Star Force: Revulsion (SF70) (10 page)

What Kip had just seen
said that this civilization was so far gone that these savages not only
participated in this sickness but reveling in it. There may be no real ‘Force’
like in Star Wars, but there was a lightside and a
darkside
,
and this was chokingly dark. These people had given over to it willfully, and
he knew that by their reaction to Mike. They didn’t stand by and do nothing,
they went after him with a vengeance that defied reason or logic, whereas a
conflicted person would freeze up and hesitate.

If these people had
been good in the beginning, they were lost now. While theoretically no one was
permanently lost to the
darkside
, coming back out of
it required a person to want to…with those who were truly dark wanting to be
that way and therefore irredeemable. As bad as the lizards were, this was
worse. The lizards didn’t kill their own, save for imprisonment situations, and
their sick sacrifices at least held a combat purpose. Sacrifices without
function were reserved for the truly insane, and that’s what Kip saw here in
the faces of the crowd that attacked Mike to their own demise.

This could not stand.
Their civilization, little that he knew about it, was clearly an abomination
that had to be removed. If you put a Jedi and a
Sith
into the same room only one would walk out
alive, and the same was true in reality. The lightside and the
darkside
could not coexist, which Kip knew meant that Star
Force was going back there at some point to deal with this, and the fact that
three of the others were already working on the problem showed they understood
how significant this was.

You didn’t leave the
darkside
alone to fester and grow, no matter whether it
attacked you or not. It had to be destroyed, and in this case that meant this
Protovic civilization had to be destroyed in some way, shape, or form, which is
no doubt what Jason, Greg, and
Rafa
were already
working on while they gathered information from the prisoners.

Kip keyed his terminal
for a
commlink
to the bridge, given that he wasn’t
wearing any armor.

“Captain, I want an
immediate course correction. Inform the Admiral that he’ll proceed with the
rest of the fleet as planned, but we’re heading directly for Sol…and goose the
speed as much as you can. I need to get there as soon as possible.”

10

July 2, 2826

Solar System

Mars

“Thought you’d come,”
Jason said as Kip walked down off the dropship in the reclusive spaceport that
sat in the center of one of Star Force’s cities that was off the public grid.
Most of the planet was civilian in some measure, but this was one of several
that were reserved specifically for Star Force use and operated in a manner
similar to the tier 3 cities save for the fact that there was no public access
for visitors.

“How bad is it?”

“Very,” Jason said as
he fell in step with his fellow 2 walking across the large internal hangar deck
towards an elevator shaft in the far wall. “We’ve established enough of a base
language to be able to ask questions and get answers, but the context is real
screwy. Heavy use of metaphors we think, but we’ve been able to get a basic
layout of the Protovic civilization.”

“How about a name?”

“Veliquesh. And they
have more than one system. Five in total, though the one we visited was their
largest.”

“Population?”

“Somewhere in the
vicinity of 3 trillion, though losses to the lizards may have taken a chunk out
of that number.”

“Are our guests
cooperating?”

“That’s where it gets
interesting. It seems our arrival was foretold in
a prophesy
,
and that they’ve been fighting the lizards for more than 1000 years waiting for
the day we’d come to save them.”

“Yet they went after
Mike pretty hard,” Kip pointed out.

“There’s the thing,
they may believe we were preordained to save them, but go up higher on the
religious pecking order and they abandon the lower levels quite fast. Their
burnt sacrifices are at the center of their culture and occur with every major
event. A victory, a remembrance, a holiday. The Protovic that Mike saw burnt
alive was one specifically raised to adulthood in a reclusive sanctuary
designed to keep them pure of various imaginary stuff. They’re raised
specifically to be sacrificed when the occasion merits it. That’s their place
in the Veliquesh civilization, though there are other sacrifices made to gain
favor, atone for an injustice, etc.”

“Peachy. Why were the
lizards involved?”

“Part of their magic.
They believe in a, and I hate to use the analogy, a living force that drives
all life in the universe and that by conducting these sacrificial rituals they
can alter their place in it. They believe that doing so all this time has allowed
them to hold out against the lizards while everyone else they’ve known of in
the region has fallen. They alone lasted, and continue to make sacrifices to
preserve their ‘grace’ within the force. They call their force
Nash’garmat’ecklima, so we’ve just shortened it to ‘Nash.’ And like all things
fraudulent, it takes a high level of delusion to keep their beliefs in check.
The six we have here are so disconnected from the concept of the truth it makes
their minds a muddled mess I haven’t seen the likes of before.”

