1

June 12, 4812

Orlero System
(Devastation Zone)

Tauntaun

Esna jolted upright in bed, her head sluggish from the
deep after-workout sleep she’d been in but the
repetitive and unfamiliar alarm had spiked her adrenaline enough to sit her up
in zombie mode immediately. It took her a few seconds to remember where she
was, but the sound of the alarm was still not registering for the simple reason
that she’d never heard it before…and it wasn’t from her chrono.
That alarm was different and much softer. This one was blaring over the comm.

Esna swung herself out of bed and wobbled through the
few steps it took to get her to the comm terminal in her personal quarters. She
found the mute button a few seconds later, cutting out most of the sound as she
realized it was also being broadcast from outside her door. Frowning and
blinking her eyes to clear them from sleep haze, Esna walked over to and
pressed the button on the wall that retracted the sliding door only to hear the
much louder sound still repeating from outside.

She stepped into the hallway and looked around, seeing
it mostly deserted but with a couple of people running. A few seconds later and
they were gone, but the alarm continued to blare.

Not knowing what was going on, she walked to the next
set of quarters that belonged to Rammak and pressed the ‘knock’ button that
would sound a chime inside to let him know someone was waiting for him. She hit
it three times with a few seconds in between each, then when he didn’t respond
she input the code the Calavari had given her and opened the door herself. She
walked in and had a quick look around, finding he wasn’t in his quarters, and
the tingle of worry from the alarm blossomed into full blown spike of fear.

She’d been living in the Star Force colony/base for
four months now waiting for transport out of the Devastation Zone, and while
she had been getting used to the location and people here she was still very
much an outsider despite the fact she was Human. What little comfort in her
surroundings she’d gained had just disappeared as the unknown sound kept blarring from the hallway and Rammak’s comm terminal, the
latter of which she also muted.

Esna didn’t know what to do, so she stayed in Rammak’s
quarters near the door and watched to see if someone else ran by. It was
another full two minutes before someone did, and when the Bsidd came crawling
through on its seemingly infinite number of legs Esna also didn’t say anything,
but managed a few blurted words when it brushed past her.

“What’s that sound?” she asked.

The Bsidd spun around, it’s 18 appendages alternating
as legs and arms as it chose to flip head over…whatever as it turned to face
her with its insect-like head that had a number of gaping holes in it that
allowed her to see clear through and out the back, though that was about the most
intact part of its body. Its chest was little more than a mess of branching
tubes with no center of mass, making it look like an ugly plant when it held
still, though right now every bit of it seemed to be twitching.

The Bsidd looked her over quizzically. “You are the
lost Human?”

“I was, yeah.”

“The alarm is a warning. The V’kit’no’sat are in the
system.”

Esna froze, her entire body going rigid with a deep
seated fear she’d only learned months ago when she was nearly killed by an
Era’tran V’kit’no’sat. This base was supposed to be hidden and a safe place for
her to stay while transport was arranged to get her out of the dangerous area
known as the Devastation Zone. It had once been the heart of the Star Force empire spanning thousands of star systems, but the Viks had
destroyed it all, leaving it barren and lifeless save for one world. They
called it Terrax, she had learned, but Star Force refused to. To them it was
Earth and the capitol of their empire…as well as the first planet the Viks had
taken from them.

Now it stood in the center of the Devastation Zone and
functioned as a V’kit’no’sat world and staging base for their continued fight
against Star Force. They’d come here to exterminate the Humans and their many
alien brothers, one of which were the Bsidd along with hundreds more races
woven together into what was Star Force, but the Viks hadn’t been able to
completely wipe them out and a more or less stable border had formed. The Viks
couldn’t gain much ground now, but they were continually pushing and Star Force
was continually defending, trying to hold onto the worlds they still had as
they struggled to grow powerful enough to go on the offensive and one day take
back the Devastation Zone…and Earth.

But right now the region was empty save for scavengers
and nomads that had entered after the fall. Esna had grown up on such a world
before being rescued. Her Human heritage had been hidden for a long time, but
once it was revealed the Viks had come to kill her, not caring about the other
people who now lived in the Devastation Zone. They weren’t Star Force and
primitive by comparison, which apparently was why the Viks ignored them, but a
Human drew their attention like an emergency beacon and they’d come for her.
Had it not been for Rammak she would have been killed by the locals even before
the Viks got to her, but he’d kept her safely away from both long enough for
Star Force to pick up on the Vik activity and follow them to her, allowing both
the Human and the long lost Commando to be rescued.

“What should I do?” Esna asked the Bsidd.

“Stay in your quarters and monitor the feeds until you
get orders,” it said, spinning around and crawling/running on at least 8 of its
appendages down the hallway to wherever it was going.

Esna watched it go, then looked down at her bare midriff,
legs, and feet as they were sinking into the soft carpet of the hallway.

“Clothes,” she told herself, walking a few steps back
over to her quarters. If there was an emergency she needed to get dressed, especially
considering this entire planet was one giant ice cube. It was warm enough
inside the base, but she’d be lucky to last 5 minutes outside. Her home planet
of Forso, whose actual name was Mace but she still
hadn’t gotten used to that considering she never expected to set foot on it
again, was a dry, almost desert planet in the region where she’d lived and even
the climate controlled interior of the Star Force base seemed a bit cool for
her after 4 months, but she’d taken that to be a luxury and had been training
herself to get used to it.

That was one reason she only slept in underwear,
though to be honest Star Force didn’t have anything like the ‘underwear’ she
used to have. Each garment Star Force made was intended to be worn alone if
needed, rather than designed as a layer not meant to be seen. In fact, most of
the people in the residential areas of the base wore almost nothing at all if
they were off duty and that still seemed a bit odd to Esna, who had been
confined inside a suit of armor for most of her life to hide her racial
identity. She’d never known why until the fact that she was Human had been
discovered in a firefight, merely complying with her father and adoptive
parents’ wishes that she not show any skin in public.

That caution had kept her alive as long as it had on Forso, but here there was no threat from the other
inhabitants…all of which were incredibly fit no matter what their race was.
Esna still blanched a bit around the Human males, for aside from her father and
brother she’d never seen another Human up until being rescued by Star Force.
Since then she’d gotten an education in sexuality, Star Force fashion, with
many volunteers helping her in that regard while treating it as training, but
while she wasn’t so nervous around the guys now, she still couldn’t help
feeling overawed when she passed by some of them that were far more fit than
she could ever imagine being.

They’d encouraged her to walk around naked to help her
adjust the fastest, but she hadn’t felt comfortable doing that. Just wearing
her skintight shorts and jog bra to the cafeteria was taking some time to get
used to, but right now with the Vik alarm blaring she felt more exposed than
she could imagine, wishing she still had her suit of armor but knowing that
even that wouldn’t do much good against the weapons and power they had.

Esna ran back inside her quarters and pulled on a full
length uniform that covered her ankles to wrists then pulled on a pair of
shoes, feeling slightly better knowing that she’d be able to run faster that
way than barefoot, but without Rammak here to tell her what to do she didn’t
even know where to run to.

The Bsidd had said to watch the feeds, so after going
back and shutting both Rammak’s door and her own she turned on the comm
terminal and brought up the holographic depictions of the base, the surrounding
area on the planet, and those few that they had of orbit. Rammak had said they
didn’t have much info on the system because active scans could give them away,
but when she pulled out the sensor data to its largest screen she saw contacts
marked as V’kit’no’sat in near the huge white star at the center of the system.

So the Viks were here, but not at the planet yet. Were
they just passing through and hadn’t noticed them?

There was no way to tell from the images she was
seeing, for the ships were just waiting at their jumppoint as more continued to
enter, coming from another star system labeled as Endocor.
She didn’t know anything about it, but it was probably just another dead system
like most of the others and not anything important. She really hoped they were
just passing through, and wondered how many times in the past the Viks had
moved by without spotting the base far out on the distant snow covered planet.

Esna sat at the comm terminal for a long time watching
as some 263 ships arrived and began to move around the star like any ship would
passing through as they headed for an outgoing jumpline, but the dot that
represented the microjump out to Tauntaun would be the telling mark and Esna
watched closely to see if they would stop at it or keep on going by.

Minutes later when they slowed and reoriented their
fleet in a matter of seconds her breath caught in her throat, then when their
fleet accelerated rapidly along the jumpline to Tauntaun her hand came up to
her face and covered her mouth as her teeth began to chatter. In fact her whole
body started to shake despite the fact that her mind seemed to be calm. Maybe
it was just in denial and her body knew better, because the Viks were coming
straight here.

How did they find them? Esna had been told this was a
hidden base, and in fact it was buried beneath the ice with nothing on the
surface to give them away.

Had they somehow followed her here? That had been
months ago and a few other ships had come and gone since then…

Suddenly heavy footsteps pounded into her room as the
locked door opened and Rammak came inside to Esna’s great relief. The towering
four-armed, orange skinned, muscle ripped alien was her best friend and mentor,
and whatever they needed to do he’d know.

Right now he was dripping with sweat and wearing only
a short pair of black shorts, probably meaning he’d been doing an early morning
workout, but he didn’t look one bit fatigued as he walked over a put his lower
left hand on her green generic civilian uniform’s shoulder as he looked at the
sensor feed.

“There is a small chance that they are only here to
investigate and do not know the location of our base, in which case we will
continue to hide, but something has obviously brought them here. This is bad.”

“What do I need to do?”

“Stay put for now. If fighting does break out, you and
I will hide like we did before.”

“Hide? Isn’t everyone going to fight?”

“This is a Clan base, Esna. The Clans are the most
elite combat troops within Star Force. Even I can’t keep up with them. We’d
only get in the way.”

“You helped kill Zen’zat before,” she argued,
referring to their last few minutes on Forso before
running from that planet onboard their rescuing Star Force ship that she’d been
told at the time had lost their Vik pursuit.

“And if necessary I will again, but only as a last
resort. If they require our help for something they will ask. Otherwise we need
to stay out of their way, and there won’t be fight too soon. So we have some
time.”

“They’re coming straight here,” Esna said, pointing to
the hologram where the sensor images had gone all wonky…which indicated that
the enemy ships had made their jump and were moving too fast to track. In fact
it meant they were probably almost here given the sensor lag times.

“If they know where the base is, they will try to
attack from orbit. We have strong planetary shields covering a small portion of
the surface. They are not raised yet, because they will give away our location,
but if they go up the Viks will have to break through. That will take time even
if they have enough ships and we’ll be able to fire back and hurt them in the
process. If they do that and succeed then this base will be vaporized and
there’s nothing we can do about it but run.”

“Run where?”

“There are emergency evacuation routes to other areas
of the planet in case of orbital bombardment. We can get out through those if
we are quick enough, but I do not think they will attack our shields directly
and waste the destruction of some of their ships. More likely they will stay
out of our anti-orbital guns’ range and land troops on the surface. It’ll take
time for them to get here.”

“And when they do?”

“They’ll try to destroy the shield generator and
defense batteries from the ground so their warships don’t have to take damage.
Then they can either attack the base with troops or pull back and pummel it
from orbit. If they’re here to kill us they’ll choose the second option. If
they’re here looking for information they’ll have to come inside.”

“Can we keep them from destroying the shield
generator?”

“Depends how many troops they land and how many we’ve
got here. I took a quick look earlier and we have a sizeable mech force, but I
don’t know the particulars.”

“I thought there were an army of Commandos here?”

“That won’t do any good protecting the shield
generator unless they try to infiltrate the base and sabotage it with Zen’zat. They’ll
probably try to destroy it from the outside, and Commandos can’t fight most of
the V’kit’no’sat races. They’re too big.”

“Yeah,” Esna said, remembering the Era’tran that she’d
seen in person, and it wasn’t the biggest Vik race they had out of the 193 that
made up their empire. “I know I haven’t earned it, but will they give me a suit
of armor? I feel naked right now.”

“Given the circumstances I don’t think that will be a
problem. I’ll grab you one myself when the time comes. They should have plenty
of spares for Humans.”

“How about now?”

“There’s no need yet. Trust me, this is going to take
some time to play out,” he said as the hallway alarm finally shut off and the
normal quiet of the residential areas resumed, though it no longer felt
tranquil to Esna. More like imposing doom.

“So what now? Just wait in our quarters?”

“Did the alarm wake you?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you need breakfast. I’ll shower then we’ll go to
the cafeteria and get something to eat. We can watch what’s going on from
there.”

Esna looked up at his giant head oddly. “They just had
an alarm. Doesn’t that mean we need to do…something?”

“Others yes. Us no. We’re guests here, remember?”

“You’re not,” she reminded him.

“Clan,” he reiterated. “I’m nowhere near their
league.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“You’re not hard to impress.”

Esna wrinkled her nose, thinking of something
sarcastic to say but letting the notion go as she decided now wasn’t the right
time. “Can we survive this?”

“I don’t know,” Rammak answered honestly, “but our
odds here are a lot better than on Mace.”

“We’ll still have to evacuate, right?”

“If they know where we are, yes. These won’t be the
only ships coming. They’ll send as many as needed to kill us now that they know
where we are. The only bases in the Devastation Zone are hidden ones, and if
this one has been discovered we’ll all have to leave.”

“How? Do we have enough ships in the hangar?”

“Probably not.”

“Then what? We just…”

“This is Star Force, Esna. There are Archons here.
Trust they’ll know what to do. They wouldn’t have built this base without an
evacuation plan.”

“You know them better than I do. I’ve only met four,
and not for very long.”

“The two you saw on Mace should be enough.”

“They’re not here though, are they?”

Rammak squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. “Unless
they can breach our shield, this is going to be a fair fight. We do as we’re
told, but otherwise stay out of the way and stay alive. You and I both have
some experience doing that.”

“About the only experience I have.”

“Food,” Rammak said, letting go of her shoulder and
heading for the door. “10 minutes.”

“I’ll be here,” she said as he left to shower in the
quarters on the other side of the wall behind her.

Esna looked back at the hologram, not seeing any
updates yet but a highlighted line that anticipated the Viks arrival point in
orbit. Staring at it didn’t help, so she stood up and began pacing back and
forth across her small quarters as a whole host of bad memories and new worries
flooded through her mind.

2

When Esna and Rammak got to the cafeteria there was
almost no one there, but the room could have held hundreds. Esna had been in
this cafeteria more than most on the base, but it felt very strange coming here
alone. The racks of foodstuffs, both packaged and fresh, were displayed along
three walls but the workers that kept replenishing them as needed were not
visible. They could have been in the back area, but Esna guessed that they were
responding to the alarm in whatever way they were supposed to. Maybe the pair
of Protovic and the Urik’kadel didn’t have anywhere to be either, or they just
thought this was a good place to watch what happened while they ate.

Where there were typically updates or random
entertainment playing in holo was now a list of
emergency protocols and a map of planetary orbit. The Viks hadn’t arrived yet,
but their anticipated arrival point was pulsing as if it was trying to warn
everyone else away.

Esna followed Rammak over to the food, but they split
up and went to different sections. They could eat a lot of the same things, but
not all Star Force races could stomach the same foodstuffs…plus they also had
favorites, so there was a Human section, a Calavari section, Bsidd, etc along with a long wall of common foodstuffs that they
could all eat. Esna got herself a tray and stacked on her usual breakfast
pancakes and two protein bars along with a glass of green, but her mind wasn’t
on the food as she found a seat and Rammak joined her a few seconds later.

The two of them ate in silence for a long time, then
ended up just sitting and watching the map as the other denizens eventually
left. Another Human came in and decided to join them,
sitting down next to Esna and engaging in some chitchat up until the pulsing
dot in high orbit shifted into ship identifications.

“They’re here,” Andre said as all three of them
responded to the single audible ping that accompanied their arrival. “If they
know where our base is I’d really like to know how.”

“We will see soon enough,” Rammak said as the enemy
ships wasted no time in easing down into an orbit that carried them eastward
around the planet. Currently the base was out of sight on the far side, with
passive tracking sensors having been placed elsewhere in order to give Star
Force the ability see opposite them. Those signals were being sent via
landlines stretched across the planet and a few stealthed satellites in orbit
that operated on tight beam transmissions in order not to betray what otherwise
would look like an uninhabited system.

“Son of a bitch,” Andre said as they orbited around
near to crossing over the base and began slowing. Their trajectory soon lined
up and the 261 ships slowed to a halt directly over them. “They know where we
are.”

Almost as if they heard him, the base command staff
deployed the energy shield with waves of pent up matrix energy suddenly zipping
out into a flat circle that rode a little over 2 miles into the air. It wasn’t
at full strength and would take a bit of time to fully form, but the
V’kit’no’sat weren’t going to allow that. They opened fire immediately,
stitching the flat shield with a combination of weaponsfire that fell down
through the atmosphere and immediately set it aglow in long streaks of air
turning to plasma.

It looked like a light tornado, for the widely spaced
ships all had their weaponsfire converging down to a single spot trying to
overload the shields and get a shot or two through.

Esna’s tray vibrated, with her tearing her eyes away
from the additional holos of the exterior of the base
where the weaponsfire could be seen hitting the shield from underneath, as well
as an orbital shot of it from above.

“Generator feedback,” the tech said. “It happens when
the shields are pressed to the limit and switch from floating to fixed.”

“What’s that mean?” Rammak asked.

“What branch are you?”

“Commando,” the Calavari answered.

“Your armor uses fixed shields, meaning that if
they’re hit they push your body. They’re locked to the emitters. Floating
shields are not and remain hard wherever they’re emitted. It takes more energy
to produce them, but if you have an object you don’t want bounced around with
kinetic hits they protect it and absorb the inertia.”

“So the shields are near to failing?”

“Or they set them this way from the beginning. Usually
it’s an autoshift,” he said as a series of red Ardent
beams shot up from the surface and hit a Hjar’at Dak’bri battlecruiser. The 18
mile wide crescent absorbed the hits on its shields as it and the rest of the
V’kit’no’sat fleet continued firing, with the resulting rumble on the cafeteria
increasing as the enemy ships got closer to the planet and began to open up
with their medium ranged weapons.

But so did the Star Force base, firing back with
Sat’chi orbs that rose up through brief gaps in the shield and tore through the
atmosphere up to orbit where they splashed against the enemy warships and would
have done tremendous damage to the hull if their shields hadn’t absorbed them.
But in doing so each hit weakened the V’kit’no’sat shields even as they dropped
their own Dey’rey orbs onto the Star Force base.

The Dey’rey were a new
V’kit’no’sat creation only 600 years old and a response to Star Force learning
to build shields in such a way that they could resist the tiny, powerful Var’ko
beams that most of V’kit’no’sat fleets carried as both a heavy pounder and
shield penetrator because they could spot overload most shields…except with
Star Force, because they had the blueprints for the V’kit’no’sat weapons due to
the ancient pyramid database recovered from a lost V’kit’no’sat colony on Earth
long ago.

Andre explained many things to Rammak and Esna as the
weaponsfire continued to fall, with far more coming down than going back up,
though two Vik ships did have to retreat as their shields fell too low. If
they’d stayed the base anti-orbital weapons would have started hitting the
hull, so their retreat took the number of attacking ships down from 261 to 259,
leaving an additional two missing from the fleet that Rammak later pointed out
had been left back at the star probably to intercept any fleeing Star Force
ships.

But right now running wasn’t the objective, holding
out was and the addition of the Dey’rey was
stretching the strength of the base’s shield beyond expectation. Andre said he
didn’t understand how it was still holding up against the combination of the
shield draining orbs and the damaging weaponsfire, admitting that the base
shields must have gone to fixed mode on purpose anticipating this much damage
without kinetic weapons being used.

Rammak backed him up on that, citing that the Viks
rarely used kinetics. Throwing mass at a target was very effective, but not
ammo efficient. That was why virtually all of their weapons were energy-based,
save a few they rolled out on special occasions, but their standard warships
didn’t carry any of those exotics.

Put a base’s shields into fixed mode, then get hit
with, say, a ramming ship, and the emitters would punch themselves down into
the ground, potentially through your base colony if the superstructure wasn’t
built like a warship. Even if it was, your base would suddenly become
subterranean, which was why base shields rarely went fixed except as a last
resort.

The rumbling that was traveling through the floor and
table up to Esna’s tray lasted so long it was numbing her legs as she sat there
with Rammak and the Human tech wondering when the shield would collapse, but no
evac order sounded. They couldn’t read shield
strength from here beyond color coding, but after another 4 Vik ships had to
retreat and start recharging their shields the color patterns began to improve
even as they were continuing to be attacked. That meant the shields were
recharging faster than they were being damaged, and almost as soon as Andre
pointed that out the enemy weaponsfire ceased simultaneously.

The vibrations running through Esna’s body stopped and
the Vik ships began pulling back to a higher orbit as the base weaponry
continued to shoot them until they were out of range. No hull damage had been
done to any of the ships, but they’d still given up on the assault.

“What’s that mean?” Esna asked both of them.

“It means they can’t get through the shield without
reinforcements,” Rammak answered before the tech could. “They were measuring
how much defense we had.”

“Rate of decrease,” Andre pointed out. “If they were
wearing our shields down faster than we could recharge them it was just a
matter of time unless we could destroy enough of their ships to change the
math. They caught us with partial shields because we were trying to not draw
attention to our location, but once the matrix caught up and fully formed they
didn’t have enough firepower to get through. If they’d kept attacking our
shields would have recharged to full power while we kept peeling off their
ships. If they stayed and all continued firing, we’d destroy every one of them
without even taking a hit to the surface, but they’re not that dumb.”

“So they’re coming down now?”

“Either that or wait for more ships to arrive,” Rammak
answered, standing up a few moments later as the orbital tracking shifted.

“Looks like you’re right,” Andre said, pointing to the
fleet repositioning around the curve of the planet. “Unless they think they can
slide a shot under the shields. They have to know we can drop them to the
surface if needed.”

Esna looked up at the towering Calavari from her seat.
“Tell me where to hide, then go fight. I know you want to.”

Rammak’s four hands balled into fists, twice each,
then he forced himself to relax.

“No. I’m sticking with you. I’ll fight if there’s no
other choice, but the Commandos here know what they’re doing and I haven’t
trained with them.”

“You said you were trained to fight with anyone,
anytime.”

“I’ll just get in the way, Esna. If they get far
enough inside the base for me to be of use, we’ll have to evacuate anyway.”

“Then why do you look like you’re ready to run off and
help now if I wasn’t here?”

“Old memories. The last time this happened I didn’t
make it off the planet.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.”

“What branch are you?” Andre asked.

“Nothing,” Esna said with a sneer. “I got rescued.”

Andre’s eyes widened. “You’re the one recovered from
Mace?”

“We both are,” Rammak answered, still watching the
hologram of the ships repositioning.

“Damn. You just got out from under their tails and
here they are again. If I were you I’d be pissed with the galaxy right now,” he
mentioned as he stood up with his tray. “But on the upside, you’ll probably be
on the first evac ships when they arrive.”

“We have ships coming?” Esna asked hopefully.

“This base has a Gondor transmitter. If they haven’t
used it already they will soon and call for help. We just have to hold out long
enough for it to get here.”

“How long?” Rammak asked.

“Outside my area of expertise. I’m a mech tech, not a
naval strategist. I don’t know where our other bases are, let alone our roaming
fleets, but I know they’re out there and they’ll come. Until then I wait and
patch up whatever battle damage gets sent back to me. You two I guess just
wait,” he said, taking a step towards the return slot for his tray on the far
wall, then he stopped and twisted his shoulders back to look at Esna. “If they
do breach the base, stay out of sight and play for time. Help will come. We
didn’t build these bases out here expecting them to be left alone forever.
There are contingency plans in place. You survived before, make sure you
survive again. Keeping you two alive is an extra insult to the Viks.”

With that he walked off leaving the pair alone as Esna
grabbed Rammak’s lower wrist and held on. A moment later he sat back down and
resigned himself to being an observer in this fight, but it was clear to Esna
that his reflexes were fighting him. He’d been hiding from the Viks for 800
years, and now that he was back where he belonged with the rest of Star Force
he had a chance to fight again and the warrior inside him didn’t want to sit
and watch while others did just that.

Esna wanted to do something too, but if Rammak wasn’t
good enough to keep up with the Clan people in this base, there was no chance of her being anything more
than baggage they’d be forced to protect. Better to stay out of the way and
leave them free to fight, but a part of her didn’t want to sit still either.

“Is there anything we can do to help? Like move crates
or something?”

“Nothing now, but if we sit here for hours doing
nothing but watching holos we’ll be less ready to
fight if we have to.”

“So what then?”

“We head to the track and take a light run. Not enough
to exhaust us, but enough to work out the anxiety and get us in motion. It’ll
be hours at the soonest before any ground troops can get to us. They have to
land them not only beyond the shield perimeter, but out of range of our
anti-orbital guns. They can tip low and skim the horizon to shoot the enemy
drop pods if they come too close.”

“Can they shoot the ground troops too?”

“They don’t tip that low, but we’ve got other weapons
for that when they get close.”

“And what if they don’t land troops?”

“Then we’ve got even more time that can’t be wasted sitting
still. If we can do nothing to help in the defense, we can at least train.”

“I should have expected you to say that. Let’s get
going then,” she said, grabbing her tray and heading off. Rammak delayed a few
seconds still watching the ships in orbit repositioning, then he followed Esna
to return his own tray into the receptacle. Once their hands were free they
headed off through equally deserted corridors and had the track area almost to
themselves once they arrived. Both of them slipped off their uniforms and ran
in their under garments and casual shoes, the latter of which wasn’t a
disadvantage unless they were going to do a really aggressive workout.

Rammak headed off at his own pace and left Esna to
hers, with both of them running several miles and getting the jitters
out...mostly. Esna was still worried about what was to happen, but she was
probably the only one on the base that didn’t already know what a Vik invasion
was like. She’d been attacked once on the ground and that had been bad enough,
but a whole fleet of ships and the number of troops they could carry was
something that blew her mind. She had no idea what was coming, but she did know
it would be bad.

But the base shield had held up to their attack, and
if Andre was right there would be help on the way. She just didn’t like being
helpless to do anything about her own survival, though she much preferred
having such powerful allies around rather than trying to run on her own, or
even with Rammak. This base was full of what they called ‘badasses,’
and as much as she didn’t want to see what a Vik assault looked like up close,
she was curious to see how Star Force fought en mass.

Esna quit her run earlier than Rammak, for the
Calavari was in far better shape than she was. The young Human waited patiently
for him like she usually did, then they both left the track feeling better and
headed for the nearest holo feed they could find.

It didn’t take long to locate one, for they were
spread all over the base, and in the few hours they’d spent training the Vik
ships had moved as far as they were going to go, now outside of weapons range
and tucked in low to the planet and just above the atmosphere as thousands of
‘tiny’ objects were traveling up and down between the ships and the surface
below them.

“They’re landing their army,” Rammak said to Esna near
the empty corridor save for a few people rushing past now and then. “Once they
get all of them down to the planet, they’ll start crossing the distance on
foot.”

“On foot? Isn’t that hundreds of miles away?”

“They’re not in a hurry, but they’re so big that a
mile for them isn’t the same as a mile for you.”

“Like the Era’tran?” she said, remembering. It had run
so fast trying to catch her on the back of Nor’far she couldn’t believe it.

“There are no Era’tran ships in that fleet,” he said,
with her immediately being grateful.

“Who is up there?”

“Based on hull designs, seven races. The worst of
which is the Hjar’at.”

“Are those the ones with the spikes?”

“Yes,” he said grimly.

“Better than the Era’tran at least?”

“No,” Rammak said, shaking his big orange head.
“Worse.”

3

June 14, 4812

Orlero System
(Devastation Zone)

Tauntaun

Jared-11924 tapped his right index finger on the rim
of the control board in front of him as he stood within the command nexus, a small
circular platform with a host of holograms rising up in front of him detailing
the outer edge of the base perimeter defense and the approaching V’kit’no’sat
army. The tapping was from impatience, but it was nearly the only sound in the
base command center as all the personnel sat or stood quietly as they waited,
monitoring sensors and relying on the Archon to lead their defensive
counterattack.

But the time wasn’t quite right yet, hence the
waiting. The V’kit’no’sat were choosing to approach split up by race…which was
unusual. In joint assaults they would mix their formations for maximum kill
power, but right now they were stretched out into 6 long columns moving side by
side across the icy plains on approach to the first major terrain obstacle on
the defense perimeter. It was a rough and jagged outcropping that ran for
several miles, but once they got on top of it they’d have a smooth stretch in
halfway to the base, which was where Jared expected them to approach from.

Their formation still had time to swing north or south
and go around it, but that would put them into a series of canyons that made
counterattack easier. Those canyons would eventually lead to the roughly
circular plain that extended all the way up to the sheer ice walls where the
main base hangar doors were, and if you were trying to be subtle that’s how you
would approach…but the V’kit’no’sat were not subtle unless they had to be, and
either out of confidence or caution they were going to avoid the canyons and
come straight over the upper plain.

They didn’t have any vehicles or ships to carry them
up the incline, but then again they didn’t need any. Their combat armor had
limited anti-grav good enough for short jumps or
descents, but there would be a transition time climbing up to the higher plain
would disrupt their already lazy columns.

It looked like they weren’t worried, and it was true
that they were still more than 50 miles out from the base, but after all the
centuries Star Force had been fighting the V’kit’no’sat they should have known
better than to expect an easy assault.

But that’s not what worried Jared the most. Their six
columns were of varying sizes and comprised of Hjar’at, which back on Earth in
the old days were known as Stegosauruses, Deo’mat and Qua’cho, which respectively
were Ankylosaurus and Dimetrodon, plus three more races that hadn’t been
present on Earth when it started out as a V’kit’no’sat colony. The Per’tal were
the smallest, about the size of a horse and quadruped like the others, but
could run exceedingly fast, looking more like a tiger in motion than a heavy
hitter like the Wass’mat were.

They were the largest of the six races, slightly
bigger than the Hjar’at but with wider shoulders and hips, making them look
very large from the air. Their heads were also huge by comparison and had two
large, clear tusks emanating out from the underside of their chin. Their tails
also were capped in a clear cone that was a version of Saroto’kanse’vam, a word
that any Archon dreaded. The Hjar’at’s spines were also of the same variety,
and that meant they could be energized at will to do massive damage independent
of whatever weaponry their armor carried.

The last of the 6 columns was composed of Vivokat, a
race Star Force hadn’t seen much of before, but Jared knew the large, long
necked bipeds were exceedingly good jumpers even without an anti-grav assist and played the role of heavy scouts exceedingly
well.

The 7th race here wasn’t on the ground or in a column,
but rather flying around in a very wide patrol cycle above the others. The
Tavi’lo were a small avian race with a duckbill like beak and an extendable
tail flap that raised up into a vertical fin. Their straight, pointed wings
were easily recognizable from the air, but what advantage they had in agility
they lost in terms of raw firepower. They weren’t heavy hitters like the I’rar’et were, but more of a support group for an army such
as this to keep Star Force from gaining air superiority.

Right now Jared’s aerial division was waiting inside
their hangars, but he knew better than to send them out first. The ground
troops had enough weaponry to knock them out of the sky with ease if they were
allowed to focus on them. No, the main defense was going to be the fixed
emplacements and the mechs, while the aerial fighters hit them from the flanks
and looked for opportunities to exploit.

What was worrying Jared the most was the null field
generator following the 6 columns. It was essentially a circular column rising
up from the ground for a hundred meters that jammed all sensors and even
visuals from seeing what was inside. The Tavi’lo were circling over top it as
well and occasionally dipping down inside. It wasn’t a protective shield like
what was now over the V’kit’no’sat’s heads and keeping the orbital fleet from
firing down onto the battlefield, but rather a method of concealment for
whatever was inside.

With all 7 races being present Jared doubted there was
an 8th here unless they’d chosen to travel in another race’s ships. That seemed
very unlikely, but what was missing from the columns and air were the Zen’zat.
Typically they flew Paklo-class
aerial fighters of their own, and there was no way that the V’kit’no’sat were
going to attack a Star Force base without them, for they needed the enemy
Humans to get inside the areas too small for the huge dinosaurs to fit.

But none were visible in the columns, and in truth, at
the rate they were moving, the Zen’zat would have had a very hard time keeping
pace running along with them. There could be troop transports hidden under the null
field carrying them so they wouldn’t be exhausted upon arrival, but why conceal
them?

The Archon suspected some other surprise was in play,
but until they dropped the field or he sent someone inside to have a look there
was no way of knowing. The footprints that should have been visible on the
backside after whatever was inside passed were not there, meaning either anti-grav transports or someone was obscuring them so Star Force
couldn’t match up which race was walking inside.

“Standby perimeter turrets.”

Annie Lothlorn, sitting in
her white/gold Clan Mantle uniform several rows of control stations over from
the Archon knew that meant her. She was one of the many naval gunners assigned
to base defense, though most of her experience was onboard the massive
jumpships of the Star Force fleet that controlled their drone attack ships.
With so much damage being done in this war against the V’kit’no’sat, the only
way that Star Force could survive was to keep losing machinery and not
personnel, which was why most naval ships were unmanned and remotely controlled
by the few that were.

The base defense turrets on Tauntaun operated in the
same way, so as soon as she laid her right arm down on the tabletop in front of
her and placed her hand on the control nub, the Star Force technology linked
the firing controls for not one, but 6 turrets directly into her mind. The
holograms she had been looking at before suddenly felt like little more than
cartoons as she was now able to see in all directions and feel the turrets as
they lay buried underneath the snow and ice ready to pop up and attack the
V’kit’no’sat on approach…shortly before they got blown away by the enemy’s
superior firepower.

But that was alright so long as she and the other
gunners could do some damage, for they were only the first line of defense and
there were many more turrets further in that she would take control of once
these 6 were destroyed, preserving the gunner while the guns were picked off in
typical Star Force battle philosophy.

Machines were expendable. People weren’t.

Readying her turrets as if they were an extension of
her body, she waited for the Archon’s command…which came through in electronic
form, for he was also linked into the battlemap software that let them
communicate mentally at speeds no button presser could ever hope to match.

When the order finally came the V’kit’no’sat ground
columns were still out of firing range and below the incline up to the higher
plain that they had not yet scaled and in which her turrets were buried, but the
Tavi’lo were flying overhead and that was who the Archon indicated that they
should fire on with artificial highlights placed on them denoting which ones he
wanted Annie and the other gunners to target first.

Across the icy plain chunks of compacted snow pushed
up revealing the widely spaced turret positions and the Tavi’lo immediately
began to alter their flight patterns in response. Several began firing on the
rising turrets even before the snow and ice had fallen off the tops and their
Chi’parat energy weapons helped to clear it by vaporizing the frozen water on
impact.

Huge clouds of steam expanded upward like pyres
marking the location of the turrets for the ground troops to see from afar, but
once the Star Force guns were fully deployed and catching the little golden blurps of Chi’parat against energy shields, Annie and the
others caused the briefest of gaps to form in the invisible defensive barrier
to allow their larger Dre’mo’don canons to fire through.

Colored typical Star Force blue, the much larger
packets of destructive energy shot in machinegun-like fashion as Annie reduced
the power of each blast in order to up the firing rate, then covered the
targeted Tavi’lo, more than 2 miles away, with a cone of fire that they tried
desperately to dodge.

She and the other naval gunners were used to big, slow
ships to shoot at, but they’d had enough training at anti-missile defense to
make the Tavi’lo look slow in comparison. The downside was that at more than 50
miles out from the base the defensive perimeter was huge and the turrets had to
be spaced far apart, meaning that most were making long shots that diminished
accuracy, though Annie had computerized help with target assist, given that her
mind was now blended with her firing controls and operating in complete
harmony.

That meant anything that came close was not going to
be able to evade, but the Tavi’lo further out were more of a challenge to hit
and when she did they weren’t instant kills, for their armor was also carrying
shield generators. They didn’t stand up well to the Dre’mo’dons, but they could
take 3 or 4 hits before their armor started getting blasted away…which resulted
in about 6-10 hits, depending on where they landed, to drop one out of the sky
at the reduced power levels she was using.

The result was the defensive patrols the Tavi’lo were
flying suddenly got pushed back towards their approaching army, for there were
too many turrets to take out on their own and the V’kit’no’sat were not stupid
enough to waste Tavi’lo that had been living for thousands, if not hundreds of
thousands of years. Such experience couldn’t be replaced quickly, so they
didn’t waste troops either unless they were really ticked off, then their egos
sometimes got the better of them.

Right now that wasn’t the case with the Tavi’lo and
Annie was only able to wound a few of them. Two other gunners managed 3 kills,
but the mass of fliers managed to retreat, leaving Star Force with a line in
the snow to defend from…towards which the heavily armored ground troops were
still approaching.

But they’d peeled back the air cover as intended, now
it was up to the Archon to decide whether to sacrifice these outer turrets in
the hope that they could scratch the approaching troops or choose to fight here
with the turrets’ assist and then have the other defense lines going all the
way back to the base to fall back to.

Jared chose the latter, and on Annie’s battlemap she
could sense the hidden doors in the ice spread out in the distance between her
turret line and base open up and reveal themselves to the orbital fleet that
couldn’t get to them through the main base defense shield that still sat
quietly over 2 miles up while the enemy approached beneath its flat wall of
protection.

This fight was going to be on the ground or in the
minimal airspace below the shield as squadrons of skeets flew out from the
opening doors. The Star Force aerial fighters took to the skies without ramming
into the underside of the shield and spread out in their own defensive screens
while heavier gunships and other flying craft followed along with lines of
mechs walking out onto the snow/ice and leaving chicken-like tracks behind them
as they formed up into loose groupings and began running towards Annie’s
distant turrets.

Esna and Rammak watched a holographic battlemap
display in one of the base amphitheaters along with a lot of techs and other
non-combat personnel. There were probably a couple hundred at least, and
everyone’s eyes were glued onto the Vik columns as they started to climb the
incline up to the high plain. Each race moved differently, though all were
wearing various colors of armor and looked horrifically deadly.

When the smaller Per’tal ran/jumped their way up to
the top they were met with immediate turret fire that blasted chunks of ice off
the rim in near misses that rolled down the hillside, breaking apart as they
went and running into some of the other Per’tal, most of whom just held their
ground and took the physical hits, then began climbing again. The ones at the
head of the column backtracked just below the rim and gathered there clumsily,
for there weren’t many good footholds and some areas were almost vertical walls
of ice, but being agile as they were the quadruped Per’tal clung to various
places as the column continued to advance and tuck in as tight as they could.

When the time came they wanted to get up and over the
edge with as much unit cohesion as possible, but for the other 5 races they
didn’t have that luxury. They had to scale the side directly and stay up top, with
the Wass’mat hitting the upper plain first and redirecting their armor’s
shields full forward to weather the heavier and slower firing Dre’mo’don shots
coming in.

Esna saw the first dozen or so walk out a short
distance then hold their ground, taking hits on their shields and even some on
their armor when the energy barriers collapsed, but more Wass’mat coming up
from behind them would step in front and cover for them, taking the incoming
fire on their fresh shields as the formation continued to gather their numbers
up top.

Meanwhile, only a minute or two later, the Hjar’at
began to mount their section of the upper plain and drew some of the turret
fire their way…along with a few more turrets popping up at distance that were
now in range. The Hjar’at held their ground much like the Wass’mat, then there
was a sudden surge of Tavi’lo flying low to the ground on the far side of the
incline and below turret range that nearly scraped the top of the Hjar’at
column, flying at high speed and soon to come into weapons range of the turrets
when they popped up.

When they did Esna saw them maneuver quickly, cycling
the tightly packed group around so when a leader took a hit on their shields
they immediately fell to the back of the formation and tucked in behind the
others. The turret gunners shifted fire to the group of several hundred Tavi’lo
and managed to knock at few to the ground before the mass flew over and
eviscerated one turret, with Esna seeing debris flying every which way when the
enemy formation cleared it.

Her breath caught in her throat. That had been so fast
and so destructive it scared her to think about it, but she didn’t have time as
the Star Force flyers raced out ahead of the approaching mechs and engaged the
Viks in aerial combat over top the turrets, which had a hard but not impossible
time shooting the enemy without hitting their own pilots.

Esna squinted at the battlemap, then looked up at
Rammak.

“Are there people in those or not?”

“The darker blue ones are, the others are flown either
by the pilots nearby or those back with us in the base.”

“You can fly two at the same time?”

“It takes a lot of training, but yes, you can when you
have mental interfaces,” the Calavari whispered. “The mechs are the same way.”

The hologram suddenly went a little fuzzy, then it
cleared with a change in the lighting levels.

“What was that?”

“The Viks engaged jamming. Part of our communications
are out, but we have multiple ways of getting the battlemap signals through.”

“Then why jam?”

“Range of signal. You see the icons on the skeets
change?”

“No.”

“The shape of them. Some of the ones without pilots
shifted. Signals from the base aren’t getting through, only short range ones
from the other fighters and turrets are. We can still control them from the
base because of landlines going out to the turrets and a few other
transmitters, but if the Viks take them out the pilots here can’t fly them by
remote. The ones in the field will have to since they’re closer.”

“The Viks are making us fight them in person?”

“Yes, but we can still control the drones at close
range, but some people have to be physically nearby if all the local
transmitters go down, and it looks like the enemy fliers are trying to pick
them off. Every time we use one it shows up to the Viks, so we try and keep
them quiet as long as possible. The turrets they can already see, but the
backups are hidden out of sight until they start sending signals. Soon the Viks
will have mechs to deal with too, and they’ll be too busy to shoot at things
that aren’t shooting back.”

“Can we win?”

“Depends what they have under that camouflage field
and how much better the Viks have gotten since I last fought them.”

“It’ll get messy,” the tech sitting two seats down
from Esna said, “but our mechwarriors are damn good and we’ve got more turrets
for them to run back to.”

“Do you know what they’ve got hidden?” she asked.

“No,” the Human said warily, “but if they’re hiding it
from us, it has to be something they don’t want us adjusting to until it’s in
our face.”

4

Esna watched the Star Force mechs run across the ice
field so fluidly they looked alive. There many different types, but some that
Rammak called ‘neos’ were moving like they were giant
suits of armor…running, jumping, and even tripping occasionally as they flanked
other mechs that were more stiff, some of which even had backwards knees and
big boxes on their shoulders. When they came near the Viks both sides began
shooting at each other, but it wasn’t until the neos
ran forward and attacked hand to hand did Esna realize the true size of the
mechs.

It was hard to visually pick out on the blanket of
white/blue snow and ice they were fighting on, but she knew personally how big
an Era’tran was and she’d learned the sizes of the Hjar’at in comparison, so
she knew how big the enemy was, more or less, and these mechs pretty much
matched them. They were taller while the Viks were longer, but now it made
sense why Rammak had told her that Commandos would be of no use against the
Viks aside from the Zen’zat.

Star Force had compensated for the Humans’ small size
by building giant battle machines…and a few bringing up the rear in the Star
Force mech ranks were even larger. Rammak said they were Mark 2s, meaning
larger versions of the smaller ones, and as she watched them fight she started
to pick out which styles they matched…even as they were getting torn apart.

The outer ring of turrets were now smoking craters and
the first wave of mechs were getting hammered hard, both from ranged weaponry
and melee attacks, but it was the Hjar’at that were literally wrecking the
mechs who were visibly trying to keep their distance from them while getting up
close with the other 5 races. Esna saw a neo shooting energy blasts from both
its arms at a Hjar’at while walking backwards, then the quadruped jumped into a
sprint that came so fast Esna couldn’t believe it.

It closed the distance to the neo even as its shields
dropped from so many hits, but the golden armor it wore protected it long
enough to get close. When it did the neo jumped sideways, making it barely miss,
but the Hjar’at swung its spiked tail ferociously and drove two of the glowing
blue spikes into the mech’s shields, which held up to
the first hit as points all over the Hjar’at’s armor began shooting their own
energy weapons into the mech as the two danced around one another for over a
minute.

Eventually the Hjar’at caused some damage to the neo’s left knee, causing a mechanical limp that reduced its
agility just a bit, but it was enough for the Hjar’at to work around the giant
machine and lurch into a short ram, tucking its head down to the ground at the
last moment and rolling its back spines forward. They fired off a
lightning-like cascade of blue energy at pointblank range that tore through
whatever shielding over the mech chest and left shoulder remained as it tried
to twist aside, but a moment later the glowing blue spines made physical
contact and burned through the armor like it was nothing more than tightly
packed sand.

