Star Force: Hamoriti (SF62) Read Free Page B

any of the vehicles nearby and taking atmospheric readings
every step of the way…yet finding nothing out of the ordinary.
    The tech variant was pondering what could possibly be
going on that would cause the ill to stand erect rather than fall as he got
within 200 meters of the most recently effected, then suddenly his mind started
to blur and he stumbled forward a few more steps before his momentum stopped.
He moved his scanner so he could get a better view of it, but it was his eyes
that were beginning to go out rather than the position of his head or the
device.
    Before he realized what was going on the majority of
his brain locked up into a kind of active stasis, with ‘holding’ input signals
going out to every part of his body, fixing it rigidly in place and maintaining
his last stance, adding the tech variant to the growing number of statues
around the object.

 
    Three days later the ‘freezing field’ had extended out
to the breach in the inner hull, with many of the bodies trapped inside it
having fallen to the ground from exhaustion or death from the illness that had
first afflicted them. New ones had been added to them around the edges as
Li’vorkrachnika were sent in wearing biomonitors so
they could try and ascertain how they were being affected and by what, but
their readings were inconclusive right up until a tremor tripled through the
artifact and toppled half of the remaining living statues to the ground.
    Pushed back beyond the entryway, there were no free
Li’vorkrachnika to witness the twitch of movement in the object, but had they
been there they wouldn’t have known what to make of it anyway. The large stone
statue bent slightly, and that motion was enough to cause a chain reaction
within it, clearing out more of the lingering sedative and partially awakening
the beast from its artificially induced slumber.
    With the surrounding array no longer capable of
keeping it sedate, the enormous hexaped pushed its
left rear leg out, scraping it along the floor and gouging out a deep furrow on
the pedestal that held it in the center of the array. With every movement that
followed the pedestal broke and tore as if it was merely loose dirt being moved
aside until the creature finally rose up on all six legs, each more than 300
meters wide, and released a roar that coincided with a telekinetic wave that
hit and ripped apart everything around it.
    The pedestal crumbled further beneath its feet,
sinking it down some 30 more meters, but the array above the creature didn’t
fare nearly as well and was almost instantaneously disabled from the invisible
impact, leaving only that part beneath the false ground to continue
transmitting the restraint psionic that worked in conjunction with the chemical
to keep the living mountain incapacitated.
    As the thing woke further it released more psionic
energy in a series of angry tantrums, slowly breaking apart its cage as the
lizards in the outer ring of the artifact ran up their tunnels towards the
surface…only to be blocked by the quarantine and locked inside to their
imminent deaths.

 
    2 months later…

 
    “ Easy helm,
let’s not get too close ,” Gosfu said, watching
their scout ship’s position on the system map relative to the large
Li’vorkrachnika warfleet they’d run across.
    “ Easing off,
though we’re well within sensor tolerance .”
    “ Best to be
overly cautious where stealth is concerned ,” the Trinx commander said,
watching the ships as they repositioned from jumppoint to jumppoint across the
orbital arc of the main star. To date the Li’vorkrachnika had only assaulted
his homeworld once, in pathetic fashion, but since then their scout fleet had
been given orders to survey the surrounding region that the reptilian race had
encroached upon.
    They were spreading out far and wide, as opposed to
the Trinx who inhabited only one system and chose to keep it that way. This
primitive race was no real threat to them, but their other neighbors