Point Zero by Aer-ki Jyr (christmas read aloud TXT) 📕

races in Star Force, or to stick with the weaker ones we’ve already upgraded as we can?” Paul challenged. “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, and the answer for right now is hell no. But down the road, once we get a handle on this, I think we have to. We’re going to need more strength in the empire, and as it stands, I’m the most advanced race we have. We’ve just leapt past the Knight races, despite the size difference. And we know how to train others to figure out who is worthy and who isn’t, but the starting Avatar has always been a limiting factor. The universe just gave us this potential, and we’re going to use it eventually. Probably not a hybrid with Humans, unless there’s an advantage there I don’t see, but as long as one of the girls makes the full transition…which I assume all of us will…then we can use surrogates and craft the first maturia class of Furyans…

2

“I don’t get the name,” Morgan said. “Unless you’ve developed a Hulk-like repressed anger?”

“Not at all,” Paul said calmly. “It’s about how we got here. We weren’t timid. We weren’t patient. We weren’t slow to act. We hammered, over and over again, more than our Saiyan metabolism required of us. Can any of you say you did the minimal required to sustain it? Anybody?”

No one answered, so Paul nodded. “Yeah, didn’t think so. When it comes to training and advancement, we’re relentless, and in this case it was actually holding back our transformation. We may not have started out this way from our default Human genome, but I’ve now got a body that matches me more than I could ever have hoped possible. And if we reproduce, some of that, hopefully a lot of that, will carry over.”

“In a naval war…” Jason postulated.

“It’s still the bigger ship that wins,” Paul agreed. “But what makes the Kiritak better workers? What makes the Bsidd more resilient? What makes the Dosogo faster? The Oso’lon more intelligent? It’s the base avatar each race begins with. It’s about the starting point, not the end result, but can anyone say that an Irondel Maverick can stand a chance against a Mainline Human commando in hand to hand?”

“Well, there were a few times…” Kai-054 noted.

“That didn’t involve abject stupidity,” Paul amended.

“Never say never.”

“The point is, we work with what we’ve got. Both in terms of races and technology. We can make some advancements, and do a lot of innovative things, but a more advanced race is always going to tip the power scales in ways you might not recognize at first.”

“He’s right,” Wilson agreed. “I’ve been considering this possibility for a while. Putting too much power into an unworthy individual’s hands has always been our greatest concern, but we’ve chipped away at that starting with the Protovic and then the Knight races.”

“The Elves didn’t turn out so well,” Greg-073 reminded them.

“That was our experiment with the telepathic community, and for some of them it did work well…as a barrier they had to overcome to discover their individuality…but in general it was a failure because we need people starting off as individuals as much as possible. The Knight races have spent so much time as a telepathic society that walking it back fully isn’t possible without losing a lot of their strengths, but we have been trimming it down,” Wilson said, glancing at Davis.

“To a point,” the Director agreed. “But we cannot reproduce Archons.”

“No we can’t,” Paul agreed, “and I’m not saying we will. But we can give a lot of people better Avatars to begin life in. And we’re going to need as much strength as we can get for what’s coming. I’ve only got tidbits of information, but I’m starting to see the writing on the wall. Anyone who rises to a certain level of power is targeted and destroyed by those lesser than them, out of fear or prejudice of some sort. Azoro mentioned a ‘natural order’ that many of the other powers believe in. It’s about the only thing they have in common, and a race exceeding their natural state carried a death sentence from those whose natural state is more advanced and they want to stay at the top of the totem pole without climbing it any higher.”

“Where are they?” Jason asked.

“Scattered. Total galactic dominion is rare, apparently, and also frowned upon for a variety of reasons. I get the feeling their egos need other people suffering in squalor to make themselves feel superior, so they won’t help their neighbors and insist the universe be left to adapt ‘naturally’ all the while they will intervene when something occurs they don’t like. The Sha’kier, I’m told, were as close to a lightside empire as I’ve seen, though not all the way. Their focus was on building, and builders do not sit by and let problems exist. They craft solutions and help their neighbors. This is why they expanded out to fully claim 28 galaxies enroute to more. Not for conquest, but for stability. Stability and the natural order are not compatible, I’m told.”

“Where do the Hadarak fit in? And the Apocalypse Monsters?” Davis asked.

“Both players in the game, neither of which is ‘natural.’ Each has weaknesses, and a role to play…which is why the Hadarak do not go to certain galaxies, or fully conquer them. Too much power in any one player’s hands causes the others to gang up on them. Any of them.”

“And the Neofan?”

“JV team and not in the loop, most likely. But there are other threats besides the thugs. A lot of them. I’m amazed the Sha’kier made it as far as they did without self-sufficiency, but what they accomplished makes us look like newbs on the galactic scale. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do, but that said,