They sunk in so deep Esna started shaking a bit out of
the horror of it, then the Hjar’at twisted its body violently with the spines
still sunk in and tipped the mech over on its side while ripping out half its
chest. The Hjar’at fell as well, but got its footing and ran a short circle to
orient itself properly while the neo tried to drag itself onto its feet with
its one intact mechanical arm, but it wasn’t going to make it in time, for the
Hjar’at charged again…only to get hit in the flank by a wave of smoke.

Esna glanced away from it, seeing one of the backwards
legged mechs firing across a large distance and sending smoke trails from its
two boxes above its shoulders. It took her a moment to realize they were
missiles, but the Hjar’at didn’t stop. It wobbled on approach, then did another
dive/flip that caused its body to wrap up in a circle and roll across the
damaged neo, then dump itself half to the side on the clear ground beyond as
its moment wasn’t quite enough to pull it through a full rotation. When it’s
spines came out of the mech, the neo was all but cut in half and no longer
moving but the smoke trail was as more missiles tracked the Hjar’at until a
trio of Tavi’lo flew in and perched on top of the missile boxes and started
firing down into the shields covering them.

The mech ignored them with its main weaponry while a
couple of small anti-air weapons on top fired at them, but the Tavi’lo
weathered the shots trying to knock out the missile launchers as the Hjar’at’s
armor was getting torn up. The mech, which Rammak called a ‘madcat,’ was almost
through to making flesh hits when the Hjar’at turned towards it and started
running…but at a side angle that kept its damaged right side out of the missile
fire.

At least until the mechwarrior reprogramed some of
them and they started to fly up and over, then circle back around and hammer
the Hjar’at while energy blasts from the madcat’s two
big arms were hitting the Hjar’at’s head and spines…the latter of which weren’t
being damaged. They were still glowing and sparking with energy, and as the
Hjar’at continued to get closer while swinging to the side she knew it was
going to ram again.

One of the missile boxes blew apart and the Tavi’lo
flew off, two of which were visibly bleeding through holes in their armor, just
before the badly damaged Hjar’at got up to a dizzying sprint speed and rammed
the mech as it held position and kept firing as fast as it could.

Esna couldn’t watch, turning his head away at the last
moment and prompting a friendly hand from the Calavari on her shoulder.

“The pilots have a chance. They’re inside an armored
cocoon within the mechs. Often times we’re able to pick them up afterwards even
if their mech is destroyed…if we win,” he added.

“How do you stop the Hjar’at? They’re so powerful…”

“Watch,” Rammak said, pointing to the back of the
battlefield in the direction of the base where Esna saw other dots rapidly
approaching. They were moving too fast to be mechs, but they didn’t look like
the aerial icons.”

“What are those?”

“Those are about to make the Hjar’at wish they weren’t
here,” Rammak said, pulling a small datapad out of the seatback in front of him
and handing it to her after he keyed it into the main battlemap and enlarged a
particular feed that showed blocky flying craft in formation heading up to the
battle and landing just shy of it…only they didn’t touch down. They hovered in
place and began to change shape, then the different craft began touching one
another, five to a group, and before long they suddenly transformed into huge
mechs that finally did touch the ground with their thick feet.

“What?” she asked, confused.

“They’re called ‘Voltrons’ after a legendary machine
from Human lore. I don’t know what it was, but these are a special Mark 2 mech
that doesn’t have a smaller counterpart. They can break into pieces and fly
where they need to go, but here is the best part,” he said, pointing to where
there were now 6 different Voltrons assembled and running towards the Hjar’at
section of the battlefield. As they did so they reached an arm over their
shoulder to their back as a piece of it popped out, grabbing it and hauling it
forward.

It was a littler smaller than their chests, but then
it also began to transform and expanded out into a huge physical shield that
they awkwardly carried in front of them as they continued to run. Then they
reached back with their other huge mechanical hand and pulled a short stick off
their backs that also extended out into what she guessed was a weapon.

“They outmass the Hjar’at
and can absorb a lot of damage, and those physical shields can be discarded
when useless. If they try to ram them, the Voltrons will catch and hold them in
place with the shields, then batter them with their swords.”

“Why didn’t they come out with the other mechs at the
beginning?”

“They’re somewhat vulnerable in the air, but once
assembled on the ground they’re very tough against a single opponent. The Viks
have to circle around and flank them from the sides to have a chance…which is
why those thors are moving in to assist them.”

Esna saw smaller mechs, the stiff kind but with normal
knees, running up behind the Voltrons and firing ahead but letting the bigger
mechs lead as they also fired weaponry from their shoulders and even a couple
of points on their legs, but not their arms that were carrying the big sword
and shield.

Apparently the Hjar’at were aware of the counter they
posed, for they immediately redirected and tried to go after the thors or other
mechs closer to them. They were not going to waste time on the Voltrons, but
the big Star Force mechs didn’t intend to be left out of the fight as they ran
out in front of a group of madcats and others, with
one of the Voltrons even clapping its sword against its shield in front of one
of the Hjar’at…who turned and charged it.

“The Hjar’at are easy to taunt,” Rammak said, “but
they’re not stupid.”

As Esna watched the Hjar’at ran forward, firing a
lighting-like blast off its spines and into the big physical shield…which also
seemed to have an energy shield covering it, for the blast did no visible
damage, but when the Hjar’at got close enough to look like he was going to ram,
the quadruped suddenly diverted to the side, bypassing the Voltron and heading
for a thor that gave it a wave of missiles from its own tiny launcher as it
backpedaled, trying to delay the impact to come.

Then out of nowhere the Voltron’s sword emerged,
flying through the air and hitting the Hjar’at in the side of the neck. It
didn’t cut through the shields and armor, but that much mass couldn’t be ignored,
especially on the run, with the Hjar’at being twisted around and tumbling to
the ground with its spines rolling over and down into the ice. They melted
through it so easily there was little drag to slow the Hjar’at and it cut a
long scar across the landscape with a huge plume of steam rising up to
completely cover the Vik, but the battlemap still had its outline in place
thanks to sensors that could see through the steam.

The thor continued to step backwards, firing
everything it had at the Hjar’at while a single skeet flew by on a strafing run
and added a few shots of its own, then as the Vik tried to flip over and stand
up the Voltron ran up to it and smashed its physical shield down on the
Hjar’at’s neck, pinning it to the ground even as the spines melted through and
cut grooves in the underside…but there was so much mass there it didn’t matter.
The Hjar’at struggled to lift its neck, but with the Voltron hanging on and
pushing down with its weight the Hjar’at couldn’t raise it, so while the
Voltron shot it with all its available energy weapons and the thor did
likewise, the Vik tried to wiggled left and right to make bigger cuts in the
shield so it could slip out, but it was no use.

It was pinned and its armor was failing. It fired off
a few large lightning-like shots into the Voltron standing directly above it
but the big mech was too heavily armored to care. It took a little armor damage
from them as it held the Hjar’at in place until its golden armor burned through
and the pair of mechs were able to make flesh hits, burning/exploding its
internal organs until the glowing spines returned to their normal clear,
glass-like appearance.

The Voltron lifted its shield up and returned it to a
one handed grip, then walked over and retrieved its sword as the thor ran off to start shooting something else.

Meanwhile there were other fights going on nearby with
each V’kit’no’sat racial column engaging separately. The Wass’mat were holding
out the best, but all were seeing casualties as plenty of smoking mech corpses
were joining them on the frigid landscape, especially around the few Mark 2s
that were focusing on the Wass’mat and Deo’mat, the two most heavily armored
races here. The Wass’mat had more mass, but the Deo’mat had almost their entire
upper body covered with a biological armor that was then covered over by
mechanical armor and shields, making them damage sponges and something the
Voltrons would not be so good against, for their ball-like tails could swing
around with such force to move the Voltron shield…and if they managed to land a
good swing against a leg, they could knock one down with a single blow.

That meant the Voltrons were more of an even fight for
them, for the Deo’mat didn’t have biological weaponry like the Wass’mat or
Hjar’at did, but the Mark 2 madcats were laying out
damage on the Deo’mat almost with impunity and running around on their
chick-like legs in such a manner that the Viks’ dangerous tails could never get
near the mechs. That didn’t mean the Deo’mat armored suits didn’t have ranged
weapons in them, but it did mean that the much larger mechs had more, not only
because of their size but because their amount of biological matter was just a
tiny pilot compared to the huge body of the Deo’mat.

So while the Voltrons kept the Hjar’at busy, most of
the Mark 2 mechs in the battle chipped away at the Deo’mat and Wass’mat, though
the latter were continually firing blasts off their tusks that the larger mechs
were trying to soak up, because they would do considerable damage to the
smaller versions if they took a hit. That said, the Mark 2s were owning the
battlefield, especially the madcats that didn’t hold
back on their missiles and were spraying damage out to anything and everything
within range. When they ran out of ammo they’d be less deadly, having to rely
on their energy weapons, but until that happened they were the focus of battle
and providing a lot of cover for the smaller mechs to move in and make kills.

As Rammak had said, as messy as it looked Star Force
was winning and that didn’t change for a long time later, but when the null
field finally made its way up the incline and got onto the upper plain where
the battlefield had drifted a considerable ways in from the edge and past the
now dead turrets, the camouflaging field dissipated and a ripple of shock and
anger spread across the amphitheater as they saw what was inside. Even Rammak
slammed a fist down onto his leg, and Esna could see rage in his eyes.

She didn’t want to ask, so she looked back at the main
battlemap and tried to figure out what was going on. There were a lot of
floating vehicles in there, probably with big guns to help attack the base? Or
were they carrying Zen’zat? Esna couldn’t know, but there was only one visible
Vik inside that rear formation and it was a Deo’mat, but what was getting to
everyone else she didn’t…

Then the size finally sunk in as they passed one of
the dead turrets. The vehicles were a lot bigger than she thought because she’d
been comparing them to the Deo’mat, so that was bad, but she didn’t know how bad.

“It’s an Ultra,” Rammak finally said.

“Those vehicles?”

“No, the Deo’mat in the center.”

“What’s so special about it? Other than being bigger?”

Rammak looked at her like she’d said the stupidest
thing ever. “The bigger they are, the more armor they can carry. That means
more shields, more weapons, and in this case a much bigger tail weight. There
are very few Ultras within the V’kit’no’sat empire and they save them for
special heavy assaults. This one shouldn’t be here.”

“How much trouble…”

“A lot. We’re not going to be able to stop it, let
alone kill it.”

“Then…”

“They’re going to get to the base eventually and send
their Zen’zat inside.”

“Get me armor,” she all but pleaded.

Rammak didn’t say anything. He just stood up and
pulled her by the arm to follow him out of the amphitheater as everyone else
watched the battle unfolding and units continuing to go down on both sides as
the Ultra continued to walk forward and started firing a few shots from range.

5

Rammak didn’t run, but he walked through the base
corridors fast enough that Esna had to jog to keep up. It took nearly 10
minutes to get to where they were going, then he pulled her inside a room she’d
never been in before…a tall room with racks and stacks of boxes, weapons, and a
variety of armored suits. She knew it was an armory, but it was way bigger and
fuller than what she’d seen on Forso…then again,
everything Rammak had there had been scavenged after the destruction of the
planet.

What she was seeing now was crisp, smooth, and not a
spec of dirt anywhere as Rammak headed around a corner and Esna scrambled to
follow him. No one else seemed to be here, probably already fully loaded and
stationed at defensive points in the base or waiting and watching the holo displays until the Viks got closer, but thankfully
Rammak wasn’t with either of them. He was with her and she intended to stick
with him as long as possible.

“Here,” he said, pulling out what looked like a cube
of white material from a shelf and setting it on the ground.

“What’s that?”

“Armor,” he said, pressing a button somewhere in the
mess of components. The rough square moved, growing up and out like a tree
until she saw the basic outline of a Human, but with pieces peeled everywhere.
It took her eyes a moment to realize that it was the inside of an armored suit
all connected together rather than the individual pieces she’d worn before…but
then again, that armor had been 800 years old.

“How do I put it on?”

“Turn around and put your feet in the boots.”

“My shoes?”

“They’ll fit. I suggest you wear them.”

Esna spun around on her heels then carefully stepped
backward, dipping the toe of her right shoe into a narrow gap over the boot
that looked like it had exploded outward with grenade damage, but as soon as
her toe encountered resistance the pieces moved on their own, widening the gap
and allowing her to slip her foot all the way in.

When she did the entire boot changed shape, matching
her foot exactly. Trying not to fall over, she stepped into the other one and
it repeated the process as she awkwardly perched with the mass of the suit a
few inches behind her.

“What now?”

“Arms, then it will autoseal.”

Esna looked to her right then reached her bare hand
out and slid it in the open arm piece, feeling her fingers get wrapped up in
the auto adjusting armored glove, then she was able to wrench it forward enough
to stretch her left arm back and do the same. When her wrist there was sealed
in, every other part of the armor suddenly came to life and wrapped around her
in a very hard cocoon that cut her off from the air completely, but the inside
of which had a gel layer that was familiar to her skin, for she’d lived inside
of another for weeks while they’d run from the Zen’zat on Forso.

Esna took a few steps and an experimental swing of her
arm, feeling much better now that she had some protection, but knowing that it
wouldn’t be enough should even one Zen’zat get to her. With allies and enemies
both hundreds, if not thousands of years old, what little experience she’d
gained with Rammak was next to meaningless, making her little more than walking
cargo that could shoot a gun and offer a little fire support if not targeted
herself. If she was all Esna could do was run, for if the enemy got to hand to
hand range she wouldn’t last a second against the Zen’zat that were Rammak’s
size, though they only had 2 arms.

“Everything alright?” he asked.

“Yeah. HUD is about the same, but there are a few
changes. I’ll figure it out. Why are these suits in cubes and
those aren’t?” she asked, pointing to more traditional ones
hanging/standing up in wall slots.

“They offer heavier protection, and because of that
they can’t condense down like yours can. They also mass a lot more. You could
barely move in those without augmentation.”

“What about you?” she asked, looking around and seeing
only Human armor.

“Other side,” he said, walking off with Esna perkily
following while she went through a few shadow punches getting the feel for the
armor. It was a lot like her older version, but it was definitely an upgrade.
She couldn’t even feel any grinding of the parts as she moved, making it more
of an extension of her body than a machine.

As far as the machines went, the other armor suits got
weirder as they walked. The ones for the Bsidd were totally unrecognizable,
looking like a pile of hoses while there were armors so tiny they barely
amounted to the size of her boot. Fortunately there was Calavari armor here,
both in Clan colors and Commando dull white, but no orange.

“Why isn’t there any orange?” she asked when Rammak
grabbed a larger cube the same color of Esna’s and unfurled it with a single
button press.

“Orange is for the Calavari faction and this is a Clan
base,” he said as he stepped into the large, almost circular boots that matched
his pedestal-like feet. “A few Calavari are part of mainline and maintain the
same standards as Human Commandos. They wear this color armor, but it’s also
the generic and that’s what these suits are.”

“You’re not taking one of the…hard ones?”

“Not in good enough shape for those, plus I don’t want
to take them from guys that are. There are plenty of standard units, so we
aren’t depriving someone else.”

“Am I going to get in trouble for this?”

“No. Unless we can stop that Ultra this base is going
to be destroyed or captured along with all the extra suits. Better that you put
one to use.”

“I can live with that,” she said, knowing that
Commandos had to earn their armor and she was almost an insult in one.

“That’s the idea,” Rammak said sarcastically as his
four-armed suit fully formed and his face was replaced with a helmet almost
identical to Esna’s, save it was much bigger. “Weapons.”

Esna spun around and followed the direction his finger
pointed, heading out of the armor sections of the large armory and over to the
racks of Star Force personal arms, all of which looked too advanced for her but
she’d learned to use a few thanks to Rammak and she wasn’t going to turn any
down now.

“Racks?”

Rammak walked over to a section that held little globs
of machinery she couldn’t recognize, then he picked up one and reached it over
his shoulder and onto his back…where it attached and expanded out into a pack
with a weapon rack on top.

“Nice,” she commented as he tossed her one. She tried
to do the same thing but couldn’t get it to work, then Rammak adjusted her arm
a bit and got it to hit on the right spot. It stuck there but didn’t expand,
though a prompt on her visor asked if she wanted it to.

When Esna accepted it expanded out and she looked over
her shoulder, seeing the familiar but slightly modified design that could hold
multiple weapons while leaving her hands free to run or do whatever else was
needed.

“How soon will they get here?”

“A few hours, maybe longer if the mechs and base
defenses force them to take their time,” he said, tossing her a pistol that she
caught out of the air and tucked into a slot on her rack near her lower back as
he handed her some replacement power packs.

“I can carry ammo for you.”

“No, take this,” he said, pulling a thick rifle off
the wall.

“What is it?”

“Something you point away from you but don’t have to
aim well. It’ll create a wide cone of damage along with a physical knockback
after a short delay. Official name is ‘Papow’ but
sometimes it’s just referred to as a heavy shotgun. We’re going to be inside,
so just tuck yourself up against a wall and point this along it and slightly
out. It’ll make it hard for a Zen’zat to get to you while dodging. Fire early
and multiple times to keep them back, but be careful of friendly fire. There’s
no precision aiming with this.”

“How many shots?”

“16,” he said, tossing her a couple ammo pouches while
he still held the weapon. He waited until she put them in her pack, then he
handed the papow to her. It was heavier than her arms
liked, but when she upped the powered skeleton in her armor it wouldn’t be a
problem.

Esna studied the weapon, getting a feel for its grip
points and functions as Rammak showed her how to reload. 16 shots was
ridiculously low for Star Force weapons, which meant this papow
had to have a lot of damage potential in it.

Rammak pulled 5 different weapons off the wall quickly
with his multiple arms and packed in a lot of ammo for them along with three
short rods.

“Death sticks,” he said, holding one out for Esna to
look at. “One shot melee weapon. If a Zen’zat gets to us and I can land this,
it’ll give us an advantage.”

“A grenade?”

“That only fires in one direction. Tap the end of the
stick to the enemy and the damage is sent entirely into him.”

“But just one time?”

“It’s a big hit.”

“Just three?”

“Others will need them too,” he said, putting them
into slots on his rack for easy grabbing.

“Anything else?”

“Information,” Rammak said, signaling her to follow
with his lower hand as he walked towards the armory’s closest exit. “Assuming
the base will be invaded, we need to know where the evacuation routes are. I
know they’re here, but that information is guarded so that the Viks won’t find
it easily. We need to get to one of the checkpoints.”

“Checkpoints?”

“I’ll show you,” Rammak said as they entered the empty
hallway outside.

The Star Force base was a lot larger than Esna had
thought, and it seemed like they walked over half of it until they came to a
set of heavy doors that were as thick as Esna was tall. They were pulled
partway open with a trio of Bsidd soldier-variants standing guard in front of
them, each of which stood a bit taller than Rammak and had some of their
appendages covered in plasma swords. They weren’t ignited now, but the plain
looking rods that covered the ends could fire up and blast or cut through a lot
of things on contact. Esna had learned about them earlier and she still wondered
how they managed not to hurt themselves with so many other ‘arms’ sticking out
all over their bodies.

They also had weapons drawn…long rifles held between
other mandibles like Esna pinching something between her fingertips, and two of
the Bsidd turned their solid helmets towards the approaching pair while the
Human could still see the far wall through gaps in their torso armor.

“We’re guests on the base and need information on the
evacuation routes,” Rammak said, stopping just shy of the first guard.

“We’re confirming the exits are clear in case they’re
needed, then we’re resealing the doors and throwing everything we have at
protecting the shield generators,” he said with an odd dialect that Esna had
come to expect from the Bsidd. “Is she the Human from Mace?”

“Yes,” Esna answered.

“You didn’t upload your ID into your armor.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“If the base falls, I need to know where to take her,”
the Calavari insisted.

“We have a network of tunnels down through the ice to
auxiliary locations far from here. Most are subsurface but some have
connections up top. We don’t think any Zen’zat have circled around to them but
we want to make sure. They’re supposed to be sensor stealthed, but this base
was also supposed to be hidden. Ready for upload.”

Esna waited as the pair were silent for a bit, then
her HUD lit up with a comm from Rammak. It wasn’t his voice but a download that
she accepted. In an instant her battlemap lit up with new data and she zoomed
out, seeing tunnels and sites marked reaching far beyond the colony.

“There will be organized evacuation channels that we
will get the techs out through first, but if things go poorly get to any exit
point you can. There are some concealed entrances that require codes that you
now have. They will auto delete if you die in your armor and can only be
transmitted via touch. Your HUD will show where and the entrances will auto
close a short time later, so if you have to run, run fast and don’t look back.”

Rammak nodded his thanks, then turned and walked off
with Esna running a few steps to catch up. She opened a private comm channel to
him so no one else could hear as she fiddled around with the menus trying to
figure out how to input an ID signature.

“Are we losing this for sure?”

“I don’t know. The base is buried under a lot of ice,
but if they feel like digging there’s nothing to stop them. When they hit the
shield generators we’re vulnerable to orbital bombardment…and the ice won’t
protect us from that for long.”

“So if we’re caught here when the shields go down…”

Rammak stopped walking around the corner out of sight
of the Bsidd with no one else in the hallway and looked at her.

“I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but if the Viks
brought an Ultra out here something big is happening. I don’t know how long the
base will hold, maybe days or weeks if we’re lucky, but unless we get
reinforcements I don’t see how we win this.”

“How long for reinforcements?”

“Depends how close the nearest base is, and that
information isn’t public here.”

“In case the Viks take the base, then they’d know
where the other ones in the Devastation Zone are.”

“Not just the computer files, but the minds of the
people here. If captured they could retrieve the data, so very few will
actually know.”

“Is that why they’re here? To find the other bases?”

“Possibly, but we don’t know how they found this one.”

“So we have to survive until help arrives, no matter
how long that is?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s leave now before the Zen’zat get in the
base. Fill up our packs with supplies and head out into the ice.”

When Rammak didn’t immediately answer she pointed a
finger up at him.

“See, you do want to fight.”

“I have to protect you.”

“Then either let’s leave now or you find something
that both of us can do to help here.”

Rammak shook his head slowly. “Human to the core. I
should take you out of here now.”

“But you’re not.”

“No, I’m not. If we get beyond the shield perimeter
we’ll be vulnerable to orbital bombardment.”

“It extends for miles.”

“And the Viks could find us early.”

“The Bsidd said the tunnels are shielded. If we go now
and hide, we’ll have the best chance of surviving. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Rammak answered with a double fist swing into the wall
that made Esna flinch, though the sturdy Star Force construction didn’t seem to
care.

“You’re not ready for this.”

“I know, but you can fight. Leave me in a fallback
position and help the rear guard or something. Someone has to protect the
techs, right?”

“The techs have more combat training than you.”

“Baju,” Esna swore. “Find
some way for us to fight!”

Rammak looked back in the direction they’d come, as if
staring through the wall at the Bsidd. He didn’t say anything for a long time,
then Esna flinched as he turned and nearly ran into her.

“Where are we going?” she asked, hurrying to keep up.

“I could help a little, but I can’t match any of the
Commandos on the base. You’ll just get in the way in a fight.”

“You said that before.”

“There’s a way we can fight without fighting and get
you out of the base before it gets hit.”

“How?”

“There have been Commandos sent out to the main
evacuation outposts to secure them. Not just to scout, but to hold the defenses
there and make sure there is somewhere to run to. We’re going to replace one of
them. She can fight better than both of us combined and us
relieving her will get her into the fight. That’s the most damage I know how to
do to the enemy right now.”

“How far away?”

“Far. We’ll have to run, and she can’t leave until we
get there.”

“How long has she been there waiting?”

“She was sent out three hours ago, so she might not
even be there yet, but the tunnels are comm shielded for range. There’s a
landline to connect the outposts, but it can’t be accessed enroute aside from
waystations that she doesn’t know to stop for.”

“So she doesn’t even know to turn around?”

“Even if she did she wouldn’t. We have to physically
secure the outposts prior to them being needed.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

“Run,” Rammak said, taking off at a slow jog down the
hallway that had Esna nearly sprinting to keep pace.

6

Chasing Rammak down the hallways until they came to
another equipment room, Esna had to skid her boots on the floor to keep from
slamming into the Calavari as he suddenly stopped. A quick hand on his butt
prevented any further collision, then both of them were met by a Kiritas that was
scrambling around collecting items and putting them into two piles on a nearby
table.

“Quickly,” it said in its high pitched voice as it
literally hopped around more than walked carrying additional items to them.
“Fill your packs and cover them with these.”

Rammak looked at two piles of white cloth the
kangaroo-like alien was indicating. “What are they for?”

“Additional sensor camouflage. They emit a low
absorption field that will cover your entire body even if the cloth is only
draped over part of you. We don’t know how good the
V’kit’no’sat sensors are down in the tunnels, but there’s a chance they might
get a ping off your weapons. This should eliminate that possibility.”

“I thought the weapons were low grade sensor
stealthed?”

“They are, but we have concerns and you’ll be heading
out beyond the shield. Best not to take chances. The other Commandos dispatched
are likewise equipped.”

“Esna,” Rammak said, pointing to the smaller pile of
foodstuffs and other survival gear, “as much as you can fit in without
hindering your running motion. Don’t overfill.”

Knowing the rush they were in Esna didn’t respond
other than to reach back and pull off her pack, then swing it forward onto the
table where she delicately started arranging the various items inside to maximize
volume. Rammak did likewise, though he was able to carry a lot more than her.
That said, he did overfill his and Esna knew why. He was going to have to run
slowly to stick with her, so it didn’t matter how awkward a pack he carried.

With his four hands working faster than her two his
pack was filled first, which he pulled back onto his armor as he simultaneously
grabbed the larger garment. It unfurled into a long white cape that he swung
over his shoulders then looped over his helmet. It fell long enough to cover
his chest, but he pulled it back so his arms would remain free with the help of
a few built in clasps, then he assisted Esna in getting hers in place.

Without a word of thanks or fortune, Rammak tapped
Esna on the shoulder and then they were off running through the base again as
he sent her a waypoint. They weren’t going to one of the main exits, but rather
an emergency branch a lot closer. It only took a minute and a half to get
there, but ‘there’ wasn’t anything more than an empty bit of hallway with
ordinary doors spaced out down its length in what Esna saw on the battlemap as
the outer edge of a Bsidd residential section.

Rammak took her to a bit of empty wall and she could
see a glowing patch up near the ceiling…except it wasn’t glowing in reality,
only on her HUD, and when Rammak reached up and touched it the section below
suddenly caved in and retracted, opening up a smaller concealed hallway that
the Calavari ducked into with Esna hurrying in behind him as the doors stayed
open just long enough for her to get past their motion sensors, then they
recamouflaged the entrance.

The squarish tunnel was lit with a single row of
subdued blue bar lights running down the middle of the ceiling that whipped by
rapidly as they ran. Rammak’s arms were almost hitting the sidewalls as he
moved, but there was plenty of space for Esna to race along behind him. She’d
just started to get into a rhythm when the tunnel ducked down and Rammak
started descending on a long staircase.

“Crap,” she said to herself, trying to get her footing
but unable to double step them on the decline. Rammak started to get a big lead
on her, but she knew he wouldn’t leave her behind so she didn’t bother
complaining, rather trying to goose as much awkward speed out of her body as
she could without…

“Ah hell,” she said, cranking her armor’s powered
setting up to maximum and taking a small hop forward that skipped three steps.
She landed hard, but jumped again before she could fall off balance, trying to
lean backwards a bit so she didn’t topple forward. That allowed her to catch
herself with her hand as her butt nearly hit on the next landing, but she
didn’t stop. She kept jumping awkwardly and half falling because she was making
better time that way and looks didn’t count for anything now.

When she eventually got to the bottom of the long
stairs there was more flat tunnel, all of which was headed in the same
direction. There hadn’t been a single jog left or right yet and Esna was
thankful for that. Getting her feet back under her again and turning the
powered setting down a bit, she ran off after Rammak as he was all but dragging
his feet to keep from leaving her behind.

“How far?” she asked.

“62 miles.”

“What? That’ll take me two days at least.”

“I know. Do the best you can.”

“Leave me waypoints and go,” she urged. “There’s no
point in that Commando sitting and waiting on me. She has to get back to the
fight as soon as possible.”

“If the Zen’zat have already found their way into the
tunnels…”

“Rammak,” Esna said firmly. “Go.”

He was silent for a few moments, then a route
materialized on her battlemap showing a pretty much straight line out to the
distant outpost with a few cross tunnels here and there, most of which were
nearby.

“Pace yourself. When I get on station I can’t come
back for you and leave it unguarded. Rest every 5 hours.”

“I know what to do. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

“Watch your footing on the ice,” he said, then took
off running at a rate she couldn’t hope to match for a minute, let alone days.

She watched him shrink in the distance, but before he
got entirely out of sight she stumbled…not because she tripped on something but
because the planet suddenly got a lot lighter. Esna’s next step shot her
straight up into the ceiling and she bounced off it, falling into a stumble
that, after a few steps, did result in her face planting on the ice.

She held still for a moment, feeling stupid as she
looked back and saw that the artificial materials of the base had suddenly
ended and a perfectly cut, yet larger replica had taken over for them made out
of carved ice at the spot where she had gotten lighter. That meant she’d
finally come out of the base’s artificial gravity and was now in the planet’s
normal gravity that was less than half of Star Force standard.

Esna got to her feet easy enough, then took a few
cautious steps that sent her bouncing far too much. It took her nearly a minute
before she could even run a step and she was glad Rammak was now out of sight,
though his icon was still visible on the battlemap and moving faster than ever.
He was using the low gravity to his advantage, so why couldn’t she?

Probably because he’d trained for this and she never
had.

Cursing her own ignorance she decided that she’d just
have to learn on the fly and dug her boot toe into the grooves cut into the ice
floor, pushing off and almost hitting the ceiling again. Esna quickly realized
she had to lean forward more than normal and risked face planting again as she
was finally able to get a few good strides in with her now much lighter legs.
Over the following minutes she started to get the hang of it, then the overhead
lights cut out and the tunnel ahead was left in darkness. It took her a moment
to find her nightvision setting, then the tunnel returned to full view and she
continued on, but it wasn’t until a couple hours later that she had established
a workable gait that had her running several miles per hour faster than normal.

At least that meant she’d get to the outpost sooner,
but even with the lesser effort she couldn’t run straight through. She’d have
to stop somewhere so Esna studied the secret map that she’d been given and saw
where the first minor outpost was. Still under the defense shield but well
beyond the base perimeter at the intersection of three different tunnels. There
were hundreds coming out from the base and worked into a spider web of
connections giving people options when they had to flee the base. There were
many outposts in multiple directions, but the big ones were well beyond, some
stretching out hundreds of miles at the end of single tunnels.

Not some place you’d want to get caught with Zen’zat
chasing you, but she guessed it was a lot better than sitting in the base and
getting shot from orbit. Hopefully her cloak would keep her hidden along with
whatever was in the ice walls to mess with sensor scans. There was just enough
bend to the tunnels that she couldn’t see Rammak’s icon anymore, meaning that
she was on her own now without even a comm connection available to him or the
base…though she was passing several HUD highlighted sections of ice that
claimed to have comm nodes buried into them.

Visually they didn’t look any different from the rest
of the walls, and Esna guessed that was to keep any Zen’zat from finding and
destroying them. She’d have to dig through the ice to access one, but at least
that was a backup plan for communication if absolutely necessary. Right now
though, as long as she kept running she was in total comm blackout unless
someone came within range ahead or behind her.

Four hours in and she got to the first minor outpost,
finding it was little more than a few rooms carved out of ice with some mobile
equipment stashed in them. Esna took the opportunity to stop, which amounted to
her sliding feet first on the ice ridges in order to slow her momentum. She’d
been running in the awkward low gravity pose for so long she couldn’t adjust,
and rather than risk tumbling forward she just chose for an ugly butt slide.

It worked, but she had to backtrack several dozen
meters to get to the minor outpost as she stretched sore muscles. The effort of
running in the low gravity shouldn’t have been hard, and it wasn’t from an
energy perspective, but the movements were new to her and therefore
inefficient. That made it hard in a different way and Esna was glad for the
rest.

There was a comm link here that connected to the base,
probably through the landline buried in the ice walls, and after a bit of
experimentation she was able to pull up live battlemap images of the mechs
fighting outside. That meant the Zen’zat weren’t in the base yet, and from the
looks of it a lot of Viks were down, but that big one was still moving forward
and a lot of defense turrets were trashed behind it, not to mention bits and
pieces of mechs and aerial craft laying on the surface ice with them.

Much more than that she couldn’t make out, but she was
glad the base hadn’t fallen yet. Every hour they held out could mean help was
that much closer, but for now the only person she needed to help was herself.
Rammak would get to and relieve the other Commando as quick as possible, so as
long as Zen’zat weren’t already in the tunnels her mission was simply getting
to the larger outpost. Esna wanted to do that quickly, but as she unfolded an
extendable chair and sat down she realized her body wasn’t going to be so
compliant in the low gravity.

Esna worked through the helmet display menu until she
found the controls to remove her armor. Standing up in a very easy motion, she
had her protective covering peel back into a flayed statue that she then walked
out of, immediately feeling a horrid chill against her sweaty face and hands.
She flicked a few strands of red hair off her forehead as she felt her fingers
start to numb up.

That was a bad sign. She’d never had to deal with snow
and ice and cold like this before. Given that she wasn’t on the surface she
expected it to be warmer in here without the wind, but apparently not. She made
herself walk around for a minute or two then couldn’t stand it anymore as the
sweat on the back of her hands began to frost over into flakes and fall off as
she moved.

Esna walked back into her armor and sealed it up
again, immediately relishing how the armor adjusted to her body temperature and
warmed her back up in a manner of seconds. She let the heat sink in for another
minute, then she took only her helmet off, seeing her breath continue to shoot
plumes of white clouds out of her mouth. Why it was doing that she had no idea
and it scared her a bit, but she knew that inside her armor she’d be alright.
Star Force technology was amazing and she knew she could put her trust in it,
so Esna allowed herself to be a little brave, or reckless maybe, and walked
around the three ice-carved rooms inspecting the gear left there.

Most of it was foodstuffs, but there was also several
tents. Having used one before with Rammak on the warm world of Forso she knew how to
operate it, and after moving several crates around almost effortlessly in the
low gravity she had a clearing big enough for the small canister that she
placed on the ground to expand into once she pressed the activation button.
Soon after there was a hexagonal room within a room that she walked into,
seeing the same basic design with a few modifications.

Esna walked back out and looked through the equipment
crates, finding the few add-ons she wanted and taking them inside the solid
tent. Within a few minutes she had the interior warmed up, the shower and
toilet extracted, and a sleeping sleeve unfurled that she would use in a few
minutes. After eating she took a quick shower to get the sweat off her, then
placed her shoes and socks beside the pillow section of the sleeping sleeve and
tucked her feet inside, sliding her uniformed body down between the soft layers
of insulated material that was more of a luxury here than a necessity when the
tent had its own heater.

Wanting to only spend a couple hours here tops, Esna
realized the awkward low gravity running had probably done more harm to her
than she thought so she didn’t set herself an alarm, deciding to sleep this off
then get moving whenever her body told her it was alright.

That ended up being only an hour and a half later when
she woke up from her nap, then she got back into her armor and on the move,
leaving the tent set up for whoever might be following her through these tunnels
in the near future. This time she tried to run as smooth as possible, but the
ground was still made of ice and every now and then she’d hit a patch that was
less grippy. Good thing about the low gravity was
that she didn’t fall very fast and was able to keep catching her feet before
she face- or butt-planted, but every misstep was going to twist her in odd ways
that would only increase her soreness…and she knew from past experience what it
was like to run when really sore.

The next minor outpost was only 3 hours away, but she
skipped it and hung in there long enough to make it to the next another 4 hours
without too many walking breaks, after which she knew she’d need at least a
good 5 hours sleep, if not more to recover her strength. The low gravity was
helping her endurance, but she wasn’t in so big a hurry as to need to push into
even higher levels of soreness just to get to Rammak a few hours
sooner…assuming there were no threats down here yet.

The minor outpost she stopped at was about the same as
the first, but with a few more supplies and an extra chamber, though it wasn’t
connected to any other tunnels. In fact, she was on a straight line out to
Rammak’s location and between her and the larger outpost there would only be
two more tunnel intersections. This far out from the base it really felt like
she was alone on the planet, though in truth she was still protected under the
edge of the base defense shield.

How it could produce that much energy this far out
amazed her, but it also reminded her how big a planet really was, not to
mention space itself, along with the fact that she’d lived most of her life in
a tiny little patch of Forso without ever
appreciating how much more was out there. Now that she’d found Star Force and
this bizarre new cold world, it actually scared her to think how big everything
really was and how little she understood all of it.

If not for Rammak taking her on a survival run across Forso she’d have been worried about getting to the outpost
and meeting up with him, but Esna now had a good understanding of how to work a
battlemap and waypoints. All she had to do was focus on completing the section
directly ahead of her and getting to the next waypoint, after that she would
worry about the rest and, bit by bit, she’d get to her destination. Like Rammak
had said, pacing herself was the key, and to that end she ate, stripped down
for another shower, then tossed her clothing in a portable refresher a moment
before she slipped into another sleeping sleeve, not even bothering to wait the
few minutes before it would have her uniform cleaned before her head hit the
pillow and she sunk into blissful post-run sleep inside the warm tent on the
frigid, ice-covered world where just a few dozen miles over and one up a
prolonged mech battle was still ongoing.

7

June 15, 4812

Orlero System
(Devastation Zone)

Tauntaun

Esna woke up stiff, but thankfully the sensation only
lasted a few minutes as her muscles worked themselves out and she was able to
get back into the long, loping strides of low gravity running. She kept
expecting to pass the Commando coming back the other way but they never crossed
paths. After another 6 hours Esna got within a few miles of the outpost and
then stopped, having pushed herself too far thinking she could make it today.

There was a minor outpost a few hundred meters back
but she didn’t bother dragging herself there, for her legs were crying for a
rest and the inside of her armor was warm enough, so she just sat down on the
ridged floor of the squarish tunnel and leaned back against the smooth
wall…only to slowly slide down as she got too little traction on the polished
plates of her armor.

Esna gently slid into a prone pose and stayed there,
her body not wanting to move as she fell asleep immediately, only to wake up
some time later groggy and resistant to moving.

Her body needed more rest, but the worst of the
fatigue was gone from her so she pulled herself to her feet…which wasn’t hard
at all in the .4 gravity…and began walking the last few miles in a hopping/skipping
fashion that still allowed her to make decent time. All the rest of the way the
Commando never appeared and she was beginning to worry that something had
happened until Rammak’s ID signature finally popped up on her battlemap when
there wasn’t as much ice left between her and him.

“You made it sooner than I expected,” Rammak’s voice
entered her helmet, though a little scratchy from the signal disruption.

“I’m paying for it,” Esna admitted. “I’m exhausted.”

“Come on in,” he said, showing himself at the end of
the tunnel with the comm static clearing up completely. “And you’ll have plenty
of time to rest. The base hasn’t been breached yet.”

“What’s been going on?” she asked, forcing herself to
jog a little over the last stretch.

“The Viks have been peeling back the perimeter
defenses, but the base has some heavy weaponry in close. They haven’t assaulted
it yet, but there is a second group of reinforcements coming across land to
join them. When they arrive I think they’ll make the hard hit with the Ultra up
front and our remaining mechs won’t be enough to take it down, but we might be
able to kill the rest of them. I think that’s why they’re calling for
reinforcements. Or it may just be equipment. Whatever it is, is coming under a
null field.”

“Another Ultra?” Esna wondered.

“Unlikely, but there’s no way of knowing without
flying a probe or aerial fighter inside, and they’d be shot down instantly.”

“How many did the mechs kill?”

“Hard to say. Most of their troops were recoverable,
and we did manage to get most of our pilots out.”

“Recoverable?”

“There was enough of them left to bring back to life
using a regenerator. They carry them in their armor and they auto activate, but
if that isn’t enough they can use others. It takes a head shot or a lot of lost
mass to kill one for keeps…unless you win the battlefield and the enemy can’t
get to them in time. We got pushed back, so most of their troops were
recoverable.”

“But their armor is…” Esna said, cutting off as she
came up to the outpost and remembered he’d said ‘equipment.’ “They’re bringing
them new armor?”

“Probably.”

“Do we have extra mechs for our pilots?”

“Some, but they’ve been using hit and run tactics to
do damage and retreat into the turret fields. Once the Ultra gets to base they
won’t have that luxury.”

“How long will it take to evacuate?”

“Depends how the Viks plan to go after the shield
generator. If they try to infiltrate with Zen’zat it’ll buy us a lot more time.
If they plan to blast through the ice…probably less. We’re secure here, so you
can take another nap for as long as you want.”

“What?” Esna said, standing on the ice just short of
the base as she looked up at the armored Calavari. “You could see that far?”

“No, the tunnel curves enough to prevent shots from
range and the ice blocks signals, but there are hidden cameras and defenses in
it too. I could see you on approach the last few miles.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“No comms. Those would give
away the surprise. Sensors are passive only.”

“So if the Zen’zat do come here…”

“We can make their getting here a lot harder so long
as we control this outpost.”

“Where’s the girl Commando?”

“She left long ago. Didn’t you pass her?”

“No. Unless she went by when I was sleeping. Could you
see me in the other outposts?”

“No. We’re all ghosts out there save for our main line
to the base. They can’t see our status either without an override.”

“So the Viks can’t see where we are if they capture
it?”

“Yes,” Rammak said, turning around. “Come inside so I
can close the door.”

“Door?” Esna asked, nearly falling as she stepped onto
the artificial floor and the regular gravity returned. Her knee hit and Rammak
looked back over his shoulder.

“Takes some getting used to. How was your run?”

“Weird,” Esna said, getting back up and walking inside
on now very heavy legs. “Why does this…” she asked as a heavy door slid closed
behind her blocking off view of the tunnel, but that wasn’t what she was
looking at.

“Bigger than you thought?”

“What is this?” Esna asked, seeing a hangar to her
left full of speeder bikes of various designs.

“There are three tunnels heading out from here. One
leads up to a surface outpost, the other two keep traveling underground for
long distances. Too long to run, so we have these to use. They’re set up with
shield guides so they just follow the shape of the tunnel and you don’t have to
worry about hitting the walls.”

“What else is out there?”

“More outposts to move to if necessary. Some with
ships, I’m told.”

“Ships?” Esna asked as she removed her pack and
weapons rack and set them on a nearby table in what looked like a food prep
area set just outside the empty entrance room. “To fly through the air or
space?”

“Starships. Small ones, at least.”

“We can get off the planet in those?”

“Only if the Viks leave, otherwise they can probably
shoot us down. But if we can hide out here long enough and make them think
we’re all dead, it’s a way to survive.”

“Why won’t they just follow the tunnels?”

“There are two sets, one for them to find and one that
we came through. Plus there are camouflage methods to confuse them. It may not
all work, but once we know no more of our people are coming we can blow some of
the tunnels and hide others.”

Esna grimaced. “Trapping us here?”

“There are multiple exits, but we don’t want to go up
to the surface if we don’t have to.”

“So what now?”

“You can take your armor off, it’s heated.”

“What about you?”

“I’m on guard.”

“We’re on guard,” she corrected him.

“You need to sleep. I already have.”

“You’re right,” she relented, stepping over to the
side of the room and triggering her armor to splinter apart, then she walked
out of it and left the contraption sprawled out and ready for her to get back
in when needed. “You have anything I can clean the interior with?”

“There’s a lot of equipment here. Look around and use
whatever you want, but it can wait until you get some rest. You’re not used to
low gravity running, and until you are it’s more draining than you’d think.”

“Figured that out already. Are there bunks?”

“Bunks yes, full quarters no,” he said, pointing to a
hallway behind her.

“How many people is this built for?”

“It’s compact, but can service a few hundred. More if
we squeeze people in.”

“I thought there were thousands on this planet?”

“This isn’t the only outpost, and evacuating everyone
to the same spot wouldn’t make sense. We have to hold out until help gets here,
and the more spread out we are the longer it will take for them to find us.”

“You said the ship was for when they stopped looking?
Are they going to find us or not?”

