Star Force: Summit (Star Force Universe Book 44) by Aer-ki Jyr

Author:Aer-ki Jyr [Jyr, Aer-ki]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Archon Lore
Published: 2017-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

6

“We have no choice,” a Deo’mat named Jaxen demanded several hours later. “We cannot tell the others, and if they do not know they will never accept Star Force’s existence. They will demand they are destroyed, as they are now. They are barely obeying the truce as it is.”

Hamob looked at the Ankylosaurus, knowing he was probably right. “What would happen if we did? If we told the entire empire the Zak’de’ron were still alive. Worst case scenario?”

“They could shut down the Urrtren,” Keesa said gravely. “We have to assume they have that power and not just the ability to eavesdrop. If they completely shut it down, they wouldn’t need a large fleet to kill us. We’d be blind to what was happening, separated, and they could cut us down one region after another. The V’kit’no’sat cannot operate without the Urrtren. We rely on it too heavily.”

“Our territory is too spread out,” Hamob agreed. “They mandated that long ago, and our worlds are spread far and wide. Even if we organized regional clusters between races, the distances are still too vast for couriers. The Zak’de’ron could isolate and kill us at their will. What else?”

“We would hunt them to extinction…again,” Gavi added sarcastically, looking slightly down on Hamob from his greater height.

“We would try,” Yaquik added. “But we would fail. They are hiding now, and I do not know how to find them all. They would evade, and we could never eliminate them. We have no ability to end this. They will forever be hunting us.”

“Unless we’re destroyed,” a Ranto’non called Plaszo noted. “We are the easier to kill, for we are not hiding anything.”

“The Rit’ko’sor did,” Wenni pointed out. “Who knows what our races are hiding from each other now?”

“I will tell you now,” Hamob revealed, “that the Era’tran have been working for some time to find replacements for Zak’de’ron technology, with limited success. We recognized that we were not the masters of our own equipment, for we had simply copied what came before. We have a few small replacements, but we are still dependent on Zak’de’ron technology and software. And until we free ourselves of it, we have no idea how much real control they have over us.”

“Are our warships at risk of being compromised?” Yaquik asked worriedly.

“I do not know. I have studied every component and there appears to be no coding that would allow them to take control or interfere with them, but the fact that we can’t write our own coding to such a level does concern me.”

“How much of a loss would we take if we ripped out all those systems and built our own replacements?” Yaniel asked.

“Power would be the same, for the raw technology we understand, but the efficiency of targeting and navigation and other automated processes would decrease by more than 20%.”

“That is preferable to our guns turning against our own fleet,” Yaquik said angrily. “Why have you not mentioned this before?”

“Because I didn’t know the Zak’de’ron were still around to mess with it…and they never used such capabilities during the war, so I doubt such things exist.

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