Star Force: Origin Series Box Set
Author: Aer-Ki Jyr
Date: 2016-01-14T18:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Literature & Fiction; Action & Adventure; Science Fiction & Fantasy; Science Fiction; Colonization; Galactic Empire; Military; Space Fleet; Space Opera; Two Hours or More (65-100 Pages); Space Marine; Teen & Young Adult
Description: Archons are the key to a lightside empire. A key that has to be painstakingly forged. An ancient alien archaeological discovery buried under the ice in Antarctica confirms that we are not alone in the galaxy, but nobody expected this. There isn't one alien race out there, but millions spread across the Milky Way that are dominated by dreadfully advanced Coreward empire known as the V'kit'no'sat that no one else will dare challenge. It is an evil empire skilled in the art of war and bloodshed, but one whose focus is on another threat at the heart of the galaxy, and they care little for the Rim.
Publisher: Archon Lore
Rights: Copyrights as per source stories

1

February 22, 2465

Krichjan System (Protovic territory)

Star Force Warship Tassadar (Mid-jump)

Kip stood in front of his command chair watching the system holo as the Tassadar moved from its null orbit towards the 8th planet’s innermost moon. The jump itself was a tricky one, with the warship having to yank hard on the system’s gravity wells to get suitable momentum, given that it wasn’t camped out around any of them. Still, an insystem jump was far slower than an interstellar one, but it was something that the drone warships would have trouble making without the Tassadar giving them a lift.

Kip had ordered a slower than normal jump anyway, coordinating with the other 6 warships enroute across the system via timestamp orders that would take away the time lag. With their shipboard clocks synchronized, they could lay out a battle plan to the second even if their active communications didn’t cycle that fast across the billions of kilometers of distance that made up the Krichjan System.

Kip had wanted the slower transit so that the Tassadar would have time to unload a significant portion of its drone warships enroute, whose own gravity drives would then brake against the target gravity wells. Such braking was easy…it was the acceleration from beforehand that was not, thus the need to disperse them in transit. The other warships were not doing the same, leaving the potential catch to the Tassadar alone. Should one or all of the five Skarron ships get away, the others could chase them without having to gather up their drone fleets, as the Tassadar would need to do, putting the emphasis of this intercept squarely on the trailblazer’s flagship.

The larger drone warships Kip kept inside the jumpship’s hull, it was the smaller ones, the cutters, corvettes, and frigates that he dispersed, for they were the fastest and best suited to tracking the Skarrons if they did jump out, giving the rest of the fleet a beacon to follow. The trouble was, those ‘trackers’ would be on automatic pilot once they made the jump…at least until one of the control ships arrived within comm range.

But that wasn’t the only reason Kip was deploying them. One trick Star Force had learned about keeping an enemy ship in place was to block its jumpline with another. That was hard to do if the enemy had differential gravity drives and nearby moons to push off of, which they did in this case, but the closer he could position a blocking ship the greater the angle off the primary jumpline would be required for a clean escape.

And if the enemy wanted to ram his blockers…well, they were the smallest of his ships anyway, and he’d be willing to make the tradeoff.

Based off the intel from the warship that had detected the 5 Skarron vessels, which was still staying away so as not to spook them until the others arrived, Kip’s people had been able to match up the approximate classes with the information they’d brought with them, coupled with the data the Protovic had provided. There appeared to be two cruisers and three destroyers…with neither of the juggernauts being present. Why the Skarrons had split their fleet Kip didn’t know, but by isolating them it was going to be easier to destroy them…if they could contain them in their present positions.

The Tassadar was working off their last known location, having plotted a jumpline to intercept where they were expected to be given their orbital revolution…with a decent safety margin. Once the jump was ended they’d have to assess the situation and make adjustments, all the while hoping the Skarrons were a bit slow and off their guard, otherwise it would be almost impossible to keep them from jumping out, for all a prepped starship had to do was press a button and a moment later they were gone.

If the Skarrons didn’t know they were here, and weren’t overly concerned about the Protovic fleet coming after them, then they might be in ‘sleep mode’ and just holding orbit while waiting for further orders. Kip didn’t think they’d get that lucky, which meant they were going to have to disable them quickly once they arrived if they were given a window to do so.