“They might not care to put in the effort if we have
no way of leaving the planet. It’s hard to say what they’ll do. They missed me
on Mace.”

“But they sent assassins to keep looking afterward.”

“That was when they had an entire planet to destroy.
This is just a single base that they can destroy easily from orbit once the
shield goes down. If we’re close the Zen’zat might come after us, but if they
have to chase through hundreds of miles of subterranean tunnels that they
hopefully can’t scan from the air, they might not care to search them all.”

“That’s our best hope?”

“I don’t know,” Rammak admitted. “I’m just holding
this outpost and securing an evac route. The Archons
will decide what to do, and if we lose all of them the more experienced
Commandos will. They understand the contingency plans better than me.”

“Riiight,” Esna said with a
yawn. “Ok, I’ll get some sleep. Wake me up when the base gets hit. I want to
see what happens, no matter how bad it is.”

“I promise I’ll wake you. Don’t worry about anything
other than rest right now.”

“And food,” Esna added as she walked over and started
digging into her pack. “How much extra water do we have?”

Rammak’s helmet tilted to the side as he looked at
her. “It’s an ice planet.”

“Oh. Right,” she said, feeling stupid. Apparently her
brain was already half asleep.

Esna grabbed a couple food cubes and started chewing,
deciding it was best to take the Calavari’s advice and not think about anything
other than recovering her strength until her head cleared of fatigue as well.

“Esna, wake up.”

Jolting her with a finger to her ribcage, Esna woke up
with a jerk and tried to clear her eyes of haze. She recognized Rammak’s voice,
but little else for several seconds as her blissful sleep was interrupted.

“What?” she mumbled.

“The base assault has begun.”

“The what?” she asked groggily, then the meaning of
his words hit her like a lag delay. “How long…have I been asleep?”

“11 hours,” he said, leaving her be and retreating to
wherever he had come from.

“11 hours!” Esna all but cursed, pulling her legs out
of bed and feeling them flop on the floor. Her head rushed with a stress
headache, but after a few seconds it cleared and she forced herself to stand
up…then sat back down when she realized her shoes were off and sitting beside
her bunk.

“Ugh,” she moaned, bending over to reach them and
slipping them back on, then she wobbled her way out of one of the outpost’s
bunk rooms that had beds stacked on top of each other, some four high in
places. She’d been using the lowest one, but Esna could have sworn she’d only
been in it for 45 minutes, maybe an hour tops.

With every step she took her body seemed to wake up
more and the strength that such a long rest should have produced seemed to
manifest itself out of nowhere, but she was still yawning when she reached the
room where Rammak was sitting and watching a battlemap holo
displayed over a small circular table that she sat down at on the far side.

“They have to choose between targeting the Ultra or
the smaller Viks,” Rammak said, pointing at the various icons as the map was
zoomed out too far to make out the shapes save for the big one. “They can’t
target both and accomplish much, so it looks like they’re trying to kill the
smaller ones. Take out as many of them as they can with the big base defense
batteries here.”

Rammak pointed to a trio of icons located in the ice
wall near the hangar where she’d first arrived and zoomed in the map,
eliminating most of the mechs and Viks from view but leaving the Ultra its
flanking units, the latter of which were getting hard hit by energy orbs flying
out from behind heavily shielded emplacements. The Viks were pounding on them
with weaponsfire from the Ultra and the escorts, most of which were Wass’mat
and Hjar’at, and all were firing their mechanical and biological weapons at the
targets.

The big Ultra wasn’t getting hit at all as it
continued to walk forward with the others trying to take some cover behind it
when they got hit, but several Star Force mechs in the area wouldn’t let them.
The Viks weren’t targeting them either, knowing they had to pour their full
firepower into the…

Suddenly one of the icons winked out and the biggest
of the base defense guns were now down to two. Smaller ones equivalent to what
the mechs had were still peppering the Viks, but the largest kill power had
been reduced by a third.

Esna watched in silence as more of the smaller Viks
fell, littering the field behind the Ultra as it and the survivors took out the
other two big guns, then the giant Deo’mat turned its attention to the lesser
base defense weaponry as its remaining escorts turned to fight the mechs that
were putting additional shots into the fallen Hjar’at to insure they could not
be revived later.

Their efforts were halted as they now had to fight the
others, but Esna could see it was already a lost cause…and the Vik
reinforcements hadn’t even arrived yet. They’d attacked without them and had
gotten all the way up to the base, and as soon as the Ultra finished off the
defenses around the hangar tunnel it could join the others in cleaning up the
mechs.

But that wasn’t to happen, because the remaining base
defenses helped the nearby mechs to finish off the escorts just before the last
wall turret was destroyed, but by the time the Ultra turned its attention to
them the Star Force mechs had run off to join the others battle sites around
the perimeter where most of the fighting was going down.

“Why didn’t they all fight here?”

“The less firepower the Viks had to throw against the
base defenses the longer they would last and the more damage they would do,”
Rammak explained. “The mechs circled around and would have attacked from the
Viks rear had they not gone out to engage them.”

“Why would that matter?” she asked, then got an
education as the ice field in front of the hangar exploded across a wide swath
that caught the Ultra as it tried to run off towards the other battles. Esna
hoped it had died, but when the frosty clouds cleared she saw it walking slowly
over the now jagged ice, but without any visible damage.

“What just happened?”

“The approach was mined. If Star Force could have
pinned all the V’kit’no’sat there it would have done a lot of damage. They
probably detected them and knew not to bring everyone across that path.”

“And they couldn’t do it with our mechs there?”

“Right.”

“But they didn’t hurt the Ultra.”

“Its shields are probably
low, but no, they didn’t hurt it. They just delayed it from getting to the
others. Look,” he said as it turned around and headed back towards the base.
“It’s going to start blasting into the ice or try to get into the hangar because
it knows it can’t get to the others in time and they can’t run to it with all
that jagged terrain.”

“Where are their flying ones?”

“All dead or down. We took them out, but only have a
few skeets left,” Rammak said, pointing to the furthest of the battle sites
that were still mostly broken up by V’kit’no’sat races. “They’re doing what
they can to help, but they can’t slug it out with the bigger ones and they’ve
got little chance of doing any damage to the Ultra even if it didn’t fire
back.”

“Where are the Zen’zat?”

“Here,” Rammak said, zooming out and indicating a
position of vehicles holding back out of the fight, though two were showing
damage. “The skeets hit them briefly, but other than that they haven’t been
involved in the fighting. My guess is that the Ultra is going to pound an
entrance inside one way or another and try to trigger any traps before they
bring the Zen’zat in.”

“And the shield generator?”

“There are multiple sites, all buried under the ice on
the upper plain and with defenses of their own. If we can kill enough of the others,
the Ultra will have to take damage to eliminate them. That’s why I think the
Archons are forcing the fight here. To peel away and permanently kill as many
Viks as they can before the reinforcements arrive. They want them to come
inside with the Zen’zat.”

“That’s good for us?”

“It’s less bad and will keep the shield up longer,”
Rammak said as a comm prompt popped up next to the battlemap.

Esna read it, for it was a simple message with no
visuals or voice, and it gave her a chill that wasn’t coming from the air or
surrounding ice.

Base evacuation
beginning. Prepare to shield and shelter evacuees.

8

June 18, 4812

Orlero System
(Devastation Zone)

Tauntaun

Over the following 2 days Rammak and Esna had little
to do but watch the battlemap vids coming in from the base. Star Force put up
one hell of a defense outside with the mechs popping in and out of subterranean
access points and actually using hidden tunnels to move from one area to
another where the Viks couldn’t track them. The few remaining skeets held the
air and were a persistent nuisance, flying so low to the ground sometimes that
Esna thought they would crash for sure going through the various ravines, but
they never did of their own accord. Two she saw shot down, but the mechs were
able to get to the pilots and retrieve them before the Viks could finish them
off.

The remaining mechs harassed and engaged in places of
their choosing, with the Viks seeming to be content to chase after them and
ignore the base and the Ultra smashing around the exterior. Star Force never
fully engaged the armored behemoths unless they had an advantage and kept
trying to draw the Viks into still intact turret defenses further around the
perimeter. They got them so far off once that the mechs ducked into their
concealed tunnels and disappeared…only to pop up again near the Ultra.

They attacked it from range while it was nearly stuck
in an ice cave of its own making as it avoided the defenses in the approach to
the hangar and worked to make its own route through the ice wall to the base
interior where Star Force wouldn’t have any surprises waiting. The mechs came
at it tail-side where it had the least weapons all the while knowing not to
engage it with the neos or Voltrons hand to hand, for
the hard club on the tail could knock them over with one swing…and then smash
them into the ground with repetitive hits.

So the mechs fired with ranged weapons as the Deo’mat
backed out, firing some leg cannons but not doing much damage until it came out
into the funnel-like entrance it had knocked down into the ice wall and swung
around, firing with weapons placed all over its body and in particular four
larger weapons on its head. Each of those was a Sat’chi and fired teal orbs
that exploded massive chunks of ice when they missed the mechs, but not so much
damage when they hit their shields.

The problem was the weapons, while deadly enough, were
set in a cluster of four and had a rapid rate of fire. That made them a chewing
attack rather than a one hit wonder and the mechs had to fight an organized
retreat to keep those being targeted behind the few Voltrons left. Altogether
there were some 53 mechs assaulting the Deo’mat Ultra, and even by catching it
in an awkward position they weren’t able to do more than take its mechanical
shields down and scratch up a little of its armor before the incoming
reinforcements dropped their null shield and sent a column of Tavi’lo through
the sky towards them.

The rest of the hidden reinforcements turned out to be
little more than additional troops from all 7 races, but when they got to the
base the mechs weren’t going to be able to do more than harass from extreme
range. So once they retreated to their underground tunnels the Ultra was safe
with air cover now protecting it and continued to pound its way through the
ice.

The Tavi’lo then went off to chase the few remaining
skeets who led them on a long chase beyond the base, apparently trying to stall
the attackers as much as they could. Then the mechs reappeared up top on the
ice plain and Esna thought they were going to try to shoot down into the
crevice the Ultra was expanding upon, but that wasn’t the plan at all. Rather
the long necked biped Vivokat had been scaling another portion of the cliffs
that allowed them to get precarious footholds. Combined with their natural
jumping ability, the mech-sized Viks hopped up the side in spurts until they
were at the top, but the mechs got to them before they could all make it up.

They fought a hard battle there against the Vivokat
and the Tavi’lo that returned to help, in addition to a few Zen’zat carriers
that brought the tiny troops up to assist with going after the pilots inside
the broken and limping mechs that were eventually forced to retreat. Esna saw
some of the pilots get rescued, but others had little Zen’zat dots sprinting
across the ice and onto their fallen machines, then digging down inside them
until they got to the pilots and killed them.

The mechs continued to decline in number and tried to
delay the Viks as much as possible, but just before the Ultra busted through
into a random wall of the base, the Vivokat group made their way over the upper
ice plain to the anti-orbital guns and attacked them directly while the Zen’zat
broke their way into the mech tunnels and began scouting them out.

The shield generators were not so exposed, buried deep
under the ice, but the weapons necessarily had to be and were only protected by
armor plating and some secondary shielding and defense turrets that the Viks
broke through eventually. They didn’t get so reckless as to attack hard enough
to lose many of their own, rather attacking long enough to take a turret or two
down then backing off, recharging shields, and going back in again. They
weren’t able to remain untouched, however, but the few Vivokat that did go down
either revived themselves or responded to Zen’zat assistance soon thereafter
with all walking or at least crawling away.

Then when the Ultra broke through, the base invasion
began but not just with Zen’zat, who poured through the gap in the thousands,
but also the smaller Per’tal. The quadrupeds were bigger than the Zen’zat, but
what awkwardness they might experience in the Star Force hallways they would
make up for with armor and shielding, for the quadrupeds were longer than they
were narrow, and the Archons, Commandos, and Knights quickly used that against
them by almost always attacking them from the rear and making them find a way
to turn around.

Meanwhile the other Viks outside had resupply bases
set up that expanded out of the Zen’zat craft, allowing them to repair armor,
eat, and even sleep…with the Ultra laying down on a giant ‘blanket’ as far as
Esna could tell along with a lot of other larger Viks while the smaller ones
guarded the perimeter and tried to hunt down the remaining mech tunnel exits
and destroy them.

The fighting inside the base was much more even, with
Star Force having the advantage of terrain and the V’kit’no’sat having the
numbers…not to mention mass, for the Per’tal were so strong. They looked a
little bit like Nor’far had, only larger, and none of the Zen’zat were riding
them. Star Force had numerous shields blocking hallways and armored doors
slamming shut, most of which the Per’tal were tasked with breaking through,
many times in the face of explosive traps Star Force had set up, but as Rammak
pointed out a few times the Viks could see them and avoid them, for they had
the ability to look through walls the same way the Archons and Mavericks did.

But they didn’t see all of them, for the parts of the
base that the Viks were taking were chewed up with blast craters, some of which
destroyed entire rooms and in a few places let ice chunks fall in from above,
but as Esna watched the areas visible to her on the battlemap slowly diminished
as cameras were destroyed in the fighting and the Zen’zat behind the front
lines moved around, found, and eliminated the others.

By the time the first evacuees made it to Esna and
Rammak, the Viks had already darkened a fifth of the base on the battlemap, but
Star Force seemed intent on making them pay dearly for every corridor and
chamber they took.

Esna knew the techs were coming before they got to the
outpost thanks to the security systems surrounding it, so she had the door open
and was waiting for them while Rammak continued to monitor all four tunnels
just in case a Zen’zat or other threat had slipped through somehow. She watched
the techs approach in their armor-like envirosuits that kept them safe from the
cold and jagged objects, but wouldn’t offer much protection in a firefight. All
of them were running in the slow leaps of low gravity, but when they got to her
and stepped inside two of them also fell to the ground briefly, making Esna
feel a little better, for they appeared to be as exhausted as she had been.

She stepped aside, giving them room to get in but they
didn’t stagger around or start talking. As soon as they were into normal
gravity and beyond the atmospheric shield keeping the warm air inside they
began taking off their envirosuits which retracted down into nothing but a pair
of really tall boots for the Humans and other small garments for the others.

Esna saw a couple of Protovic, who added extra
lighting to the outpost with their bioluminescent skin, many Kiritas who were
hop/walking further in and immediately went to the supply crates, and a pair of
female Calavari that were much smaller than Rammak, but who were carrying
backpacks over their envirosuits.

Out of those backpacks leapt a contingent of Irondel,
who were only a handful of inches tall. They fell to the ground without harm
then began running off through the outpost to do what Esna didn’t know, but
they weren’t wasting any time about it.

Behind them came more Humans, a tall but thin Critel,
and a mix of others. Esna counted 48 plus however many Irondel there were being
smuggled in before the Bsidd arrived. They came in an organized train of
skittering mandibles wearing envirosuits that covered over most of their torso
gaps, making them look the most normal she’d seen until they started peeling
them back into tiny pouches attached to various rib/tube things. Their anatomy
was still a mystery to her, but she recognized the pair of soldiers that
followed them in, after which there were no more people coming within sight.

“Close up,” one of the Bsidd said, with Esna hitting
the door controls and sealing them all in, then the soldiers headed for the
control room where Rammak was and Esna followed them as everyone else was a
combination of busy and sucking air, for they’d made the trip out here in less
than a day.

Esna retracted her helmet, which pooled itself as a
cluster of parts behind her neck, rather than disconnecting it entirely and
walked up next to Rammak who had his similarly retracted.

“Orders?” the Calavari asked.

“Hold here until the base falls, then we’ll evaluate,”
one of the Bsidd said, with Esna having to tilt her chin up to look at the
three heads that towered above her, though she could see the female Calavari
walk into the room through the gaps in the nearest Bsidd.

“What’s the status of the battle?” she asked, with her
elongated head putting her considerably taller than Esna but not even close to
the other three as she crossed both sets of arms in front over her black/red
Star Force uniform. Her legs were covered though by the high white boots of her
contracted envirosuit.

“Anti-orbital guns destroyed, Zen’zat and Per’tal in
the base with an enlarging foothold, but we still control the key areas. The
shield generators are still intact and operational.”

“Good,” she said, referring to the last point. “We’ve
got time then. I just need to know where to start drilling.”

“I was only sent here to hold this location. I haven’t
been information of any evacuation plans,” Rammak admitted.

“The plan is to stay alive as long as possible,” the
Calavari said as she worked a control board and plugged in a tiny datachip. A hologram of the entire tunnel network extending
out as far as 1,700 miles appeared, but she zoomed it down to the area around
their present location, “but these tunnels are easy to follow once the Viks
find them. We’re going to have to seal them off and dig new ones to confuse
them. We’ve got equipment stowed here to start that, but the bigger pieces are
further down the line. Has there been any word on how deep their sensors can
penetrate?”

“The mech tunnels seem to be adequately camouflaged,
based on combat reactions. The Viks are shutting them down now, but the mechs
have been moving freely through them and ambushing at will.”

The mining tech rubbed her chin. “They’re shallow and
constructed differently, but that’s a good sign. We’re deeper but we don’t have
much in the way of materiel to work with. These tunnels have diffusing residue
injected into the sidewalls that should keep them hidden except for close
range. If they can scan them from the surface then there’s no point in digging
laterally. We’ll have to go lower and I don’t want to do that without knowing
how low to go.”

“Are we setting up an ambush?” Rammak asked.

“Yes,” the Bsidd said before the tech could answer.
“Both to diminish their numbers and to delay them. We have to keep the techs
moving ahead of any pursuit.”

“Which is why I have to start digging as soon as
possible.”

“What do you need?”

“A preferred engagement zone,” she said, glancing at
all three Commandos and even Esna, as if she were one of them. “How do you want
to play this?”

“Multiple passes,” Rammak said without hesitation,
“mined with remote explosives that will allow us to move through but force the
Zen’zat to either turn back or walk through them. They should not be hidden
from Pefbar.”

“Good, because we don’t have equipment for that
anyway. Do you want tunnels or chambers?”

Rammak looked at the Bsidd.

“Pit entrance on one off a wide chamber.”

“And thin supports under loose material we can collapse
in others,” the other one added. “We need as much CC as possible.”

“I assume we’re digging past the outpost?” Rammak
wondered.

“That was my assumption. We’ve already got defenses
leading up to it on all sides. How far away do you want the engagement zone
erected?”

“Just on the far side,” the Bsidd said.

“Can you scavenge the equipment and explosives in the
other three approaches?”

The tech looked up at him for a moment, not
understanding.

“We know which way they’re coming from,” Rammak added.

“And we’ll lose control of the other defenses when
this structure falls,” she finished. “We can if we have time, but this ice is
more compact than up near the surface and we only have small coring models
here. We can use them to do pretty much anything, but if you want some major
excavations done we need larger equipment and the nearest depot is some 24
miles further on.”

“Take the speeders and go get it,” the Bsidd ordered.

“Have the tunnels been secured?”

“Not beyond this point,” Rammak answered. “I’ve been
watching the battlemap and there hasn’t been any activity beyond the base, but
I’ll go with you just in case.”

“Thank you. I assume there are small arms here for
us?”

“And shield generators.”

“Both will slow down our work, so the more escorts we
have the better.”

“Esna?” he asked.

“I’ll go. Just tell me what to do.”

“Get your pack and full weapons rack.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Going,” she said, scampering out of the room and
leaving the Star Force veterans by themselves.

“Is she…” the tech asked.

“The Human survivor from Mace. I’m keeping her under
my personal protection. She’s eager, but not trained to handle this.”

“I assume you’re Rammak then?” the tech asked, not
having her suit on to see his ID.

“I am.”

“Have you gotten caught up on everything?”

“My fitness is lacking, but I’ve been studying nonstop
since I got here. What is it you worry I’m unaware of?”

“Nothing in particular. But if anyone knows how to
survive a V’kit’no’sat invasion it’s you. Any suggestions?”

“Is it possible to cut a tunnel and backfill as we progress
so we can’t be followed?”

“Yes, but travel will be slow. What are you thinking?”

“Hopping between tunnels.”

The tech studied her charts again, measuring the
distance between the widely expanding spokes this far out from the base.

“It’d take days to cross to the nearest one, but it’s
possible.”

“I’m also concerned about depth. If they identify the
tunnel entrances and do a deep scan following them, how deep do we have to get
to lose the trace?”

“I wish I could tell you for sure, but this base was
built with a considerable margin for error. Unless they’ve made some wild
advancements they shouldn’t be able to track us this far down with the
diffusers in place, and the cloaks should make it even harder to spot us.”

“We’ve split up for a reason,” the Bsidd reminded him.

“Do they have a way of knowing how many of us there
are?”

“Unlikely,” the tech answered.

“Then scattering is our best chance.”

“Agreed,” the Bsidd echoed, “but
after we hold here. More evacuees will be coming to this outpost soon.”

“Are there more speeders somewhere?” Rammak asked.

“Not many, but a few further on. We’ll have to shuttle
people out in stages,” it said as Esna came back fully decked out.

“Let’s get moving then,” Rammak said to the tech, who
nodded in agreement and redeployed her envirosuit as they headed for the
garage.

9

Esna rode out through the tunnel on the back of
Rammak’s speeder, but rather than the seat she’d grown accustomed to back on Forso this one was a standing bike that had footholds to
keep her onboard as it whipped through the tunnel. The speeder didn’t take up
the full width, barely half of it, but it was centered with the ice flashing
past on either side, above, and below thanks to spacing shields that she could
see. They were almost invisible but with just enough of a blue tint to let her
know where they were. She’d touched one at the beginning of their quick trip
out, finding it resisted her armored finger as if it was gel, but since then
had kept her hands inside the wind shield that was diverting the air around the
passengers.

It was another form of energy shield and covered the
top of the elongated speeder like a roof and sidewalls while the physical
bottom curled up on both sides to about knee height. Standing behind her were
several techs, all in single file, then another speeder was trailing them
bringing even more. After so many hours spent running these tunnels she’d
really wished she’d had one of these speeders at the beginning.

When she asked Rammak about it he pointed out the
obvious. That if the base was taken the Zen’zat could use any speeders left
behind, but they wouldn’t think to bring any vehicles of their own if they
didn’t know the tunnels were here. That meant they’d be on foot too and so long
as none of the speeders out here were left behind the Zen’zat would be left
running while the evacuees were zipping off at a rate the enemy would never
catch.

In hindsight that made perfect sense, but she still
thought it was partly biased on Star Force’s love of running, because what
would it have hurt to keep a handful of speeders in the base for scouts or
whatever?

She didn’t have long to think about it before they
arrived at another minor outpost, this one little more than several large rooms
with the digging craft parked in them. They weren’t big, more or less a fat
speeder with a lot of stuff on the front and back, and the techs hopped off and
mounted them immediately, leaving Rammak and Esna alone with the two bikes.

“You’ve got the other one.”

“Really?” she asked.

“Just watch the map and don’t slam into the outpost.
Other than that the controls are simple.”

Esna pulled her feet out of the restraints and jumped
across the gap to the other bike, free floating longer than normal due to the
reduced gravity, but landing on top of it and spinning herself around into the
pilot’s slot that was little more than a control board rising up from the
nosecone.

“Head on back now. I’ll bring up the rear,” he said as
the techs already had the diggers powered up and drifting towards the tunnel
entrance.

“Heading out,” she said, then realizing that there
wasn’t room to turn around in the tunnel. “Rammak, how do I get pointed the
other way?”

“You don’t. The control bar slides to the other end.
Release switch underneath.”

Esna knelt and looked underneath, finding the single
button easy enough that loosened the base so she could drag it down the center
stripe of the passenger area and all the way back to the rear where an
identical nosecone clicked it in.

“Ok,” she said, powering it up and easing off down the
tunnel with the blue energy fields acting as bumpers on the walls. “Here we go.”

32 hours later…

A Star Force Ma’kri jumped into the system, exiting
far away from the star and cloaking immediately as it picked up the emergency
beacon from the base and a V’kit’no’sat vessel in low orbit around the star.
The first was more surprising than the second, for V’kit’no’sat ships randomly
patrolled the Devastation Zone looking for Star Force vessels or anything else
that wasn’t supposed to be here, but the fact that the base had been discovered
and was currently under attack meant that security had been penetrated somehow.

“Take us there,” Captain Bivandi said, not having
planned on stopping in this system as they passed through but now there was no
question of where their priorities lay. “Quietly.”

“Shall we buzz him or take the long way around?” the
helmsman asked.

“Go offline slightly, then feel free to press the
sensor limits of the cloak. They might not have time to wait.”

“Think someone messed up?” the Protovic’s second in
command asked.

She shook her glowing head. “I wish it were that
simple, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Let’s hope there’s someone left
to rescue that can tell us.”

When the Ma’kri eventually entered orbit of Tautaun it came in high and well away from the V’kit’no’sat
fleet with its cloaking shield apparently holding against their sensors. There
was no way that the Ma’kri could fight that fleet, for they were extremely
outnumbered and outmassed. The Ma’kri was only 4.2
miles long and thin like a knife blade, built for scouting and high speed
intercepts, whereas the V’kit’no’sat ships were all larger, with the Kafcha
measuring in at around 18 miles long and being very wide and very thick
warships.

All V’kit’no’sat ships were huge in order to
accommodate their usually large crews, though the design parameters still held
true for their smaller races. There was nothing Bivandi could do in fleet
combat here to be helpful, but it looked like the base hadn’t fallen yet, for
its defense shield was still active.

“Straight line comm if they’re able,” she ordered
while tapping a glowing finger on the armrest of her command chair. If the base
still had the equipment operational they could pinpoint the angle that the
transmission was coming in on and reply with a beam back along that trajectory,
meaning that the ship and base could talk without it having to lower its cloak
or letting the Viks know where they were…except that there might be enough
atmospheric disruption to give it away, for this little planet had a very dense
atmosphere for its size.

Still, the risk was worth it. And if they were
discovered they had sufficient engine power to run straight out of the system
if need be. The two ships in stellar orbit weren’t going to be able to stop
them, so the Ma’kri pretty much had the run of the place so long as they kept
out of firing range.

An image of a head appeared in front of the Captain,
with her realizing it was being transmitted from inside an Archon’s helmet. Jared-11924
to be specific, judging from the ID tag.

“Welcome to Tauntaun,” he said sarcastically. “How
many of you are there?”

“Just one Ma’kri. We were passing through when we
picked up your distress beacon. What’s your status?”

“Losing ground, but we’ve still got the shield
generators secured. They’re not trying to get at them from the outside, so
we’re buying as much time as we can. We’ve already got people evacuating through
subterranean tunnels and will continue to do so as we fall back, but they’ve
got both Zen’zat and Per’tal in here. We can’t hold out forever.”

“If you’ve still got shield control we can run to the
surface and pick you up.”

“Negative on that, I’m afraid. Our surface exits are
no longer an option.”

“What can we do then?”

“A little payback. The V’kit’no’sat have troops camped
on the surface waiting for the shield to go down to be retrieved.”

“Orbital bombardment is out. Their fleet is parked
right over you.”

“They’ve got a Deo’mat Ultra down here.”

The Captain blinked in surprise, with her eyelids
glowing only slightly less than her neon blue orbs. “What the hell is an Ultra
doing out here?”

“Good question. I’ve got about 20 seconds left to
talk. If we elevate the shield can you scratch it and run?”

“Yes.”

“Do it then get clear. We’ll
hold out down here as long as we can then scatter underground.”

“We’ll decloak as late as
possible. Time the shield right.”

“Get that bastard,” the Archon said, then cut the comm
as sounds of weaponsfire around him increased.

“We have a priority target,” Bivandi announced to her
bridge crew. “Deo’mat Ultra on the surface. We’re going down to kill it and
anything else Vik within range, but we’re not landing. They can’t get out
topside, so they’re retreating to underground evacuation tunnels. This is a
vengeance mission, pure and simple, and that fleet is going to be really pissed
so let’s make this as quick as possible.”

Esna and Rammak were back inside the outpost when word
of the Ma’kri arriving came through the landline while the techs were busy
adding tunnels and setting up additional traps. Another four groups of evacuees
had come in to increase their numbers along with a few wounded but still
fighting capable Commandos who were out covering them. Rammak had been woken up
during a sleep cycle and Esna was about to take one of her own, but there was
no way she was going to miss whatever the Star Force ship was going to do.

So she and a dozen other people watched the battlemap
waiting for the ship to appear on it, and when it finally did everyone was a
little shocked, for it was hitting the atmosphere so hard it was setting it on
fire despite its knife blade shape. The overhead V’kit’no’sat fleet moved
immediately, firing its long range weapons at the fireball as it plowed down
through the atmosphere but not towards the base. It was descending towards the
surface beyond the shield as the techs whispered about either a troop drop or a
pickup of one of the other evacuation groups that had gotten to a surface exit
through the tunnels.

But rather than letting the ship through the edge of
the protective energy shield it looked to be coming down outside it altogether.
That didn’t make any sense to Esna, because wouldn’t that mean the Vik fleet
could just shoot it and whoever else was on the surface? It wasn’t until the
Ma’kri had nearly hit the ground and pulled a hard turn to start flying level
to it did she realize that it was actually headed for the base as it took
several weapon strikes from range against its own weak shields.

But then something Esna hadn’t though was possible
happened…the base shield suddenly rose up several miles and the Ma’kri slid
underneath the giant flat circle as the Vik fleet’s weapons hit it rather than
the Star Force ship.

“Yeessss,” a pilot said
gratuitously as the Urik’kadel stood on the rim of the table that otherwise the
rabbit-like race couldn’t have seen over the edge of.

“Holy crap that was ballsy,” a Human tech said.

“It’ll be worse on the way out, but hopefully they’ll
get some people picked up.”

“They’re not on an evac
run,” the pilot corrected them. “They’re going in hot then going to run out the
far side before the fleet can pin them down.”

“Why can’t they evacuate anyone?” Esna asked the
Urik’kadel.

A little furry finger pointed to the battlemap images
inside the base that were being displayed next to the outside view of the ship
decelerating hard and kicking up a hurricane of snow and ice thanks to the
atmospheric distortion it was dragging along with it.

“The Zen’zat have cut them off from the surface. They
can’t get to the ship,” it said as the 4 mile long knife came to a hard stop
over top the base and opened fire on the V’kit’no’sat troops from pointblank
range even before the snow wall blew in and covered everything. “So they’re
killing the troops caught out in the open. Naval beats everything.”

Esna watched in a mix of relief and horror as the
battlemap compensated for the snow by creating artificial silhouettes based on
the sensor images that could see through it along with the data flowing out
from the Ma’kri that was linked into the base’s systems. A horrific downpour of
energy weapons, some of which were so large they killed Per’tal in single
shots, vaporized the snowstorm it was falling through and blasted apart the
V’kit’no’sat that had nowhere to run…and even the Tavi’lo couldn’t fly fast or
far enough to escape, for they were slow compared to the anti-missile
batteries’ normal targets.

It took less than a minute to lay waste to them
all…save for the Ultra. It persisted longer, diving into whatever ice crevices
it could find to try and soak up some of the weaponsfire as it did its best to
go turtle, but there was no way to survive the combined firepower of all the
ship’s batteries as they finished off the other Viks and focused on the single
Ultra. Esna watched as its shields, then its two layers of armor were ripped
apart over the seconds that followed, then suddenly all the ship’s weapons fell
silent and it accelerated across the frozen landscape just as the previous
snowstorm had started to subside, kicking up another one that traveled in its
wake like a long ribbon as the Ma’kri race towards the edge of the shield on
the northern side.

When it popped out it came under heavy fire, but
rather than head back up to orbit it continued to accelerate while staying low
to the ground and the snowstorm quickly changed into another fireball that left
rivers of liquid water in its wake as the Vik fleet chased after it above the
atmosphere where they could move much quicker absent the drag.

“The distortion is helping to disrupt the
weaponsfire,” the pilot commented. “I bet he jumps as soon as he clears the
atmosphere.”

Esna watched as the Ma’kri was hounded as it tore
across the landscape gradually gaining altitude, then almost at random it made
a hard turn skyward and shot up through the edge of the Vik fleet, rotating to
put its thinnest side towards their nearest ships as it raced through them…then
disappeared, but the weaponsfire did not. They tracked the now invisible ship,
making additional hits as it flew an evasive course that eventually saw the Vik
fleet’s weapons missing, then ceasing fire entirely as 6 ships made microjumps away from the planet.

“What just happened?” a tech asked, with Esna thinking
the same thing.

“They engaged their cloak as soon as they left the
atmosphere and altered course enough to throw off the targeting locks,” the
pilot explained. “It doesn’t work at that range, but it helps. Then they jumped
away from the planet. That’s why some of the Vik ships went after them.”

“Will they catch them?” Esna asked.

“Depends how much damage they took. Dragging
atmosphere like that sucks energy from the shields and they got hit pretty hard
afterwards. They probably took some hull damage, but not enough to stop them.
If their gravity drives weren’t damaged, I don’t think the Viks will catch
them.”

“No siege defenses,” Rammak commented, referencing the
lack of portable shield generators that their ground troops sometimes carried.
“They were caught off guard.”

“Enough to tip the battle inside?” a tech asked.

Rammak shook his head. “I don’t think so. There are
too many inside the base and their gunships can resupply them with more even if
we drop the shields down to their lowest. That was a payback strike, but it
won’t save the base.”

“We still got the Ultra,” the pilot said. “That’s got
to burn them.”

“Can it be revived?” Esna asked.

“With all that?” the Urik’kadel said, almost laughing.
“He’s toast, trust me. There might be some other ones they could salvage, but I
wouldn’t count on many.”

“Looks like they’re going to try,” a Critel tech said,
pointing to the nearest warships that were dropping tiny craft into the air
that appeared to be flying towards the shield perimeter, which was likewise
dropping back to a lower altitude to prevent their bigger ships from getting
under it like the Ma’kri had.

As if on cue, the few remaining mechs and skeets that
Star Force had in play came up out of several tunnel exits and began racing
across the now very cratered and hazy battlefield, heading towards the dead Vik
corpses to get to them before the enemy could and ensure that they didn’t rise
to fight again…as well as filling the air with missiles to try and shoot down a
few of the gunships on approach that returned the favor, but not enough in
time. After Star Force fought a retreat back to their tunnel exits and the gunships
then destroyed those exits, the Vik reinforcements found none of their fallen
troops revivable.

The gunships then flew over to the base entrance and
added their Zen’zat to the already high number of troops conquering the
interior one level at a time.

10

July 1, 4812

Orlero System
(Devastation Zone)

Tauntaun

Three days ago the base defense shield had fallen,
taken down by Zen’zat and Per’tal inside the base as Star Force could no longer
defend it. Rather than pulling out and pounding the base from orbit, the
gradual ground taking inside continued as the Archons sealed off multiple entry
points and mined others, forcing the V’kit’no’sat to work hard for every meter
they took, but there was no stopping them.

The evacuations had continued over the past two weeks
with injured Commandos and Mechwarriors coming through to Esna’s outpost, but
there weren’t that many more left to come. From what limited battlemap data was
available, Star Force only controlled small pockets of the base around the
evacuation points and they were near to pulling out altogether. Esna knew they
could run a lot faster than her, so it wouldn’t take them two days to get here
and to the other outposts that there was no battlemap link to. In fact there
was no communication at all, isolating each other out of necessity in case one
outpost was compromised so it didn’t reveal information about the others.

Some of the pockets of Star Force resistance in the
base were winking out as their battlemap links were cut or jammed, ending up
with only the one at the end of Esna’s tunnel in holographic view thanks to the
landline connection. She and others watched as Star Force was finally pushed
back and detonated several devices to temporarily block the Viks approach,
bringing down the ceiling, walls, and even tearing out the floor just shy of
the evacuation tunnel that the remaining Archons and Commandos fled into.

Esna hadn’t been wrong about their running speed, for…

Her train of thought was broken as she saw dust-like
snow dropping around the fleeing personnel and someone brought up an exterior
map of the base.

“They’re going for the tunnels,” a Bsidd soldier
commented.

Esna watched the fleeing personnel as they distanced
themselves from the few cameras in near the base, seeing a few of them stumble
just prior to disappearing from view as they ran out of range.

“They don’t know exactly where they are, so they’re
bombarding the perimeter,” another Bsidd added as they all watched the Vik
fleet pour so much firepower down around the base in a giant circle that it
vaporized the ice and sent huge plumes up into the air that were visible from the
far away cameras positioned around this side of the planet. It looked like a
curtain of steam, except there were visible chunks being thrown out from the explosions
as the Viks tried to cut off the recently discovered evacuation…but at least
they didn’t know exactly where to shoot.

Esna watched for several minutes, then their
connection to the base winked out and they were left with only peripheral data
coming from tiny surface mounts. That let them watch the orbital bombardment
from the outside, but they no longer had access to orbital scans or pretty much
anything else now that the base’s equipment was no longer feeding them data.

“They cut the landline,” a tech said. “No way of
knowing if our people got through that section of tunnel before it or not.”

“The door…” the Bsidd said, scurrying out of the room.
Esna followed it all the way over to the entry tunnel where it was indeed open
with only an energy shield separating them from the cold beyond. There were two
other Commandos there, one Protovic and one Human as they waited for another
group of evacuees that were less than a mile out and running towards them, but
the Bsidd didn’t say anything to them. Instead it pulled out a panel on the
wall nearby and bringing up statistics on the shield and holograms of the
surveilled area ahead.

Nothing happened immediately, with Esna seeing the
people on approach running normally, then they were suddenly knocked off their
feet and dragged through the tunnel as the Bsidd reacted so quickly he knocked
Esna aside as he hit the door controls.

She fell back on her butt as the heavy blast doors
closed, but just before they made it all the way the shielding sparkled a little
bit.

“What’s happening?”

“The explosions are traveling through the tunnels,”
the Bsidd said a moment before there was a large bang that sent a vibration
through the entire outpost.

“Clear now,” the Protovic said, seeing the people in
the tunnel starting to pick themselves up again slowly…some of them anyway.
“Stay here,” he told Esna, “and guard the door. If another blasts comes
through, close it.”

“Got it,” Esna responded as the two Commandos and
Bsidd soldier, which Rammak had said was basically the same thing for their
race, opened the door again and took off running down the tunnel. Esna watched
them shrink in size visually, but was able to follow them on the hologram easy
enough as they raced towards the downed evacuees with the Bsidd taking the lead.
Somehow it could run a lot faster than the others and it probably had to do
with the fact that it wasn’t actually running, but rather crawling down the
tunnel with grip points below, beside, and above it.

Actually, it was more throwing itself down the tunnel
while the other two ran quickly in its wake as a warning beacon was set up in
the tunnel. It wasn’t a momentary flash, but a permanent marker the Bsidd put
up in the battlemap they were all sharing locally, and Esna quickly saw the
reason why…

There was a lateral crack in the ice that the Bsidd
had just jumped over. One that hadn’t been there before, meaning that the
shockwave must have created a crevice that looked to be about half a meter
wide. Esna messed with the hologram controls and eventually got a larger image
as she shrunk the tunnel down, showing the crack to be widespread but not going
all the way up to the surface, thankfully.

“There could be a lot more further back,” Rammak
commented as he caught up to her from wherever he had been.

“Are the miners ok?”

“Yes. I think this fissure formed due to the blowback
from the sealed tunnel. Hopefully everything past this point will be
unaffected…” he said as they got a warning in their helmets a split second
before the now standing evacuees were toppled again by another blast wave.

Esna slapped the door control and sealed it in time,
then another vibration shook the outpost.

“How many more of those are coming?”

“Whenever they hit the tunnel. It’s probably a lot
worse closer to the base.”

“Does that mean we lost the Archons?”

“Not necessarily. If they survive the blasts they can
dig their way out.”

“How?”

“I’ve seen them melt metal with their bare hands. Ice
is much easier. If there’s an intact tunnel for them to get to they’ll make
their way to us. If not, they’ll be trapped and have to make their way through
cracks or try to get to the surface. It’s not good, but I wouldn’t count them
dead yet.”

“Can you melt metal?”

“No. It’s a psionic. It’s rumored Arc Commandos can.”

“What’s an Arc Commando?”

“A legend. There’s no official record of them, but
I’ve talked with people that have said they fought beside them.”

“No record?” she asked, getting another warning but
having kept the door shut this time.

“Star Force has layers of secrets. The higher…” Rammak
said as another vibration hit the outpost, “ranked you are, the more you’re
aware of. That way the Viks can’t get the most important information out of
Commandos like me if we’re captured.”

“How do you melt metal with your hand?”

“I do not know,” he said as the Bsidd was seen on the holo racing back towards the outpost with a passenger
wrapped up in what looked like half its mandibles, but the other half were
still propelling it along like a rocket…plus the last shockwave probably helped
too.

“Let me,” Rammak said, standing by the door controls
as he communicated with the Bsidd via a private helmet comm. “Stand back.”

Esna retreated out of the way, then another warning
flashed followed by a fourth vibration impact. A tiny fifth followed a second
later, which was little more than a knock on the door as the Bsidd was thrown
into it.

Rammak opened it immediately and the mass of mandibles
climbed in carrying a Kiritas in a broken envirosuit that was also oozing a
little blue blood as the Calavari resealed the doors in preparation for the
next impact.

As if on cue one of the medtechs that had evacuated to
the outpost rushed in and took the Kiritas from the Bsidd and immediately began
peeling away the envirosuit and applying a small device on the guy’s fleshy
chest. It seemed to seal against his skin, then there was an audible crack as a
bone was reset and the flowing blood dried up as what Esna recognized as a Star
Force regenerator quickly worked to accelerate the healing of the Kiritas to
near magical levels. The same thing had happened to her after she’d been
wounded on Forso, but she’d been hurting so badly she
didn’t remember much of the process.

They let the regenerator work for a few minutes, then
the Kiritas was able to walk away under his own power before the next group
arrived in between more concussion waves, each of which was of a different
intensity. By the time they all got inside with several more wounded, the
fissure in the ice had expanded out to two meters and the tunnel had been set
askew so that only part of it was visible. The other section had dropped to the
right half a meter, still leaving an opening but making it harder to get
through especially for the bigger races.

The bombardment didn’t stop for another 2 hours, at
the end of which the tunnel was still more or less intact, but broken in
several spots whether it be cracks or chunks of ice having fallen down from the
walls or ceiling, but there appeared to be no full cave-ins as far as the
outpost’s perimeter monitors could determine.

How much damage had been done to the base was unknown
until several hours later when the Ma’kri sent a wide data pulse down that the
outpost was able to pick up, but wouldn’t dare respond to for fear of giving
away their position to the Viks…at which point they’d no doubt get blasted from
orbit. The one way transmission gave away the Ma’kri’s
position, but it was still running around the system with the Viks unable to
catch it and Esna was glad it gave them a sneak peek of what was going on.

The base itself hadn’t been touched, with the ice
overtop not having a single weapon impact crater on it, though there were some
additional ice chunks that had flown out over and landed on it from the
destructive halo that now ringed it. There was a corridor a mile and a half wide
that was utterly devastated, now reduced to a trench that held a liquid lake
that was just beginning to refreeze.

“Oh no, the tunnel…” she said aloud as dozens of
others were watching the incoming data.

“The air will slow the water if there isn’t another
release for it,” a Calavari tech said as he studied another control panel.
“Pressure on the tunnel shield has increased 43%, so there’s a bottling effect.
Given the narrowness of the tunnels and the temperatures of both the ice and
water, it might seal itself off before reaching us. There are other connecting
tunnels for it to drain into as well.”

“Oh shit,” a Kiritas tech said, drawing looks from
everyone else. “The water is trackable.”

“Not inside the tunnels…”

“The fissures aren’t sealed,” a Bsidd finished. “Every
time it branches out the orbiting fleet will be able to map it if they’re
looking closely. Which means if the water reaches this outpost we have to
evacuate immediately. We can stop it here and preserve what’s beyond, but
they’ll be alerted to our position.”

“We need to know where the water is,” a mechwarrior
said, still limping on his right leg as a healing patch worked on it. Esna had
asked him earlier why he wasn’t using a regenerator and he said because the
power charge on those things was insane and they needed to save it for worse
injuries.

“We can seal the tunnel further up,” the mining tech
assured them, “and cut our way through any obstructions. Is there any chance of
Zen’zat coming through that water?”

“Not likely. They’d have to find the tunnels again.”

