Maty, Aer-ki Jyr [top 20 books to read .txt] 📗

placing a fist over his chest as a gesture of respect as he walked backward a few steps and departed the primitive dwelling made of dried mud mixed with stone.

Rajamal looked at the cube again, not wanting to fully believe it and then have this moment ripped from him. He could not take that if it happened, and his mind was on guard to protect against it with a barrier of skepticism, but if Theodral had confirmed this, he had no reason to doubt it.

The Zak’de’ron were leaving. All of them. And soon.

Rajamal clasped the cube in his palm, unwilling to set it down, and walked outside the modest bunker he had been living out of for many years and into the dim sunlight. The view beyond was the same…canyons and scorch marks where the surface of this planet had been torn apart in an asteroid rain some millennia ago. And before that it had barely been inhabitable due to the lack of almost all water.

It was dry, desolate desert that lacked sand. Instead it was horrible terrain to travel over by foot, mostly rock with some dirt and cliff sides too sheer to scale. Nobody wanted to live here, which was why Rajamal did along with a cell of the rebel Zen’zat.

He walked outside and stopped two steps short of a drop-off that went down more than 100 meters, ignoring the common hazard as he looked up into the sky and the ring of more or less stable asteroids that circled the planet pole to pole. They formed a line that crossed overhead twice a day every day as the planet rotated beneath them with the promise of more deadly strikes in the future for anyone foolish enough to try and permanently inhabit the planet.

Inside those rings were a large number of Zen’zat ships, whether they be of their own construction or claimed from enemies and rebuilt. More were of the latter category than the former, and even in a desolate system like this they always had to hide. Even their habitats were built into the sides of the cliffs so to be out of sight from above, and made of local materials that could easily be abandoned when needed…as well as demolished with light explosives.

Rajamal had lived the life of a renegade for thousands of years now, so many that his past service to the V’kit’no’sat seemed like a dream…and his part in the war against Star Force when it was in its infancy even vaguer still. They had come so far since then, defying the V’kit’no’sat and the Zen’zat with a combination of will and luck that Rajamal could still not fathom. They’d pardoned him and the Zen’zat for their role in the war against them, letting go of that vengeance, but the Elder Zen’zat knew why.

They were not so stupid to leave an enemy at their backs, but they were wise enough to know when a former enemy was no longer a current one. The Zak’de’ron would never change, nor would the Oso’lon and J’gar that had refused to join Star Force. And a part of Rajamal was glad for it, because he did not want to forget what had happened. There needed to be an accounting, and while Star Force had a calmer way of enacting it, what was required in this war was blood. Those responsible for the Deathmark and those that carried it out had to be killed.

Anything less would be apathy for all the victims they casually murdered, and Rajamal would not forget them. Much time had passed since the majority of their deaths, but the Deathmark was still in effect on an unofficial basis. Any Zen’zat that tried to live freely disappeared. Rajamal had found several of the mercenary teams sent to destroy them, and from their interrogation he knew they had been hired to do what the Zak’de’ron and others could not without drawing Star Force’s wrath.

The war against the Zen’zat had never ended. Most just forgot that it existed with the Hadarak and everything else going on preempting their danger sense. What did it matter if a few million died here and there. That was standard attrition in the galaxy from a macro point of view. But when one had time to look and see what was occurring, it was unacceptable.

There were too many people in this galaxy to protect, and Rajamal did not fault Star Force at all. They were doing far better than he could have in their place, and they had saved the Zen’zat within their protective bubble. Rajamal could join them and be safe as well, but to do that would mean turning a back on those still outside it as well as all those whose deaths had not yet been avenged.

Star Force didn’t have time for vengeance when the galaxy was burning under the Hadarak assault. But Rajamal did. And he was not going to let this go until those responsible paid for their treachery in blood.

The Zak’de’ron were too powerful to beat in anything other than small battles, and there had been a few of those that resulted in trashed and nearly worthless captured ships from an operational standpoint. But it was Zak’de’ron technology that had led to the development of better weapons for the rebels than their predecessors had…though far inferior to what Star Force fielded and refused to share.

Rajamal had those victories as small payment against the Zak’de’ron, but soon that race would be beyond his touch…and their leaving was more relief to him than regret.

That was when he realized his ongoing fatigue. Not in a physical sense, but an emotional one. He was fighting a never-ending war…and had just been given a glimmer of hope for an actual, victorious ending.

Theodral was right about one thing. He could let the Zak’de’ron go…on the condition that they never come back. The Zen’zat had been at fault