Kip had the Tassadar slow down slightly after the 18 drone warships were away, allowing them to get to their braking points first. He needed them to get to blocking positions as soon as possible and the Tassadar’s mass was going to show up on the enemy’s sensors sooner than a corvette, so letting them get a head start should shave a smidge of time off the intercept.

As for the moment when the Star Force ships came out of their braking maneuver and stood face to face with the Skarrons…well, there weren’t many options available. Typically they would open fire and start slugging it out, or races with starfighters would deploy them into blocking positions. Star Force had attack drones for that, but they rarely used them anymore. They were so small opposing ships could just run over them, and their weaponry was equally insignificant against capital ships, leaving their usefulness in much more small scale engagements.

No, the only way to engage another fleet was if that fleet wanted to engage…or so conventional wisdom held within the Alliance. The trailblazers wouldn’t hold for that, especially since they and some of their Captains had successful captures/kills in the past, lucky as they were, but moreover because they had access to the V’kit’no’sat database…and they definitely knew a thing or two about naval engagements.

Most of their techniques involved technology that Star Force couldn’t yet build, but centered around creating a localized inertial dampening field over the target ship’s gravity drives, thus rendering them inert. An IDF nulled out acceleration factors by encasing all matter within it in a sort of latticework of an energy field that spread out external forces across each molecule evenly, such as gravity did during a free fall…it felt like there was no effect, but in truth gravity was still pulling, just without any resistance in one part of your body or another, or in this case, a ship’s hull.

Objects could still move around inside the field, or even pass through it unaffected, like a dropship entering or leaving a jumpship. The gravity drives had to be outside the IDF and push against the emitters…which then spread the effect out over the interior, which acted as a single mass. A gravity drive couldn’t function inside an IDF, given that gravitational effects didn’t penetrate the boundaries of the field. Because the entire IDF acted as a single mass, gravity pulled on it as one. The field was the mass, not the contents, meaning the external gravity didn’t reach the interior. With a gravity drive set inside an IDF, it would have nothing to push or pull against.

It was in this way that high gravity colonies nulled out the local gees with IDF, then created normal gravity through gravity plating inside the field. So if the V’kit’no’sat wanted to pin a starship in place, they just blanketed the target ship with an IDF and poof…their gravity drives were suddenly useless.

Trouble was, Star Force couldn’t produce an IDF without an emitter. Paul, Liam, and Roger had worked up a variety of ways to put one on an enemy’s hull, but if their shields were up there was little they could do except park it nearby outside…which the enemy could then shoot down with ease.

So they’d done the next best thing and modified some of the smaller drone warships with a super large IDF emitter, meaning that if a cutter could get close enough to the enemy ship it could ‘grapple’ the target with the field, allowing it to only maneuver on convention thrust…assuming the cutter didn’t get blown away in the process. Four cutters and two corvettes were so modified within the Tassadar’s onboard fleet and had been dispatched with the other blockers, but they wouldn’t be any use against the Skarron cruisers.

The term ‘cruiser’ or ‘cutter’ or ‘corvette’ weren’t terms with specific meanings, they were a way of categorizing ships, naval or aquatic, and really just a rule of thumb measurement. Star Force cruisers, matched up against the Skarron version, were only half as massive, making them similar in tonnage to Star Force battleships. The difference was in how they were used, and in general all Skarron starships were larger than their Star Force counterparts.

But larger didn’t necessarily mean stronger, thus Star Force had dubbed the Skarron fleet ships as ‘cruisers’ or ‘destroyers’ based on how they measured up. The smallest warship they had was dubbed a ‘destroyer,’ for they didn’t use the smaller classes, much like the Hycre, whose ships were considerably smaller, much more in line with Star Force classes.

Due to the Skarron cruisers’ size, the IDF fields on the Interdictor-class drone warships couldn’t lock down all the gravity drives, for like the lizards, they had multiple drives stretched along the length of their hulls, as opposed to Star Force designs that had them all in the rear. If the Star Force ships got close enough, one of them might be able to snag a destroyer, but it would more likely require two working together, for the Skarrons’ hulls were shaped like artistic, curved blades, with spirals coming out on many sides, each of which held a gravity drive, making it difficult to cover all of them with a single field.