“They’d come by air and core down,” a Human Commando
added. “We can watch for gunships with the surface scanners.”

“Not well,” a tech differed.

“It’s something,” the Bsidd soldier said, having taken
effective command since no Archon was here. “Stay in the tunnel so they can’t
pick you up freezing new ice, but backtrack as far as you can and see if you
can pick up any survivors. When you get to the water, stop it if the diffusion
is still covering you. If not, back up until it is.”

“Alright,” she said, tapping on the chest of the Human
Commando next to her. “You’re with us.”

Esna watched those two and a few others leave, then
she backed out of the room while the Bsidd and others went into analyzing what
little bits of data they could get regarding the status of the Viks in the
base. Rammak followed her and caught up in one of the bunk rooms where a few
other people were sleeping and she was peeling off her own armor.

“I’m getting a few hours,” she said, retracting it
down into a cube to save space along with everyone else crammed into the little
outpost. “They’re all dead, aren’t they?”

“There’s no way to know, but without help to get to
them they’ll die of starvation even if they’re still alive and trapped. The one
thing they have going for them is that there are these outposts to get to if
they can, and some a lot closer down the tunnel.”

“If they’re not destroyed too,” Esna said in a
whisper, trying not to be rude to those sleeping, though nowhere in the outpost
was truly quiet.

“Say what’s on your mind,” Rammak pressed, sensing
something was amiss.

“I’m not used to being underground like this.”

“We traveled underground a lot on Mace.”

“Through rock. Getting blasted by those ships while
pinned down here is bad enough, but to get flooded out with no way to get to
the surface…”

“You’re feeling confined.”

“Aren’t you?” she bit back a little more than she’d
intended.

“Better than fighting the Zen’zat and knowing you’re
going to lose. This way we still have a chance.”

“Until the water gets here.”

“The doors will stop it.”

“But they can do it again anywhere we go, right?”

“Possibly, but they have to know where the tunnels
are.”

“And the water will tell them.”

“Only if it branches out beyond the tunnel. The miners
do something to the ice around the tunnel to keep us from being detected so
easily, plus our armor masks sensors too. Ice isn’t as dense as rock, but
there’s enough of it over us to keep us hidden this far down.”

“Then how can they see the water?”

“The water isn’t wearing armor. How tired are you?”

“The treadmills are booked for the next day and a
half.”

“So we go into one of the outgoing tunnels and do some
sprints getting you better acclimated to the low gravity. It may not be the
surface but it’ll help clear up some of your claustrophobia.”

“What’s that?”

“Fear of being pinned down.”

“Are you saying there’s no danger and I’m just being
stupid?”

“You’re feeling an opponent you can’t strike back at
and that inability is making you irritable and unstable.”

“Sorry,” Esna said, apologizing for her tone.

“You’re still a newb, and considering that fact you’re
handling everything fairly well, but if you don’t get some relief the pressure
will continue to build inside your mind until you explode or crumble, neither
of which I can allow. Put on your cold gear, but leave your armor with me,”
Rammak said, picking up the cube with a single hand.

“No armor, are you nuts? It’s freezing out there.”

“Which is why you’ll be running hard sprints and
taking your rest inside the shield. Best way to deal with claustrophobia is
getting as much air to your skin as possible.”

“There’s no way I’m going out there naked.”

Rammak hissed a little laugh, still trying to be
quiet. “That would be reckless.”

“Glad we agree on that,” Esna said, pulling her shoes
back on and walking with him to an equipment room where she found a pair of
thin, insulated sweats that she pulled on over her uniform along with a set of
gloves, matching socks, and a hat that left her face the only skin exposed, but
without her armor she felt next to naked when Rammak opened the doors on the
far side of the base and set her armor cube down just inside. He then stepped
through the shield and pointed beside him, then further down the empty tunnel.

“Run to me, stop, pivot, and sprint back here ending inside
the shield.”

“This is so stupid.”

“Then why are you smiling?” he asked as he took off
running oddly down the tunnel in the low gravity.

“Am I?” she said to herself as she stretched out her
muscles a bit and looked down the tunnel. As much as she didn’t want to face
the cold it would feel good to get away from everyone else for a little bit…so
long as the ice didn’t come crushing down on her or a wave of water rushed down
the tunnel.

But this tunnel was blocked from the other by the
outpost, supposedly. The fissures on the other side were not present here, probably
because the base stopped the concussion wave from continuing on. Everything
before her was smooth, clean tunnel and she was starting to think Rammak was
right about this…until she stepped through the shield into the frigid air and
her face started to instantly numb up.

She groaned and rattled off a string of mental curses
as she took off awkwardly sprinting the best she could in the low gravity,
bouncing off the ceiling at first before doing a somersault midair to right
herself.

The fact that she was able to pull that off cheered
her up a bit, then after that point her mind shifted into workout mode focusing
on getting to Rammak and back to the warm air before she became a chunk of ice
herself.

11

July 3, 4812

Orlero System
(Devastation Zone)

Tauntaun

Over the past two days some 32 more evacuees had been
recovered from the tunnel, some of which were half dead when they dragged
themselves up to the shallow water that was leeching out from ice blocks closer
to the base and which the miners had contained with a low ice wall in the
tunnel as they worked to dig a new one parallel to it so they could backtrack
and look for more survivors without having to worry about the water. They were
including diffusion material in the ice walls as they moved along with
compacting the removed ice into them and making the structure as hard as stone.

Rammak had left Esna in the outpost as he and several
other Commandos were called out to help with recovery, but they left a trail of
transmitters via pylons and suits of armor that allowed all of them to stay in
contact and see what the others saw via the battlemap. That meant Esna, camping
out in a corner of the outpost on top of a storage crate, could watch Rammak’s
helmet telemetry on her own HUD as he ran down one of the freshly cut tunnels
and up to a digging machine that was boring into the sidewall.

When he got there Esna could see that they were
cutting sideways into what was the old tunnel where a battlemap icon was. It
was transmitting on a low signal, not enough to give it away on the surface,
but enough to punch down the tunnel and let someone know that the Archon was
there. The miners had cut the side tunnel up even to the icon and were now
boring as close as they could when the signal from the Archon increased in
strength and a new battlemap link was established.

Through it Esna could see from the Archon’s
perspective, with the other tunnel almost completely filled with water that was
seeping through the cracks ahead in a cave-in that was blocking the Archon’s
path. He couldn’t get through, or at least not yet, for there looked to be a
lot of cutting/melting already done through a mini-tunnel in the debris.

When the digging machine got within a few inches of
the sidewall it stopped and drilled a few pylons into the flanking ice that
established a containment energy shield to keep the water from spilling
through. The digger then pushed through the field and melted away the remaining
ice as a doorway opened from the Archon’s point of view that Esna flipped away
from back to Rammak’s helmet telemetry.

The Archon swam into the air and fell to the ground,
his wet armored hands and knees freezing on contact and the rest of his body
frosting over as the cold air hit him. He stayed on the ground until another
Commando knelt and offered him a flask containing foodcubes,
water that wasn’t freezing, and a bit of ambrosia, but the Archon broke free of
the ice and waved it off.

“There are others still alive behind me holding
position as long as they can,” Esna heard him say as a new waypoint showed up
on the battlemap. “Get them out, now.”

“How many?” a Protovic Commando asked.

“8, one of which was dead an hour ago. They’re in an
air pocket. You have to swim to them through the hole I bored.”

“We can do better than that,” the mining tech answered
as she mounted the digger. “Stand aside.”

Rammak stepped forward and offered the Archon his
lower left arm, but instead of helping him stand the Calavari picked him up
entirely, cradling the smaller warrior in all four arms in front of him as he
walked back into the newly bored tunnel and took off running.

“We need a speeder here now,” Rammak said over the
comm back to the outpost, “and a medic.”

“On the way,” another person in the outpost answered,
and Esna really wanted to run to the garage and jump on, but Rammak had told
her she needed to stay here and she wasn’t going to risk getting in the way.

A minute later there was a new signal on the battlemap
zipping off down the original tunnel at high speed and heading the 18 miles
back to where Rammak was bringing the Archon towards them as fast as possible.
Rather than watching him run, Esna switched to the tech’s point of view just as
the digger passed through the energy shield and hit the water…then somehow
moved it aside and froze it instantly into a new wall.

It moved slowly as it turned to align itself with the
mostly flooded tunnel, then Esna saw the path ahead where the Archon had broken
through. The digger followed that path, expanding upon it but not clearing out
the entire tunnel width. Just enough to get the machine through and create an
ice tube that was sucking air back from the point of entry and keeping it
separate from the rest of the flooding.

Esna watched in wonder as the digger pushed forward,
eating away ice like magic and moving it where it wanted. She didn’t know how
it was doing that, but it was working. What shocked the Human more was how far
the Archon had come, busting through many blocks and narrow points where the
ice walls were thickening from the water. In fact some of the man-sized holes
that the Archon had come through were now down to only a foot or so in
diameter, meaning that if the digger wasn’t here the Commandos wouldn’t have
been able to swim through without cutting their way past somehow.

The digger had no trouble with it at all and Esna saw
it make steady progress all the way up until a few more weak signals appeared, then
they grew strong enough in response that Esna could suddenly see inside a dome
above the tunnel where ice had fallen down from. It looked like there had been
some additional digging to expand it, but inside there were armored bodies
frozen to the ice walls in some cases, though all had their legs in the water
and were moving them slowly to keep it from freezing over.

When the digger got close a few of the armored suits
began to move, but the rest stayed still as statues until an ice tube formed in
the water below their feet and moved further up the tunnel. The slow water flow
there suddenly cut off as an ice wall formed, then the water at their feet
dropped suddenly as if it was drying up and the ice below it disappeared
revealing the digger as it pushed forward and out of the way, burying itself in
an ice tunnel offshoot ahead.

Esna switched to one of the Commandos coming through
the tunnel and saw as she got underneath the makeshift survival dome and began
yanking people off their frozen perches. Three were showing as dead on the
battlemap, and the others all had bio-readings in the red, meaning they were
close to dead.

There were 6 Commandos and 3 Mechwarriors, the latter
of which had different armor that looked more like envirosuits. Esna found an
identifier in the battlemap data that said it was ‘light armor’ and she guessed
that made sense, but none of them had packs on. Did that mean they’d had no
food since the base attack? Were they starving to death or was it from the
cold?

The biodata probably said that, but she couldn’t
understand most of it. All she could understand was the bad shape they were in
and the dead state of the others.

The rescue team didn’t waste any time, grabbing and
dragging all of them down into the smaller ice tube and sliding them from
person to person until they were back at the main tunnel. Those that could move
did so slowly, then the medtech got to them as the speeder was long gone,
zipping back through the tunnel towards the outpost with the Archon onboard.
Esna hadn’t noticed, but another speeder had already been sent out and the two
were about to pass.

She flipped over to their point of view and saw each
reduce their energy buffers enough to hug one side wall as they slowed down
greatly, then slipped by with only inches to spare before accelerating again.

“Tight,” she commented, switching back to the rescue
team and seeing the bodies, both alive and dead, sprawled out as the medtech
attended to them. He opened their helmets briefly, putting things on their
necks or in their mouths, then sealing them off from the cold again within
seconds. He even worked on the dead, and Esna was both amazed and glad to see
two life signs return.

That must have been a regenerator at a work. Being
able to bring someone back from the dead was pure magic as far as she was
concerned, but apparently the magic wouldn’t work on the third individual, a
mechwarrior that she assumed had been the first one to die. Apparently there
was a time constraint on reviving and this one hadn’t been gotten to in time.

Esna switched off the HUD piggyback and returned to
her normal helmet view, hopping off the crate and moving to the tunnel doors
where the speeder was about to arrive. A few other people were there but she
was able to squeeze through them to see the Archon come in. He stumbled off but
managed to stay on his feet as the speeder was moved through the outpost
interior and back to the garage, then his golden Titan armor retracted from his
body in a flow of material that didn’t turn into a cube or boots, but rather a
vest that the Archon dumped to the side as his pale, withered face looked
around.

He didn’t say anything, but after a few seconds got
his footing and walked further into the outpost with Esna and everyone else
making way for him. The others let him go but she trailed from a respectful
distance, seeing him go straight to the foodstuffs and collect a pile of them
that he then sat on a table where he visibly sagged into a chair and cradled
his head with one hand as he telekinetically undid the wrapper.

He ate unmoving, flying the food and even water into
his mouth. Esna didn’t know if he was in shock or too tired to move, but he
didn’t look right. Not at all. But at least he was still alive, both for his
sake and theirs, for now in addition to the Commandos they had an Archon to
take the lead, and if their reputation was even partially deserved Esna’s
evacuation group now had an even better chance of survival.

Over the next few days a few more personnel would be
recovered from the flooded tunnel, most of whom were dead, but there were three
more survivors and the rescue teams didn’t stop searching until they reached
full submersion, after which the digger moved into the flooded tunnel and more
easily covered ground, melting rather than freezing as it backtracked as far as
it could. When it got to the newly frozen lake they turned around, knowing that
anything out there had either been obliterated in the blasts or cut off on the
other side of them.

But on the way back the digger picked up a warning via
the battlemap markers that it was collecting as they pulled out for the last
time. Further up the partially submerged tunnel there were people boring down
from the surface along one of the fissures. One of the V’kit’no’sat warships
had descended and parked in a hover seen on one of the surface cameras and was
firing a cutting beam down to where the water was seeping out of the hidden
tunnel.

As soon as they got word of that the digger, already
back in the newer tunnel, accelerated as fast as it could, not bothering to
stop and pick up the mobile relays. Fortunately the cutting beam didn’t sever
the tunnel, but it did knock out the inner wall and forced the mining tech to
stop and cut through it. The big beam was no longer active, but there was now a
shaft down through the ice that ended in what had been a fissure and was now a
narrow crater filling up with the melted ice with the flow now coming in from
both directions.

Some of that was flooding into the dry tunnel, but it
no longer mattered. The Commando with the tech knew was what coming, and they
barely got through the blockage and back into the small river that was flowing
down it when a section behind them blew out. They were already accelerating
down the tunnel, but not so far ahead that the Commando couldn’t turn around
and see the Zen’zat start coming through the breach and into their tunnel. One
of them even got a few shots off that hit the rear of the digger, but the
shield matrix there that was meant to cut through the ice was robust enough to
absorb them.

“Zen’zat in the tunnels,” the Commando reported back
through the links to the outpost. “Recommend we evac now before that ship decides to start shooting more
holes in the ice.”

“Already underway,” the Archon answered. “Get your
asses back here ASAP.”

The first to leave the outpost via speeder were the
techs who were taking as much portable gear and supplies with them as they
could up the line…but in three different directions. With the impending threat
of another orbital attack guessing to their position they couldn’t take the
chance of keeping 283 people together in such a confined space. Esna was
staying with Rammak, but after talking it through with each other and a bit of
arguing, the Archon had made the decision to keep both of them with him. That
meant they’d be staying at the outpost until all the others were out then
heading up one of the two branches that only had a small advance team preceding
them.

The idea was to seal off the other two exits using the
diggers and put as much ice in them as possible once those evac
teams had split off, then to hold in the outpost and give the Zen’zat as much
trouble as they could. So long as they were nearby the warship wouldn’t fire on
their position, but if the enemy suddenly retreated the Archon had already told
everyone to run like hell.

But the only way they could get out of here in time
was to use the speeders…which were right now ferrying people in shifts down two
of the tunnels, but one of which forked several miles beyond. The third group
was taking that fork while the tunnel that led to the surface exit wasn’t going
to be used.

There were supposed to be more speeders stashed
further down the line but they didn’t have time to go get them. They had to get
the outpost cleared as quickly as possible while preserving as much in the way
of supplies as they could, though a lot was going to have to be left behind.

As for Esna and Rammak, they were staying with the
fighters while all the techs and wounded were being moved out. That pleased
both of them coming from the Archon, for they trusted his judgement and Rammak
especially wanted a chance for combat…though Esna could tell he was still
worried about her. They didn’t discuss it further, but she assumed that being
in the company of an Archon was the best place Rammak thought she could be,
especially considering that she wasn’t going to be doing any fighting…just
watching and then running with the others while slots on the speeders were
going to those that needed to be elsewhere.

In truth, she had nowhere to be given her lack of
skills, but felt honored to be able to tag along with the warriors and was
watching over one of their shoulders when the first of the Zen’zat got within
the outpost’s defenses…which did not fire. The Commando controlling them waited
until they got much closer before popping concealed turrets out of the ice walls
and opening fire in the enclosed space, but rather than retreat the Zen’zat
charged the turrets, sharing the damage against shields as they altered
positions and got close enough to shoot back.

But the turrets were shielded too and the Zen’zat
weren’t able to destroy them until they got up close. Several went down from
ranged weaponsfire before they got to hand to hand range, but the last of the
four deployed was physically battered into submission. None of the Zen’zat were
killed, but several had damage to their armor in addition to breached
shields…which was when Esna saw the Commando press another button and that
whole section of tunnel exploded from the hidden mines.

The Protovic glanced up at her and raised a glowing
eye ridge. “Think we got a few of them there, plus the tunnel is blocked until
they dig it out.”

“And then?” Esna asked.

“Then they look in the ice for more mines and
eliminate them as they go, which will slow them down even more.”

“They can do that?”

“Unless they’re very well hidden. In fact we’re
counting on it when they get to the other side of the outpost. We can move
through the corridors but they can’t unless they want to risk getting blown up.
It’s called strategy.”

“What if the ship just decides to shoot us?”

“The Viks are only bloodthirsty with their enemies.
They don’t waste their personnel. Takes too long to train new ones when they’re
tens of thousands of years old. They might try something else tricky though, so
keep your eyes open.”

“Will do. How long before they start digging out?”

“I’d guess they came prepared to move ice, which means
they’re probably digging out their wounded right now.”

12

July 4, 4812

Orlero System
(Devastation Zone)

Tauntaun

Esna left the outpost along with Rammak, his bulk
shielding her as they ran out into the tunnel on the back side with only a few
other Commandos between them and the Zen’zat that were breaking their way through
the sealed door on the other side after already having fought their way through
the perimeter defenses. It’d taken them nearly 18 hours to do so and the
outpost was now fully evacuated thanks to multiple speeder runs in and out and
the Zen’zat growing more cautious. Nevertheless they were pushing forward and
herding the Star Force survivors back even further.

Perhaps they didn’t know there were more tunnels out
the back side, or they just figured that they’d catch them eventually, but
there didn’t seem to be an insane hurry to take them down in light of the
explosives lining the tunnels that the Zen’zat were carefully disarming from a
distance with their telekinesis or forcing the Commandos to blow them early to
try and do some damage or collapse more tunnel.

The turrets on the near side tunnel were all destroyed
now, but those in the exiting tunnels had been previously severed from the
outpost control and reconfigured so that if the outpost fell the Zen’zat
wouldn’t be able to commandeer them, and as Esna and Rammak ran by their
positions they all started popping out along the main tunnel while the pair
took a hard left turn and went into one of the newly dug additions before they
got to an ice block ahead. It had been created to wall off the main tunnel and
force the Zen’zat into the new ones that had even more explosives, and if
things went as planned they’d be busy deactivating those while the group got to
the last two speeders on the far side and fell back to their next outpost.

But when Esna and Rammak got through the maze of
tunnels and up to the speeders they waited, as did the other Commandos and
Archon when they eventually caught up to them. None of them boarded the craft,
rather using their battlemap to remotely control the defense turrets, shield
generators, and mines that they’d laid out behind them as the Zen’zat claimed
the outpost that was now bare of any useful equipment for them.

It only took a few minutes before they found the
single exit tunnel, for the others had been sealed over with ice previously.
That probably wouldn’t stop them from digging them out eventually, but when
they saw the Commandos retreating…and the Archon had made sure they had…there
was only one place that they could have gone and that was into the maze where
the Zen’zat soon followed.

But they didn’t have an easy time of it, having to
fight through the main tunnel turrets first. They stopped after destroying
those to let their shields recharge and to start disabling more mines when the
Archon and two other Commandos suddenly took off running back into the maze.

“Stay here,” one of those remaining said. “They’re
going to try and bait them in.”

Tyrenk-1482995 ran up into view of the Zen’zat down a
slightly curving tunnel in the maze, but not within firing range, for the wall
blocked normal vision of the enemy. He could see them and them him thanks to the Pefbar sight that both Zen’zat and Archons
possessed that allowed them grainy black/white vision of everything in a 360
degree sphere and that also allowed them to see through most materials, of
which ice was easy so long as it was within their range. Tyrenk could easily
see the through the 46 meters ahead and he assumed they had equal if not
greater sight range, but they didn’t come charging for him.

There were mines set up in between them and the
Zen’zat, including under the Archon’s feet right now. Thankfully Star Force
controlled the detonation triggers, otherwise they’d be in a world of trouble.
If the Zen’zat chased after them all they’d have to do was fall back and start
popping the mines using the controls in their helmets, but the enemy wasn’t
going to be that stupid, unfortunately, so Tyrenk was going to make it harder
on them.

The Archon pulled a grenade out of the pack he’d
acquired in the outpost and threw it down the tunnel, using both his Pefbar and
corresponding Lachka to guide it like a missile around the curve. His vision
let him steer it and his telekinesis kept it aloft as it came into range of the
Zen’zat who immediately tried to shoot it, but Tyrenk sent it into a spiral
that made the first few shots miss.

Then suddenly he felt his control of it slipping as
the Zen’zat used their own Lachka to grab it and hold it more or less still,
then a Dre’mo’don shot from their forearm gauntlets blew apart the grenade
before it could detonate.

“Nuts,” the Archon said as he hefted his own
Dre’mo’don rifle, which was a bit more powerful but a lot bulkier. Star Force
had caught up with V’kit’no’sat technology over the past millennia in most
cases, but the Viks still made some things better and, in this case, smaller.
The Zen’zat wore their weaponry on their forearms save for special circumstances
and today wasn’t one of them. Tyrenk got a good look with his Pefbar at the 4
in the tunnel ahead and guessed there were more back in the outpost, but these
didn’t have any auxiliary weaponry.

“Come out shooting when able,” he told the pair of Commando/Soldiers
behind him. “I’m going to try and take these.”

“Careful,” the Bsidd said.

“I’ll try and send one your way,” Tyrenk added as he
sprinted ahead, quickly coming into view of the Zen’zat who opened fire…but the
Archon simply absorbed the shots on his shields and bioshields, a useful
psionic that allowed his body to create its own defense shields without need of
armor. Some Zen’zat had the Nakane as well but most didn’t, and one of the big
reasons why the Viks hated Star Force so much was that they possessed psionics
that they hadn’t earned under their rules, which were ingrained into their
genetic code rather than being some academic mantra.

But Star Force had stumbled upon a way for one Archon
to share a psionic they had earned and activated naturally with another, and
thus any Archon of Titan rank or higher possessed more psionics than any
Zen’zat in recorded history…and Tyrenk was using them to get up to the four
Zen’zat before they could blow him away.

He could feel his bioshields taking hits as his
mechanical ones failed, but the second layer of protection held up for the
handful of seconds it took him to get to the taller Zen’zat, all of whom were
in the 7-8 ft range. Archons had chosen to retain
their original size rather than take the augments that they gave their own
Knights, but unfortunately none of the Knights from the base had made it into
this evac group, so there was a size disadvantage
here.

But their smaller size allowed them to be faster on
average, though there were plenty of Knights faster than Tyrenk. Training
allowed one to enhance in amazing ways over the centuries and the Archon didn’t
know what level these four Zen’zat were at. For all he knew they were 10,000
years old and going to kick his ass within seconds, so he played it safe and dove
into their midst while charging a Jumat blast, pooling the invisible energy
around his body as he dropped his bioshields, then throwing it off him with
such concussive force that all 4 Zen’zat were knocked off their feet.

Two went into the walls, one went back down the tunnel
towards the outpost, but the fourth went the other way towards the Commandos.
Tyrenk dug his feet into the ice ridges on the floor and ran backwards,
punching the Zen’zat with another Jumat blast and pushing with his telekinesis
to get the bigger opponent closer to the Commandos and inside the mine field as
they fired expertly and hit their enemy while avoiding friendly fire on the
Archon.

The Zen’zat flipped over and dug his feet into the
ground while firing back and hitting a hasty bioshield thrown up as the other
three Zen’zat fired from range. They hesitated a moment, knowing the mine field
was still there, but now that one of their own was in the same place as the
Star Force troops they knew they wouldn’t detonate the mines and kill their own,
so they took off sprinting to join the displaced one who was getting his own
shields hammered.

Tyrenk hit him again, this time physically with a headbutt to the abdomen. The Zen’zat held position and
tried to wrap the Archon up in a grapple hold until the others could catch up,
but another Jumat blast threw the Zen’zat into the ceiling and Tyrenk grabbed
him by the arm as he fell slowly in the low gravity, throwing him towards the
Commandos.

That got him on the other side of a buried shield
generator that the Archon activated with a thought to his helmet controls. The
light blue colored barrier popped up and caught the next few shots from the
approaching Zen’zat as the Star Force troops had a brief 3v1 to fight.

The Bsidd immediately tried to grapple the Zen’zat as
it fell through the air, but the lesser strength of its mandibles were not able
to match the enemy muscle push for pull, but there were so many mandibles that
the Bsidd managed to trip up and partially subdue the Zen’zat even as it shot
the Commando at pointblank range from its forearm gauntlets.

But the Bsidd’s shield were
at full strength, which allowed him to continue to grapple with the Zen’zat as
the Protovic Commando and the Archon fired into him at pointblank range,
busting through what was left of his shields and beginning to tear through his
armor.

In his helmet the Archon was also monitoring the
status of the barrier shield behind them, and just before it fell to the other
three Zen’zat he slipped his rifle onto a latch on his back and dove towards
the tangle of Bsidd as the insect-like alien had its armor break on one of its
mandibles. Tyrenk could telepathically feel its mental shout of pain, but it
continued to hold on as well as it could as the other Commando kept pouring
shots into the enemy until the Archon got in the way, grabbed the Zen’zat by
the foot, and hurled both it and the Bsidd further down the tunnel…not once,
but three different times like some sort of game that the low gravity made
almost comical.

Then as the other Zen’zat were breaching the shield
and starting to come after them, the Archon triggered a single mine at the edge
of the field and brought the tunnel down on top of them.

It didn’t kill them, probably not even damaging their
armor as their shields took the brunt of the attack, but the falling ice pinned
them under it and gave the Star Force trio enough time to deal with their
captured Zen’zat and finally shoot through a few spots on his armor to deliver
the fatal blows to his Human flesh beneath, after which his helmet was blasted off
and a couple of headshots were delivered, ensuring that he wouldn’t be revived
later.

With another dead Zen’zat on the scoreboard, the trio
retreated deeper into the mines before the other Zen’zat could push their way
free of the ice, at which point they had to retreat unless they wanted more
mines triggered under their feet as they pursued.

“How you doing?” the Archon asked the Bsidd as it
scurried along with them, though at least two of its mandibles were hanging
limp and broken, with the shattered bits of armor attesting to the sheer
physical strength of that now dead Zen’zat.

“I can keep up,” it said, clawing its way at speed
with multiple other mandibles. Fortunately it could rely on any of them for movement,
and was thus leaning slightly forward in an odd position as it ran, though it
could maintain the same speed upside down if it wanted to, for it was sprouting
mandibles in all directions from its root-like central body.

“Good work keeping him down.”

“I’ll heal, he won’t.”

“One less bad guy to deal with,” the Protovic added as
they came to a stop well down the tunnel but far from the speeders.

“Take one of the speeders and head on out. I’ll stay
and make sure they honor the mines,” the Archon told the Bsidd as he got a
warning from one of the other Commandos. “Shit. Run…”

Esna was watching the battle through the helmet links
and getting dizzy from the Archon’s perspective, so she switched to the
Protovic Commando and got a good display of their fighting skills. This Archon
didn’t rank as high as those that had rescued her on Forso,
but he was still a badass so far beyond her she didn’t even know how to measure
him…and the way that Bsidd had tangled up the Zen’zat was scary. She was really
glad they were on her side.

Esna saw that the Zen’zat weren’t coming after them,
then all of a sudden Rammak grabbed her by the arm and easily picked her up in
the low gravity, swinging her over to and onboard one of the speeders as he and
several others climbed on rapidly.

“What?” she asked, trying to clear her head while also
turning off the view from the Protovic that was covering a good chunk of her HUD.

“We’re being targeted,” Rammak said as their speeder
took off in a hurry down the main tunnel, accelerating up to maximum speed and
putting as much distance as they could between them and the Zen’zat.

“By who?” she asked, finally getting her normal helmet
view restored as she was wedged between Rammak and another Bsidd that was
helping hold her in the standing position with a mandible pressed across her
right shoulder as the acceleration tried to throw her off.

“The ship,” Rammak answered. “It’s moving out to our
position.”

“Baju,” she swore, glancing
back over her shoulder but realizing the others were too far away to see now. “Won’t
they hit their own guys?”

“If they pull back to the outpost and their naval
gunners place a precise shot, they can target all the mines and any of us near
them,” he said as the battlemap signals from the others winked out. Esna thought
that meant they were dead, then realized it was just them getting out of range,
for there were no transmitters placed down the length of this tunnel. And if
there was going to be an attack from the surface, she was sure they would feel
the impact.

The blast vibration got to them some 40 seconds later,
shaking all the ice around them and dropping little bits of mist but nothing
more serious than that. There was only the one hit and whatever concussion wave
might have followed couldn’t catch up to them in time as they continued to race
on, not waiting for the others until they were several more miles away, at
which point they stopped in the tunnel and waited.

No one said anything, they just stood on the speeder
and watched their battlemap, which at the moment showed nothing but the 7 of
them. Esna stayed silent as well, following their lead, but just when she’d had
about enough of it and was going to open a private comm to Rammak the other
speeder popped up behind them racing forward.

“Yes!” she said, seeing that there were icons for all
the other Commandos and the Archon onboard.

“How close?” a Bsidd asked over open comm.

“We had a good four second head start,” the Archon
answered sarcastically, “and the mess they just made will keep them busy for a
while, but it’s clear we can’t dig in. Not at this depth anyway. They’ll just
pull back whenever they hit a bottleneck and call in fire support. This ice
melts too damn easy. We’re going to have to slow them down when we can, but the
only way we’re surviving this is to keep moving and there’s no reason to delay
the techs. They have to get as far ahead as possible.”

“Understood. Hope the other groups are running like
hell too.”

“Same here. Get moving so we don’t run into you,” the
Archon said as they were approaching the stopped speeder’s position. “Savakni is hurt pretty bad.”

“How bad?” Rammak asked as their speeder started
moving again.

“I’ll live,” the Bsidd answered, “but
I’ve got more broken bones than I want to count. That Zen’zat was as fat as a
Calavari.”

“Hmmph,” Rammak groan
appreciably. “At least he didn’t damage your sense of humor.”

“Never,” the Bsidd said, though the pain in his voice
revealed just how much effort he was using to hold his concentration together.

Had Esna broken her arm, she wouldn’t be joking.
Crying and screaming more likely. And that was just another sign of how out of
their league she was, both in this evacuation group and in this war.

13

July 6, 4812

Orlero System
(Devastation Zone)

Tauntaun

Captain Bivandi was sleeping onboard the Ma’kri when
the call came, with her ship safely cloaked and far away from any planet as it
sat in a null orbit around the star. It had taken a while to lose the
V’kit’no’sat pursuit, but once they put enough range between them and her ship
the cloaking effect became good enough that they were able to escape. That was
what Ma’kri were best at…running, hiding, and striking from anonymity, but
there was no way her ship was going to be able to do enough damage to any of
the Vik ships even if she could get the smallest of them alone.

So when she was informed that additional Star Force
ships were entering the system the Captain knew it was go time.

The Protovic got dressed in a proper uniform, leaving
only her head and hands glowing for all to see, then quickly got to the bridge
just as the last of the huge Star Force jumpships enter the system…though on
delay, for the sensor lag mean the ships were already here by the time the
Ma’kri saw them. It was parked closer to Tauntaun than the star, meaning that realtime communication was out of the question.

Still, she sent a message off in the general direction
of the central star then had her Ma’kri reposition so the V’kit’no’sat couldn’t
track her down…though at this point she didn’t think they really cared, for there
were some 183 Warship-class jumpships
here now to keep their attention. That wasn’t enough to remove the
V’kit’no’sat, but it did mean that they no longer owned the system.

Bivandi eventually got a reply indicating that she
should move her ship in behind their formation and look for targets of
opportunity as they counterattacked, making her wonder what exactly it was they
had in mind. As far as she could tell they couldn’t win, but maybe they knew
something she didn’t.

She had the Ma’kri rendezvous with the Star Force
fleet at Tauntaun, getting there first and securing their entry jumppoint while
still cloaked. When the first of the 20+ mile long jumpships arrived the
V’kit’no’sat responded immediately, coming up from their low orbit over the
base and forming up into what amounted to a giant hammer that the enemy then would
throw at the incoming fleet.

But the jumpships weren’t here to fight themselves,
rather they were carriers that immediately started disembarking the smaller
warships that they carried. Each was far smaller than the Ma’kri and of varying
sizes, but they contained no crew whatsoever and were controlled entirely by
pilots on the jumpships that, as they each came out of their cross-system
microjump, spilled out their complement of 50-100 drone warships…all of which
had no internal space wasted on corridors, quarters, cafeterias, or other
living spaces. No person could board a drone warship, for there were no spaces
to occupy. They were solid machine from one point of their cubical rectangles
to another, which made them a lot more formidable than equal-sized
counterparts.

However, they were tiny compared to the bulk of the
V’kit’no’sat ships and had to operate in swarms to do enough damage to take
them down. Early in Star Force’s history it had been the reverse, with an enemy
called the Li’vorkrachnika using swarm tactics against Star Force’s larger and
superior warships, and they’d learn well from their enemy how to fight with
swarm tactics…then taken it up to the next level, meaning that even though the
V’kit’no’sat would probably win this fight head to head, Star Force could still
do a whole lot of damage and end up not losing a single person in the fight.

That had to annoy the V’kit’no’sat, whose massive
ships, while hard to kill, all contained crew that would be lost when one was
destroyed. Their size prevented that in most cases against other opponents, but
Star Force was built on V’kit’no’sat tech even if it didn’t look like it from
afar with the jumpships spawning clouds of the drones that were for the most
part under half a mile long. Star Force was an illegal offshoot of the
V’kit’no’sat that had accidentally occurred when one of their frontier
colonies…Earth…was evacuated and they accidentally left some Zen’zat behind.

Those Zen’zat were Humanity’s ancestors, though no one
knew who they were. What occurred after the evacuation hadn’t been documented
and that first chunk of independent Human history was and always would be a
mystery, but after the rediscovery of the planetary defense station in
Antarctica and the wealth of knowledge and power it contained, Star Force had
been born and grown out of the V’kit’no’sat legacy…which meant where the mighty
empire could fight others without losing a single ship, the same was not true
with Star Force.

Not anymore, anyway.

Even before the weaponsfire started Bivandi noted the
jamming signals the Viks were throwing up, attempting to disrupt the drone
control communications that operated off Star Force’s battlemap system. The
V’kit’no’sat had never been able to stop it completely, for Star Force used
multiple overlapping methods of communication and when some of them went down
the others carried on, but the enemy did have a way to reduce their fighting
range to a smaller one than otherwise preferred, though Bivandi knew the drones
could be programmed to attack on their own, but such things were highly
inefficient. Having a living, breathing pilot adapting as the battle progressed
was always an advantage…especially when they could fight their hardest without
having to worry about dying, meaning the drones became expendable with the
objective being to do the maximum amount of damage to the V’kit’no’sat fleet
possible.

The jumpships were also heavily armed, but would stay
out of range until the V’kit’no’sat tried to come after them, then they’d flee
just far enough to stay out of the fighting while still in communications range
with the drones in a naval dance that was one of the first things learned in
Star Force naval warfare.

You had to preserve the jumpships at all costs, else
the drone fleet would become almost useless.

Fortunately the jumpships were used to carrying all
the drones inside them, so when they emptied out they got a lot lighter and
more maneuverable, with sufficient engine power to stay away from pursuit for
the most part, though it was never a sure thing…and that’s where Bivandi knew
she’d get her best strike opportunities. When the V’kit’no’sat sent a few of
their ships to harass the jumpships.

She deactivated the cloak on a small lateral portion
of the ship where the Viks might or might not be able to see and sent a comm
request to the commander of the fleet, getting back a hologram of a Human that
she didn’t recognize, but his uniform said he was an Archon. The purple stripe
indicated a Trunks ranking, which was the third highest tier…currently, for the
trailblazers were always increasing their skills and creating new tiers as they
progressed.

“If I counted correctly, we can’t win this,” Bivandi
said evenly. “What’s the plan?”

“We’re not hard engaging, just saying hi,” the Archon
said without any trace of levity in his voice. “Do you have anything on the survivors?”

“They’re in the tunnel network, but we’ve got no way
of tracking them unless they break comm silence. The V’kit’no’sat bombarded the
area around the base, so if any were that close at the time they were either
cut off inside or destroyed in the attack, but I do know evacuations were going
on for several days, so there are probably at least some that got far enough
away.”

“What are they doing with the base?”

“They haven’t scratched it save to knock out the
orbital guns. Whatever they’re doing inside I don’t know. They were disabling
monitoring equipment all the way up to when they pushed the final evac group out.”

“There’s more going on here than a single hit, so be
cautious and just give them something else to think about than the survivors.
And good work getting the Ultra.”

“Thank you,” the Captain said, knowing that the Archon
must have read up on their mission reports during the jump out from the star.

“If they try any more landings and you can disrupt
them, please do so.”

“I was planning to nip on the heels of whoever went
after the jumpships.”

“Appreciated, but we can hold our own. It’s those on
the surface that need every bit of help they can get. Until we get numerical
superiority we can’t risk pulling them out, so let’s try and diminish their
pursuers as much as possible. That is assuming they’re going after them through
the tunnels?”

“Hard to say, but there have been a few pinpoint
strikes beyond the base on or near tunnel locations. We have no eyes on the
ground transmitting, but they’re not lighting up everything. I would think that
means they can’t track the tunnels from the air.”

“Good. Then our people still have a chance.”

“If any have been captured, you know they’re better
off dead.”

“You’re suggesting we destroy the base ourselves?”

“If there are V’kit’no’sat inside up to no good, yes.”

“We’re not in a position to do so yet, not thoroughly
anyway. Do they have shield control?”

“Not that they’ve demonstrated, but there hasn’t been
anyone shooting them either.”

“Something doesn’t feel right. They want something
here more than our deaths. Let me know if you come up with anything.”

“Will do,” Bivandi said as the Archon commander broke
the comm and she returned her attention to the approaching V’kit’no’sat ships.

“Full cloak,” she ordered her bridge crew vocally
rather than sending it through the control board. “Get us as low to the
atmosphere as possible without giving our position away. We’re going to play
this backside.”

Esna didn’t know about the arrival of the Star Force
fleet until she finished her turn on the treadmill in the third major base
along the main tunnel line situated some 113 miles out from the base. When no
one was waiting to take their turn she grew concerned and walked around the
more empty but identical facility to the first two until she found the others,
most of whom were crowded around a worktable that had the biggest holoprojector in the outpost.

“What’s going on?” she asked, not seeing Rammak with
them, as she nudged her dripping, sweaty body in between a couple of Kiritas
techs without touching them.

“Help has arrived,” a Commando said, but that was the
only statement any of them made and Esna respected the silence as they watched
the battling and sometimes broken ships fighting it out above the planet. There
were a lot more Star Force icons on the map, but they were so tiny she didn’t
know how to guess their overall strength. What she did figure out after
watching for a few minutes was that Star Force was engaging the enemy without
getting too far inside its lines. The Viks kept pushing forward and Star Force
would pull back while targeting the forward-most ships.

Esna didn’t know anything about naval combat, but she
had looked through some of the older battles in the database, including the
fall of Forso back when it had been known as Mace.
That battle was huge compared to this one, but there was far more action going
on above her…or actually below her given the fact that they were fighting over
the other side of the planet…than she could comprehend.

Basic rule in fighting though, the one pulling back is
usually not the one with the advantage.

And that turned out to be true here as well,
unfortunately, as Star Force finally moved into a full retreat and disappeared
from planetary orbit altogether as the ships jumped out. The Viks didn’t follow
them, rather returning to their original position over the base.

“Interesting,” the single Scionate mechwarrior in the
group said as it stood in a group of Bsidd of varying sizes. “They didn’t
pursue.”

“What’s so important here?” the Kiritas beside Esna
asked. “It’s like they’re glued to the planet.”

“Is there data on the other bases to be found?”

“No,” the Archon said, answering one of only two Irondel
in this group and who were standing on the table while the others were gathered
around it. “Everything was scrubbed unless someone screwed up, and if they did
and that information has been recovered, then there’d be no reason for them to
hold the base. They’re up to something else.”

“Contact,” Rammak’s voice came over the comm,
startling Esna because it was coming through every speaker in the outpost
rather than her helmet which she and many others were not wearing. “Zen’zat on
approach, foot only. ETA 3 hours.”

“Why do I get the feeling like we’re being herded?” a
Human Commando asked the Archon.

“I know. Either they shouldn’t care and let us freeze
out here or they should be hitting us harder and faster than this. Regardless,
we either fight or run, and with their naval support that leaves run. Pack it
up people. We’re moving out.”

Everyone broke apart in a quiet, organized explosion
of bodies that Esna held still so not to interfere with, giving her a good view
of the Irondel diving off the table after everyone left and scurrying across
the floor. How they didn’t get stepped on she didn’t know.

“Better get some food and water in you before we
leave,” the Archon said, not having moved from his position while everyone else
left. “You look exhausted.”

“Just got off the treadmill. Where is Rammak?”

“Tunnel 3, here,” the Archon said, bringing up a
holographic schematic of the surface as he shrunk and moved the orbital one
aside. “They haven’t shown up behind us yet, either because they’re farther out
or they’re not coming, but there is a group flanking us.”

“Did they dig down or…”

“Kill another group and cross over our way? I don’t
know. It’s more distance to be traveled, but if they didn’t have as much
resistance that could be the case. It could also be that they’re sending
runners out through every tunnel they can find in order to map them.”

“Can they get ahead of us?”

“Only in one spot, 34 miles ahead. That’s the last
cross connection. Beyond that the main line spurs but doesn’t reconnect again.”

“So we’ll be cornered past that.”

“We’ll have hundreds of miles of tunnel, but yes, if
they get behind us we won’t be able to access any of the other tunnels unless
we cut new ones.”

“Are we breaking up again?”

“I don’t plan to. We’re down to 58 now and that’s a
manageable number. Get any lower and a single Zen’zat could theoretically kill
everyone. This way we still make them follow us in groups or we’ll make another
kill.”

“And you can only go one place.”

“Right. If we have to scatter more we will, but I’d
prefer not to. Rammak will be back shortly. Get yourself a quick shower while
you can. Outposts this size are getting further and further apart.”

“Thank you,” she said, hurrying off to get herself
ready to move again, but Rammak beat her back and found her as she was
finishing eating a stack of food cubes on a small table in the corner of a room
all by herself.

“Want some?” she offered, having 5 left.

“I have supplies in my pack,” he said through his
helmet as he looked down at her clothed but otherwise naked body. “Where’s your
armor?”

Esna pointed to the next room and Rammak left to go
get it. A few seconds later when he came back with the cube she gave him a
strange look as she chewed.

“What?”

“There are three speeder shifts. You need to leave on
the second.”

“And you’re not?”

“No, I’m staying with the final group. There are more
Zen’zat coming.”

“I know. I thought the Archon wanted me with you
guys.”

“There are more
coming,” Rammak emphasized.

Esna frowned. “How many more?”

“Well over 50 behind the scouts. They’ll be here an
hour later.”

“How do you know that?”

“A sensor I placed in the tunnel.”

“Wait…” Esna said suspiciously. “I thought they were
killing all our monitoring equipment?”

“They have been. They missed this one.”

“On purpose?”

Rammak nodded. “It wasn’t hidden. The scouts just ran
by it, then the main group did too until partway through. I think they wanted
us to know how many were coming.”

“So we’d surrender?”

“No. We don’t surrender to Viks. They’d never let us live.”