“Regimented?”

“That’s putting it
mildly. This makes fascism look sane. If you even whisper anything contrary to
their beliefs you’re executed, which then leaves no one but the crazies around.
They figure they’ve got plenty of population, so they focus on the ‘purity’ of
their race which involves some nasty Hunger Games-like stuff to weed out the
younglings who are worthy and who are not. If you’re not drinking their
kool
aid you don’t get a chance to grow up. The ones we’ve
got are a mix of loyalty, crazy, and skill. Normally a civilization like this
would implode on itself, but it’s survived against the lizards due to this
weird mix of comprehension and delusion they’ve got going for a cultural hive
mind. They adapt to fight the lizards, reworking their tenets as needed to
survive, but always drift back towards crazy when they have a chance.”

“You’re saying the
lizards have actually driven a bit of sense into these barbarians?” Kip asked
as they reached the elevator doors and Jason telekinetically hit the call
button.

“Sad to say, but yes.
These guys want to be
darkside
, but necessity has
somewhat brought them to their senses. Like they’re sitting shallow in the
ocean but never breaking the surface. They can see the light and orient off of
it, but are never allowed to breathe the free air. There’s a twisted nobility
in them that’s giving us unfettered access. They want to help us learn,
thinking we’re their saviors from prophecy, and they’re also very keen to get
to know our Protovic.”

“Have you brought any
of them in on this?” Kip asked as the doors opened and they stepped inside,
with Jason keying their destination within the city.

“Yes, and we had to
almost restrain them at times from beating the crap out of our guests. They
find their whole civilization repulsive, and their red coloration is getting
under their skin…no pun intended.”

“Why?”

“They’ve never known of
any red-skinned Protovic, and the mystery behind where these came from is
something that is going to throw the purple-skins into a fit once they find
out. Those we have here have agreed to keep things quiet while we get the
information we need, but their government is already sending additional staff
to help us with the interrogations. They want to know who these bastards are in
a big way.”

“Have they been of any
help yet?”

“Their presence gives
us legitimacy, but without psionics we’re having to teach them the Veliquesh
language as we learn it, so there hasn’t been much opportunity for them to do
much questioning other than what they’ve fed through us. In that they’ve been
helpful, and seem to know what psychological buttons to press and when.”

“Who else knows about
this?”

“Outside of Star Force
only the Protovic, and they’re limited to a few dozen individuals. The Protovic
Chancellor is personally on his way here and should be arriving within a couple
of weeks. He said he wanted to keep this quiet until they got a grasp on what
was happening.”

“If these were Ter’nat
I’d do the same,” Kip agreed. “What does Davis have to say about it?”

“Just that he wants
information. He’s letting us take the lead on this.”

“Does he realize
there’s only one solution to this?”

Jason nodded. “It’s the
details that are in question…and right now there are a lot of unknowns. I’ve
been taking 2 hours a day out of my training schedule to work with these guys.
Adding another shift in will be a lot of help.”

“Why not call in a
dozen mages?”

“Quality over quantity.
Most of the mages haven’t been inside non-Human minds that much, and I don’t
want to be dealing with their learning curve while we try and bridge the
language gap. You’ve probably had more exposure to Protovic minds than anyone,
I’d guess.”

“Haven’t dealt with
them in a while, but probably.”

“Then you tell me how
they feel before I bias you any further. Any objections to getting started
now?”

“Nope. I’ll settle in
later.”

Jason nodded and the
pair rode the next few minutes in the elevator in silence before it opened up
into a residential section of the city, which prompted an eyebrow raise from
Kip.

“We’re treating them as
guests rather than prisoners. We’ve emptied this complex save for them and they
have the run of the place, but aren’t permitted to leave. We’re handling all
interrogations here.”

“How many people did
you have to boot out?” he asked as they began walking down a nearly empty
corridor towards a checkpoint that had a pair of security officers standing
guard in front of the main entrance to an upscale residential complex that
contained quarters larger than the base units that all civilians were given
coming straight out of the maturia. This region would have housed those
individuals who had earned considerable upgrades that included multi-room
quarters and a lot of other living space luxuries.

“About 200. There were
enough nearby facilities that we were able to relocate them all into higher
level complexes temporarily in exchange for the inconvenience. How long that
will be is still in question, and I don’t think they mind if we take our time
with giving them back their original quarters.”