But while Kip had deployed the interdictors, they weren’t his primary means of disabling the enemy warships. For that, he was going to rely on one of Roger’s contributions.

The system hologram suddenly zoomed in to the planet and the moons, with a countdown clock above indicating that the number of seconds remaining until arrival was at 21. A dot on the emblazoned jumpline indicated the Tassadar’s calculated position, with a cluster of dots appearing at the end where the ship’s telaris sensors were just beginning to pick up the Skarron ships.

“Captain. Target the nearest and clearest ship you get with the bloon launcher and don’t wait for my order to fire. Hit them quick. I want at least one kill out of this engagement.”

“Copy that,” the Captain said, with Kip leaving the details to him and the crew, who knew well what they were doing. The trailblazer remained standing in front of the hologram as the tiny dots just ahead of the Tassadar began their braking maneuvers, followed by the big ship a split second later.

As the relative speeds between them and their targets resolved back to manageable numbers, additional sensor data began pouring in and updating the hologram, showing the five enemy ships in greater detail as another Star Force warship jumped in from one of the moons, coming in at a different angle. Soon the others followed, but the Tassadar got off its first shot before the last of them arrived.

Mounted along the bow of the Warship-class jumpship, the ‘bloon launcher’ was a unique weapon created specifically for the warships, and needed their size to house the massive thing. Inside were IDF emitters that were saturating an energy matrix equivalent to goo that would be used to carry the field to the target. The V’kit’no’sat had many types of energy matrixes that held other energies contained, for the more damaging ones, like the mauler, repelled from themselves, meaning they had very short firing range before the energy mass disintegrated.

Star Force had recently been able to reverse engineer the most basic of the coagulant matrixes, and thanks to Roger’s genius had used it like they’d used paint to hold stun energy together until it could reach its target. The bloon launcher, which was a shortened version of ‘balloon,’ essentially threw water balloons at the target, carrying with them various forms of energy, similar to the perimeter defense weapon on the V’kit’no’sat pyramid, though much less potent.

The bloon launcher had various types of ammunition, but for interdiction duties the Star Force techs had worked out a way to saturate the pseudo-goo with IDF. It wouldn’t persist forever, lasting maybe 30 seconds after impact, but it gave the Tassadar and the other newly built warships the ability to temporarily disable the enemy’s gravity drives if they ‘painted’ the hull with enough bloon hits.

And the warship certainly wasn’t holding back. Already having formed and charged several coagulant bloons, it was chucking them out the forward launcher at a rate of 1 every 3 seconds and aiming at the cruiser on top of the Skarron formation as the Star Force ship continued to drift closer off its residual momentum coming out of the jump.

Soon the other seven warships were firing off bloons as well, making sure not to hit the Tassadar’s drone warships as they quickly got into blocking positions around the Skarrons, who didn’t so much as move until after they were surrounded, at which point they began repositioning and firing off showers of white plasma streaks from multiple cannons, similar to the weapon loadouts of their walkers.

Each cannon was low yield, but combined they amounted to a considerable offense. The small Star Force ships held their ground, covering the Skarrons with their IDF as much as possible as their own shields got hammered by the plasma…then one of the other cutters that was punching a small hole through one of the Skarron destroyers’ shields with its mauler got pelted with what looked like a rapid-fire splinter gun.

The first three deflected off the cutter’s shields, but the fourth cored it, with the back tip just showing at the entry point, for the rest of it had buried itself inside the well-armored hull.

“Rail gun,” Kip whispered to himself as he saw all but one plasma cannon on the cutter go dark. Two hits later and it went out as well, with the destroyer turning its attention to another of the ships as the Skarrons were quickly chewing apart his blockers, all the while getting plastered with bloons that were, ironically, sticking to the enemy’s shields where they couldn’t get to the hull.

That was another little piece of matrix technology Star Force had stolen from the V’kit’no’sat. Kip knew how they could defend against it…expand their shield matrix out then deactivate it altogether. The momentum would push the IDF goo away from the ship and they could reestablish shields again at a closer proximity…the question was, could the Skarrons do that with their shield matrix, and if they could, would they think of it in time?