“Then why?”

“I don’t know, but with that many coming I have to be
the slow one. You’ll…”

“Endanger the rest of you if you have to fight or run.
I get it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you guys fighting it out?”

“We’re taking off on foot as soon as the speeders get
back for the second shift, then they’ll come back and pick us up enroute. You
have to go with them.”

“How soon?”

“Sooner if you and the others start down the tunnel on
foot now. The more distance we can put between the Zen’zat and us the better.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, getting to her feet and shoving
the last few food cubes into her mouth as she hurried by him. “Restroom, then
I’ll be out of here.”

When she got back Rammak had already filled up her
pack with supplies and had weapons on her rack, which she attached in a
practiced motion once her armor was back on, then he led her to the outgoing
tunnel spur they were taking. There were two to choose from and she hoped the
Zen’zat picked the wrong one, but she doubted it. For all she knew they could
smell them or something even if they were out of sight.

There were a few other techs in envirosuits picking up
and carrying small crates, while one was dragging others on an improvised sled.
All of them were at least a few steps down the tunnel while the warriors were
gathering their own gear, but it was obvious they weren’t hauling cargo. They
were the rear guard while…

“You’re staying behind to save space?” she turned and
asked Rammak at the last moment.

“You can fit several crates of supplies in place of
me. Those will be needed later if we’re to survive.”

Esna’s face scrunched up with emotion, but fortunately
Rammak couldn’t see it beneath her helmet.

“Run fast,” she told him, then turned and jogged up to
the tech pulling the crate sled and offered her muscle to help them move a bit
faster.

14

Esna and the others ran for more than an hour before
the speeders came back. Rammak and the other fighters trailed them so far
behind sometimes she couldn’t see them on her battlemap, but for the moment
they were just within range. As the others began loading the cargo she looked
back but had to activate her zoom just to catch a bit of their armor getting
around the slight curve in the ice.

They were still there, but they wouldn’t be taking
this ride. They’d have to wait for the speeders to come back again and Esna got
a sinking feeling like she might lose Rammak if she left him now.

Her brain told her no, that they were ahead of the
Zen’zat and would stay ahead of them, but still…

“Get on,” one of the Kiritas said, snapping Esna away
from her zooming stare and focusing her attention on the here and now. They’d
loaded more quickly than she’d expected, with only a couple techs left stepping
on. Esna ran two steps then jumped, floating up and over to her single empty
spot at the back of one speeder with a stack of cargo behind her nearly
reaching to the ceiling, but when they accelerated off it missed by several
inches with the guiding energy fields making sure there would be no impacts so
long as the tunnel remained smooth.

And just like that Rammak’s icon on her battlemap
disappeared as they got out of range. She didn’t have anything to look at
except the backside of a mechwarrior’s armor and the ice walls to either side
that were nothing but a blur, so she just stood still with her feet pinned
under holding straps as the group traveled further and further away from the
Zen’zat. Esna chewed on her inner lip a bit as what Rammak had labeled
‘claustrophobia’ started to twitch inside her head again.

A few minutes later she retracted her helmet, getting
a blast of cold air on her face for the few seconds that she could stand it,
then closed up again. She did that twice along with tapping on her leg armor as
time seemed to blur into one long and pointless ride without Rammak here. When
she was with him Esna knew she was accomplishing something, but split apart
from him now she felt a little…

Well she might as well face it. Star Force had Humans
in it and a lot of other crazy, wonderful people that she was starting to fit
in with a bit, but without Rammak she was totally lost. She didn’t expect the
others to leave her behind to die or anything like that, but they probably
didn’t understand just how slow and weak she was when even the weakest person
in Star Force was still a badass. Even the techs she was traveling with could
defeat her in hand to hand combat with ease, and that wasn’t their focus in
training.

Well, not all of them. The Irondel couldn’t. She’d
just kick them into a wall or something, but they didn’t count when they didn’t
even stand as tall as her knee. But why then, she wondered, were they in a Clan
at all? Rammak had said everyone here was the best of the best, so what did
they have to offer?

There were none of them in her second group, for
they’d gone with the first, but it did beg the question of what their
usefulness was. They couldn’t move crates around…even Esna could do that…so how
skilled did the little furballs have to be in other
things to warrant their inclusion?

It was a valid question and Esna sunk her mental teeth
into it as a distraction up until she half lost her balance when a flash on
either side popped out of nowhere, then the speeder suddenly decelerated.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Cross tunnel,” the driver of the speeder said over
the comm. “You’re getting off here and running again. When we get the last ones
up to this point we’ll move the first group on to the outpost, then you.”

“Alright,” Esna said as they slowed to a stop and
everyone got off, with her feeling better just by taking a step of her own down
onto the ice…as well as knowing Rammak would be picked up sooner than planned.
Looking back on her battlemap she saw the location of the tunnel crossing which
was now etched into the battlemap’s memory rather
than just being a faint line yet to be filled in. She saw it now stretched out
either direction as far as the sensors on all of their armored suits could
detect, and fortunately there were no Zen’zat in range.

That meant if they hadn’t snuck ahead in this tunnel,
the evacuees now had them squarely behind them…meaning ahead meant safety so
long as the Viks didn’t drill down another access shaft. But they couldn’t do
that without knowing where the tunnel was, so Esna assumed they were safe, save
for the Zen’zat catching up with them from behind.

Now she knew why it had been so damn important to keep
the speeders away from the base. They were what was keeping the evacuees ahead
of their pursuit. If the Zen’zat had got their hands on even one of them she
and Rammak would be dead by now no matter how hard they fought.

But Rammak wasn’t here yet and there was still a
chance for him to get caught between two groups of Zen’zat with nowhere to run.
That said, she wasn’t out of danger either if Zen’zat came down either side of
the cross tunnel and caught up to them without the Archon and Commandos here to
defend them from behind.

“Hurry,” she urged the speeder driver as he switched
ends once it was fully unloaded.

“Don’t worry,” he said with a mock salute. “I’ll get
your boyfriend back to you.”

“He’s not…” Esna said as the speeder accelerated down
the tunnel with the others following seconds later, “…my boyfriend.”

“Help,” the Kiritas beside her said as he grabbed one
of the handles on a crate sled and began to pull.

“Sorry,” she said, grabbing the other attached to a
rope. Together they got moving at decent speed again, though they were the last
in the line of evacuees. A lot of them were pulling cargo by themselves, and
Esna was grateful for that because it meant she wasn’t going to fall behind with
two of them dragging the same one.

But still, when she glanced back behind them at the
empty tunnel now that the speeders were well out of sight, she felt an odd,
dangerous chill knowing that there was nothing between her and the Zen’zat if
they came up the side tunnels. And if they got close enough to pop up on her
battlemap then she was already as good as dead, for she’d never outrun them.

That thought made her work a little harder, digging
her toes into the grooves cut into the floor and keeping her crate and Kiritas
tucked in behind the next dragging sled and glued there for the remainder of
their trek through the seemingly endless ice tunnels.

Kiev-428119 stood in the command nexus onboard his
flagship, mentally tied into his fleet and able to issue orders at such a fast
pace that no verbal or button pressing combination could ever match a single
thought through the interface he was using, though at the moment there wasn’t
much to do aside from watch. The Star Force fleet had pulled back from the planet
after damaging 19 V’kit’no’sat vessels and destroying 2 others. He’d lost some
392 drones with another 84 requiring significant repair, but the crews onboard
the warships were already busy seeing to that as those ships had been recalled
and docked while the others free floated ready to engage if the V’kit’no’sat
came out to them.

But they didn’t, happy to just hold position over the
prize they’d stolen from Star Force. Kiev didn’t understand their atypical
behavior and was trying to deduce what was going on from both their orbital
position and what little he could make out on the ground when their purpose
suddenly dawned on him.

Tied into the fleet’s battlemap he saw the data from
the incoming stellar jumppoint the same time as his bridge crew which were just
on the other side of the wall the separated the command nexus in a little
privacy nook, for when in the heat of battle even the awesome power of the
battlemap interface and the Sav psionic weren’t
enough to micromanage everything in a largescale battle and the less physical
distractions around to eat up attention the better.

Kiev saw dozens of new V’kit’no’sat ships emerging
from their interstellar jump and knew they were too soon to have been summoned
by the current enemy fleet. Travel between stars took time, even for comm
signals, and there was no way one could have gone out and precipitated this
response…meaning that the V’kit’no’sat had intended to bring in reinforcements
from the beginning.

That or this was just another roaming fleet happening
to cross through this system, but the odds of that were so low Kiev didn’t
waste two seconds considering it. V’kit’no’sat ships didn’t travel in such
large numbers without a specific target to smash, and however they had
discovered the location of the Tauntaun base, their typical method of attack was
simple and straightforward…come into the system and blow up whatever they could
find.

They might throw some variation in there, such as
capture the base, loot it for prisoners or computer information, then blow it up along with the prisoners once their
usefulness was extinguished after multiple mind raids. Regardless of the
wrinkles, the end result was always the same. Everything in the Devastation
Zone got obliterated with prejudice. The V’kit’no’sat did not want Star Force
operating here or anywhere else, and they were particularly sensitive to
backline incursions behind the front where they were constantly probing and
hammering any weakness in the line of Star Force systems that had proven strong
enough to hold out this long.

Star Force had been on the defensive ever since the
first V’kit’no’sat invasion, though in recent years it had become more of a
draw when the enemy was no longer sending massive invasion fleets to bleed their
way into victories, but Star Force still hadn’t been able to take back any
worlds. Tauntaun and other covert bases had been established before the
invasion, for the most part, and that’s why they’d gone mostly undetected.

How the V’kit’no’sat had learned of this one was
important, but the epiphany Kiev was having lay around the fact that the
V’kit’no’sat didn’t send all their ships in one attack. If they’d expected
heavier resistance they either would have sent more or sent in a scout to
determine how much was necessary. There was no way they’d assault with a
partial fleet, because that meant Star Force could kill more of their ships
even if they ended up losing the battle and the V’kit’no’sat were not so stupid
to waste ships and personnel…unless they had a reason to do so.

And that reason had become crystal clear now. The
V’kit’no’sat could have destroyed the base, but they hadn’t. They were still
chasing escaping personnel through the tunnels, which Kiev could see via the
drops onto the ice fields that individual ships were flying low to assist with
and digging conduits down through the ice with their weaponry, but why bother?
Why not just bombard everything around the base constantly for 2 or 3 days and
then leave any scraps of survivors to freeze while the fleet held onto orbit
and dared Star Force to try and get past them to search for their people?

The V’kit’no’sat wanted to kill the Star Force
personnel on the planet, but they didn’t want to do it in a way that made Kiev
think that they were all dead. If he did he’d retreat when outnumbered, like he
was now and getting even more so with every ship that entered the system, now
up to an additional 63 with more continuing to arrive. They knew Star Force
wasn’t going to fight if they had a disadvantage and let the V’kit’no’sat
murder them, and the hit and run attacks the Archons had been orchestrating across
the Devastation Zone only underscored that philosophy.

Star Force deliberately made themselves a nuisance out
here in a way that made them very hard to pin down and kill…but now the V’kit’no’sat
had a way. They had prisoners that Star Force would try to rescue rather than
destroy, for when captives had been taken in the past and their rescue had been
deemed impossible the ships they were prisoner on were targeted and destroyed
if possible to avoid the torturous deaths the V’kit’no’sat were famous for.

But if the people down on Tauntaun weren’t captive
yet, the V’kit’no’sat knew Star Force wouldn’t abandon them.

Hence this was a trap. A big fat trap designed to pull
the fleet into a fight they couldn’t back away from without sacrificing the
people on the ground. The V’kit’no’sat wanted to draw this out in order to
bring in more opposition, whereas a huge initial fleet might have scared Star
Force away.

Kiev expected this reinforcement fleet to be the first
of many for the enemy, and until the distress call from Tauntaun was marked as
‘completed’ with confirmation signals flowing out across the Devastation Zone,
Star Force ships and fleets would continue to come and investigate even if they
thought they might be late.

And with enough V’kit’no’sat ships in the system they
could start attempting ambushes around the star that the incoming ships might
or might not be able to run from in time. There were only so many jumplines in from surrounding systems, and the stronger one’s
engines were the more systems there were in jump range, but get enough ships to
camp out all of their jumplines and you’d have some
single ships or small fleets running into a buzz saw if they came in low to the
star.

If they came in high, braking hard early or traveling
slower to target they’d have some forewarning, but the V’kit’no’sat had
millions of years experience with running down
starships, and as good as the Star Force fleet was they could still get caught
out, especially if the V’kit’no’sat started mining the jumplines.

There was no indication of that yet, but Kiev had a
gut feeling that this was just the beginning and unless he could defeat the
V’kit’no’sat fleet and get a couple of good hours to evacuate the surface
survivors before more enemy ships arrived this system, this planet was going to
become a hotbed of action. For no matter how bad the situation was, Star Force
wasn’t going to turn a blind eye to its people trapped below.

And he was sure the V’kit’no’sat were counting on that
very fact.

That was one big downside of fighting a war over a
thousand years long. Both sides figured out the other very well and surprises
were hard to come by, though it seemed the V’kit’no’sat had arranged one here.
Fortunately they weren’t the best at strategy. They were damned good, and Kiev
knew to never ever underestimate them, but their go-to strategies were standard
practice and they only adapted when pushed to…whereas Star Force had the
improvisational masterminds of the trailblazers. They’d not only built the Star
Force military from scratch, they’d done it in a way specifically to fight the
V’kit’no’sat even before the galaxy-spanning empire realized that Star Force
had erroneously been allowed to exist.

That hadn’t stopped the V’kit’no’sat from smashing
Earth and everything else in what was now the Devastation Zone, but it had kept
Star Force alive long enough for them to even the odds and hold onto a good
chunk of territory rimward. The V’kit’no’sat never
let up, always pushing to eradicate them with Star Force taking heavy losses
and constantly pulling back, but every now and then a trailblazer would find a
way to take a bad defeat and turn it on the enemy by outthinking them. They
understood war better than Kiev ever would, constantly finding new ways to
fight and pushing technology and tactics to never before seen applications.

And of all the trailblazers, Kiev’s Clan leader was
arguably the best at naval combat and not too far away inside the Devastation
Zone. With a heads up he would find a way to get the people off the surface
before this escalated too far…or he’d find a way to avenge them in short order.

With a thought Kiev activated the comm system and sent
a beam transmission to the location of the hidden Gondor relay on the far
outskirts of the star system where it was hiding from the V’kit’no’sat. It
wouldn’t respond with an information ping unless directly querried,
and now that the base had been taken it probably hadn’t been checked since, but
he wasn’t interested so much in any updates as he was in sending a message out.

He recorded a brief holovid
and added all tactical data on the current state of the system and send it out
to the satellite in a single pulse. When it arrived it returned all its updated
transmissions on the same line of sight so only the querrier
or anyone else along that line would detect it. All of it was encoded, but
keeping the location of the relay satellite secret was important, for Star
Force didn’t have communications systems strong enough to reach between stars
without the relays.

When Kiev got the comm dump back he knew his message
had been sent out, and reading through all the updates with the speed that only
a mental interface would allow, he saw multiple notations of ships around the
area signaling to the network that they were heading to reinforce the base on
Tauntaun, so he knew he’d have help coming and based on the distances involved
he had some idea of when they’d be arriving.

But it didn’t look like he’d be outnumbering the V’kit’no’sat
fleet any time soon, for their combine ship count had risen by another 271, and
that meant the survivors on Tauntaun were going to have to hold out on their
own into the near future.

15

Esna’s legs were burning even before the empty speeders
passed them by, but at least she got a quick break when everyone had to get
down and out of the way. She actually laid flat on the ground as the speeders
elevated as much as they could with their pilots ducking down to make the pass.
At first she was confused as to why they were empty, hoping to see Rammak on
one going by, but then she realized the fighters had to stay at the rear.

They weren’t on her battlemap and Esna worried that
something might have happened to them, but without even a single passenger on any
of the speeders that seemed unlikely, for they probably would have pulled a
wounded body or two out of a fight…unless the Zen’zat had gotten to them first
and the speeders had just turned around.

No. If that was the case then they would have stopped
and picked up Esna’s group in order to get them as far ahead of the pursuit as
possible. Passing them by meant they were going for the first group that had
been running longer than hers had. They’d get them to the next outpost then
come back, meaning that everything was going as planned.

That bit of logic settled her fears as she got to her
feet and grabbed the handle for the cargo sled and started pulling again,
intent on doing her part as long as she could, though it was obvious that even
the techs had far more endurance than she did. Hopefully when her legs gave out
she’d be able to at least keep up with them absent the cargo pulling, but she
didn’t want to let it go that far. Esna was tired, but she wasn’t done yet and
was getting really sick of being a piece of cargo herself. Right now at least
she was doing something useful and she intended to stretch out that usefulness
as much as possible.

A short break an hour later saved her from having to
bow out when everyone stopped to get some food and water, with a few people
heading down the tunnel a ways to find a spot to relieve themselves. For some
reason Esna didn’t feel the need, but as soon as she took a drink of water her
dehydration made itself known. She probably didn’t have anything left in her to
pee out, and greedily sucked down a full bottle before eating a handful of food
cubes.

A few minutes later they were off again, with Esna
forcing herself to keep helping the Kiritas as much as she could, though the
Human was convinced that the smaller guy was doing most of the work. Still, any
effort she could peel over to herself would help him and she focused on that
and nothing else going forward, finding herself too exhausted to even worry
about Rammak. Right now she just had to focus on staying on her feet and
maintaining tension on the handle.

She got another 20 minutes before tripping on one of
the little ridges in the floor. The crate sled hit and pushed her down a few
meters before the Kiritas got it stopped, then he placed a small hand on her armored
shoulder as his wide fan-shaped helmet appeared over hers.

“Are you conscious?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m still here. Just lost my footing,” she
said, pushing herself back into a standing position thanks to the low gravity.

“You’re too tired and losing focus.”

“I’ll manage,” she promised. “Let’s go.”

The Kiritas’s helmet nodded and they started pulling
again, then they had to work extra hard to catch back up to the others. Once
they did Esna settled into a determined grind with her embarrassment fueling anger
that kept her going a long time after, though she did stumble a few more times
as her legs weren’t as fast to react to the toe grips as she thought.

When Esna didn’t know how much longer she could make
it the speeders showed up again and stopped for them, with the others loading
the crates up and a Protovic coming back to get her.

“We’ve got them,” he told her as he guided Esna to the
front speeder. “Rest now.”

“Is it that obvious?” she said, not bothering to
argue. Her body would have overridden her mind anyway if she’d tried.

“Normally Humans can’t be telepathically read, but
you’re so fatigued its gushing out enough that I can pick up on it. When you
get your feet in place lock your armor into rigid position then let yourself
fall asleep for a bit. I’ll be behind you and make sure nothing bounces you
off.”

“Thank you, I will,” she said as she stepped up onto
the flat floor and tucked her feet into the loops that would give her something
to hold on to as the speeder accelerated and decelerated. Standing still was
blissful enough, but it took her a couple minutes before she found the powered
mode submenu that allowed her to lock her armor. When she did Esna became a
living statue, but she was able to sag inside enough to get a bit more
comfortable and didn’t have to keep her head erect anymore.

As soon as her forehead tipped a fraction of an inch
and the helmet held it up her head washed with fatigue-induced sleepiness that
was only disrupted by the acceleration to come. As promised she didn’t fall off,
then everything went black as she closed her eyes and drifted away in an odd
but welcoming standing sleep in the low gravity.

Esna heard someone’s voice, then a couple of hits to
her back shook her awake. She deactivated the armor lock with the option she’d
left open on her HUD and staggered a bit as she noticed everyone getting off
and unloading cargo next to a hole in the ice tunnel.

“You ok?” the Protovic asked.

“Yeah, sorry. I was asleep. What now?”

“Get inside and rest. We’ll be staying here until the
others catch up, then taking the speeders all the way to the next main
outpost.”

“Ok,” she said, seeing that the hole was the entrance
to a minor outpost that had neither artificial gravity nor heat, just several
rooms with more supplies that the unloading teams were adding to, though there
were a few tents already set up.

“Over here,” a Bsidd said to her on a private comm
channel that also provided a waypoint into the far chamber. When Esna walked
through the first and rounded the corner into a short connecting tunnel a
couple meters long she saw more tents where the Bsidd was standing along with a
few others.

“Yes?”

“You can get cleaned up in here, use the restroom
there, and sleep in one of those,” it said, pointing to the various tents.
“Food is in the other chamber.”

“Restroom?” she asked, pointing to the tent second on
her left, and the Bsidd nodded.

Esna walked over to the door and opened it, seeing
that the inside had been segmented into two stations big enough to handle the
Bsidd soldiers and Calavari. She walked into the one on the left and saw a
button that she hit experimentally. It created a force field over the entrance
that was mostly solid, though she could see just a little bit of the tent wall
beyond it. Assuming it was a privacy screen she began disassembling her armor
in the ample space provided when the outside door opened and someone else came
in.

She couldn’t tell who or even what it was, but it
wasn’t a Bsidd and it went into the other chamber. Realizing that there might
be a line she hurried as fast as her tired muscles allowed her then suited up
again knowing that as soon as she stepped outside the tent the air would be too
cold to walk around in and her slightly sweaty uniform would probably snap
freeze in the few steps it took her to get to the shower tent.

When she got there she opened the tent door and passed
through the atmospheric shield keeping the warm air in and the cold out to see
four different shower stations, one of which was being used by a Kiritas. These
were not sectioned off from one another visually, with everyone apparently not
concerned about seeing each other naked. Esna was also too tired to care and
climbed out of her armor again as she spotted four clothing refreshers along
the wall. She stripped off her uniform and underwear and put it inside, then
walked a few steps completely naked over to a pedestal that activated with a
clear containment shield that kept the soon to be falling water droplets where
they were meant to be.

The warm water was a relief beyond measure and worth
the effort of standing up for. She didn’t even notice the slower speed of the
droplets as she held onto an edge above her and closed her eyes, letting her
mind roam as her body soaked.

When she opened them again the room was full. The Kiritas
was gone, now replaced by a Protovic and two Bsidd. She couldn’t help but look
at the Protovic, whose entire body was glowing a combination of blue and green
in exotic patterns. The Bsidd bodies were dull by comparison and looked more
like…well, she couldn’t really tell. There were no visible body parts other
than the stalks, and of the other three she appeared to be the only one with
‘bumps’ of any kind.

She sighed, realizing that she was probably holding up
someone else from taking a shower, but not wanting to leave. These were real
water showers, not a cleansing shield thing like she’d used before, and she
could have kissed whoever packed them into the cargo crates.

“Tired?” the Protovic asked, and she guessed he was
the same one from the speeder though she couldn’t be sure.

“Very,” she admitted, “but I’ve done this sort of
thing before. I’ll manage. Do you always glow that much?”

“It’s constant. I can’t turn it on or off,” he said,
blinking eyes that burned a pure blue.

“Do you see it when you close your eyes?”

The Protovic smiled. “Good question. No I don’t. Only
the outside of my eyelids glow.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, I’ve just never seen any of
you naked before. Are you a male?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s your…parts?”

The Protovic tapped on his pelvic plate. “Internal and
only come out when needed. We’re not so easy to disable as Human males, and
these dark spots,” he said, pointing to rough, hard patches that covered the
top and back of his head and a few other stripes down his body, “are
exoskeleton. It makes us a lot more durable than Humans. Even our glowing skin
is a bit tougher.”

“You look…pretty.”

“A lot of people say that of Protovic,” he answered as
one of the Bsidd shut down his shower and began putting his armor back on. A
process that caused an eyebrow to raise on Esna’s face as she watched it twist
and curl all throughout the gaps in his torso in order to cover every bit of
exposed area.

She realized her jaw must have been gaping, for the
Bsidd looked at her.

“We don’t glow, but people still stare a lot.”

The Protovic laughed and Esna realized it was a joke,
but the Bsidd left before she could respond to him. Looking up, she found a
soap release and pressed the button with it traveling down the containment
shield on all sides and expanding out until it looked like it had frosted over,
then there was a series of three tones before it suddenly blew inward covering
most of her body. She closed her eyes and mouth before the third tone so she
didn’t get any in the wrong spots, then began rubbing the soap around to the
spots where the spray had missed.

Then when the Bsidd left a Human tech came in and took
its place, with her stripping down with far less hesitancy than Esna did and
doing a remarkable job of taking a speed shower. That reminded Esna to hurry up
herself, but she couldn’t help but stare at the Human. She’d seen and felt a
few guys naked, but had never seen another girl other than herself in a mirror.

Esna sighed, both impressed and embarrassed by how
much fitter the Human tech was. She made Esna look puffy with all her slick,
sculpted muscles and tiny frame. Height wise they were about the same, but the
fitness comparison was shocking.

Esna began rinsing off and reluctantly about to shut
down the water flow when the other Bsidd left and another Human entered. It was
a guy this time and suddenly she felt a lot more naked, along with a few other
emotions that burnt away some of her fatigue. She averted her eyes as he
undressed, then hurried over and got her now clean clothes back on before she
looked at him.

Even though he was a tech, he was still all chiseled
muscle. A bit more than the girl, but they were the same motif. Whatever type
of training they went through previously in their lives, it had to be a lot
harder and longer than the little Esna had been doing, and if these were the
visible results of it then she had a lot to look forward to…if she survived
long enough to get off this planet and to a safe Star Force world.

Esna crawled back into her armor and left, finding a
couple of others waiting outside. She cringed a little at knowing she’d been
holding them up, then Esna went over to one of the sleeping tents that only had
one other person there, and it was one of the Irondel. He or she, Esna couldn’t
tell which, was curled up in a tiny sleeping sleeve that was far too cute for someone
probably hundreds of years old and far smarter than her, but she was tempted to
go over there and wrap the little guy up in a big hug.

Thankfully her fatigue prevented any such stupidity
and directed her to a rack of varying sized sleeves. She pulled out one built
for her body and probably that of a Protovic too and rolled it flat on the
floor next to the far wall before taking off her armor again and this time
condensing it down to a cube that she placed just over her head along with her
pack. If somehow the Zen’zat got to them here she’d have it within arm’s reach,
but guessing by the urging of her body towards blacking out, if they attacked
while she was sleeping she was going to be toast regardless.

Not really caring at the moment, she took her shoes
off and set them beside her head as well, then slipped her socked feet inside
the sleeve followed by the rest of her body with only her face still showing.
Then when her head hit the built-in pillow her eyes rolled back a bit and she
was halfway unconscious before she even thought of Rammak.

The speeders should be heading back to pick up him and
the others now, meaning that she at least had until they caught up to sleep
without having to worry about Zen’zat, though at the moment a few thoughts of
that male tech were bouncing around in her head until fatigue kicked them out
and nothing other than rest occupied what little part of her mind remained
functioning as she fell quickly fell asleep.

16

July 7, 4812

Orlero System
(Devastation Zone)

Tauntaun

Esna was comfortably asleep for a long time in the
quiet tent that several others entered, but they were all but silent and
allowed her to sleep uninterrupted until a rumble jolted her awake. Her eyes
opened but she lay still, wondering if she had imagined it until a second faint
rumble made its way through the ever still ice beneath the tent.

Seeing the others rising from their sleeping sleeves
and starting to get their armor on she did the same, but was slower than the
rest and was the last one out of the tent after three more rumbles. No more
followed, but everyone else obviously thought this was important and she even
found Rammak waiting for her outside the tent.

“When did you get here?”

“A couple hours ago. You were asleep.”

“What’s happening?” she asked as everyone else moved
out of the tents.

“Another group is getting hit from a low flying
warship.”

“How do you know?” she asked, belatedly looking at her
battlemap and seeing a few new icons indicating new data streams.

“The fleet is monitoring and transmitting the
location. It’s the splinter group that took the mining vehicles.”

“Why is that important? The vehicles, I mean.”

“Unless they transmit their status we can’t know, but
it could be they arranged another minefield area that the Viks had to remove.
Either way they’re drilling another access point down through the ice.”

“I thought we were past all the cross tunnels?”

“We are.”

“Are we leaving again?”

“I’m not sure yet. How are you feeling?”

“Good to go.”

“How are you feeling?” Rammak repeated.

Esna sighed. “Sore, tired, and flabby.”

“Flabby?”

“I saw a Human girl in the shower. I look flabby
compared to her.”

“No Esna, you’re not flabby. When you see some of the
lazy civilians you’ll understand. You just don’t have the musculature
underneath your skin yet to create the body lines Humans typically get when
they’re fit. You’re not carrying extra weight, you’re just weak.”

“Soft then?”

“Soft works,” the Calavari said as they all heard the
Archon’s voice over the comm through their helmets.

“The V’kit’no’sat have landed Ari’tat, so expect them
in the tunnels shortly. We’re moving out now and blocking access behind us. First
group goes all the way to the next full outpost. Second moves equipment down a
few kilometers while third and fourth groups backtrack and redecorate.”

“Fourth?” Esna asked as she got a message prompt
saying nothing more than the number 2.

“Assignments,” Rammak said. “I’m in the second group.
You?”

“Same,” she said, relieved.

“Good. We’ve got cargo to move,” he said as a couple
techs came back into the tent area and began the short process of
deconstructing them.

“And then?”

“Let the Archon worry about it. Find the light stuff
to move, I’ll get the heavier things.”

“I’m game. Show me where to start…”

Diving through the atmosphere came a fast moving group
of some 128 Star Force drone warships, both smaller and faster than the
V’kit’no’sat vessels moving to intercept and fire upon them from range, but
they’d gotten enough of a head start thanks to the much larger diversionary
second attack that the fleet was making above them in orbit. Both sides were
slugging it out again and all for the purpose of getting these drones down to
the surface of the planet.

They weren’t headed for the captured base or any of
the landing zones for troops, they were headed for the Domjo-class warship that was sitting over the ice and had recently
fired down into it going after the base evacuees still running through the
tunnels. Kiev wasn’t just going to let them get away with that, but he didn’t
have enough ships to make a play for low orbit to shield and potentially pick
them up, so he was going to exact a little payback and give them an excuse to
pull back a little, for he was sure they wanted to draw this out and he wanted
to keep the survivors alive as long as possible.

So the drones raced down through the thick atmosphere
that in the low gravity still amounted to an atmospheric pressure slightly
greater than that of Star Force standard at the surface. The blocky drones
augmented their shields so that they became knife blades and reduced drag, but
they were still setting the atmosphere on fire for how fast they were moving in
order to stay ahead of most of the V’kit’no’sat pursuit, though some long range
shots hit and two of the drones were lost before they came down around the
Domjo and spread out…then they all flew underneath the 6 point star-shaped 12
mile wide Ari’tat warship.

Using it as cover against the rest of the descending
V’kit’no’sat ships, the drones engaged in pointblank carnage on both sides for
a few seconds before the Domjo began to rise up quickly with the drones
following save for one Corvette-class
brick that stayed low and fired down into the hole in the ice, blasting it
wider and well as dropping energy orbs that blew out laterally in an attempt to
kill whatever ground troops they had nearby.

After a few good rounds that drone moved skyward as
others fell to the ground as smoking hulks, then it put full power into its
engines and made a jump pushing off the planet’s gravity well. It only had a
few kilometers to accelerate, which diminished its impact speed, but the drone kamikazied into already weakened shields and punched
straight through into the hull of the Domjo, tearing through the armor and creating
a huge crater that even could be seen bulging out the top side just a bit due
to all the material that got compacted inside.

The rest of the drones fired into the huge wound,
expanding upon it as the ship tried to run to orbit with the little Star Force
gnats staying close and using it for cover as it lost more and more gravity
drives, slowing its ascent.

But it managed to make it up past 100 miles in
altitude and into the thin air where the other warships were waiting, with the
Domjo managing to limp up through them as chunks of its underside continually
fell off and began to drop back down to the surface. Along with them the drones
split off from their attack but accelerated hard upward through the gaps
between the V’kit’no’sat ships and ran towards their distant fleet. Not all of
them made it, getting hit from multiple targets, but some 40+ got out still
with engine power and flew clear of weapons range by making emergency jumps
that the V’kit’no’sat were not going to follow to chase down a handful of
drones while thousands more were pounding them higher up in orbit.

Esna was carrying a crate in her arms and hopping
along down the tunnel when the huge tremor hit, shaking the ice so hard that chips
shook loose and fell down through the air in a snow mist as her foot landed
askew and fell forward landing on the crate a couple seconds before another big
tremor shook her so badly she slid halfway across the tunnel on her knees
amidst a huge shriek of ice that hurt her ears.

Esna held onto her crate and tried to drag her feet to
stop her sliding, then a violent jerk made her lose her grip and faceplant into the ice with the crate spinning a foot away.
She decided to stay down until it ended, which didn’t happen for another 40
seconds and after 6 more impacts when she tentatively stood up and saw that the
tunnel behind her had disappeared.

“Baju,” she swore, running
back to where a few techs were standing just shy of a huge crack in the ice.
They stopped her before she could get too close, but Esna could still see the
half meter wide gap on the other side of which the tunnel floor was now almost
at ceiling height with a narrow gap that she’d have had a hard time crawling
through.

And Rammak was with the others down the tunnel on the
other side.

“Stay back,” a Kiritas warned. “They can scan down the
crack and find us.”

“How are the others going to get across?”

“They have to dig down and expand the gap, but there’s
no way to get across without being scanned. The combat armor is shielded to
make it difficult to pick up, but the envirosuits aren’t. As soon as they come
through any ship directly overhead will spot them.”

“There may be other fissures further ahead,” a Bsidd
said, coming up from behind.

“The speeders will let us know that,” the Kiritas
responded. “And we can’t dig from down here without being spotted. They have to
widen the gap from the other side.”

“How?” Esna asked. “They don’t have a digging
machine.”

“They can melt it with their weapons, but we need to
get a platform ready so they don’t get stuck in the crack if they slip and
fall. Tear up one of the crates…”

“No, make it out of ice,” the Protovic next to Esna
differed.

“You’re right,” the Kiritas agreed. “We need to cut it
out of the floor…”

“Genius,” the Protovic said, turning around and heading
up the tunnel.

“What?” Esna asked, very worried about Rammak making
it through.

“The flooring has diffusion shielding mixed in with
the ice,” the shorter tech said as it swung its stubby tail around and took a
single hop forward, motioning for Esna to follow. “If we cut out a section and
put it above and around the gap it will extend the cover.”

“Damn you guys are smart,” Esna said, keeping pace
with him.

“That’s why we’re techs. Mind pulling another sled
while we cut and fuse?”

“Sure. Anything to help.”

“No,” a Bsidd tech said. “Her armor is shielded. There
aren’t any more Commandos on this side.”

“There’s a mechwarrior further down.”

“Better than an envirosuit but hers is still the best
we’ve got. Plus she’s got the cloak.”

“Alright, but we need a floor piece first. We can’t
risk her falling and we can’t use a rope…wait, just wrap it in her cloak.”

“Esna,” Rammak’s voice suddenly popped onto her comm
as she and the techs turned around to see his big head in the narrow gap on the
other side of the fissure.

“We’re here,” she answered. “We’re going to dig the
tunnel open and make a bridge.”

“How long?”

“Not sure,” the Protovic answered the all-comm. “We’ll
work as fast we can, but we have to shield the gap from warship scans or
they’ll point and click annihilate us with naval weaponry.”

“There’s a cave-in further back that we’re having to
dig out, so we can’t help here and the Zen’zat are still coming.”

“We’re on it,” the tech promised.

“We’ll get you out,” Esna echoed.

“Hurry,” Rammak said, then he and his battlemap icon
were gone as he retreated up the tunnel.

As they worked the fleet in orbit disengaged from the
fight after more ships on each side were lost, but they transmitted a good view
of what had caused the fissures in the ice. It wasn’t weaponsfire like Esna
thought, but pieces of warships falling down from above and pounding huge
craters, a few of which weren’t that far from here. Luckily none of them had
hit above the tunnel itself, but it looked like a few had in some of the other
tunnel spurs.

Esna didn’t know if anyone was in them or not, but if
it hadn’t been her concern for Rammak pounding through her head her
claustrophobia would have been spiking to new heights now as she helped the
techs with everything they asked, first of which was helping to pry up slabs of
ice that they cut. She and others carried them near to the fissure and stacked
them there until they had a large pile, then they took her cloak off her armor
and cut it up into pieces and wrapped them around a rope that they tied to her weapon
rack so the tether wouldn’t show up on sensors with nothing but ice across the
planet to clash with despite its tiny size.

Once the rope was on she knelt down next to a slab
tipped up on its side and dragged it forward until she was almost in the crack,
but not quite. There she used a tool they gave her and melted it against the
wall but with it being lower than the ceiling. She did the same thing again on
the other side of the tunnel before giving Esna one over her head and helping
her from behind put it up on top of the two vertical slabs.

The precision measured and cut slab dropped down as
she squatted and it ended up about shoulder height as she dragged it out into
position over top the others, then fused it into place but still not extending out
into the fissure. When she backed out the techs helped her put two more
vertical slabs on top of the flat piece which she climbed up on top of. It took
the Bsidd and their mandibles to help lift the next flat piece up to her, but
with the help she managed to get it up near ceiling height and drag it into
place, but she didn’t fuse it.

Esna pushed it halfway down and accepted another piece
that sat partway on the vertical wall pieces. She fused those two together into
a longer slab then had help pushing it out into the fissure all the way to the
far ice wall and sliding it into the gap that Rammak had poked his head into.

“Got it,” she said, backing up as her feet teetered on
the edge of the mid height platform…where she could see looking down that the fissure
went very deep. Too deep for her to glimpse the bottom of.

“Next wall,” the techs said, giving her a vertical
piece that she then slid up and into the gap on the left, then followed by
another on the right. Once those were fused into place she backed out and the
techs began cutting out the mid height floor piece she’d been standing on.

“Well done, Human,” the mechwarrior said.

Esna frowned beneath her helmet at what she’d thought
was also been a Human. “What race are you?”

“Dvapp.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what that is.”

“I can take whatever shape I want. This form fits
inside the standard mechwarrior armor.”

“You what?”

“I can change shape.”

“How?”

The Dvapp took his helmet off and Esna was shocked to
see that he had no face. It was just a lump of white goo that suddenly shot out
of the armor like a snake and pooled on the floor…then it rose up and took on a
texture that looked like hard packed sand as it expanded into a much larger
biped form.

“Wow,” she said, looking up at him.

“He’s rare,” a Kiritas said as the Dvapp stretched out
an arm-like tendril and grasped another slab of ice and took it out of the
hands of the two techs bringing it up to the main pile from their ‘dig site’
further down the tunnel. The tendril literally melted around it, then the Dvapp
picked it up and reached it all the way past Esna to where another tech took it
and laid it against the wall. “The Dvapp aren’t part of Star Force.”

“I am,” the mechwarrior said as he oozed back inside
his armor and resealed the helmet. “My race was attacked by the V’kit’no’sat
even though we didn’t assist in the war. Our mere association with Star Force
was enough to make us a target. Those who survived were evacuated to the Rim
Region and we’ve rebuilt there, but rather than fight they cower behind Star
Force’s protection. I and a few others do not and have joined the empire that
saved our race not once, but twice.”

“Are you made of ice?”

“Crystal, more or less,” he said as the other techs
continued to cut away at the central slab with others being stacked nearby to
add to the impromptu tunnel extension.

“Does crystal get cold?”

“Not like you, no. But this armor has its advantages.”

“Does crystal show up on sensors? It looks like ice.”

“More like stone,” the Protovic said passing by with
another slab. “Never punch a Dvapp with a bare hand.”

“Wasn’t planning to, but good to know,” she said,
looking back at the Dvapp who was only a few inches taller than her. “Really?”

“I can be liquid or solid, and very solid if given a
moment to prepare.”

“So it makes you hard to beat up?”

“Very.”

“So why a mechwarrior and not a Commando?”

“I can’t use my body like I need to inside armor, and
without armor I have less defense and no shields. I can cause Zen’zat trouble,
but every shot I take destroys part of my body. Humans and others have far more
experience as a biped than I do, so it’s best if I leave armored hand to hand
combat to you. Inside a mech I am mentally linked to it, and because I do not
have a base form it is easier for me to adapt to various types of mech bodies
that don’t match your physiology.”

“Makes sense,” Esna said impressed, though still
mildly confused. “What do you eat?”

“Not what you do, but Star Force makes foodstuffs for
a wide range of races.”

“Do you have enough with us?”

“Yes, some was taken from the base, but I also have
the emergency rations I take into my mech.”

“You’re not wearing a pack.”

“I don’t need to,” he said, retracting his right glove
and oozing out his ‘hand.’ Esna looked and didn’t see anything, then his arm
material flattened out and several canisters became visible inside.

“You can store it inside your body?”

“Weapons too, but this armor is confining,” he said as
he pulled himself back together.

“That is so cool. Is there anything else I can do?”

“Just get ready to haul chunks of ice away when we get
to cutting the far wall,” the Kiritas said. “Until then just…chill.”

Esna smiled and stepped aside to make more room for
the few remaining slabs to pass, then after that most of the techs were
standing around as well while a floor and additional walls were added out
across the gap and then reinforced. When the digging time came the techs made a
line and started walking in a circuit with each being handed a small chunk of
ice. Esna joined them and got hers as she stepped up onto the higher floor slab
then walked it back down the tunnel a ways where she stacked it into the
closest hole in the floor where the slabs had been cut from, then repeated the
process again and again as they chewed out material from the far side angling up
to the now higher opposite tunnel floor.

17

Esna waited silently for the most part as a handful of
techs worked to cut stairs into the ice while a few others hauled off the
smaller bits, leaving her and most of the group with nothing to do until a call
for assistance came and suddenly she and several others were ordered via
battlemap up the partial stairs and into the outstretched hands of Rammak who
helped lift them up the rest of the slick incline.

“What do they need?” Esna asked, waiting with him as
the others passed by.

“Your weapon. Come with me,” Rammak said, running off
with Esna hurrying to keep pace as they worked their way back down the tunnel
and through a cave-in that was now a much smaller tunnel with shoveled debris
clogging the sides for several dozen meters given that they didn’t have
anywhere else to stash it. Eventually they came up on a group of people still
digging out with only a narrow, arm-sized hole punched through to the far side.

“Trade me,” a Human Commando came up to Esna and said,
pointing at her papow and offering his own rifle.

“Ok,” Esna said, unslinging it and exchanging the
weapon that the Commando then took up to the small gap and shoved through to
someone on the other side.

“What’s going on?”

“The Zen’zat are almost here and we’ve got 6 people on
the far side of this cave-in. They’re holding at the outpost further back, but
if we can’t get them dug out in time they’re going to have to fight and your
weapon will buy them some more time.”

“Glad you gave it to me then. Where do you want me?”
she asked as one of the warriors shot the pile of ice and blasted it into bits
and mist that washed back over her and Rammak, then the diggers got back to
work on the dislodged pieces that they were kicking back towards her.

“Carry,” Rammak said, picking up one in each of his
four hands and dragging the ice chunks away from the bottleneck. Esna picked up
one with both hands and followed him, then realized there was already a low
wall being built about shin high further back that he was adding to.

“Fallback point?”

“The ice will take a shot or two that our shields
won’t have to. Stack it with as few gaps as possible.”

“How far away are they?” she said, putting her piece
in place as Rammak walked back to get more.

“A few minutes out. We…” he said as weaponsfire was
heard on the other side, and not a single shot busting up ice either. The
Archon and others were firing on the Viks.

Esna grabbed and carried a few more pieces as her
exchanged rifle dangled from her rack that was no longer covered with a cloak,
then as the weaponsfire continued she stopped just short of picking up another
piece of ice as a bare Human hand came through the cave-in fingers first with
flows of water pouring out around it.

She stood there awe struck as the hand moved sideways
then down, cutting out the ice around the narrow hole with intense heat that
eventually dropped the half cylinder to the melty ground underneath it once the
Archon finished his circuit, then a rippling of the air came through the
central hole and hit her in the chest, pushing her back through the tunnel and
onto her butt as the plug of ice followed.

Rammak stopped it from sliding into her with a massive
foot as Tyrenk’s arm pulled back and was quickly
covered with armor as he disappeared from view on the other side. Not two
seconds later a Bsidd Commando tucked down its appendages and slid through the
expanded gap followed by the rest of the cut off Star Force warriors as Rammak
grabbed Esna up in his arms and carried her back down the tunnel faster than
she could have possibly run.

