Free Star Force: Bahamut (SF86) (Star Force Origin Series) by Aer-ki Jyr Page B

coreward
territories. Nice work with those guys, by the way.
    Think I told
them too much?
    No. But when
Nefron gets here we’re going to have to decide how much to let them know. These
guys aren’t dumb.
    I’m not so sure
about the Sety. Why are they so damn annoying?
    We’re starting
to challenge The Nexus, Davis thinks. I had a long talk with him about it
previously. We’re small compared to them, but several of their member races are
making inroads with us and the possibility of defections is unnerving them.
    So they’d prefer
to throw their weight around?
    And keeping us
out of here under the guise of protecting this Uriti was the perfect excuse
with their buddies. We shut that down real quick and outstaged them in a far greater way than they’d ever thought possible. How do you think
they’d feel?
    Grateful, if
they’re really that committed to keeping these things from running amuck.
    I think we’ll
find out soon how dedicated they are, if each race files an independent report.
Good call on that. What did you make of that warning about telepathy?
    I’m going to
find out myself. You stay up here in case I get fucked up. Not sure how well
our blocks will work against something of that magnitude.
    Alright, but
play it safe. If this thing twitches the ranges might alter.
    Recklessly safe,
as always , Riley joked, though the description was quite accurate.

 
 
    7

 
    July 5, 3254
    Unnamed System
    (Uriti/Hamoriti
location)

 
    Paul sat in his quarters reading through the files
that he’d acquired from the lizard ships. It’d taken some time, but he’d
eventually been able to work his way into their comm system and hack into enough ship databases to find which one the templar was
on, then downloaded his full set of files before being detected and having a
hardware solution imposed on the tap. He’d managed to leave a ‘thank you’
message before the plug had been pulled, but as of now there was no way back
into the lizard fleet systems for they were only transmitted what amounted to
brief text messages between one another.
    But he’d gotten what he needed. The templar was on one
of their cargo vessels that had been reworked from the inside out to become a
mobile fortress. It didn’t have additional weaponry, but was coated with so
much armor and packed with additional, often redundant gravity drives, that the
cargo carrying capacity had been reduced by 21%. From the exterior it looked
like all the others, but this was definitely intended to be his personal,
inconspicuous ride around the war zone.
    Paul was sitting in a cushy chair that he hardly ever
used, but for the moment he had some reading to do and might as well sit here
to do it rather than standing in the command nexus or sitting at his terminal a
few meters away. He’d already skimmed the information previously, but this time
he was going to go through it line by line, in Li’vorkrachnika, and not rely on
the translation programs which could occasionally make a mistake.
    The full plans and history of the deal with the Trinx
were spelled out, as well as the timetable for technology ‘payments.’ It galled
him that these bastards had been feeding them tech all this time, no matter
what their reasons. This wasn’t so much an emergency panic as it was a complete
disregard for the wellbeing of others. The Trinx and their allies were far
superior to the lizards and the payment schedule wasn’t going to have them
catching up in a very long time, and it seemed that so long as their priority,
being the Uriti, was met they didn’t give a damn what happened to everyone
else.
    The threat of the Uriti was real and significant, but
Riley was right. After all these years the economies of these races could have
been regeared into production necessary to supply the
equipment they needed to combat the Uriti minions in sufficient numbers…but why
do that when they had a much cheaper and easier method of obtaining what they
needed? And with the