“Archons,” one of the
guards said respectfully as the pair walked by, with Kip and Jason nodding in
return as they entered the promenade of the little city inside a city that was
this residential block. It led into a bit of a park with potted trees and
curving stairways that led up to the higher levels that included a cafeteria,
some basic entertainment facilities, and a lot more quarters. Pretty much all
standard stuff, with most of the denizens traveling a bit further into the city
for specialized needs but allowing for midnight snacks and such within easy
walking distance.

“And there we are,”
Jason said softly as they approached an individual sitting on his knees in the
park area. “They pray to synergize themselves with the Nash multiple times per
day. They think it upgrades their karma.”

“Any truth in it?
Psionic or other stuff.”

Jason shook his head.
“Nope. Just pure, unadulterated bull shit.”

“Is he going to get
ticked if I interrupt him?”

“Walk up in front of him,
and if he feels like talking he’ll acknowledge you. If not he’ll just ignore
your presence.”

“The damn red even
makes them look like
Sith
,”
Kip said, accelerating his pace until he passed between two low hanging trees
and came up in front of the bench where the Veliquesh held his meditative pose
murmuring something that sounded unintelligible. The trailblazer stood directly
in front of his glowing red/green face, seeing that he wore Star Force
clothing, ostensibly because he’d been taken off his destroyed ship without
having a chance to pack.

The man didn’t move,
nor open his eyes, leaving both trailblazers standing there looking down at his
elevated sitting position as Kip reached out and began eavesdropping on his
surface thoughts. Almost immediately he sensed a considerable deviation from
what he knew to be a normal Protovic mind, which sent him on a hacking hunt as
he poked around every facet of his mental structure without the man having any
clue that he was inside his head.

You’re right. He is different.

How?
Jason asked.

Culturally and structurally. It’s almost as if he’s more advanced, yet
broken at the same time. Pieces of his mental structure are strong and
efficient, yet there are just as many sections that are degenerate.

We think it’s the equivalent of crack babies. Their parents were so
screwed up that a bit of their mental damage got codified into their genetics
and passed onto their offspring. Factor in that only the ‘damaged’ ones would
pass their sick upbringing and you get a snowball effect. That’s our current
theory anyway.

We’ve seen bits of that in other races
, Kip agreed, thinking
specifically to the Lacvamat and how many generations it took to undo that
excessive group mentality. It wasn’t gone now, just modified to be less burdensome,
but the Archons knew well that genetic inheritance could be a blessing or a
curse, yet always just a starting point. Though for those weak willed it
stacked the odds against them righting themselves over the course of time. It
was always easier to go with what was default and not think about what you were
doing, but no sane person could live life without at least some curiosity
prompting one to poke around a bit inside their own head.

If you had to fight
your own programming things got bad, not so much because it was impossible, but
rather because one didn’t know what to do and was learning everything as they
went along. This Protovic was probably partly crazy when he was born, then
willfully chose to feed into the instability rather than fight and counter it.
No matter how messed up someone was there was always a path into the light
through training, but someone like this who figuratively had been born with the
crazy already in him would have to fight a long, hard battle just to get to
‘normal,’ and in Kip’s experience he knew that most people were not up to that
kind of a fight, especially as younglings, and just acclimatized to their
current situation…which in this case, given their cultural counterpart, was to
willfully go
darkside
.

As disturbing as that is, it’s the more advanced parts that interest
me. Why are these Protovic ahead of the others?
Kip wondered.

We haven’t gotten into a lot of their lore yet, both due to time and
the fact that we only have a limited vocabulary. They may know of a split that
our Protovic don’t.

This one doesn’t know about what Mike did?

None of them do. They were in orbit at the time and we cut off
comms
before anyone could tell them.

Good move there. Don’t want them clamming up and making this harder
than it already is. What kind of schedule do you have them on?

We keep them busy. Four hours in the morning, four in the evening. He’s
on his midday break.

Do they train?

They have cleansing rituals that amount to some light cardio and
flexibility work. Maintenance stuff, really. From what we’ve learned they have
fairly short lifespans, sacrifices aside. They also have a forced reproduction
edict, given the turnover of ‘failures’ in their younglings. They’re working
off of default strengths more than anything. Our Protovic would kick their
asses handily.

So how are they holding back the lizards?

That’s a question I’ve been asking since I got here. Their tech level
has a lot to do with it. Beyond that we’re not sure yet.