Accepting the fact that she was baggage right now,
Esna didn’t complain or thrash around, merely waiting until he’d let her down
but that didn’t happen until they got back to the fissure where he rolled her
across the last few meters of ice and down the stairs as he turned around and
headed back.

“Run,” he said, and Esna knew better than to disobey.
If she stuck around then she would slow everyone else down, so the best thing
she could do was put distance between herself and the Zen’zat while the others
bought time for her and the techs to get away.

To that end she took off sprinting as fast as she
could in the low gravity without bouncing off the walls. That meant she
actually had to apply less muscle
power and that counter intuitive approach was hard to maintain when she could
still faintly hear the sound of weaponsfire behind her. Esna slipped up once,
hitting her head on the ceiling when her foot didn’t land right on one of the
floor grooves and she ended up jumping up more than ahead, but she managed to
land on her feet and keep going with no one else in sight for some 15 minutes
until a speeder gratuitously appeared…and nearly ran her over.

She ducked to the side wall as it braked to a stop
only 3 meters ahead, not thinking it could slow down that fast, though it was empty save for the pilot.

“Get on,” the Kiritas said, and when she did so it
accelerated towards the fighting, ironically making all the running she’d just
done pointless, but it got them up to the warriors still fighting and falling
back in time for them to jump on, including Rammak, who picked up Esna again
and held her in his arms.

“What are you…”

“We need to make room,” he said as a few others
crammed onboard, some laying down on top of each other in order to stack
everyone in, for the other speeders were already carrying the techs off down
the tunnel and this was the only one left available.

“Ok,” she said from her awkward perch up near the
tunnel ceiling, then the speeder started to move away as another Commando
caught up and jumped on, but the Archon wasn’t there.

“Where’s Tyrenk?” she asked.

“Buying us time,” Rammak said as they creeped down the
tunnel further and further away until Esna finally saw a golden dot of armor in
the distance sprinting towards them. He looked like he was almost laying flat to the ground in order to get enough leverage
on the ice, but however he was managing it he was moving at them so fast it
only took a minute for him to catch up as a few long range shots from the Zen’zat
flew into the speeder and hit a shield covering the front of it, but one went
higher and got over it with the green energy orb slamming into Esna’s helmet.

Rammak immediately swung her off to the side and out
of the firing line as much as he could, but there wasn’t much room to wiggle
around. Other than being freaked out Esna wasn’t hurt, for her shields had
caught it all, but before she could comment the Archon got to them and jumped
on, taking Rammak’s hand and hanging onto the side with a foot on the floor as
his only attachment point, for there was no other room left.

The speeder then accelerated hard, with both Tyrenk
and Esna nearly scraping the walls on either side as Rammak held them both on
with his four arms.

“That was close,” Esna commented, but the Archon used
his free hand to pull a rifle off his back and carefully swing it underneath
him so he wouldn’t lose it on impact with the ice wall inches beyond his left
shoulder. He aimed the weapon behind them and Esna suddenly got worried.

“Pursuit?” Rammak asked, not seeing anything.

“There are Ari’tat back there.”

“What’s that mean?” Esna asked, looking back from her
Calavari perch.

“They’re smaller than Zen’zat and use their own
personal speeders to travel large distances. Smaller than this one, so they can
move through the tunnels.”

“They’re easy to kill,” the Archon added, “but
dangerous in numbers. Right now we’re all tucked on this speeder…”

“You expect them to travel faster?”

“Yes,” he answered the Calavari. “And to scout. Get
ready to drop me.”

“What?” Esna asked.

“They can’t carry Zen’zat on their speeders, so it’ll
just be them and we can’t have them following us. All it’ll take is one good
position trace and they can shoot us with orbital bombardment. I’ll kill
whatever is coming and you can send the speeder back for me later.”

“Don’t you want help?”

“She does have spirit. I’ll give her that,” Tyrenk said to Rammak, “but she doesn’t understand the gold
armor yet. Educate her,” he said, then without a word Rammak threw him behind
the bike and into the middle of the tunnel where he quickly began to shrink in
size, but Esna didn’t see him fall. It looked like he was floating behind them
as he disappeared in the distance when the tunnel curved ever so slightly.

“What was that?” she demanded.

“He’s a Titan, Esna. His armor color denotes his
rank.”

“That’s not one of their higher ranks.”

“It puts him at a far higher level than anyone else
here. It also means he has Jumat.”

“What’s that?”

“The very powerful psionic that he knocked you down
with earlier. In an enclosed space like this, he is very hard to get to, and if
he has to run he can probably outrun the Zen’zat given his shorter height in
these tunnels. If anyone stayed with him they’d be a hindrance in this
situation.”

“Why didn’t you wait for him to tell you to let him
go?”

“He did telepathically.”

“Oh,” she said, having forgotten to turn her own
countermeasures off that blocked telepathy and other enemy psionics. Rammak had
made her get into the habit of turning them on whenever the Zen’zat were nearby
and it hadn’t occurred to her that he’d been doing the same thing. She guessed
the Archon could tell when it was on or not, because it would stop his…

“Wait. How did he knock me down with my
countermeasures on?”

“They don’t work on physical collisions, that’s what
your shields and armor are for.”

“He used energy to knock the ice out didn’t he?”

“Concussive energy. It hits things like a physical
punch. The countermeasures are for other types of attacks. You’d need a
dampening field to stop Jumat from moving you, and there’s no way you could fit
that into armor.”

“What’s a dampening field?”

“The same thing warships use to keep ships from
ramming into them, but it takes a whole lot of power and has to expand around
them like a balloon.”

“What’s a balloon?”

“A gas bag.”

“You mean a hapbit?”

“Yes,” Rammak said, laughing.

“What’s funny?”

“That word. I know where it comes from.”

“And?”

“Some balloons were used as decoration at parties by
Humans and other civilians picked up the practice and their holidays. One is
called a birthday.”

“What’s that?”

“The yearly anniversary of the day you were born on.
Most Calavari don’t celebrate it.”

“I don’t know what day I was born on. Neither did
Teren.”

“The people that celebrate that day would say ‘Happy
Birthday’ as a greeting to that person whenever they saw them and since
balloons were used, somehow after Mace fell ‘happy birthday’ became ‘hapbit’ and people thought that meant ‘balloon’ rather than
the holiday.”

“Seriously?” the Protovic right behind Rammak asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s hilarious.”

“Without proper instruction many things got skewed
after Mace was destroyed.”

“Is he going to be ok?” Esna asked, worried about
Tyrenk.

“Archons are survivors,” the Protovic said
confidently. “And if it’s Ari’tat that come after him, he’ll own them.”

“How long before the next speeder gets back?”

“I don’t know. Probably a few hours.”

“Can you hold me that long?” she asked Rammak.

“I have plenty of arms to rotate between,” he said
sarcastically.

“Right. We lost a lot of crates, didn’t we?”

“Some. But there will be more stashed ahead.”

“Until we run out of tunnel,” she argued.

“We have a long way to go before that and there are Star
Force ships in orbit. They’ll find a way to get us out if we can stay alive.”

“I hope so,” Esna said, looking down the tunnel as it
stretched out behind them at dizzying speed.

Three weeks
later…

A cloaked V’kit’no’sat Kaeper-class scout starship was parked in orbit around the Orlero System’s star as more and more allied and enemy
warships came out of their jumps periodically and traveled to the ice world
where the captured Star Force base was drawing the heretics out of their hiding
places across the Devastation Zone so they could fight them in the open.
Gradual increases in their own ship count had been arranged previously, but
this Kret’net Kaeper was sitting here undetected for one reason and one reason
only.

The communication system that the V’kit’no’sat used to
link their empire together didn’t extend out here, so communication from star
to star had to be accomplished via courier. Already a few other single ships
had been dispatched to send word that the battle had begun, but this Kaeper was
left waiting for the big Star Force fleet to arrive that the Era’tran had
predicted would be lurking somewhere nearby.

And now it did, with an unending stream of jumpships
coming into the system and laying claim to a portion of stellar orbit as they
looked to be angling out in a patrol pattern that would allow them to ambush
incoming ships and essentially blockade the system. The Kaeper knew it had to
leave before then, but managed to stay around long enough to catalog over 8,000
jumpships arriving along with a slew of command ships, one of which was plainly
identified as the Excalibur.

The Era’tran had hoped that ship would arrive here,
for it meant a trailblazer came with it. Now it was up to the Kaeper to get the
nearby star system where the bulk of the newly arrived V’kit’no’sat fleet
waited and signal them to come at once. They had to get here before the survivors
from the base could be rescued else the Star Force fleet would run and scatter
again. The V’kit’no’sat ships here could do the same and survive, but it was
only while the ice planet was held hostage could they force Star Force’s into
giving them the fight they wanted away from the strong planetary defenses along
the current border.

Here would be an even fight, and an even fight meant a
V’kit’no’sat advantage.

The Kaeper moved to its outgoing jumpline before the
Star Force ships could congregate there to great extent and went low into the
gravity well, so deep that the stellar radiation was eating away at the shields
at an alarming rate, but the more gravity a ship had to push off against the
faster it could travel and the destination system had been chosen because it
also had a larger than average star on which to brake against, meaning even
less time spent in interstellar space for the courier ship.

When it was in position the Kaeper activated its
gravity drives and was flung away from the star like a slingshot so fast the
nearby Star Force ships had no chance of intercepting. They would have had to
get to it before it got on the jumpline, but with its cloaking shield that
wasn’t going to happen anyway, though the other V’kit’no’sat ships in the
system were more or less trapped here now, or would be a few hours later when
the Star Force fleet wrapped itself around the entire star and poached the jumplines to the nearby stars.

But the plan wasn’t for them to escape, the plan was
to draw them in and now Star Force had their big fleet here. It wasn’t all
their ships, but it was enough to severely weaken them should they be
destroyed, and if they could do that it would give the V’kit’no’sat a better
chance of taking Grid Point Stargate…the #1 obstacle
to pushing into Star Force’s remaining territory and a location they guarded
more heavily than any other system on the border.

Destroy the Excalibur’s
fleet here and it wouldn’t be able to come to Stargate’s
aid when that assault was launched. Fail to pin and fight the Star Force fleet
here and victory at the Grid Point was not guaranteed.

So it was with all haste that the Kaeper traveled at
maximum possible speed to get to the waiting V’kit’no’sat armada before time
ran out and the pesky vermin escaped their grasp once again.

18

July 30, 4812

Orlero System
(Devastation Zone)

Tauntaun

Esna hopped off the speeder again, glad to finally
stretch her legs after standing for hours in the same place as her group of
evacuees retreated to yet another minor outpost further up the line. It was
nothing new, just some hollowed out ice chambers with stacks of supplies inside
that would replace and augment what they were carrying with them ahead of the
inevitable V’kit’no’sat pursuit.

Help was so close now with the Star Force fleet now
owning the system, but the V’kit’no’sat had gotten enough reinforcements in
that they were able to cover the surface base with ground troops now that they
had control of Star Force’s own planetary defense shield. It was active and
protecting those underneath, including many of their warships that were not
going to let any Star Force ships get to the surface to rescue those in the
tunnels.

Already there had been fight, with the V’kit’no’sat
warships staying under the cover of the shield and firing out well past Esna’s
location and downing Star Force drone warships that tried to get in close, but
the overlapping firepower was too much. If the drones couldn’t surround the
enemy warships then they couldn’t damage them enough to take them down, and
with the energy shield covering their top sides and the ground their
undersides, there just wasn’t enough room to fight. The V’kit’no’sat were dug
in and all but daring Star Force to attack the base directly.

Rammak had told her that a trailblazer was now in the
system, and not just any trailblazer, it was ‘The Admiral’ himself. He wasn’t
actually an Admiral, for he outranked all of them, but the nickname had stuck
from long ago due to his insane naval skills. His name was Paul-024 and even
now his fleet of drones was chasing the orbital V’kit’no’sat warships, long
gone from their blockade position, and fighting them everywhere in the system
they could catch and engage, but the Viks were losing ships and had nowhere to
go, for Star Force now controlled stellar orbit and were ambushing any
additional V’kit’no’sat ships arriving, forcing any survivors to either leave
or flee elsewhere in the system to join the group already on the run.

But those closest were turtled up inside, around, and
overtop the captured Star Force base and essentially holding Esna and the
others fleeing through the tunnels hostage. They were beyond the edge of the
defense shield now, but not outside of weapons range. If they took an offshoot
that led to the surface they’d be shot dead as soon as they were spotted, with the
smoking hulks of drones dotting the snowy landscape underscoring that fact.

Every time one hit nearby there was another quake, but
fortunately the trailblazer was keeping them back far enough so that they
wouldn’t fall on the evacuees…even though he didn’t know exactly where they
were. Tyrenk said he had enough firepower in orbit to take down the base’s
shields and obliterate it along with the V’kit’no’sat, but he wasn’t going to
do that without knowing the position of the survivors…and if the survivors sent
even a single comm message out the nearby Vik ships could pinpoint their
location, zip out over top of them for a few minutes and end them with
saturation bombardment that would liquefy a square kilometer of ice before the
drones could do them much damage.

And the orbiting ships couldn’t fire down on the Viks
unless their targeting was very good, for if they missed they’d hit the
surface. That was why there were thousands of drones hugging the surface in a
giant wide ring around the base so they could shoot laterally and not endanger
the evacuees in the tunnels or even the base. Paul had no idea where any of
them were, and for all he knew some of them were being kept captive inside.

But Rammak said he’d find a way. The question was if
he’d find it before they ran out of tunnel and the Zen’zat caught up with them.

Esna walked off to a corner of one of the ice chambers
and flopped down on the ground, just happy to get off her feet for a moment
despite the low gravity. She wiggled her arms and legs as her armor slid over
the ice, then kicked her legs up and into a handstand position that she held
for a few seconds before losing balance.

Someone caught her leg and kept her upright, but it
wasn’t Rammak. She saw a golden boot beside her and realized it was the Archon.

“Stiff?” he asked.

“Yes. Am I in your way?”

“No. Just wondering how you’re holding up?”

“Sick of living inside armor,” she said, still upside
down.

“I was told you spent most of your life inside armor
to hide your Human physiology?”

“Only in public…and most of the rest of the time.
Guess I just got used to living in a Star Force colony where I didn’t have to.”

“Still haven’t learned to do a proper handstand?”

“Never had the low gravity to learn.”

“Sure you did. We have training chambers where you can
adjust the gravity levels up and down as much as you want.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Headrush?”

“A little.”

“It helps to look at something. Closing your eyes is
harder.”

“Thanks. I’ll remember that. Can I come down now?”

The Archon laughed, then Esna felt her leg get tugged.
Her body swung completely around in his grip and suddenly found herself landing
feet down on the ice next to him. “Better?”

“Thanks.”

“If you need a workout, better get some tunnel running
in now. I’m not sure how long we’ll be able to stay here.”

“How far back are they?”

“Pav’ley has rear guard. If
they come up on us he’ll give us a heads up, but the first wave of techs are
going to leave in a few minutes. We can’t risk getting bunched up again.”

“Which way are we going…at the next divide?”

“We’re heading to the hangar.”

Esna frowned. “We’ll be able to fly away?”

“Not with the Vik ships nearby. We’d need a
distraction or pickup, but if we do run out of tunnel I’d rather have a ship
we’d at least have a chance of escaping in rather than being cornered and
having to fight it out.”

“What about the others?”

“There are only a few ships stashed out here. Most
can’t get to them. Paul has to win this before they can be rescued, but at
least the V’kit’no’sat can’t decide to just bombard everything within a few
hundred miles of the base. We own orbit now.”

“Are you sure they can’t track us when we get signals
from the fleet?”

“Totally. We’re all in passive reception mode save for
short range battlemap and comms. You’d have to be
within a few hundred meters to pick them up through the ice. As long as we stay
silent they can’t find us down here except by following the tunnels. We’re in a
tough situation, but we do have a few advantages. How much running have you
been doing?”

“Half an hour a day to keep from going crazy.”

“Take an hour, half out half back. We should be ok for
that long. If not I’ll be out ahead of you getting my own run in, so you’ll
have friends on both sides.”

“How far are you going?”

“Not enough. I haven’t gotten a good workout in in
over a month. You have no idea what that does to an Archon.”

“Are you ok?”

“Annoyed more than anything, but staying alive is the
priority. Making us miss workouts is just another reason to hate the Viks.
Remember that if they catch up to us and you need to
shoot them.”

“I lost my big gun.”

“I know. It was put to good use though. Get some water
in you then get running.”

“As ordered,” Esna said with a bit of humor as she ran
off to one of the tents.

“Is that one ok?” a Bsidd asked the Archon.

“I’m not sure. I’ve never met a Human who didn’t come
through a maturia, but she hasn’t shown a quitting attitude yet.”

“And if she does?”

“Stun her and put her with the crates. We’re not
leaving anyone behind.”

Paul-024 was taking an easy run on the Excalibur’s halo track doing 17 mph as
he watched the ongoing fleet movements across the star system via a simple
headband that allowed him to mentally tap into the battlemap system as he ran.
Over the course of his 1,788 year life he’d run more miles than he could tally
and had gotten so efficient at it he could almost sleep while running, so
monitoring the condition of the ongoing conflict and issuing a few commands
wasn’t taxing in the least for the Archon as he got in a light workout not knowing
when the next major engagement was going to go down.

The majority of his fleet was in orbit around the
star, with his flagship and others stationed over Tauntaun and holding
planetary orbit while others were busy chasing and harassing V’kit’no’sat ships
across the system as they continued to evade without trying to make a stellar
run and break through the thin blockade. He was pretty sure he knew the reason
for that, which was why he had the bulk of his ships on the jumplines.

But at the moment his primary concern was the
survivors of the base attack. He’d committed a lot of drones to continuous
hover within the atmosphere so they could fire underneath the base defense
shield and now had a standoff with the V’kit’no’sat ships defending from
underneath it. Neither was within range of one another around the curve of the
planet, but if the V’kit’no’sat ships eased out just a bit they’d get hit by
ranged attacks…and vice versa.

Paul knew the layout of the ice tunnels, and the
furthest endpoints were now in the ‘safe’ territory that could not be targeted
directly from underneath the base defense shield. They’d have to move over the
surface a bit to get the right angle, especially if they had to rise to get
over some of the ice canyons, and if they did that they’d expose themselves to
the full firepower of the drones that were lined up and just waiting to hammer
the larger V’kit’no’sat warships with massed fire…not to mention those further
up in orbit that did not have current lines of attack on the ships beneath the
shield.

If they came out from beneath it he’d be in the bad
position of having to shoot down and potentially hit their own people beneath
the ice…or kill a ship and have it land on them…but Paul had them
positioned there to prevent the base shield from gaining elevation. If it did
the curve of the planet would matter less and the protected ships would gain
more range out to the ring of drones and any survivors that made their way to
the surface in between.

But if they raised the shields to a higher elevation
then the low orbit warships Paul had standing by would be able to get an angle
underneath the shields to target the V’kit’no’sat warships near the base. He
was fairly certain that anyone who got out of the base would not be within a
few kilometers of it, and any inside would be protected from falling debris, so
there was a free fire zone he had tagged around the base if the shields did
rise in elevation and he figured the V’kit’no’sat knew it, for they were
keeping the shields as low as they could with their massive ships pancaked
between it and the surface.

With them there Paul couldn’t launch a surface attack
with mechs and aerial craft…they’d get annihilated against naval power. Right
now the V’kit’no’sat owned that little bit of territory within the system, but
Paul had them bottled up now. If the survivors could make their way beyond the
curve of the planet then he could find a way to get them out, though it still
wouldn’t be easy. The V’kit’no’sat ships were so large one or two could zip out
from under the shield and into firing position, shoot off a round or two
killing the survivors, then duck back under the shield before it took enough
damage to be disabled.

And Paul knew they’d do it just to spite Star Force,
so the trailblazer had to have assets ready to protect the survivors. Mechs
would be better than people on foot, but a single shot from a warship could
destroy one if the battery was big enough, and the same thing went for
dropships. He could send some equipment down to the surface, but doing so would
alert the V’kit’no’sat to the location of the endpoints of the tunnels, at
which point they could just connect the dots and guestimate where they were
running and start blasting away in the area with saturation attacks.

And a good number of the 48 V’kit’no’sat warships
stuffed underneath the shield were Hjar’at, and they had even more of a
tendency for brute force attacks than the rest of the V’kit’no’sat did. They
wouldn’t hesitate to take damage in order to accomplish their mission, and if
they ignored the drones and went straight for the survivors Paul knew their
chances of killing them were high…so he was going to have to get innovative.

But there was no rush. Right now this was a game of
chess and he had the V’kit’no’sat pinned down from assisting the subsurface
Zen’zat and any other smaller races that could fit in the tunnels. There were
still holes bored down through the ice where low flying gunships were moving
back and forth delivering supplies and additional troops from the base now that
Paul had severed some of the tunnels that appeared to already have been
compromised. That denied the enemy the ability to move through them for
resupply, but he felt the gunship movements were also about saving time, for
the furthest navally bored holes in the ice were over a hundred miles from the
base.

The curve of the planet was protecting them against
fire from the drones as long as they buzzed the surface, but that didn’t stop
Paul’s people from taking occasion shots at them when they got beyond the
shield. Star Force knew where the tunnels were and where not to shoot, and
without giving away their location with too many shots they kept a few energy
weapons poking shallow holes in the ice of their own as they aimed for the
gunships.

They’d got 4 so far with another 7 damaged, but the
Zen’zat pilots were now flying extremely fast and evasive, making the long
range shots difficult despite the speed of the beam weapons. Trying to hit them
with kinetics or missiles would have been pointless, for the V’kit’no’sat’s own
ships could intercept them before they hit, but the low powered Ardent beams
traveled at a rate of 1.7 lightspeed, making them
very good for target shooting at a range of 200 or so miles.

The problem was that the gunships were resistant to
sensors. They weren’t cloaked, but they didn’t offer a lot of reflectivity.
Star Force sensors were good, so they were still being detected, but there were
also some scattering countermeasures in place. So instead of a faint dot for
the guns to target there was a widespread dot giving the impression that each
gunship was many times wider than it actually was and the dot was constantly
changing shape so Paul’s gunners couldn’t just target the center.

They hit each dot with every shot thanks to their
prime position parked in low orbit with no resistance, but where the gunship
was under each shot was unknown and that shell game was how most of the
gunships were getting through. The upside was that no more warships were coming
out to drill new holes down to tunnel depth, meaning that if the survivors were
continuing to move further away from the base then the V’kit’no’sat infantry
was going to have to be traveling through the tunnels on foot or speeder over
great distance, and he knew Zen’zat didn’t use speeders. The gunships were the
smallest craft they typically carried, so they were probably having to run
through the tunnels in pursuit.

Paul wished he had a battlemap link to what was going
on down there, but he knew they had to stay comm silent else they’d reveal
their position. Star Force comms were very hard to
pick up by the enemy, but since the technology they were based on had been
created by the V’kit’no’sat this enemy would not be so easily fooled. Pump out
enough signal strength and they’d just lock their weapons onto their location
and use the signal as a homing beacon.

If they had a warship sitting overhead that would be
game over, which was why Paul was adamant about maintaining orbital control now
that he was here. He couldn’t directly save the survivors on the planet, not
yet anyway, but he was going to make sure they at least had a fighting chance.

And if the V’kit’no’sat decided to move outside the
shield and start tearing up the ice, he wasn’t going to hold back. If the
survivors didn’t make it out, then neither would the V’kit’no’sat down there no
matter how hard they ran or fought. Paul had enough firepower sitting in orbit
to make sure of that, and if needed he’d blow through the base energy shield to
do it.

Right now it was a temporary standoff while whatever
was going on in the tunnels continued, but Paul knew it wouldn’t last. The
V’kit’no’sat were clinging to this base because they wanted it for some reason.
Normally they’d just want to scratch it off their map, but they’d taken it intact
and were adamant about holding it.

That told Paul more ships would be on the way and they
were just playing for time until they arrived…which was why he’d stationed most
of his fleet around the star. He’d already intercepted and destroyed/chased off
some smaller arriving V’kit’no’sat ships but nothing yet of the size he expected
them to bring. As much as the enemy wanted to think of the Devastation Zone as
their territory, it wasn’t. It was a neutral zone where both sides had large
fleets moving around looking for an opportunity to exploit.

There was no way they thought this small a ship count
could permanently hold this location. A short term operation…yes. Enough to
stop Paul’s fleet, let alone the others…no. The V’kit’no’sat were up to
something bigger, and he just hoped whatever stalling game they were playing
would allow at least some of the survivors to make it out.

But until something happened Paul had workouts to do,
so he kept running while monitoring until he got 20 miles in then headed over
to the Sanctum’s sparring chambers and obstacle courses. He wasn’t going to let
his fitness sink while this stalemate continued, but he was going to stay
mentally linked to the battlemap at all times so that when something did happen
there wouldn’t be any lag in his response.

The V’kit’no’sat were too good to give any advantages
to, and even while his subordinate Archons and Admirals were damn good, he was
better and Paul knew that he always had to keep himself in the loop…which is
why he even slept with the headband on in standby mode. The first sign of any
trouble and he’d be altered immediately with the ability to send orders back
within a fraction of a second, though for a full scale battle immersion he’d
need to get to a command nexus. The mobile interlink would suffice for the few
minutes it took him to get there, and he’d gotten well accustomed to running
through the ship’s corridors when needed to cut down the time even further.

Right now though there was no activity reported around
the star, and until there was he didn’t expect the V’kit’no’sat huddled up
under the defense shield to do anything more than wait…aside from whatever
pursuit was taking place down within the ice.

19

July 31, 4812

Orlero System
(Devastation Zone)

Tauntaun

Esna was riding on the back of the speeder with
Rammak, bored and stiff from another long trip with the warriors as they moved
to yet another outpost, but fortunately the one ahead was a full variety with
artificial gravity, heated air, and perimeter defenses. Right now though there
wasn’t much to do, so she was watching the feeds being transmitted down through
the ice from the fleet in orbit, but not much was happening there either.

The only movement was the piece of the V’kit’no’sat
fleet that had run off to an empty part of the system with Star Force chasing.
They kept moving around not wanting a fight and had been doing so for a while
now, but suddenly she saw that reverse and the V’kit’no’sat hold position
waiting for Star Force to catch up with them.

She didn’t understand what was going on up until they
started firing at each other…and not some brief scuffle. They were closing to
pointblank range and slugging it out.

It was far from the planet she was on, but it was
still frightening, though it wasn’t until she belatedly noticed the plethora of
warnings popping up around that star that her breath caught in her throat. The
fight she had been watching was small compared to the onslaught that was
happening with the main Star Force fleet as it was attacking and trying to stop
a slew of V’kit’no’sat ships coming in along a single jumpline.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“The Viks are dropping the hammer,” a Commando ahead
of her said, “and they’re trying to do it coming through the front door.”

“They’re losing so many ships,” a Protovic commented.

“It’s a force push,” Tyrenk said, being the only
person here with naval credentials, given the fact that Archons were not only
badass hand to hand fighters. They had to be skilled in all 5 divisions of Star
Force warfare and their ranks were determined by their lowest skillset. “We
were set up on all the jumplines, but it will take
time to pull the other fleets around to this one. During that time the
V’kit’no’sat will push in as many ships as they can and attempt to get a
foothold, which they’re doing now.”

“How can they navigate that close?” Rammak asked.

“We’ve seen it done before,” the Archon explained, “in
smaller numbers. Usually they have the upper hand and don’t need to stack like
this. I’ve never heard of this density and volume seen in an interstellar jump.
They either knew what we had here or they didn’t and were coming in as hard as
they could. We’re doing a lot of damage right now, but in a few more minutes
it’s going to shift and they’re going to control the jumppoint.”

“And then?” Esna asked.

“Then it’s a slugging match. I’m glad we’ve got Paul
up there.”

“He’s leaving orbit,” someone else mentioned.

“There’s too much lag out here. He has to get close
enough to link in with the fleet in realtime, then
the V’kit’no’sat are going to get their asses kicked in the short term. Long
term I don’t know. We’ll have to see how many ships are coming. I expect a
lot.”

“How does this affect us?” Esna asked.

“Depends. If they can…Rammak!” Tyrenk said, suddenly
jumping off the side of the speeder. Once he got outside the air shield the
drag pushed him back past the end but Rammak reached out and gave him an arm to
grab onto, then swung the Archon in behind him as the Commandos in front of
Esna moved up. She did too, with Rammak spinning around and putting his back to
her.

“What’s going on?” she asked, but Rammak only replied
by pulling out multiple weapons and firing back down the tunnel.

Esna was facing the wrong way and couldn’t see, but
she could looking through Rammak’s point of view so she did that, getting a pop
up screen on her HUD that showed his weaponsfire zipping off into the distance
as a contact showed up on the battlemap that Esna hadn’t noticed before. She
had been watching what was in orbit while the Archon had been more focused on
what was behind them.

And it wasn’t just one, it was two now as they caught
up…whatever they were.

A flash of green zipped past Esna and the speeder
entirely on her right side, at which point she realized that they were being
fired on as well.

“Ari’tat,” Rammak announced. “Esna, get to the front.”

“How?” she asked as the Commando in front of her
reached back and grabbed her arm, then pivoted around her mass to exchange
positions with her. The next one did the same, and the next and next all the way
up to the pilot’s station.

“Stay tucked in behind me,” he said, “and hold onto my
butt. We’re about to slow down real fast.”

“Ok,” she said, planting both her hands on the side of
his hips as she pressed herself up against his pack while the weaponsfire behind
them increased. Suddenly the Archon dropped off the back as they continued on,
then about three seconds later they started slowing down fast.

“Stay with the speeder, Esna,” Rammak said as the rest
of them jumped off when it came to a stop. The pilot put a hand on her shoulder
and hopped off for a step to get by her, then came back up and took position on
the opposite pilots station dragging the control bar.

Esna moved to avoid it as she watched Rammak run off
with the others as the Archon fought in the distance. She switched to his
viewpoint and suddenly saw several small floating devices with even tinier
long-necked bipeds riding in them. Both them and their
rides were firing on the Archon as he got up to and made physical contact with
one, grabbing it and throwing it off its perch as he soaked up shots with his
shields. Then he hid behind the captured speeder a bit and came out in a surge
of speed that Esna found impossible.

He was on the second one before it could pull back,
but the others didn’t make the same mistake. They zoomed back down the tunnel
and out of range, firing as they did and racking up hits on him as the little
Ari’tat from the first speeder continued to fire tiny shots up from the ground
where it stood about knee height to the Archon.

Suddenly Tyrenk turned around and ran back towards the
approaching Commandos, kicking the Ari’tat further down the tunnel with him
before pounding it with multiple rifle shots. The little thing couldn’t take
much damage and against an Archon 1v1 it had no chance. He killed it then
ducked to the ground as the Commandos opened fire and filled the top of the
tunnel with shots that forced the Ari’tat back, taking down one of their
speeders but the Archon didn’t go after it. He pulled back as his almost depleted
shields began recharging and met up with the Commandos who were also met by the
speeder Esna was on as it followed them.

They all boarded within a few seconds as the pilot
switched ends again and Esna got sandwiched between armored bodies. More shots
were fired as they accelerated away, but on her battlemap the Ari’tat kept so far back that most shots from either side were
hitting the tunnel walls as much as their targets.

Esna wondered what would happen if they managed to hit
the speeder enough times but she didn’t say anything. Sometimes she wondered if
she should speak at all, but right now they had better things to do than answer
her questions and that didn’t end for more than an hour later when they neared
the outpost and several turrets flashed by that were popping out of the walls.
Esna also saw a shield pop up across the tunnel, taking a few shots as the
speeder moved on and the Ari’tat finally fell back, but she had a feeling they
wouldn’t go far.

Their speeder kept moving rapidly all the way up to
the doors, then decelerated hard to keep from ramming the base. The techs
already inside opened up for them but everyone hopped off before they got to
the door, leaving only Esna and the pilot onboard as he drove them inside. She
hopped off there as he moved the speeder into the garage then ran back to find
Rammak, but Tyrenk spoke to everyone through the comms
before she could get to him.

“We’re moving out now. One speeder is going all the
way to the end of the line, the other two shuffle to a fallback point 10
minutes out. I’m staying here and holding this base as long as we can. After it
falls I expect them to be all over us. Their main fleet is here and I think
their patience with us is over. First speeder carries no cargo. The other two
same old same old. Pilots go on the first with as many techs as you can squeeze
in. Get the ship ready but do nothing to betray your position. My gut says the
Zen’zat are going to run us into the ground and we need an out. Make sure we
have it. I don’t want to have to go topside if we can manage…” he said,
hesitating.

“What?” a Protovic asked.

“A contingency plan. Get that first speeder moving in
60 seconds. I don’t think we have a lot of time.”

No one hesitated or asked additional questions, with
all the techs moving around rapidly grabbing gear and crates, the latter of
which they began loading up on the other speeders while techs in envirosuits packed
themselves onto the foremost one out of sight from where Esna was jogging over
to Rammak as he came in from the tunnel.

“You’re going with the second ground to the end of the
line,” the Calavari said firmly. “But first we have to get everyone to the
staging point. You’ll be the last to leave before us. Until then I want you
monitoring the surface feeds. If any of the warships underneath the shield move
out, tell us immediately even if we’re busy. Especially if we’re busy.”

“So we’re splitting up?”

“We’re heading to the same hangar, but you can’t stay
this far back.”

“A while back you said you couldn’t either. Guess you’re
more useful than you thought.”

“I have size that the Humans and Protovic lack. At the
least I can soak up some shots meant for them.”

“Liar.”

Rammak huffed. “Very well. I may do more than that.”

“You better,” she said, punching him in the gut and
not moving his Calavari mass a millimeter as she clamped down on her emotions
and moved into a nearby room where there was an empty holotable.
Learning from the others earlier, she activated it and linked in the surface
feeds from the warships still there making sure the Viks under the shield
couldn’t come out and cause the mayhem that Rammak was worried about.

Esna retracted her helmet but kept the rest of her
armor on as she got a big map over the table showing the base and everything
around it, including their position, but nothing from the other survivors who
were still hiding from detection the best they could. She didn’t know how many
of them were left, or if the two other splinter groups they’d tried to distract
the Zen’zat from had made it, but she really doubted her group were the only
ones left.

She hoped not, thinking of the thousands of people she
had been living with and learning so much from. If anyone didn’t deserve this
it was them, and only now was Esna beginning to realize how bad the V’kit’no’sat
were and what Rammak must have gone through on Forso.
She’d thought she’d had it bad before, but Star Force had it worse. Far worse.

But thankfully they were more able than she was to
fight back against these bastards.

She had no doubt that Tyrenk would keep the Ari’tat
and Zen’zat back long enough to get everyone past this outpost, but if a ship
flew overhead and fired down on their now marked position they might not be
able to run fast enough to avoid the blast, so Esna understood her task. If the
others were fighting at the time they might not notice immediately and those
few seconds, if it happened, could be critical.

Esna brought up a smaller second map to the side that
showed the outpost and the two tunnel sections around it so she could keep up with
what was going on without losing focus on her primary task. Already she could
see the Ari’tat keeping their distance but chipping away at the perimeter
defenses as they took turns firing from their little egg-like speeders, each
soaking up a bit of damage on their shields then falling back before they could
be destroyed. The weapons on them didn’t look to be any bigger than what the
Zen’zat were carrying in their armor, but that was a bad guess based off the
size of the flashes. Esna had no idea what potency they all were.

Before she knew it the two speeders were back and
picking up more crates and some techs and were off again to the staging point
that should be far enough away to be safe from a warship attack on the outpost.
Depending on how much cargo they took she probably wouldn’t have to leave on
the next trip, but it wasn’t going to be long until she had to leave Rammak
again.

Before the speeders made it back the first of the
Zen’zat showed up, running at insane speed through the tunnel and slowing down
to take up position behind the 14 Ari’tat that were left. They were moving at
Archon speeds and now Esna was worried about the others. If any of the groups
didn’t have access to speeders…

Esna made sure to keep an eye on the surface, for that
was her one job here, but she saw several of the smaller Commandos move out
into the tunnel and lay down on their bellies with longer weapons that she
hadn’t seen them use before. They must have been carrying them in some of the
crates, but it wasn’t the size of them that spooked her. It was the fact that
the outpost door was shut behind the three of them, leaving them alone in the
tunnel with only the perimeter defenses.

Esna saw them start to fire with their sniper rifles
less than a minute later and she realized what they were doing. The tunnel
defenses were only going to slow down the Viks if they were careful and
deliberate in eliminating them. But if they also had to deal with the sniper
shots their job became that much harder, especially when one of the Ari’tat
speeders exploded under a combined salvo of turret shots and the three snipers
all targeting it at the same time. Its rider fell to the ground intact and
scurried off, taking a sniper shot on its shields and surviving, but its speedy
ride would not be chasing them onwards past this point.

The Zen’zat quickly switched places with the Ari’tat,
preserving their chasing speed and taking the turret shots themselves as Esna
realized there were dozens of them showing up and probably even more coming
beyond the outpost’s sensing range. They had an army chasing them, and no
matter how good the Archon and the Commandos were she realized they didn’t
stand a chance fighting that many.

She took a close look at the warships parked
underneath the shield. They hadn’t twitched yet and she hoped they wouldn’t at
all, for her and Rammak’s only chance of surviving this was to run to the end
of the tunnel with the ship hangar. If it was the size that the Mavericks had,
and that was only a guess, but if it was, their only hope was to get off this
planet before those warships came out and swatted them out of the sky.

And to do it before the army of Zen’zat either overran
them or pushed them into a last stand at the end of one of the few tunnel
branches left ahead.

20

Esna ducked as a blast hit the ice above her head and
dropped half the ceiling down beside her. Fortunately the cave-in wasn’t very
deep, but a few pieces still hit her in the shoulder as they shot out faster
than they otherwise would have in the low gravity. The expanding gasses from
the vaporized ice shoved her into the wall and she bounced off it as she ran
for the speeder Rammak had just sent her too.

He’d been holding her just inside the garage as the
Zen’zat had breached the base and were fighting the Archon and other Commandos
inside, but now that the speeder had arrived back he released her to go and she
sprinted to catch up to the already full craft as the rest of the techs and few
mechwarriors were shuffling around onboard to make room for her, but she didn’t
make it before Rammak was lit up with energy blasts.

Esna turned at the sound, seeing him get hit while
shooting back, then two Zen’zat came out into the garage. One kept shooting him
while the other turned and headed toward Esna and the speeder…but Rammak jumped
him and both of them smashed into the side of the tunnel as Esna pulled out her
rifle and started shooting at the other.

A few shots hit, then she got blanketed with green
energy orbs that sucked down her shield strength as the Zen’zat ran towards
her. Esna knew she couldn’t outrun him, so she held her ground and pumped as
many shots into his black/green armor as she could before he landed a single
punch/shot into her helmet and snapped her head under heels with the blow, then
punched her in the back as she floated upside down in the middle of the tunnel.

Esna flew further down the hall, catching a glimpse of
the speeder zipping off. They didn’t have any Commandos onboard, just techs in
envirosuits with no psionic countermeasures, and there was no point in them
sticking around to die along with her when all the Zen’zat had to do was reach
inside their chests and crush their internal organs with their powers. Yet the
sight of them running still caught her by surprise just before she landed face
down and skidding on the ridged tunnel floor.

She got her fingers into that groove and stopped
herself, taking a few more shots to her armor that no longer was shielded, then
the Zen’zat got knocked the other way, leaving her alive and her armor
unpenetrated. When Esna looked up and got a knee underneath her chest she was
that the huge enemy warrior had been rammed by the Scionate mechwarrior that
must have jumped off the speeder…but the Zen’zat was still flying backwards
down the hallway towards the golden armor of the Archon that had apparently also
grabbed him with his powers.

He was so much smaller than the Zen’zat that Esna didn’t
understand what happened next, but the bigger enemy got bounced around the
tunnel as the two exchanged punches, kicks, and pointblank energy blasts that
left the Zen’zat falling to the floor and the Archon running back into the base
past Rammak…who was limping towards her.

“Thank you,” Esna told the Scionate as she rushed past
him, but one of Rammak’s four arms pointed the other way as he managed a hop
that turned into a run inside his white armor that now had plenty of scorch
marks covering it.

“Going,” Esna said, not sure if his comm was
working…or maybe it was hers that got hit. Either way he was telling her to
run, so she turned and moved as fast as she could, seeing the slightly melty
spot on her chest that didn’t want to flex as much as it had before. It wasn’t
too bad though, especially since she had to do the stupid hop/step in the low
gravity that required her to hold back effort anyway.

“Can you hear me?” Rammak asked on audio as he
suddenly caught up behind her

“Yes.”

“Try your comm only.”

Esna shut her audio transmitter off. “Can you hear
me?”

When he didn’t respond she assumed it was her armor
that was damaged and turned her external audio back on. “It’s not working.”

“How’s your battlemap?”

“I can still see it.”

“Do you see my waypoint?” he asked as they continued
to run.

A little marker popped up in the tunnel ahead of them.
“Yep.”

“Get there then stop and dig in. The speeder will meet
us there, but we need to provide as much cover fire for the others as we can.”

“What happened to the turrets on this side?”

“Control panel got hit. Keep going, I’ll catch up,” he
said, sliding to a stop next to one of the hidden turrets still safely tucked
inside the wall.

“Jump on,” the mechwarrior said, with Esna easily
launching onto the quadruped’s back and laying down in a bear hug as it ran her
down the tunnel as Rammak went through a lengthy comm identifier process before
he could use the manual override that required him to be within 5 meters of the
turret. He hadn’t done this in a long time, but it wasn’t something one forgot
after seeing how useful the things were.

A few seconds later he got it and the ice nearby
popped out and fell to the ground as the head of the turret peeked into view
and an energy shield snapped over it. He confirmed it was set to non-Star Force
signatures then took off after Esna again but stopped for one more turret at
the end of the field and manually activated it as well.

Past that he head after the Human and Scionate and trailed
behind them until they got to the waypoint he put down, then they stopped and
looked back not seeing anyone in the tunnel after Rammak got to them but with
the curve of it preventing them from actually seeing the base. That didn’t stop
their battlemap from connecting through all the turrets so they could see the
dots on the map of all the Zen’zat in the base and the warriors holding
there…with the Archon’s dot moving around erratically.

“I don’t have a weapon,” the Scionate warned, “but
I’ll do what I can.”

“Take mine Esna offered, holding out her pistol then
realizing that he didn’t have the hands to use it.”

“I require special weapons that attach to my armor,
but we don’t typically wear them in the mechs. I didn’t have time to grab one
on the way out of the base.”

“What about the crates?”

“Replacement power packs, but no actual weapons.”

“That’s dumb,” Esna said, putting her pistol back on
her rack.

“Not when they’re part of your armor,” the Scionate
said. “I wear this in the cockpit so I can survive after a defeat, not fight
hand to hand.

“Is your armor psionic shielded?” Rammak asked.

“Limited duration, but yes.”

“You’re on retrieval detail.”

“Understood,” the Scionate said, circling around
behind the Calavari as he looked at Esna.

“Lay down,” Rammak ordered, “and aim steady. Don’t
fire if you risk hitting one of us. Shoot wide, then if you miss you’ll either
miss clean or hit your target. Even if you hit nothing we need to discourage
pursuit of the injured.”

Esna glanced at Rammak’s chest as she scrambled to get
her rifle out and lay down, then froze as she saw orange blood seeping out onto
his white armor.

“You’re hit.”

“They are light and will close,” he said, with Esna walking
around him and seeing two more spots where the Zen’zat’s shots got all the way
through his armor.

“What about the cold?”

“I’ll survive. Focus. We have to hold this position
until the speeder gets back,” he said as his first turret started firing. Esna
dropped to the ground along with Rammak and together they blocked off most of
the floor but made for much smaller targets as two Commandos came into view
near the turret, one a Protovic and the other a Bsidd that was being
carried/dragged as a few scattered shots hit the Bsidd. Esna thought she saw a
shield flash but she couldn’t be sure.

