The Powers That Be by Aer-ki Jyr (best sci fi novels of all time .txt) 📕

The not yet finished plans were for a Voidcrusher-class Zeda…with the terms being Davis’s choice. ‘Sedas’ were defensive stations that could move slowly between star systems, but that wasn’t going to be good enough when Esna took her people across the Grand Border into the depths of the Hadarak-infested systems. Hers needed to be faster, more heavily armed, and containing no civilians. They also needed to have industry onboard and the workers to harvest resources from captured planets and even dead Hadarak.

That was going to require more than one type of Zeda, and right now there were 3 planned. Voidcrushers were for combat and would also be equipped with Essence defenses and offenses, to both kill Wardens and to defend themselves against Lurkers or whatever else the Hadarak showed up with beyond the normal minion swarm. Forge-class Zeda would be just as fast and well-armed, but inside where the hangar bays and barracks that the Voidcrushers carried their armies within, would be the extra industry required to create Yeg’gor, and to recycle it.

Tennisonne hadn’t even started on it yet, nor the third type of Zeda to be called an ‘Armory.’ It would have the same speed and defenses as the other two, but inside the bulk of its space would be occupied by ship and mech yards, along with large warehouses to store raw materials gathered that could not yet be processed. In this way the Armory-class Zedas were the treasure chests of the new force, yet they would look identical on the outside to the others, so the enemy would not know which was which.

There were many facets of the triad being included that had already been discussed, including the ability for 4 Zedas to combine into a fully functional shipyard capable of producing another Zeda inside their tetrahedral perimeter. Once Esna had enough of them…far more than 4…she wouldn’t be using existing shipyards to increase her numbers. She’d be making them inside enemy territory in orbit of planets her forces had already cleared of enemy infestation.

But that was long, long into the future. Right now she needed one to get started, and until she had it she would be running her operations out of one of the 7 Canderian sedas stationed in this system…but it would be for the last time, because once the first Voidcrusher was completed she would be taking command and leaving Canderous behind permanently.

Davis had not gone for her idea of giving Canderous enhanced powers to fight the Hadarak. Instead he had come up with something better…and the others in their short-lived group had expanded on his designs until she found herself involved in something far more grand than she had anticipated.

Canderous was a Human faction, and as such it could only pull on the very small Human population for recruits, even if it sought those outside Canderous itself. Only taking from Canderians would have meant Esna would be able to be an effective fighting force against the Hadarak, but not the monster she needed to become. To do that, she had to go bigger and draw from all the population of Star Force.

And suddenly she found herself elevated to the level of the trailblazers, for Davis had commissioned a new Clan to be formed, and he’d given it solely to her to build and lead, though she was no longer designing most of it. Even the trailblazers themselves were chipping in and offering ideas, which were all flowing to her now that Davis had bowed out.

Esna had wanted to become a specialized weapon to fight the Hadarak, and Davis had given her exactly that. She was in full command now, and she knew that being Canderian was not enough. She had to become more than that, and now she stood watching the beginning of her first Zeda being put together piece by piece as her body ached from the upgrades that she’d recently been given.

She’d accidentally been granted the psionic Fornax by a quirk of fate, developing it naturally from her dormant genetics in a time of great stress and pain. But now it was no longer alone. Davis had granted her the other basic 6 with a pathway to the higher tiers if she could earn them.

Esna had telepathy now, telekinesis, the ability to survive cold and heat and melt metal in her bare hand. She also had the ability to see through walls and enter a healing trance to greatly speed up repairs to her body. Her personal power level had now soared beyond her dreams, and yet she had a mere inkling of the power the Archons had, which made her respect and fear their prowess even more.

Yet now, ironically, she would be commanding Archons as many had already requested transfer to her new Clan. She didn’t deserve to lead it, and didn’t know what Davis thought he was doing. Lead Canderous, yes, she could do that. She understood them and already held a co-equal position with the Khans. But the Clans were superior to even the Knight races and their Esquires. The Clans were the best of the best…and now she was to lead one?

“Rammak what am I doing?” she asked the windows as the distant stars had to compete with all the little craft zooming around the shipyard and winking in and out of the direct sunlight coming from behind her. “I’m not ready for this…but I know you’d say I wasn’t ready for anything before, yet I managed to find my way with help. And I do have help now, a lot of it, but everyone is busy doing their things to help the empire and this…I know this the key. I can feel it. But why are they leaving it to me? I gave them the idea, why aren’t those better than me taking this? It makes no sense.”

There was