, then the others. The Archon had laid it out for him and he trusted in their wisdom. He had no idea what was ahead, but this was the moment where he took the other piece of advice the Archon had given him and decided on a name.

“Ranger,” he said aloud, but barely in a whisper as people from all kinds of races walked past him. Others were stopping momentarily to take photos, but none of them bothered him. They just slipped by as they started their climb.

The name was a reminder. He was supposed to be isolated, not part of a giant team like the Paladin. He had confirmed this bit of information about himself over and over again, so he decided to lock it into a name in case he ever forgot. Where he was going he didn’t know, but his quest lied out there somewhere in the unknown. Hopefully by the time he got to the top of this mountain he would have discovered another fact about himself, and if not, then by the time he got to finish them all, but there were no guarantees. No timeline like he was used to working on. Everything was random and unknown. Ranger fit him perfectly.

So with a satisfied huff, he started walking forward along with the other hikers…most of which were far shorter than him, but the gates were designed to be well above his head height as he passed through and the gentle incline of the paved path was felt on his legs.

Others slowed immediately, but he did not. With strides that ate up three times or more distance than his fellow hikers, he began passing them without even trying to. His journey was forward, and now that he could actually apply his effort to it and no longer had to patiently wait, he didn’t feel like going slow.

Ranger passed more and more hikers on the climb, and began feeling better with each step he took. The future was unknown, but now that didn’t scare him. It beckoned to him. Somewhere out there was the answers to what was wrong inside him, and just knowing that was enough for now.

Not for later, but for now he had his heading and he was going to faithfully follow it as any good Paladin would.

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