Lurker by Aer-ki Jyr

Author:Aer-ki Jyr [Jyr, Aer-ki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Archon Lore
Published: 2018-09-19T06:00:00+00:00

6

June 28, 128530

Outreach 39 System (V’kit’no’sat/Hadarak border)

4th planet

Paul-024 was sitting in the cafeteria onboard the Excalibur when word of the destruction of Riona’s fleet reached the system. He got a ping on the telepathic transponders, prompting him to mentally link into the nearest relay and pull a limited, but useful amount of data without having to get up from his three trays of food that he had only just begun eating.

He stopped midway through a spoonful of mashed potatoes, then calmly set it down and got up, walking out of the cafeteria to the nearest comm station where he could properly interface with the ship’s computer. His jaw was set firm, teeth clenched as he ducked into a corridor alcove and pulled out an inset stool, then he sat down and placed a hand on the interface terminal, allowing the computer to transmit directly into his brain the same way his armor would, though he wasn’t wearing any at the moment.

He pulled up all the data the Valkyrie had brought back, along with Jason’s message before the other trailblazer had left to track down what was left of her fleet. Riona was one of Paul’s closest friends, and now she was most likely dead. There was a small chance she had survived along with a few others in the wreckage, but Paul doubted it. Her ship had taken a direct hit on the bridge from a disintegration weapon that neither he nor Jason fully understood, nor did it appear to emanate from any particular place on the Hadarak’s body. There were no weapon ports at all, just solid Yeg’gor without any tentacles orifices. It looked more like a ship than a Hadarak, but a very alien ship at that.

Riona had run into it without knowing anything about it. It had targeted and destroyed the Ysalamir, then killed almost everyone in the fleet in an instant…then finished off the others by destroying the portions of the ships they were on before they could manage to run away. She had no chance against that. She’d been totally blindsided, expecting it to fight like a Hadarak rather than…whatever it was.

It wasn’t fair. She’d lived for more than 100 millennia, only to die like this…and not just her. Everyone in the fleet had been killed, and that added up to 682,139 people, most of whom were at least 1,000 years old. Hopefully a handful were still alive out there for Jason to find, but that wasn’t Paul’s concern now. That thing was still out there, and maybe more than one of them, and he had to find a way to defend against those unknown weapons.

While he was going through the data he got a personal call, which he routed into a small hologram no bigger than the size of his hand popping up over top the console he sat at.

“You heard?” Kian-093 asked, with his own Borg-class ship also sitting in orbit around one of many fortified Star Force staging bases located just inside

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