“He’s holding to the left side of the hallway. Send
your shots to the right,” Rammak said as the Scionate jumped over their heads
and ran towards the pair.

“Ok,” she said as not one, but two Zen’zat ran into
view soaking up turret hits in order to get to the fleeing troops. Rammak
opened fire a moment before Esna did and he had two weapons to her one, meaning
they sent three lines of shots down the tunnel landing a few shots on Zen’zat
armor that the turret had already stripped the shields off of. The second
turret was also landing a few shots, but the armor on the Zen’zat was so good
Esna didn’t think any of them got through before he was up on top of the two
Commandos.

“Stay,” Rammak ordered, getting up and sprinting ahead
as the Protovic and Zen’zat wrestled around on top of the Bsidd that appeared
to be unconscious. The Calavari fired a few shots as he went, but the turret
was silent, operating on safety protocols that had its target too close to a
friendly.

Esna didn’t have those protocols, but she couldn’t get
a clear shot either but she did snap a few off further down the tunnel when she
could at the other Zen’zat that was beating the first turret into a pulp hand to
hand and looking like he had miscalculated its defenses. If she could just hit
him once or twice it might be enough to…

A flash of vaporizing armor hit the same time she
pulled the trigger, making her think it was her when it was really another
Commando coming up behind the Zen’zat who then turned and headed back, at which
point two more Zen’zat appeared with the Commando. Esna ignored them as Rammak
got to the first Zen’zat, trying to get a shot…

Esna pulled the trigger three times as Rammak grabbed
on with his four arms and threw the Zen’zat back towards Esna, clearing her for
the shot if she was good enough to take it. She tried regardless, aiming to the
right like he’d suggested, and only got one hit on the Zen’zat before it shot
Rammak again and then the Protovic rammed him into the tunnel wall opposite the
unmoving Bsidd that the Scionate was now dragging away. Esna tried to find
another opening but none arose as most of the warriors in the base now
evacuated down the tunnel and headed towards them.

Esna knew they’d finish off these few Zen’zat when
they got here, if only Rammak could hang on a little later. Even damaged the
Zen’zat weapons were bad and the Calavari’s big mass was soaking up a lot of…

Suddenly the Protovic dove the Zen’zat again and Esna
saw him punch into a wound on his armor as they grappled, then a shower of
electricity covered them both for a couple of seconds, after which the Protovic
rose and the Zen’zat didn’t for a moment, during which the two Commandos
finished him off with a slew of pointblank shots.

Esna didn’t know what just happened, but there was so
much more going on that it didn’t matter as Rammak put some extra shots into
the Zen’zat to make sure it stayed dead then headed back towards her while the
Protovic turned and went to help with the other Zen’zat as the closest turret
continued peppering them when it had a clean line of fire. The other turret was
already smoking junk.

Esna got off a couple more shots when she felt she
could before Rammak got to them.

“Is he alive?”

“Barely,” the Scionate said as both sets of Calavari arms
pulled out weapons. Rammak stepped over top of Esna and straddled her in order
to leave the left side of the tunnel open.

“Stay down.”

“You’re worse,” she said, seeing a few bits of blood
drip and then freeze on contact with the ice beside her.

“You know I can take a beating.”

“I still don’t like it.”

“Better me than you. Keep looking for open shots.
There are more wounded coming.”

“How did those Zen’zat slip through?”

“They saw weak targets and went after them. There are
too many too keep track of, but in the tunnel they all have to come the same
direction.”

“Warships are still staying put,” Esna said after a
quick alternate view of the battlemap.

“They won’t shoot the Zen’zat. Keep your eyes on them,”
Rammak said, firing off a string of shots near the top of the tunnel that
zipped over the shorter heads of a couple of Humans further down that were
dragging two other Commandos each in the low gravity as easily as if they were
duffle bags. They got to the waypoint a little bit later and dumped their
passengers behind the Bsidd.

“How long till the speeder?” one of them asked.

“Several minutes. We have to hold here.”

“No shit,” the Human said, dropping down and laying next to Esna with only Rammak’s leg in between them.
“How are your shields?”

“Low.”

“Then why are you standing?”

“Where do you want me?”

“On the bottom, other side.”

Rammak stepped away and landed with a thud on his
chest as the Commando next to Esna rolled up on top of her.

“Stay still and focus ahead,” he told her. “If I’m on
top they can only hit you in the arms, head, and shoulders. Shift your shields
to focus there.”

“Alright,” Esna said, trying to look ahead and work
through her HUD’s menus at the same time while the other Command perched on top
of Rammak, leaving a gap in the tunnel between the two pairs. She barely found
the proper shield settings in time before the other three opened fire on a
Zen’zat trying to run down another pair of Commandos. Those two wisely hit the
ground and flattened out, allowing the foursome to fire at their pursuit while
flipping over and adding their own weaponsfire.

The Zen’zat got too many hits even as she tried to
dodge and her shields disappeared in the blink of an eye. Her armor lasted
longer as the Vik did the only thing she could do…which was to dive on the two
Commandos when she got to them and therefore eliminate the weaponsfire coming
from the living wall that Esna was a part of.

The Commandos knew it too, and as they wrestled the
two of them managed to throw the Zen’zat towards the wall and even while the
Zen’zat kept low the experienced shooters were able to punish her even while
Esna held off pulling the trigger. She couldn’t make that shot and the last
thing she wanted to do was hit and kill one of their own if she missed.

After the Zen’zat was down and staying down, one of
the Commandos didn’t get up and the Scionate darted out and dragged him back up
to the wall, then the Protovic with him came walking through the gap and began
to attend to the wounded as best he could with whatever was in his pack.

A few moments later he squeezed in next to Esna in
what would have been a nightmare for her claustrophobia if the presence of the
armored bodies and weapons surrounding her hadn’t made her feel the safest she
had ever been…plus she was here, fighting rather than running, even if she
didn’t deserve it.

And the last thing she was going to do was let them
down. She might not be a badass Commando, but if she could just keep getting in
a few decent shots that would mean her being here was valuable. To that end she
worked with the others as a few more wounded made their way back just prior to
the main force that included the Archon.

Following him was a tunnel full of Zen’zat that was
being thrown back a bit as the Archon chucked a few explosives that partially
collapsed the tunnel, giving him a chance to sprint ahead and dive over top of
the wall pile that had gotten even thicker with more Commandos being added.

Stuck on the bottom Esna wasn’t removed and she had as
good of a view on what was coming as anyone as the Zen’zat dug through the ice
pile, then were shot as she and those on the right side were able to just get a
few shots around the gentle curve in the tunnel. Some of her shots missed and chipped
out ice there, but ironically that allowed someone else to get another shot off
through her hole, so she didn’t try to aim too well and just kept firing off as
fast as she could.

Her shot counter was descending quickly, but these
Dre’mo’don rifles carried a lot more ammo than the plasma rifle she’d learned
to use back on Forso. Still, she couldn’t get into
her pack for a recharge while being smashed on the bottom of the pile, so when
her counter dipped under 50% she slowed her rate of fire, letting those up top
do most of the long range shooting.

The Zen’zat took damage, a lot of damage, but their
leading troops weren’t stupid. They fell to the ground early, much like Esna
was now, and let those with full shields step over them and take the lead. So what
she and the others were firing into was a moving formation that kept rotating
out and…

Suddenly a missile shot out and into the Zen’zat,
blasting them backward and collapsing the tunnel on top of them.

“Forgot I had that one,” a Bsidd said from behind somewhere.
Esna could tell by the accent.

“Don’t help them dig out,” the Archon added. “But if
you see one pinned take them down before they can rotate. Anyone else thinking
the speeders might have stopped for drivethrough?”

Esna heard a few chuckles, but she didn’t fully
understand what he meant, though she was also wondering how soon they’d be
back, for they weren’t showing on the battlemap yet and up ahead large chunks
of ice began levitating and moving off the pile as the Zen’zat used their
powers to move them, probably by cooperating…then the ice chunks began floating
towards the Star Force formation.

“Oh no you don’t,” one of the Commandos said as they
opened fire and started blasting apart the chunks as at least some of the
Zen’zat tried to rush the living wall behind the impromptu cover.

21

The ice chunks didn’t get far, either being blasted
into steam that filled the hallways and obscured Esna’s view or dropped to the
ground a few seconds later for what reason she didn’t know, but once she switched
her HUD to a different setting the Zen’zat were visible again through the
quickly cooling mist. They had stopped and dropped to the ground, one of which
fired just over the ice and hit Esna in the face with a green orb.

She flinched, but her shields held firm as she fired
back. Meanwhile the rest of the Zen’zat were finishing digging themselves
out…from which came more ice chunks being thrown rather than run up towards the
Star Force Commando wall. Most got knocked down one way or another, but a chunk
hit the Commando above Esna then dropped down in front of her, blocking her
firing line.

She shot it, puffing a huge wave of steam over her and
those nearby, then the rest of the chunk suddenly reversed course and flew out
to hit one of the prone Zen’zat in the head as he was pulled backwards and
under more Zen’zat coming forward to take the hits…but they were suddenly
thrown back along with the mist as a ripple of distortion slammed into them and
physically moved them a few meters, exposing the shieldless
Zen’zat crawling below.

They got hit again and Esna could see a lot of armor
damage to them, but their fellow troops pulled them further back with their
powers and out of range as more Zen’zat came out of the ice pile and got in
front of them. Meanwhile the other Zen’zat ahead were getting chewed up while
doing some shield damage to the Star Force wall but nothing significant.

Slowly the Zen’zat worked their way through the
collapsed bit of tunnel, cycling their wounded back and sending fresh troops
forward to exchange fire with the weakening wall. Esna didn’t take many hits,
but even her shields were down to 54%. Those above her had to be far lower and
she wondered how much longer they could hold when the pressure on top of her
armor disappeared and she suddenly found herself being dragged backwards by her
feet.

When she got outside the wall the hole in front of her
collapsed down with the Commando who had been on top of her taking her place.
She turned around and sat up, looking for who had pulled her out when she
realized the speeders were back, both of them, and the wounded were being
loaded up. Some were walking, others were being carried, and the Protovic who
pointed her to the speeder obviously wanted her to join them.

She didn’t argue, running over and hopping on to the
furthest one that was loading up first, then the backmost
of the Commandos began leaving their support positions and joining her. Once
they pulled off, the wall started to disintegrate as the top individuals began
sliding off while the Archon held position right behind…then she saw a blue
shield pop up over the tunnel and everyone scrambled to get up and back to the
closest speeder.

Esna didn’t see what happened next, for her speeder
took off as soon as it was full, but the last thing she saw was Rammak’s bulk
crawling up off the ground where he had been bottom of the pile…then it was
just ice walls flashing past and she had nothing to look at but her battlemap,
which also cut off as soon as the distance and the curve of the tunnel broke
the connection.

It didn’t take long for them to get to the staging
area where the few Commandos with her got off and a medtech came up to deal
with the wounded. She stepped down too, and it was a good thing she did because
a minute later the speeder took off again, easing through the techs and then
accelerating off into the distance and leaving everyone else ahead of the
Zen’zat but not nearly as far ahead as she would have liked. Still, they were
coming on foot and she’d just ridden a speeder. They had some time.

The second speeder showed up a little later and Rammak
was on it. So was the Archon and Esna knew he would have been the last man out
so she assumed they were all there, though another Bsidd looked like it was
missing one of its mandibles. There was also some purple blood dripping from
the severed point that was itself melty from weaponsfire.

She cringed, not wanting to know how much pain it was
in, but the Bsidd was walking fine on its other mandibles as a medtech got over
to and began to seal up the wound. Rammak passed them by in the narrow tunnel
and eventually got over to her with at least one additional melted spot on his
chest armor.

“You did well.”

“How bad are you?” she asked, not caring about praise
right now.

“Hurt, but still fighting capable. Have you reloaded?”

“Not yet.”

“Do it now. They will be here soon and we have to
move.”

Esna reached back into her pack as she looked around
at everyone else who were more or less standing still. “Why aren’t the techs
moving yet?”

“I don’t know, but…” Rammak said as an explosion ahead
dropped a section of tunnel down blocking the end towards the Zen’zat.

“Get on the speeder.”

“Without you?”

“Hurry. We don’t have time. Give me your rifle.”

“Can you still run?”

“Faster than you. Get on, now.”

“Stay alive,” she said, running up to and hopping on
the other speeder that the techs were piling on in addition to the wounded.
Esna got squeezed on like cargo, but she didn’t mind as much as she did leaving
Rammak, who began running along with the other Commandos and the Scionate as a
group behind the speeder, but they were quickly left behind as the craft zipped
ahead and up to speed within a handful of seconds.

“How far are we moving?” Esna asked.

“All the way,” someone who she couldn’t see said. “So
get comfortable.”

“What about the Commandos and Archon?”

“The first speeder will come back for them whenever it
can.”

“Won’t the Zen’zat catch them first?”

“They just got a head start. They’ll make use of it.”

“Some of them are wounded.”

“They know what they’re doing.”

“Can’t we go part way then send the speeder back for
them? We can run too.”

“I agree, but Archon’s orders. He wants us as far from
the Zen’zat as possible. I guess he thinks they can outrun them.”

Esna didn’t say anything more, but she knew that
Zen’zat were crazy fast. Whether or not Rammak’s head start would be enough she
couldn’t say, even if he wasn’t wounded, and the thought of him falling behind
and getting caught was something she pushed out of mind, trying to think of
something else and focusing on the battlemap information coming down from orbit
and the massive brawl going on up there.

Paul’s mind was interlinked with the battlemap,
connecting him to every ship and crewmember simultaneously. He could see where
they were, what they were doing, and what was being done to them in the way of
battle damage thanks to the insane skill he’d developed using the system over
more than a millennia, as well as his Sav psionic
upgrade that made him even more formidable at this type of oversight and
control.

But the V’kit’no’sat out there also had mental
interface systems that they used, so he didn’t hold any technological
advantage. And when dedicated to the fight, the V’kit’no’sat were willing to
die to achieve victory. That appeared to be the case here, for they were going tooth
and claw into his ships in a way that told the trailblazer that they were here
to force a fight and kill every Star Force ship they could. They weren’t being
cautious or overly clever, they were just hammering now that they had a
situation where they knew Star Force wasn’t going to retreat from.

Paul could fight that way with his drones, for they
were expendable with no crews onboard. He had no problem ordering them to
kamikaze when needed, though the V’kit’no’sat rarely took that approach. Their
ships were so much bigger it wouldn’t make sense, and if they could get up on
top of one of his jumpships they’d just use their superior firepower to tear it
apart. No, ramming was a technique that smaller ships used against larger ones,
and the V’kit’no’sat were not so stupid to use it with valuable crews onboard.

So Paul had a slight advantage there, but at the same
time he had to keep all of his control ships back out of the fight. He often
used them as bait to draw the V’kit’no’sat where he wanted and they were
definitely trying now, though it was more to keep him honest rather than hoping
for an actual intercept. Unless he or his subordinates got sloppy they weren’t
going to catch any of them. Paul knew the V’kit’no’sat’s tricks and technology well
after fighting them for so many centuries, and if they were going to introduce
something new here he’d probably see it coming.

His command ship was a little bit different. Still
small compared to the V’kit’no’sat fleet and even smaller than most of his
jumpships, the Excalibur did not
carry any drones. Nor did this model of command ship carry the standard ground
troop module in the core of the donut-shaped ship that could land itself on a
planet and become an instant battlefort. This model of command ship had that
central plug replaced with additional equipment that kept the warship as a
control station for the drones deployed from other vessels and made it a more
formidable brawler at the same time.

He couldn’t slug it out with the larger V’kit’no’sat
ships for long, but he could do better than the jumpships could and every now
and then he went from being the chased to the chaser, with him diving his command
ship in amongst the drone swarms and using his much heavier weapons to focus on
either an objective or vulnerable target.

The V’kit’no’sat had learned to try and bait command
ships in before, but Paul was too good to fall for those traps. He knew that if
he or his ship was destroyed the rest of the fleet would continue on, for he
was not the only Archon capable of guiding the battle, but he also knew the
V’kit’no’sat would gladly trade one of their ships to eliminate him. That was
why the Excalibur and the jumpships
had dampening shields that could be thrown up in a matter of seconds that would
block and catch any kamikaze ship trying to ram them.

The V’kit’no’sat knew that too, so when an Era’tran Ti’mat-class cruiser that was a touch
smaller than the Excalibur
accelerated into a jump from well back and headed towards Paul’s ship he
immediately reacted. The drones ahead of his ship in an escort ring parted and
his command ship descended rapidly. He had to order all of them to use
jump-scale propulsive thrusts in order to do it and that left them scattered a
bit afterward, but fortunately their capacitors were at full power and they
could all make it out of the way.

The Ti’mat zipped right through the formation and
continued on further out from the star as Paul saw the follow up coming in.
Some 22 other Era’tran ships had made slower microjumps
out towards his position expecting the Ti’mat to have been caught on Paul’s
dampening shields and stopped there…where he expected some type of IDF to have
pinned him in place for the hammer blow that was coming now.

But Paul had seen it coming and dodged it, and with a
simple redirect he sent his command ship away from the attackers with his
escort drones keeping pace all the while bringing another tendril of drones out
from the main group behind the Era’tran…who saw their mistake and made evasive
jumps to get away before Paul’s fleet could get in range and pin them down with interdiction fields.

Disaster avoided, Paul’s maneuver now had those 23
V’kit’no’sat ships out of position and weapons range of the rest of his fleet
as he redirected the drone tendril back into combat. They’d made a small gamble
and lost valuable time for it, but it didn’t surprise the Archon. The Era’tran
were always going after control ships, as if the fact that they continually
eluded capture or destruction was a personal insult.

As for Paul’s momentary distraction from the rest of
the battle, it accounted for nothing because he wasn’t micromanaging much at
the time. His sub fleet commanders, Admirals, and ship Captains were all damned
good at what they did, allowing Paul to focus where he wanted while they
carried out his orders, and the more skilled they were the broader those orders
could be.

Same went for the pilots and gunners on all the
drones. Paul wasn’t telling them where to shoot each time, but he would tag
targets with priorities and they would work out amongst themselves how best to
attack each one, when, and where. Paul could pick out an individual gunner and
even remote control their turret if he wanted, or he could give them specific orders that their Captain or Admiral did not.
The entire battlemap control system made him a god on the battlefield, and
whenever a trailblazer or other highly ranked naval Archon was involved the
entire fleet performed better, but even Paul couldn’t have fought this
V’kit’no’sat fleet on his own. His mind wasn’t powerful enough for that, and it
was the fact that his fleet contained thousands of skilled individuals that he
was able to guide and organize that was the key to their lethal naval power.

They would all do their part. Paul’s was to keep
adjusting strategy to whatever the V’kit’no’sat did…while they were also trying
to adjust to him. He didn’t need to know who their commanders were to face
them, for he was engaged in a massive chess game that said more about their
identities than anything else.

But they were not quite a united fleet. Each race
operated semi-independently and while they could work seamlessly together they
more often than not split up objectives amongst themselves. This scale of a
fight, though, was more of a brawl that looked so chaotic that no one could
straighten it all out.

That was an illusion, however, for Paul had fought
enemies that operated naval combat that way…and cut them into pieces with ease.
A controlling mind overseeing and guiding a mass of ships like this was
necessary for higher level naval combat, and it was an advantage that both Star
Force and the V’kit’no’sat had over other civilizations and races in the galaxy.
And in a fight like this it was a prerequisite, for Star Force was still an
infant compared to the V’kit’no’sat who had been dominating the inner galaxy for
millions of years.

But that dominance was also a disadvantage in that
they only adjusted to the enemy in the rare circumstances where they found
themselves, often temporarily, to be inferior. They almost always dictated the
flow of battle, but Star Force had been born of their legacy and with knowledge
of their strategies, tactics, and technology. Paul had spent almost every year
of his life either preparing to fight them or actually doing so and had helped
the other trailblazers design a navy specifically for that purpose.

The key, he’d learned, was flexibility and not giving
the V’kit’no’sat the fight they wanted. They had a bit of an ego that could be
manipulated at times, but otherwise they were the most deadly and formidable
opponent known in the galaxy. Paul hated them for what they’d done, but there
was always a necessary level of respect for their skills and capabilities.
Without that they’d adapt to you and reassert their dominance in unexpected
ways.

Acknowledge the threat for what it was, learn from
them, and continually try to look for geographical advantages and you could
effectively fight them, but Paul knew better than anyone there was no quick or
easy way to beat the V’kit’no’sat. They were like fighting a hurricane where your first and foremost priority was simply surviving.

But this time Paul did have an advantage in geography,
for he had the star blockaded and the V’kit’no’sat had to bring in ships gradually.
One couldn’t shove a fleet of that magnitude along a jumpline simultaneously,
for it was like a navigation chokepoint that if guarded held great opportunity
or peril, depending on your point of view…and all of which occurred in the
vacuum of space.

Right now Paul had them on the defensive and was
racking up ship kills mightily, but his advantage was thinning with every
additional ship to arrive. They hadn’t all come in together, rather in separate
groups. It was a tactic he’d encountered before to make you think that their
entire fleet had arrived so you would abandon your ambush positions as the
ships already present lured you away so the next group could arrive unchallenged
and easily flank you.

That was why Paul didn’t know if more ships were
coming or not, but he was keeping the V’kit’no’sat bottled up around the
jumppoint and forcing them back against another invisible wall in the vacuum of
space. For if they fled the opposite way they could potentially collide with
any ships on their way into the system.

He didn’t know if there were more coming or if the
V’kit’no’sat simply wanted to fight here because Paul’s fleet was here, but
none of them had broken off to head for the besieged planet or anywhere else in
the system. The only maneuvering involved was between the front and the rear of
the battlefield which saw ships moving around like schools of fish, some
darting in to do damage then swimming away before they could be killed so they
could recharge their shields and head back in again later.

Paul had been involved in prolonged battles that had
taken multiple days to sort themselves out and he expected this one to be
extremely lengthy, for whoever the V’kit’no’sat commander was he was keeping
his ships on a tight leash. They didn’t have a huge advantage here and Paul’s
ship made no attempts to hide its identity, so they knew the trailblazer was
present, and while they were eager to engage his fleet they were doing so with
just enough cautionary aggression to frame this battle in an endurance grind
protocol.

Fortunately the trailblazers had practically invented
that approach to naval warfare to counter the V’kit’no’sat’s technological
dominance that had been all but mitigated in recent years. So even as ships
were being lost on both sides, the majority of the damage being exacted was
going to armor damage and shield depletion, the latter of which could be
continually regenerated so long as the emitters weren’t destroyed or the power
source cut out.

It was like two swordsmen parrying over and over again
looking for an opportunity to strike the other with a killing blow…but while
not being so reckless to expose themselves to one.

Paul and his crew could switch off continuously,
despite the fact that the Archon could go for long periods of time without
sleep, so there wasn’t a fatigue issue there. No, the fatigue issue was the
number of drones being damaged or destroyed, and likewise the V’kit’no’sat
ships. Both sides were being slowly whittled down, and despite the fact that it
looked like Paul had less resources to work with, battles of this size rarely
came down to starting numbers. It was the trend of how much damage you were
doing versus how much you were taking, and so far the computer analysis had
Paul’s fleet ahead by a decent margin.

That said, the V’kit’no’sat had far more tonnage and a
misstep by either side could skew those numbers considerably, so at this point
it was up in the air who could come out on top, with the only certainty being
massive damage to both fleets if they continued to keep up this intense level
of naval combat.

22

August 1, 4812

Orlero System
(Devastation Zone)

Tauntaun

Esna’s speeder came to the end of the tunnel spur the
Archon had directed them down, with the ice suddenly disappearing but normal
gravity didn’t return. Nor did her environmental sensors indicate the
temperature went up. The speeder passed through an artificial doorway and into
a large hangar that immediately sent a wave of relief through her
claustrophobic mind, so much so that she’d forgotten how much she’d clamped
down on those feelings.

The hangar wasn’t part of a base, but just a long box
set down in the ice that was almost on the surface. She hadn’t realized it
during the trip, but the tunnel had been slowly climbing in altitude and
according to her battlemap the hangar roof only had a few dozen meters of ice
covering it.

As the speeder slowed to a stop people began jumping
off and spreading out, but Esna stayed on until her footing was secure then
forced her stiff legs to move in a short hop that took her down to the hangar
deck. The pilot of the speeder also got off, making Esna realize he wasn’t
going back. But that made sense, because they’d passed the other two speeders
going the opposite direction earlier and they had more than enough room to pick
up everyone that was left. Still, the lack of urgency seemed odd given the fact
that their warriors were running on foot to stay ahead of the Zen’zat…or
Ari’tat, if they dared to send them against the Archon again.

Esna disconnected her pack and weapons rack, laying
them on the ground and stretching out a bit as she went through some
calisthenics routines that Rammak had taught her. The size of the hangar was
refreshing, but the sight of the long, giant ship sitting in it caused her
mixed feelings. It stretched at least half a mile long and was of a shape she
didn’t recognize, but the far end was bigger than the front…assuming this was
the front that she was standing under, for the exit had led them right up to it
and most of the ‘expansive’ room to move around was the gap between the hull
and the floor.

Huge landing legs were visible in the distance, as
well as a lowered ramp that probably explained where the rest of the techs
were, but as she looked at it her emotions couldn’t settle on whether it was
their ticket out of here or to a quick death at the hands of a Vik warship, for
as big as it was to her eyes now she knew that compared to what the enemy had
brought this beauty was extremely undersized.

Then again it probably wasn’t for fighting, and if
they could take off all they’d be doing was running with the fleet up there
doing the hard work. Still, with Zen’zat tracking them and no other way out of
this hangar, Esna much preferred having the option to fly out of here rather
than to make this their last stand as probably a lot of other evacuee groups
were having to do…or had they disappeared down tunnels the Zen’zat weren’t
searching while chasing Esna’s group and others?

That had been the plan when her initial group had
split into three, but there was no way of knowing if they’d successfully drawn
them away from the others or not. Given how many Zen’zat seemed to be chasing
them, maybe they had.

Esna hoped so for the others’ sake, but knew that once
the Zen’zat got here the ship would have to leave. Probably before that
actually, because if they found out it was here they might call one of their
warships out or at least alert them to it. Meaning when the hangar opened
they’d be target practice.

With that in mind she picked up her pack and rack and
carried them over to the ramp and headed up inside the ship…where normal
gravity was restored and her legs reminded her how little real work she’d been
doing. She felt so sluggish after having been in low gravity, but the slight
burn in her muscles was a good sign. This ordeal was coming to an end one way
or another and her body was starting to wake up along with her mind now that
she was finally out of those damn tunnels.

As soon as she was up the ramp Esna found herself in a
small room that looked like an entry chamber. It had two doors leading out, one
of which was already open, so she went through it and found herself in a long,
wide corridor that looked like it ran the length of the ship. There was a
single person visible in the distance, then a sound to her right caused her to
spin around and see a Human tech outside his envirosuit. His name was Gustov, if she remember correctly, and though he was
wearing a green uniform instead of an envirosuit as he waved at her.

“Glad you guys made it. How many more are still out
there?”

“The Archon, the Commandos, and the Scionate,” Esna
said, retracting her helmet and getting a taste of the fresh, warm, and clean
air inside the ship. “What can I do to help?”

“How far behind you are they?”

“Hours.”

“Then get yourself cleaned up, some food, and maybe a
nap. We’ve got the ship taken care of, so the only thing you could do is stand
guard at the tunnel entrance, but I don’t see much point. The speeders will be
back before the Zen’zat are, and if they’re coming in hot they’ll let us know.
We’ve got anti-infantry weapons on the underside of the ship ready to target
the tunnel if needed. I’d suggest you get out of that armor and relax a bit. If
we need something we’ll let you know.”

“Alright. Where on the ship do I go?”

“Roam where you like, there aren’t individual
quarters. We have bunkrooms designed to accommodate as many people as possible.
This was designed as an evac ship. Do you have any
injuries that need attending to?”

“No, I’m ok, but there are a lot of hurt Commandos
coming.”

“The medics are dealing with them already.”

“No, I mean in the last group. Rammak was hit in
several places, as were some others.”

“Calavari are hard to kill. They’ve got a lot of
redundancy in terms of organs. We’ve got a regenerator onboard, so as long as
they’re clinging to life we’ll be able to repair them. Come on, I’ll get you
sorted.”

Esna followed Gustov through
a bit of a ship’s tour. It was a lot bigger than the outposts, but nothing like
the Ma’kri she’d been on before. This was tiny in comparison and most of the
ship was work/equipment areas. The living areas were compact and efficiently
designed, but as stated there were no quarters, just rooms full of bunks of
varying sizes. Esna found one of the smaller ones and put her gear inside, then
the tech left her at the shower room where she got out of her armor and cleaned
up quickly.

Putting her somewhat worn but fresh uniform back on
after it also got cleaned, Esna went and stashed her armor beside her bunk then
took a quick nap, intending to be awake before Rammak’s group got here…assuming
they did. But when she settled in to sleep she couldn’t at first, worrying
about the others, then the next thing she remembered was hearing feet stomping
by her as her eyes resisted her mental order to open them.

Esna groggily swiped the sleep out of her eyes and
rolled out of the bunk in time to see a Kiritas coming through.

“Esna. Need your help.”

“What?” she asked, trying to wake up.

“Need more hands. Come,” he said, hop/stepping down
the corridor.

“Do I need my armor?” she asked, standing up.

“No, just your hands.”

“Alright,” she said, hurrying after him and finding
her body still hadn’t readjusted to the normal gravity yet, feeling like she
weighed twice as much as normal but flaking off pounds with every step as she
followed him into one of the engineering sections were several other techs were
busy working. “Is something wrong?”

“Modular equipment. Need to shift. You hold, I work.
Use this,” he said, grabbing a shallow, open topped box and holding it up to
her waist…which was about even with his shoulders.

“Sure. What’s the hurry?”

“Need safer transmitter to contact drones without
V’kit’no’sat knowing. Have parts, but not in correct configuration. Set up for
standard transmission. This will lower range, but allow us to transmit on battlemap
signals.”

“Aren’t we already getting battlemap signals from the
fleet?”

“Those aren’t stealthed. Combat armor is stealthed,
but suffers from short range. Can communicate farther if unstealthed,
but that creates risk. Starships don’t use stealthed signals because nowhere to
hide, but enough redundancy is included in design to allow for adjustment in
cases of special need, such as now.”

“Makes sense. How long will it take?” she asked as the
Kiritas pulled out a palm-sized component from one wall and put it on the tray,
then proceeded to do the same going down the row with such quick movements that
Esna had trouble seeing his hands through the blur.

“Less with more help. We only got order few minutes
ago.”

“Order from who?”

“Archon. They are nearly here.”

“They are? How long did I sleep?”

“Bring,” the Kiritas said when the tray was full, then
he took a handful of components himself down the workspace that was almost too
narrow for her to walk straight on with the wide tray, making her watch her
steps carefully. “Up ladder.”

“I can’t climb with my hands full,” she warned as the
shorter tech scurried up it with his tail disappearing through a hatch, then
his head coming back into view.

“I take tray,” it said, reaching down while its tail
was looped around something out of view to keep it from falling.

“Why do you talk like that?” Esna asked, reaching it
up to him and managing the pass without dumping it all on her head. “The other
Kiritas don’t.”

“Some do. We prefer to use less words. More efficient.
Do you have trouble understanding?”

“I can understand you fine,” she said as the empty
tray came back down and she grabbed it.

“Need more,” the tech said, dropping down and landing
in an easy hop on his long, powerful legs. “You not learn English in Star
Force. You learn different?”

“Some words are different, but most is the same,” she
said as he started pulling out more components and piling up the tray again.

“How? Did you have recordings to learn from?”

“No. I just learned.”

“From what?”

“Everyone else. My father, actually. Then words were a
little different on For…I mean Mace.”

“800 years is long time. Much lost. How language
stayed same is mystery. Must have calibration to keep same.”

“Maybe there was…calibration…on the planet. I lived in
a remote part of it. I couldn’t go far.”

“Why? Hunted?”

“I would have been, but I was told to keep away from
people. It kept me and my brother alive for a long time.”

“Where is your brother?”

“He didn’t make it off the planet. The people killed
him when they found out we were Human. Would have killed me too if Rammak
hadn’t been there at the right time to save me.”

“Did not hear that. You did good to survive. Come,”
the Kiritas said, with Esna following him back to the ladder and passing the
tray up again. They repeated the process dozens of times while talking about a
lot of things, all at the Kiritas’s prompting. In a way it made the time go
fast and they worked their way over what felt like half the ship, mostly by
themselves but in and around the other techs at various points as they were
shifting all kinds of portable modules from place to place.

Esna had no clue what they were doing, but then again
they were techs who trained for this. Combat she had started to understand
thanks to Rammak, but her experience salvaging parts on Forso
didn’t prepare her for this. Every now and then she saw something familiar, but
she still didn’t know what they actually did. The technology she worked with
and understood was far more primitive, a fact that she related to the Kiritas.

“You salvage Calavari tech?”

“What was left of their cities was buried under the
rubble. I found some pieces still intact and sold them with my brother for
extra burgos.”

“Is that currency?”

“Yes.”

“Did they use the salvage?”

“I assume so.”

“So they understood it?”

“Actually, I don’t know. Most of what I traded I never saw again. A few pieces were put to use in the
settlement.”

“Like what?”

“Some power transfer cord. Structural supports. Stuff
I could understand, actually. I wonder what they did with the rest? Could they melt it down?”

“Reuse materials? Some of it, yes. They are here.”

“What?”

“Earpiece. Speeder has arrived with wounded. Go find
your friend.”

“Thank you,” Esna said, running off and finding her
way back to a proper corridor. From there it was easy to get over to the ramp
but she waited there as others were coming up because she didn’t have her armor
on…and it was still frozen in the hangar.

It didn’t take long before Rammak came walking up
heavily, then he raised a lower hand at Esna.

“I’ll live,” he said before she could ask.

“Your armor is covered in blood,” she pointed out.

“Healing patches,” he said, pointing at the spots on
his armor with holes in them. Underneath she could make out tiny spots that
weren’t charred armor or flesh. “I’m better off than I was when the speeder got
to us.”

“How far away are the Zen’zat? Are the Ari’tat
following?”

“We collapsed sections of tunnel on the way, so if
they are they will be delayed. We have a guard post set up in the tunnel to
stop the Ari’tat before they find the hangar, but we can’t stay here long,” he
said as an appendage-short Bsidd walked by him. “I need to get to the med bay.”

“Go,” Esna urged, walking beside the Calavari. “Did
everyone make it?”

“We lost Nar’hem,” he said,
referring to a Protovic Commando. “We have his body, but I don’t think he’s
revivable.”

“What happened?”

“Too much blood lost. He passed out while running and
the Archon carried him back. He tried to heal him but there was too much
damage. Where’s your armor?”

“In my bunk.”

“Get it on,” he said, tossing her empty rifle back to
Esna. “If we can’t take off we have to defend the ship and we’ll need everyone
shooting. Even the techs.”

“Will do. Glad you made it,” she said, placing a bare
hand on his still cold armor as she walked in front of him and down a cross
corridor as she headed back to her bunk. She looked at her hand and saw a
white/orange smear on it. The white was frost from all the ice and it melted
from her body heat within a few seconds. The orange was Rammak’s blood. That
likewise thawed and left her hand streaked with the precious fluid. How much of
it he’d lost she didn’t know, but luckily he had a lot in him.

Apparently the Protovic didn’t. She didn’t know how
close Rammak had been to dying and he probably wasn’t going to tell her, but
judging from the amount of orange on his armor Esna didn’t think he would have
made it if the speeder hadn’t gone back for them.

23

August 2, 4812

Orlero System
(Devastation Zone)

Tauntaun

Two Commandos were stationed down the tunnel and out
of view of the hangar entrance when the V’kit’no’sat caught up to them in the
form of the Ari’tat, who immediately pulled back when the pair of Bsidd opened
fire on them in addition to blocking most of the tunnel with their spindly
masses. The Ari’tat pumped shots into them from their speeders in a standoff
for several seconds before an explosive in the ceiling of the tunnel was
detonated and dropped a wall of ice down into the tunnel between them,
temporarily sealing it off as the two Commandos turned and began to run back
towards the hangar with a skittering of appendages that proved advantageous in
the low gravity.

They reported in as soon as the battlemap signals got
through to the ship and all those onboard, indicating their time was almost up.
The Archon ordered them to fall back completely, with the pair running across
the hangar and up the ramp that closed behind them with everyone else already
onboard. A pair of turrets popped out of the underside of the ship and targeted
the tunnel entrance as an earthquake shook the ice around them.

With Paul having left to stellar orbit to fight the
ongoing naval brawl there, Archon ViLord Chase-571190 was in command of the
fleet at Tauntaun and standing in the command nexus onboard his Warship-class jumpship when the ice over
the hidden hangar began to break apart and raise up. He knew it had been coming
after the ship made discrete contact earlier, but he hadn’t known when exactly.
Apparently the Zen’zat had gotten to them and they had no more time to wait,
which meant he had to cover them as they fled.

Mentally linked to all the ships in orbit and on the
surface, he saw through their sensors as the industrial mole tore through the
ice and the hangar doors opened below, prompting one of the V’kit’no’sat
warships to start moving underneath the defense shield. It was a 12 mile wide
Domjo, meaning he couldn’t kill it very fast even with a slew of orbital
bombardment, but as soon as it left the protection of the shield it got
hammered from above as dozens of Star Force ships let loose on the surface with
every weapon they had.

Similar to the savage orbital bombardment the
V’kit’no’sat unleashed previously, the ice around the ship vaporized on contact
with missed shots, but the Domjo was so big that most hit. The few that didn’t
were not aimed at the tunnels, for Star Force knew where they were, but with
every second that passed the Domjo gained speed heading for the hangar whose
doors hadn’t yet fully opened.

Doing the math was easy, the implications were not,
and Chase knew that unless he delayed the Domjo they’d make the intercept and
just shrug off the damage being done to them. Its shields were still holding
and the few hundred miles to the hangar were clipping off quickly as it
continued to gain speed, dragging a pressure wave of atmosphere with it that
churned up an ice hurricane in its wake.

Smaller such disturbances were also visible following
the tracks of the individual drones that Chase sent racing out from their
patrol ring around the base and in towards the Domjo, exchanging fire as they
quickly came within range of one another but racing to get up to the Domjo and
flying past the hangar as the doors finally cleared. A few of the drones
stopped on the far side, waiting for the elongated evacuation ship to rise up
and blocking the Domjo’s attacks with their shields
and then their armor and mass when those failed.

The drones closer to the Domjo formed a wall, blocking
as many shots as they could and firing back, but the V’kit’no’sat ship just
plowed through them, accepting the loss of shields that cost them even as the
orbital bombardment started to hit their hull and blast plates off at an
alarming rate. Its momentum didn’t slow as it compensated for the kinetic
blocks and continued to fire on the few drones now surrounding the Blockade Runner-class evacuation ship.

Chase manually operated the drones around it, forming
a box that flew in sync with the ship away from the hangar and further around
the curve of the planet while still in the atmosphere. One of the drones was
about to lose engine power, so the Archon dropped it back early and readjusted
the others, flying a new one in and reforming the box as the Domjo continued to
get closer and closer, punching its way through the atmosphere and firing every
weapon it had at the clump of drones that were flying so close together they
might as well have been physically connected.

Once they got far enough around the planet to be out
of firing range of the other V’kit’no’sat ships still under the base shield,
the cube began gaining altitude as yet another of its blocks was blown away by
the massive Domjo that was even now trailing smoke from several wounds that
were adding up as the orbiting fleet sent part of the drones in orbit after it
to add damage while those on the ground reformed the ring, knowing that they
had more people down in the ice to protect from the rest of the ships under the
energy shield.

Chase readjusted the box, peeling the front blocks off
and rotating them around to the back as the Domjo continued to blast away at
the drones, but it couldn’t get through fast enough and the evacuation ship
made it out of the atmosphere…at which point it made an emergency jump away
from the planet and out of firing range.

The Archon blew out a sigh of relief but the Domjo,
now heavily damaged at this point, didn’t give up. It got clear of the drones
and made its own jump, heading off in the direction of the Blockade Runner as
the much smaller ship ran for its life across the star system at a speed that
Chase knew his drones couldn’t match, meaning his part in their escape was now
complete and his duty lay to the rest of the survivors still trapped on the
planet.

Putting a priority protect order marker on the Blockade
Runner within the battlemap, he turned his attention back to the planet while
keeping a mental eye on their progress, though with the increasing lag
resulting from distance and their current speed he could no longer follow their
path in realtime, for at the moment the ship had
disappeared from the battlemap entirely given the fact that it wasn’t carrying
an active transponder and had accelerated faster than the sensors on his ships
could catch up to. When it slowed down again he and the rest of the fleet would
be able to pinpoint it, but for the moment they were running and running hard,
and he wished them well.

Now it was up to him to get the rest of the evacuees
out, and he still didn’t know how many of them down there were still alive or
where exactly they were, but there were another 3 evacuation ships buried under
the ice and he was going to have to prepare a better reception for the next
one, because the V’kit’no’sat would be better prepared the next time one of
them started breaking through the ice on the surface.

He also now had a few less drones to work with, but at
least the Archon had one less warship underneath the shield to worry about.

Esna was sitting at a table with Rammak and several
techs watching a small hologram as their ship pulled out of the atmosphere and
jumped away from the planet. When they eventually got free she slumped back in
her seat, still tired from the normal gravity dragging on her but overly
relieved to be free of that ice planet, those stupid tunnels, and the Zen’zat
chasing them.

“That was close,” a tech noted.

“Very,” another said as they all seemed to relax, but
Rammak hadn’t. He was still watching the hologram intently. Esna didn’t say
anything, choosing to stare with him until her heart seemed to skip a beat when
the Domjo reappeared on their rear sensors.

“They’re still coming,” Rammak said, bringing everyone
else’s attention back to the hologram.

“Why are we that important?” a Kiritas asked.

“We are their prey and we escaped,” Rammak said,
seeing that the ship was closing on them slightly, but wouldn’t be within
weapons range anytime soon as both ships zipped across the system on a heading
that didn’t lead to any planet or the star. It had been a random jump and one
that was going to have to be diverted else they’d eventually drift out of the
system and away from the gravity wells they needed to navigate with. “They took
a lot of damage chasing us, and they intend to finish the task.”

“Will they catch us?” Esna asked.

“I don’t know,” Rammak answered honestly, “but there
are a lot of Star Force ships out there. If we run to them that Domjo isn’t
going to last very long.”

“Where are we headed now?”

A tech adjusted the hologram and plotted their course.
It was a straight line heading nowhere in particular, but after a few seconds
it started to shift ever so slightly in closer to the star.

“Is that the star’s gravity or are we turning?”

“Turning,” Rammak said, “by pulling on the star. I
think we’re headed somewhere in here.”

Esna and the techs saw him point to the massive battle
taking place on one side of stellar orbit, but his thick digit wavered covering
a stretch right next to the battle.

“We can’t fight that ship, so we run to those who
can,” another Kiritas added. “And once we get a proper gravity launch we should
be the faster. Not sure how it’s gaining on us now.”

“Adjusting to our speed and one upping it. Short of a
full power jump Vreen couldn’t prevent that, but we
can increase speed too on our next proper microjump.”

“It’s going to be hours on this track, so there’s no
point in staring at the holo,” a Human by the name of
Tadi said. “We’re out of the worst of it. Time to
sleep or train. At this point we’re just passengers.”

“Agreed,” Rammak said as he stood up. “Esna?”

“Let me guess. Running?”

“Best way to get your legs back to normal. Go wear
yourself out.”

“As ordered,” she said sarcastically. “What about
you?”

“I’ll join you later. I need to do some calisthenics
to work in this new tissue,” he said, referencing the regrowth of the damaged
areas of his body that the ship’s regenerator had recently completed.

“Sore?”

“Not exactly. But with all the low gravity and the
damage my equilibrium is off. I need to reset.”

“You’re not the only one,” a tech added. “That low
gravity has me messed up too.”

“Work on it,” Tadi said.
“Then get some rest. If we’re needed for repair work they know where to find
us.”

With that the hologram on the table was abandoned and
people split up to go wherever to do something. Sitting and watching a slowly
approaching dot while your ship traveled through space was pointless when you
couldn’t do anything about it, despite how counter intuitive that seemed right
now. Part of Esna wanted to watch until they were either caught and killed or
fully got away, but either of those two things didn’t require her attention and
her body did, as did the rest of the makeshift crew.

The ship was small by Star Force standards, but it
wasn’t so small it didn’t have a track. It was a tiny one, only 400 meters long
and a few meters wide in an irregular loop winding between sections of the
ship. She wasn’t the only one there on arrival, seeing a Kiritas come
hop/skipping so fast she just stood there gawking at how he moved.

But then he was past and around the corner out of view,
so she dragged her heavy body out onto the running path and took off slowly,
intent on jogging for a while until she forgot the loping steps of low gravity.
That didn’t happen fast, and by the time Rammak came flying by her later she
hadn’t regained much form but she had picked up her pace a bit. He didn’t stop
to talk, as was normal during workouts because he was so much faster than her,
but he did lap her a few times before she finally called it quits and slumped
to the ground just outside the entrance to the track where she’d started…she
thought. There were several exits and her legs were so dead she might have messed
up the markings but Esna didn’t care.

Her body felt like crap, but she knew she’d be better
for it later and the sitting on the floor was a luxury she was going to give
herself for a few minutes. Actually she gave herself 5 passes for Rammak as he
kept running laps, then she forced herself up and walked across the ship to the
communal showers. Two booths were empty and she grabbed one, glad to be back in
a water shower tube and able to fill it up all the way to her shoulders.

Still alive and kicking and the 2nd Star Force
starship she’d been on after being rescued, except this time she didn’t feel
like an outsider. She might be totally outclassed by those around her, but over
the past few weeks she’d become one of them. A newb to be sure, but now one
with a bit of combat experience against the Zen’zat.

Thinking about that fact made her feel good, as well
as acutely aware of how unready she was to fight them. Hopefully she wouldn’t
see another Zen’zat again within weapons range…at least not until she got the
proper training that would take a couple of centuries.

But right now that didn’t matter. She was alive.
Rammak was alive. And they were out of those ice tunnels. She much preferred
liquid water, and right now was going to soak it up without regard for time
unless someone banged on the door for her to get out. There were other shower
booths and the ship was designed to hold a lot more people than was on it, so
she assumed she wasn’t making anyone wait.

Esna dipped her head under the water and slicked down
her red hair, then touched her forehead to the clear, curved panel and closed
her eyes, letting herself reset as much as she could while her body relearned
normal gravity and a lot of other things. This time, at least, there were no
tears, but she felt thin inside. Stretched from the effort that it took to get
here, but her experience on Forso had helped, for she
had come through this one a lot better.

Rammak was right. Experience was worth more than burgos ever could be.

Paul woke up from 68 minutes of sleep then returned to
the command nexus on the bridge of the Excalibur
and reasserted control of the fleet as it continued to fight the V’kit’no’sat.
Most of the ships weren’t engaged, rather holding position out of weapons range
while pieces of each fleet dove in at each other trying to expose or create a
weakness in a conflict that hadn’t stopped for so much as a minute since their
fleet had arrived. No new ships had come in recently, but the V’kit’no’sat were
still holding onto their jumppoint. Maybe to protect another group coming in
later or just to make Paul think they were, but they hadn’t stopped attacking
when he had pulled his line back a bit in an experiment.

He’d punished them the day before when they pushed a
little too hard, so they might be playing it a little bit more conservative now,
but he suspected there was something else going on here and almost expected
them to get more reinforcements soon. He still had some ships camping the other
jumplines but most were now engaged or standing by
near the battling ships to replace or screen for them when they needed to
withdraw and recharge shields.

As soon as Paul returned to fleet command he
immediately began making small shifts in positioning to set up for another
exploratory push to gage the enemy’s reaction and potentially create an
advantage to exploit, but he was also belatedly aware of the fact that one of
the evacuation ships buried under the ice on Tauntaun had managed to escape. He
got the full replay through the battlemap in a fraction of a second and his Sav-enhanced mind dissected it in under 2, after which he
sent out orders for an intercept with them as they fled, sending a jumpship and
a fleet of drones to a rendezvous point in near the star but away from the main
battle. They’d peel that Domjo off and deal with the few other ships seeming to
drift away from the main fleet.

Paul thought they might go after it as well, but so
far they hadn’t jumped out of support position. They were getting closer to
preferred jumplines in order to go after the Blockade
Runner that wasn’t following any, rather cutting across the system in a huge
arc that they could easily intercept if they picked the right point.

There was no way Paul was going to let that happen, so
he sent some more drones out to either spook them into an early jump or push
them back into the main group…that or they’d be destroyed, for he was sending
more than enough firepower to eliminate them if they held position and decided
to fight it out.

That was just one decision and set of orders he made
in the following minutes out of thousands his well trained
mind was facilitating, as well as having numerous conversations with other
Archons and Admirals through the battlemap connection in the mental shorthand
they’d learned to use long ago. Together, as a unit, they dissected
V’kit’no’sat movements and explored options, with the others taking as much
load off of Paul as they could, knowing that they needed to keep him as fresh
as possible and not let the V’kit’no’sat wear him down, for he was their most
potent weapon within the fleet, and both Star Force and the enemy knew it.

24

When the evacuation ship got near to the other
approaching Star Force ships the crew gathered around various holographic maps
throughout the Blockade Runner and Esna found herself once again looking at
moving dots that quickly grew into starships, one of which was a gigantic
jumpship that was bigger than even the Domjo chasing them. She knew a lot of it
was empty space where the drones would park when not in use and the extra
engines needed to carry them around, but it was still heavily armed and had a
fleet of drones with it as her ship began slowing down for an intercept.

The drones didn’t stay put, they came forward into a
screen that accepted the evacuees and finally seemed to be enough for the Domjo
to give up the pursuit and turn back…but the drones went after it anyway, for
sections of its shields were still down, apparently due to hull damage after
the hours spent in transit had fully recharged the rest of its shields. Esna
watched the dots go chasing as she sagged in relief. They were now rejoined with
the tiny bit of the Star Force fleet and safe from their pursuit…though the
system was still full of V’kit’no’sat.

The Blockade Runner began moving in formation beside
the jumpship that dwarfed it and Esna thought they were going to dock inside
but they never got that close. Instead they held position alongside as both
ships began moving further away from the fighting around the star towards a
jumppoint highlighted on the map, but other than that the pilot and Archon
didn’t say anything to the crew, at least not that she heard. Nobody was
wearing armor onboard, so she assumed there wasn’t some comm that she was
missing.

“What are we doing?” she finally asked to the room as
someone shifted the display to the main battle still ongoing outside of realtime range, but they were getting the constant feeds on
delay none the less.

“Heading for a jumpline out of the system,” a tech
said.

“Why aren’t we getting onboard one of the big ships?”

“Because they’re here to fight,” Rammak explained.
“And we have a ship that can take us out of here.”

“And one with enough speed to outrun most of the
V’kit’no’sat,” a Protovic added.

“That ship chasing us was catching us,” she argued.

“We made an emergency jump out from the planet.
Probably wasn’t full speed. We’ve got so many engines on this ship that with a
head start most of them can’t catch us. They might be able to match speed, but
shouldn’t have enough engine power to run us down. And we just got our head
start and an escort to make sure we keep it. We’re good to go now.”

“Going where? All the way to the border?” Rammak asked
skeptically.

“I doubt it,” he said, his glowing face going blank
for a moment, then his eyes resettled on the Calavari. “We’re heading four
systems away to a rendezvous with another ship that will escort us to another
hidden base. Tyrenk doesn’t know where, but the order came from the
trailblazer.”

“How do you know that?” Esna asked.

“I just asked him.”

“When…oh, wait. You have telepathy too? I thought that
was just the Mavericks.”

“All Protovic pink and above have telepathy, but it’s
not as strong as what the Mavericks have. They have Archon telepathy.”

“Pinks?”

The tech pointed to the green patches of glowing skin
amidst the blue.

“Our base color is blue, and the green is a rank. All
Protovic in the Devastation Zone are green, which is the highest rank. When
we’re younglings we start out with black skin along with the blue, then as we
earn upgrades we gain abilities and the color changes. Pink is the last upgrade
and gives us telepathy, beyond that there are 3 ranks that are skill based but
don’t come with any enhancements. Yellow, Orange, and Green.”

“So your skin is blue with the art on it?”

“It’s not art, it’s my skin. Protovic naturally are
two colored. The patterns just look artistic.”

“When they go aqua you know you can’t wrestle them
anymore,” a Gustov added.

“Why?”

“They get their shock upgrade.”

Esna looked at both of the two Protovic in the room.
“Shock? How many abilities do you have?”

“More than Humans.”

“Not counting Archons,” the tech said in his race’s
defense.

“Obviously,” the Protovic replied as the dots on the
map continued to move in an arc around the star towards their jumppoint that
was maybe an hour or two away.

“Shock to kill or stun?” Esna asked.

“Depends.”

“They have to be charged first,” Rammak explained. “When
they get hit with energy blasts they’re able to absorb a little of it. Helps
reduce damage, but they can also store and use it offensively.”

“So if I hugged you, you could shock and kill me?”
Esna asked with an odd look on her face.

“No,” the Protovic said, laughing. “I don’t carry
enough charge for that. I’d have to take in a lot more than the lights and heat
provide. If I don’t use it, most of it will dissipate slowly. You don’t have to
worry about bumping into me either. It takes a conscious effort to release what
little I have.”

“It’ll still hurt,” Gustov
added.

“Never said it wouldn’t.”

“Wish I had that,” Esna commented.

“I wish I had a protected mind,” the other Protovic
said. “If the Zen’zat got too close they could have made me do whatever they
wanted.”

“Your suits didn’t…”

“They don’t have countermeasures,” Rammak said. “Only
combat armor does.”

“Oh,” she said, realizing how disastrous that could
have been. “How far away do you have to be to be safe?”

“Out of sight.”

“The greater distance the more difficulty the Zen’zat
have,” Rammak explained, knowing this subject matter better than techs did.
“But different Zen’zat have different Ikrid strength levels, so you never know
for sure.”

“Ikrid is the Human telepathy,” the Protovic added.
“That’s what Zen’zat and Mavericks have.”

“What about Protovic Mavericks? Can their minds be…”

“No. They have your immunity. I have the ability to
shock. Feel like trading?”

“Rather have both,” Esna said honestly, drawing a few
laughs.

“Typical Human,” a Kiritas said.

“Indeed,” Rammak added proudly.

“Meaning what?”

“You’re always seeking improvements,” the Kiritas said
as half the eyes in the room were drawn to the holograms as a more significant
fleet movement began to take place.

“What is Paul up to?” someone else asked.

“Winning, I hope,” Gustov
said. “I don’t think we’re going to stick around long enough to find out.”

Esna and Rammak stayed and talked a bit more, then
ended up going their separate ways as the ships continued to head to the
jumppoint. When the time came and the Blockade Runner aligned itself on the
exact corridor that ran between the giant star behind them and the tiny prick
of light in the distance that was their destination, Esna was alone in a small
cargo room half full of unopened crates. She didn’t see the jump, not that
there was much to see from a battlemap perspective anyway, but had she wanted
to she could have been watching the external cameras, for the transition past lightspeed was an interesting little spectacle in and of
itself.

But right now Esna just wanted to get some time alone,
and without a set of quarters to do that in the best she could do was a quiet
corner of the ship where the Human just decided to hang out for a few hours and
think about everything that she had gone through and what it all meant.

Her time on Forso seemed
more like a dream than her past, especially her time spent on Yammar’s farm.
Even her brother seemed distant, though there was a part of that relationship
that she’d never lose connection to.

So much had changed over the past few months. She was
now with other Humans, something she had never expected beyond her brother. Not
only were there Humans, they were Humans with superpowers and an empire full of
a lot of other races, some of which had superpowers of their own.

Not only that, their empire had almost magical
technology and training, along with a wealth of information that she hadn’t
even begun to scratch yet. Her entire world had been turned upside down ever
since her brother had been killed, and this was the second time she had escaped
death…with the help of others. She wasn’t totally helpless, but against the
V’kit’no’sat she could do nothing on her own.

But in stark contrast to that was how much she’d
grown. Not in height, for that hadn’t changed, but she was a different person
now.

No, that wasn’t true. She was still Esna, but Esna had
been ‘upgraded’ considerably. Ignoring all the superbeings
around her and how small she was compared to them, Esna tried to remember back
to Forso and compare to those standards…which weren’t
much. It was a rough survivalist environment with more things going wrong than
right, but there had also been a lot of solitude on that ruined world. Solitude
spent with her brother, yes, but apart from the rest of the limited society
there. It had seemed so big back then, but Star Force dwarfed it so much that
it was making her reevaluate everything.

And what did she find? She wasn’t sure. A new purpose
where before she had had none. That was something important, but that wasn’t
all of it. When Rammak had found her she had been a wreck, but he’d said she
was special and had risked his own life trying to keep her safe. He was still
doing that, but now that she was with Star Force she wasn’t special anymore.
Quite the opposite. Everyone was tolerating her but she really didn’t belong
here.

In Star Force maybe, but not with this group. They
were ‘Clan’ and that meant they were the best of the best. Even Rammak said he
didn’t rank high enough to be assigned to that base and that group of elites.
Esna guessed she felt a little guilty for being baggage they had to carry
around and protect, but down in the tunnels at least she had been able to do
something to help.

Now up here she was totally useless. Even the techs
and warriors had nothing to do right now. Everyone was just waiting as they
traveled through space, and while her thoughts should have been on what was
ahead of her they were stuck in the past.

What had she just witnessed? What were these
V’kit’no’sat? Hearing stories was one thing, but this was so big she couldn’t
understand it all. She felt like a tiny little speck in this huge galaxy and
owed everything to Rammak and Star Force without a way to repay them. They
didn’t need anything from her, but not being able to return the favor just made
her feel even more inconsequential.

Back down on the planet there had at least been an
objective. To survive. That made sense, but now that they were safe again it
was lost and she was just a passenger, going where she didn’t know. Rammak had
told her she could do basically whatever she wanted after she finished her
basic training, but that wasn’t helpful. She didn’t even have a clue what she
should be trying for.

Esna didn’t want to lose Rammak. He was her only
stable point in this crazy life and once they got where they were going they
were going to split up. Her to her training and him to his. How he wasn’t fit
enough she didn’t know, but that’s what he claimed. From what she’d seen he could
hold his own with the other Commandos just fine.

But even if that was true he’d be off to fight
somewhere else and she’d still be parted from him…meaning she had to figure
herself out here and now. Once Rammak was gone she’d have to steer her own course
forward and that thought scared her. Not because she thought she’d be in
danger, but because she simply didn’t know what to do.

Esna flinched when the door opened and the mildly tan
Archon walked in wearing a white uniform with a single golden stripe going down
either side. Other than that it was pure white and gleaming, which fit his
persona perfectly.

“Bored yet?” he asked.

“Just thinking. Am I in your way?” Esna asked,
standing up from the crate that she’d been sitting on.

“I’m here for you, actually?”

“What do you need?”

“Other way around. You weren’t with Rammak and you’re
not running or sleeping, so what are you doing? Thinking about what?”

“Everything. Nothing,” she said, shrugging and sitting
back down.

“Well I am bored, as are most of the others. We can
get some training done, but there’s nothing to do between workouts,” he said,
finding another crate and hopping up on it lithely. “You all healed up?”

“I wasn’t injured this time.”

“That’s right. This is the second time you’ve had
Zen’zat chasing you. Does it get any easier?”

Esna snickered. “No.”

“What was it like back on Mace? Before Rammak found
you.”

“I don’t know how to describe it. I can see it in my
mind, but I’ve changed so much I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Show me,” he said, holding out his bare hand.

“You want to read my mind?”

“Asking. Not ordering. You didn’t strike me as the shy
type.”

“I’ve heard that before. Guys said I didn’t strike
them as the shy type so they just said they wanted to mate with me.”

“And did you?”

“Sure. I hadn’t done it before, but I liked it.”

“Well that’s not what I meant. Sorry. Archons don’t
have sex.”

Esna frowned. “Why not?”

“It causes us to go into a mental mode incompatible
with training and fighting. You have to be willing to face pain in both of those,
whether they be injuries or stress, and pleasure is a completely different
mode. How are your legs doing after all that low gravity?”

“Bad.”

“They’ll readjust. But the low gravity is a lot like
sex. Very easy, even fun to move around in, but when you get used to it you’re
less able to handle normal gravity. Let alone high gravity. We need the
constant challenge to keep us strong and sharp, so we don’t seek pleasure in
ways that will weaken us, so no sex. Occasional flirting, yes. Sex no. On that
note, you are kind of cute. Just for the record.”

“Thanks, but I know I’m not. I saw what the other
girls look like naked…in the showers. I’m not in their league.”

“Fit is sexy. The fitter you get, the hotter you get.
But even now you’re attractive, and if you don’t mind, you look like you could
use a hug and a thorough mind filter.”

“Mind filter?” she asked as he stood up and walked
over beside her.

“You’re trying to think things through. I can help if
I can get inside your head, but it’s your choice.”

“Ok,” she said, holding up her hand. He took it, then
slid up on the crate behind her. Straddling the crate, he wrapped her up in a
hug and pulled her back against his chest with her red hair rubbing the side of
his face.

“This alright?”

“If I lie you’ll know, right?”

“Yep.”

“You feel good.”

“That’s the idea.”

“Do I feel good?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t that weaken you? The pleasure I mean.”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Sex creates a pleasure mode that overrides the rest
of your senses. Holding you doesn’t do that, it just feels good. Taking a nap
after a long workout feels good too. Don’t think we want to feel pain all the
time, because we don’t. We just want to avoid weakness.”

“Does this count as flirting?”

“Could be. Or you could just say it’s a friendly hug.
Labels don’t matter.”

“And you’re doing it to read my mind without making me
nervous.”

“You are nervous, but not for that reason.”

Esna blushed. He really was in her mind.

“Nothing to be ashamed of, youngling. I know I’m hot.”

Esna giggled. “Yes you are.”

“See, you’re better now because you’re not thinking
ahead. You’re living in the moment.”

Esna’s mood soured a bit, but not quite back to where
she had been before the Archon had walked in. “What do you mean?”

“Stop trying to plan out the future. You’re here, now,
so embrace that and learn as you go.”

“I don’t want to lose Rammak,” she said bluntly.

“Friendships are good when they’re an advantage, and
right now it is with the two of you, but you’re going to need to split up
later. If you don’t it will hurt you both.”

“Because I’ll slow him down?”

“And because he’s a cheat for you. He can teach you
things from his experience that you are better off learning on your own. Believe
me, we all prefer to learn from someone wiser than us, but some things are
better learned by failing, adjusting, then getting it right later. If we have
someone guiding us the whole way we never get the failing part.”

“So why didn’t you leave me here alone?”

“Because sometimes when we’re lost we need a helping
hand. We have to make do without if no one is there, but when we can help we
do. You’ve got a lot to learn, but the thing you need to realize is that we all
started off where you are. We were all that weak in the beginning. So don’t
look on us as different, just think of us as having a really big head start.
You can choose to work and train and catch up with us, or you can go civie and have all the sex you want.”

“Not both?”

“No, not both. Not if you want to catch up. If you
don’t care about catching up and just want to improve, then yes. You can have
both, but I know that catching up is important to you.”

“I’m basically helpless right now.”

“You’re not the only one. There are a lot of
younglings in maturia that are less capable than you. They just aren’t here for
you to see. In a way that’s also an advantage, because we’re your norm here,
which is why you feel so out of place, but the longer you stay with us the more
you’ll pick up our mojo.”

“Mojo?”

“Our way of doing things. Our habits. Our
awesomeness.”

“I wish.”

“Why?”

“If there are weaker people in Star Force, I don’t
want to meet them. I want to catch up with you guys.”

“Have you had enough sex to figure out how all your
parts work?”

Esna couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, I think so. But
some of them are requesting your inspection right now.”

“I could oblige, but what I’m going to tell you will
be more helpful. If you want to catch up to us, to join the elite ranks, then
no more sex. No more anything besides training and rest. That’s how you’ll
improve the fastest, if that’s what you want. You can still improve at slower
rates and get to this level, sort of. There’s something special about the way
we do things because we’re totally committed, but as far as strength and speed
are concerned, there are multiple ways to get to my level…and I’m not the strongest
Archon. Middle of the pack, actually.”

“I don’t know how someone could be stronger than you.”

“You need to pay more attention. A lot of those
Zen’zat were.”

“Then why didn’t they kill you?”

“I have psionics they don’t. It’s one big advantage
that Archons have. I have more than any Zen’zat, though the older Zen’zat have
several too. If one of them was in the tunnels none of us would have survived.
Thankfully they weren’t.”

“How does Star Force survive against all that?”

“By earning it. We’ve lost a lot, but we don’t quit
and we keep improving. Knowing what’s out there, is having sex worth it?”

“No, it’s not,” Esna said firmly. “I want to fight.”

“Alright then,” Tyrenk said, kissing her on the side
of her forehead before lifting her up and off the crate. “If that’s the way you
want it, I’ll give you as much of a head start as I can.”

“How?”

“Younglings don’t get to train with Archons, but right
now I’m bored and have nothing else to do on this jump, so your gain. Ready for
some cheating help?”

“Won’t that make me weaker because I’m not learning it
the hard way?”

“There’s plenty of hard stuff for you later. The
biggest lesson is learning to seek it out because it’s valuable, not because
someone led you to it. You’ve already learned that. You want to improve, so I’m
going to help speed you along…if you want. If not, there’s a couple male techs
that I’m sure could help keep you from getting too bored.”

“Really?”

“Like I said, you are cute.”

“Good to know,” she said smiling, but it was a cruel
smile. “But I’ll pass. Teach me what you can.”

Tyrenk pointed to the door and it magically opened for
him. “Let’s go, youngling.”

25

August 5, 4812

Urego System
(Devastation Zone)

Stellar Orbit

The evacuation ship came out of the first leg of its
jump, decelerating into a mass of ships transitioning around the star.
Fortunately they were Star Force ships, all 5,294 jumpships in what was quickly
identified as trailblazer Morgan-063’s fleet. A quick comm confirmed they were
headed for Orlero and the already huge fight going on
there, but that didn’t alter the Blockade Runner’s orders. Their escort wasn’t
amongst them, so they passed each other by transitioning through the system
with the fleet making the jump out a few hours ahead of the evacuation ship.

But they weren’t the only ship in the system. Almost
immediately after the last of Morgan’s fleet departed another faint signature
popped up on the battlemap within the system, not on an incoming jumpline.

“What have we got?” Tyrenk asked when he got to the
bridge.

“Not Star Force and barely registering at all, but
it’s on an intercept course.”

“Show me a layered scan.”

Vreen brought up the little
data they had on the sensor contact and split it into different views, some of
which were not present at all, as if the ship weren’t even there.

“Damn it,” the Archon said as he began pulling up star
charts of varying systems. “Increase speed.”

“You know what that is?”

“It’s V’kit’no’sat. Probably a scout ship trailing
Morgan’s fleet.”

“How can you be sure? The computer can’t identify it?”

“It’s running on a suppression cloak, which means its
invisible at this range to part of the sensors while the rest only return a
faint image. That fingerprint tells me who it is, but not what it is. Take us
to the Narven jumppoint.”

“Narven? That’s out of the
way.”

“If that’s an augmented Kaeper like I’m afraid it is,
it’s faster than us. We won’t be able to make the rendezvous. Get us as much of
a head start as you can.”

“On it,” the Bsidd said, using the gravity drives to
pull laterally as much as they could on the star to kick up their speed as they
headed for a jumppoint even further away than the one they had been headed for.
“We’ll see if they can match. How much firepower does an augmented Kaeper
carry?”

“More than us. The engines are enhanced to complement
the suppression field and allow it to trail ships at a distance and overtake
them mid jump if needed. This one was probably following the trailblazer
without them even knowing it.”

“Then why do we know it?”

“They know they can kill us and aren’t being subtle
about it. When they see us accelerating they’ll probably drop the cloak
altogether. Goose as much of a jump on them as you can.”

“With or without going for max jump speed?”

“If we don’t make it there
first it won’t matter, but save as much as you can.”

“Why the divert?”

“Unless they’re slower than I think or we run across
the some help, we’re going to have to run hard and we can’t do that in vacuum.”

“Then let’s hope they’re not faster,” the Bsidd said
as both it and the Archon studied the tracks privately without informing the
rest of the crew. As expected the cloak dropped on the Kaeper, revealing its
form and amping its speed a little more with the
extra power available. It was Kat’vo, belonging to
the smallest avian race in the V’kit’no’sat based on the 5-pointed ‘X-wing’
hull shape.

Tyrenk waited on the compact
bridge until they finally got to the jumppoint and left the system with the
maximum acceleration possible. It drained their capacitors completely, after
which the power core would begin to refill them as they drifted between stars.
Those capacitors would then deliver the massive power needed to brake the ship
at their destination, but fortunately that star was larger so it wouldn’t take
as much energy thanks to the deeper gravity well.

As soon as they made the jump they lost contact with
the V’kit’no’sat ship and wouldn’t be able to detect it again unless it caught
up to and passed them mid jump. If it was that much faster they were dead on
arrival, for it would be waiting for them on the other end and run them down
shortly thereafter. If it didn’t overtake them, then they wouldn’t know how far
behind it was until it arrived, for the distance between ships with even a
couple of seconds head start was massive at jump speeds.

Right now they had what looked to be 4 or maybe 4.5
hours head start on the Kaeper. If that increased by even a fraction after the
jump they’d be ok. If it decreased by a small amount they could still probably
make it to the rendezvous point.

If it decreased by a lot, as the Archon feared, they’d
never make it and that was why he’d ordered the redirect. To at least give them
a small chance of survival if they were going to get caught.

“So that’s what we’re looking at,” Tyrenk said after
explaining to everyone in a meeting in the cafeteria. “Until we come out of the
jump we won’t know any more.”

“If we have to fight, how long will we last?” the
Scionate mechwarrior asked.

“I’m not sure how strong their shields will be with
the augments, but they’ll have more weaponry than us. They know it too, otherwise
they wouldn’t have come after us. We’re an easy kill if they can catch up, even
if they have to chip away for a while.”

“How does going to Narven
help?”

“If they can catch us there, nothing. But if we can
jump out and get to Chawik, there’s a large planet
with a thick atmosphere. If we can get to it and dive inside, we’ll have better
navigation options. If they catch us in vacuum, we’ll fight but I don’t see how
we can win.”

“How does air help?” a Kiritas asked.

“We have a narrower profile, so less drag. That should
eliminate their speed advantage.”

“So we run laps around the planet until one of us runs
out of fuel?”

“Better than certain death,” the Archon said with a
shrug. “Plus there are some really high mountain ranges. If we can get some
terrain to fly in, that gives us something else to work with.”

“To buy time or to kill them?” a Protovic asked.

“I’d prefer the latter, but I doubt it. We’re stuck
here, so I’m trying to give us as much to work with as possible.”

“Anything we can do to lighten the ship?” a Human tech
asked.

“Not yet. If its hairline then we’ll look at that, but
there’s not enough equipment onboard to change our mass by much…and we might
want to chuck some of that as kinetic weapons in a pinch.”

“Asteroids?” another pilot asked.

“None in Narven without
going way out of our way. The jumppoint for Chawik
will be closer, and the more systems we get through the greater the chance of
running into friendlies.”

“Or more V’kit’no’sat,” a Bsidd added.

“That won’t matter unless they’re more augmented
Kaeper,” Tyrenk said with a confident shake of his head. “We weren’t given an
escort because we can outrun just about everything in the V’kit’no’sat fleet.
It’s just our sucky luck that we happen to run across one of the few as fast as
us.”

“Why are we more valuable than trailing the fleet?”
Rammak asked.

“We’re so hard to find and kill out here they probably
didn’t want to pass up the opportunity.”

“Is there anything we can do to stack our odds?” a
Kiritas asked.

“Not unless you can boost the ship’s capabilities.”

“If it’s going to be a rear catch, we could pull armor
off the front and double up the coverage on the back,” another tech thought out
loud. “It’d be tricky moving the plates, but it’s doable.”

“If they clip our weapons first the armor won’t
matter,” the Archon said as his eyes moved off.

“What?” a Commando asked.

“How much additional structural integrity could you
get me on the forward hull?”

“It’s smaller,” a Kiritas said, trying to work through
whatever Tyrenk was getting at. “We could get triple, maybe quadruple armor
there by exposing other areas. We could also tear out the shield generators
over some of the batteries and double up the ones we expect to get hit first.”

“We don’t have time for all that,” a Bsidd differed.
“We only have a few breather packs. Not enough for all the techs.”

“I can help from the inside,” Tyrenk offered, “but
prioritize the strengthening of the bow. I need as much kinetic punch as
possible. Weapons enhancements are a bonus if there’s extra time, which I
doubt.”

“How much strengthening?”

“Enough to survive a collision…that will snap them in
half.”

Esna sucked in a quick breath, not having understood a
lot of what they were talking about, but she understood that and exchanged
glances with Rammak, who seemed to agree with the Archon as he nodded his
approval.

“The planet’s habitable?” a Protovic asked.

“Jungle climate, 1.3 gravity, and most of it
mountainous.”

“Any outposts?”

“Not to my knowledge, but there might be a dead drop.
Trouble is that I don’t know where it would be if it’s there.”

“Dead drop?” a mechwarrior asked.

“Habitable planets sometimes have caches of emergency
supplies stashed away,” the Archon explained. “But I don’t have the list of
what planets and where they’re located. I do know how to find them if they’re
there. There’s a comm chirp that goes out periodically, and if we adjust our comms to look for it then maybe, but we can’t assume there
are any. We need to prioritize supplies and rework some additional IDF in the
rear of the ship, as well as a control link for me. I don’t think the bridge
will make it. Are we all on the same page?”

There was a chorus of nods, then the Archon clapped
his hands together.

“Let’s get to it.”

With that they broke up, or at least the techs did,
and scurried out of the cafeteria along with the Archon while the warriors
stayed put and congregated around one of the tables. Esna walked up beside
Rammak, who was standing behind them, and gave him a shrug of her shoulders.

“If we can’t outrun them,” Rammak explained, drawing
everyone’s attention to the newb, “we’ll have to abandon the ship and fight
them on the surface. That doesn’t give us good odds, but it’s better than
sitting here and getting shot up.”

“Agreed,” a Human Commando name Bard echoed. “We need
to cram as much gear into our packs as we can and work up some additional carry
capacity. The techs have enough to do as it is. If they can get us to ground,
it’ll be up to us. Kat’vo are aerial and about as
worthless as Ari’tat, but assuming they have any Zen’zat with them they’ll be
able to scout from the air while they hunt us on the ground, as well as adding
fire support. We’ll need to prioritize the deployable shields.”

“That’s you big guy,” a Protovic said, looking at
Rammak. “Think you can manage two?”

“If we’re staying with the techs, yes.”

“Good. Now what about her?”

“Give her the ammo,” a Bsidd suggested, “so we can
carry more weapons. The Kat’vo are hard to hit on
strafing runs unless we can blanket the sky.”

“Bsidd have that duty. Take as many rifles as you can
hold. Esna, you’re getting a single pistol, a handful of rations, then we’re
going to stuff your pack with all the ammo we can fit in it. You’re going to be
a big fat mushroom stuck to Rammak’s side and you have to stay with him. If they
kill you we lose most of our ammo.”

“Whatever you want,” she said. “But why can’t they
just shoot us from their ship?”

“Tyrenk is going to try and make it so they can’t, but
if he fails we’re going to have to run for whatever cover we can find. There
are mountains and our armor makes us difficult to track. If we tell you to
scatter, don’t hesitate. Just pick a direction and take off running. We’ll use
pre-packaged waypoints for rendezvous later. Our only hope in this is to
survive long enough for someone to find us.”

“We’ll drop a beacon,” the Protovic added. “They’re
working on it now. One in the system ahead and one if we can make it to the
next.”

“Won’t they shoot it?”

“We’ll send it off a different direction. If they
chase it then we’ll get a bigger head start and it’ll be worth the loss, but
it’s also camouflaged and won’t send out a signal unless it detects Star Force comms. It’ll tell them where we’re going if and when
another ship passes through there. So we just stay alive, got it?” he said,
looking directly at her.

“Again?” she asked, but nobody laughed at her sarcasm.

“I know it’s not fair,” Bard said. “You’ve survived
the V’kit’no’sat twice already in a short period of time. Sometimes the galaxy
is like that. You just have to keep clawing back until it finally cuts you a
break. No giving up, because you never know what’s going to happen 5 minutes
from now.”

“I won’t,” she promised. “Just tell me what I need to
do and I’ll do it.”

“Same to you,” the Commando said, looking up at
Rammak. “Your luck really sucks.”

“Perhaps, but I’ve survived 3 times already. Some
would say that was very good luck.”

“Hard fought and paid for,” a Bsidd added. “You
deserve better than this.”

“We work the problems. We don’t choose them,” Rammak
said stoically.

“Agreed,” Bard said knowingly. “We’ve got a couple
days, so let’s start organizing our supplies and squeezing every bit we can
into whatever makeshift carriers we can come up with. After the techs finish
here, they’re going to be cargo carriers too.”

“We’ve still got the speeders don’t we?” a Critel
asked.

“Do we? Did those get brought onboard?”

“Yes they did,” the Protovic said after a moment of
telepathy.

“Gooood,” Bard said slowly.
“Very good. Now let’s get to tricking them out.”

“On it,” a Bsidd said as they all broke up and left
the cafeteria with Rammak signaling Esna to follow him to wherever they were
going.

26

August 8, 4812

Narven System
(Devastation Zone)

Stellar Orbit

Esna and everyone else onboard ship was watching the
battlemap as they came out of their jump. So far the Vik ship hadn’t caught up
to them, meaning it wouldn’t be waiting when they arrived, but how far behind
it was trailing them was still an unknown. When the Blockade Runner came out of
its jump it didn’t fully stop, instead maintaining some speed towards the star
while being askew of the proper jump point as its engines continued applying
lateral motion and dragging them into a faster stellar orbit headed towards
their next jumppoint.

It had been explained to Esna that the Kaeper couldn’t
see which way they were heading, so it would have to brake along a straight
line, find the Blockade Runner on sensors, then chase
after it. If they could get far enough around the star before it arrived then
they wouldn’t be there to be seen, which was why the ship was dipping down very
close to the star. Right now it was a huge wall of light on the hologram next
to the ship’s position as the jumpline they had arrived on slowly rotated out
of view.

But then the Kaeper arrived a few minutes too soon. It
was 1.7 hours behind them, meaning it was gaining ground as feared, though Esna
saw the time to intercept estimates start to rise as their momentum got them
further ahead, creeping up to 1.8 hours before they lost sight of the Kaeper around
the curve of the star.

“We’ll make it out of this system,” Tyrenk told them
all after coming back from the bridge. “But the V’kit’no’sat have too much
closing speed. They’re going to catch us after the next jump. Good news is we
have more time to work. Unless we bump into help we’re going in atmosphere to
fight them. Let’s just hope we can get to the planet before they catch up.
We’ve gained a bit of a lead with the slingshot maneuver and should again in
the next system, but I can’t promise we’ll even make it into the atmosphere. Do
what you can to stack our odds now and we’ll see how this goes.
Get to work.”

And with that they broke up and Esna had nothing to
do, so she and Rammak went to the track and got another workout in. Later they
needed the Calavari muscle to help move some equipment, but there was nothing
Esna could do but wait. Even Tyrenk was busy using his telekinesis to move
objects along the hull outside the ship while he was still inside, so he wasn’t
able to give her any more lessons.

She hated being useless, but she liked the idea of
that Vik ship getting to them before they got to the planet even less. The
others had made it clear they had no chance in a space battle, and just waiting
to die was…well, at least back on Tauntaun she had a tunnel to run through. Out
here there was just…nothing.

The next three days went slowly, but eventually they
came to the end of the jump and decelerated against the star before the Kaeper
caught up, but it wasn’t four minutes later that the ship came out of its own
jump on a straight track, which put some more distance between them and the
Viks as the Blockade Runner was already redirecting towards the planet.

After that the chase was on, with everyone watching
the battlemap as they were quickly discovered and the Kaeper turned to come
after them with it gaining ground every minute that passed. Esna didn’t know if
they’d make it or not, for her math skills weren’t that good, but the techs
seemed to think that they weren’t and 19 minutes prior to getting to the planet
the Archon ordered everyone into the reinforced survival cage near the back of
the ship.

Esna ran through the corridors with the rest of them
as hatches were sealed and everyone piled into what had been a barracks. The
bunks were now torn out with the padding having been added to the walls. Other
than that it was just a large empty room that they all moved into save for one
workstation where Tyrenk sat down and cradled a small orb in his bare hand.

“Mental interface,” a Kiritas tech said when he
noticed her watching. “He’s flying the ship with it.”

Esna nodded, then watched the battlemap on her
helmet’s HUD as the Kaeper kept getting closer and closer…then the first bit of
weaponsfire hit the aft shields. Both ships exchanged shots as the Kaeper flew
past them, slowing as it did but not enough to match speed. It overshot and
flew out of weapons range until they got closer to the planet and its gravity
gave the Vik more engine grip to work with, then it slid back into range as the
Blockade Runner flipped over, showing the enemy their reinforced shields on the
backside.

Esna saw some 18% of their shield strength get chipped
away in the minutes that followed with even less depletion on the Kaeper, then
both ships had to hit the brakes hard to keep from slamming into the planet.
The distance between the two wobbled as the Blockade Runner actually
accelerated for a brief moment, shooting past the Vik momentarily and taking a
few hits to the forward shields before slamming on the brakes.

The maneuver wasn’t enough to put them ahead of the
Kaeper, for it had slightly stronger engines and was able to hold with them all
the way down to the edge of the atmosphere where the deceleration ended, but
both ships left enough residual momentum that they dipped into the gasses only
seconds later.

Esna saw their ship hit hard and turn to the left but
she didn’t feel anything. She’d been told that unless the IDF failed nothing
would be felt in this room…and if it did fail she’d be dead so fast she
wouldn’t feel it anyway, which was why there were no handholds or safety straps
in here. She would have wondered about the padding on the walls if they weren’t
in the middle of a firefight, but right now there was more important things to
follow as the Archon had them moving so fast that they were literally a
fireball cutting down into the thick atmosphere over the jungle-covered world.

The Kaeper turned to follow, but it couldn’t catch
them very fast. In fact not at all as the Blockade Runner began to creep
further away. Not more than a couple kilometers but it was something as the
chase around the planet’s curve continued all the while weaponsfire was
shooting back and forth. The fireball they were trailing helped, Rammak said,
but it wasn’t enough to stop the incoming fire completely and the hits on their
shields were continuing to sap power…along with the massive drag of the
atmosphere itself.

That drag was also draining the Kaeper’s
shields, with sensor estimates putting them down to 53% while the Blockade
Runner was at 39%. Tyrenk kept the ship maneuvering side to side, up and down,
anything to try and throw off the incoming shots but none of it worked. The Vik
gunners were too good to miss something that large, so eventually they dove
towards the surface only to pull back up again and skim the mountains, getting
some of them in between the two ships and blocking the weaponsfire.

That allowed the shields on both ships to start
recharging slowly, but before the Viks could come up over the mountains the
Archon had them flying low and fast through the valleys, not so much that they
were setting fire to them, but they were causing a huge gust of air to hit and
knock down trees in some places.

It wasn’t 20 seconds before the Kaeper rose up high
enough that it could see down between the mountains and spot the half mile long
ship, then the energy blasts ripped up and down between the two as the Viks
maneuvered to stay overtop of them and not let the mountains get in the way
again. They were several miles overhead and Tyrenk pulled the Blockade Runner
up enough just to clear the mountains, then they rocketed off again laterally.
The fireball returned and it was another chase that couldn’t quite shake the
Viks.

The Archon ducked them back down in between mountains
for a brief respite, but the Kaeper rose back up to its preferred height and
rained down more weaponsfire on them in an exchange the evacuation ship simply
couldn’t match. Esna realized this is what the Viks must have known would
happen the moment they spotted them. Their weapons, shields, and engines were
simply too much of an advantage for the enemy, and even while the shields were
dropping hard and fast they would still be up when the Blockade Runner’s went
down, meaning the Viks might not even take a scratch on their ship before
Esna’s was blown to bits.

So long as the Viks didn’t do something stupid it was
an automatic kill and that sickened Esna. They had no way to win this, no help
to run to or call for. They were as good as dead, she could see that plainly,
and when they finally abandoned ship the Viks would hunt them down on foot or
just shoot them from the air if they even made it out. It was hopeless and they
knew that, but they weren’t offering or even demanding a surrender. They were
out for Star Force blood and it looked like they were going to get it no matter
what Esna and the others did.

Despite the fast and awesome starship she was in, they
were totally helpless.

But as the V’kit’no’sat had learned long ago, Archons
had a tendency to find ways of hurting you when you thought you had them all
but defeated.

With the Blockade Runner down between mountains firing
up at the Viks with her shields almost gone, he pointed the ship straight up
but held position, throwing what little shield energy remained in the rear to the
front and reinforcing that bow shield. That would give them a few more seconds
of fight left, especially considering that the narrow profile offered less for
the Viks to shoot at, but it was only a delaying measure. Once the shields were
down completely the Kaeper would clip the weapons batteries at such close range
and then the Star Force vessel wouldn’t be able to harm the Viks anymore.

The Archon held them floating just over the jungle,
aft gravity drives low and almost touching the treetops as the Blockade Runner
faced the sky and continued to exchange fire, then a couple seconds before the
shields failed completely…after draining as much power from the Kaeper’s shields as he could…the Archon pulsed the now
partially recharged gravity drives and shot their ship straight up at a speed
it couldn’t survive passing through the thick atmosphere at. The shields popped
and the bow of the ship began to burn in the split second before it rammed the
Kaeper.

The Vik ship tried to turn away at the last moment, meaning
either its pilots were good or they had an automated anti-collision program
running, but with the atmosphere limiting their movements and the Archon being mind melded into the piloting controls, he was able to make
a microadjustment that ensured the Blockade Runner
hit the middle and thickest pylon on the enemy ship.

The shields covering it crunched the front of the
Blockade Runner where the techs had added additional armor they’d stripped off
other areas of the hull as well as having added internal bracing to shore it up
more, but it still pancaked a few meters in before the energy shield matrix
collapsed and hull hit hull with the hammerhead bow punching into the Kat’vo vessel and tearing clear through to the other side,
severing the central section as well as two of the outer pylons that got
clipped.

The Blockade Runner gained altitude quickly on the
other side…or rather what was left of it. Fireballs flew everywhere above the
Kaeper as parts of the evacuation ship shot out erratically as they vaporized
into massive sized fireworks with the aft chunk of the ship now careening over
towards the south as its momentum carried it onward, now less than half a ship
and with that half horribly contorted.

The Kaeper’s pieces were
propelled upward from the collision, then fell back down into the mountains
either due to lack of power or lack of input control, with the intact pieces
hitting and rolling down the incline and tearing away long gouges of trees and
rock until they settled at the bottom of the valleys, one of which hit a narrow
lake and splashed almost all the water out of it, blanketing the hillside
jungle in a tsunami that gradually worked its way back down to the bottom.

Inside the safe room Esna didn’t feel a thing except a
single vibration when one of the three doors suddenly dented inward with some
exterior hit. Other than that she wouldn’t have known about the impact or the
destruction, the latter of which she didn’t fully grasp as the battlemap winked
out when the ship’s systems died.

But not all of them, for the Archon was still using
the few rear gravity drives that were intact to steer their descent into a
giant smoking rainbow across multiple mountain ridges until they crash landed a
fair distance away from the V’kit’no’sat ship. That impact Esna heard more than
felt as the walls contorted with loud screeches and one of the doors popped off
with a wave of fire coming inside that the Archon stopped with an upraised
hand.

“We’re down!” he yelled over the comm and externally.
“Let’s go!”

The next thing Esna knew the golden armor dove into
the flames, pushing most of them with him, then Rammak grabbed her by the arm
and pulled her alongside him as everyone followed the Archon out…

To be concluded in

Persistent Ravage (Wayward 3)