The Tassadar continued to pound the cruiser with bloons, careful to continually adjust its heading to keep the cannon in line with the enemy, for the massive jumpship didn’t turn very fast and it had only the one cannon mount, which, like a rail gun, didn’t have much aiming ability off the ship’s axis. With the other jumpships doing the same, four of the Skarron warships were pinned in place, but one of the destroyers was able to destroy the interdictor corvette holding it and moved out to bully aside the frigate blocking the obvious jumpline away from the moon.

The much larger destroyer pounded the frigate with plasma and rail gun splinters, but the frigate held position and its shield strength up until the two ships collided when the Skarrons made a minuscule jump…just enough to punch the frigate aside, crushing the forward/port corner in and ripping apart one of the ‘blades’ on the Skarrons’ hull where the two met. After the impact pushed the Star Force ship aside the destroyer took a bloon hit, but its IDF didn’t cover all the gravity drives and the ship was able to limp away in a surge of momentum, taking it out of the engagement zone.

Kip tagged one of the other warships and ordered it to pursue, with the big ship hesitating as it worked out the jump calculations and reoriented itself, then it also disappeared in a slow surge, matching and slightly exceeding the Skarrons’ velocity as it tailed it within sensor range to wherever it was headed. The other six jumpships continued to pound the Skarrons with IDF as they and the Tassadar began launching their drone warships.

“Open a comm channel and tie in the translator,” Kip ordered. A moment later he got a hand signal from one of the crew, and Kip telekinetically tagged the ‘on’ button on his control chair behind him.

“Skarrons, this is the Star Force commander. You’re a few minutes away from being destroyed. I’m offering you a simple choice. Surrender and live, or ignore this communication and die. Respond if you want to live, and do so quickly.”

Kip hit the mute button with a thought, then raised an eyebrow at Captain Shannist. “Odds?”

The blue-haired man shook his head. “Not enough data to speculate, but my gut says no.”

“Concentrate fleet fire on one of the destroyers, continue to suppress all four with bloons. Maybe if one goes down the others will get wise.”

“And if they do surrender, what do we do with them?”

Kip sighed. “We’ll jump off that bridge when we come to it.”

A few moments later the first of the heavy cruisers shot out a cleansing beam at range and punched straight through the Skarrons’ shields…or so it looked, but on the computer analysis it showed that the weapon had indeed been blunted for 1.2 seconds before penetration. Still, it cut straight through a thin portion of the hull, gouging out a trench some 20 meters long that, if you looked close, you could see stars through. Secondary explosions cut that view out, as internal atmosphere and a host of liquid and solid debris filled the gap and spewed out along the breach point on both sides.

The significance of the Skarron shields not being instantaneously penetrated by the cleansing beam meant that they were hybrid shields…part physical, part energy. Lizard shields were totally physical shields, blocking plasma due to its mass. The cleansing beam was a pure energy weapon, something that physical shields couldn’t block, meaning that the Skarrons had a more complicated matrix…or two matrixes in play.

Kip glanced at the updating computer analysis, which indicated one shield barrier only, after plasma and mauler blasts began to rain down as the drone warships closed to medium and closer ranges. The Skarron destroyer fought back, with fire support from the others that weren’t too far away, but within a minute it was KIA from the multiple cleansing beams, leaving the other weapons to chew up the carcass.

Kip waited for a return communication, but none came, so he let the carnage continue, one ship at a time, until the last cruiser was overwhelmed and destroyed…which told him that the Protovic commander had been right. The Skarrons were hungry for conquest, and it didn’t look like losing was in their playbook.

2

February 25, 2465

Krichjan System (Protovic territory)

7th planetary orbit

“Beacon active,” Shannist confirmed upon Kip’s request as yet another Star Force warship jumped into planetary orbit and immediately began to disgorge its full complement of drone warships. As it did it reoriented its axis slightly, launching a bloon towards the leftmost of the two Skarron juggernauts that the Tassadar and its battle group had pinned down from range.

Another flash came from the other juggernaut as its shields continued to be painted by IDF saturated energy ‘goo’ as the enemy ship targeted Kip’s flagship with its long range weaponry. The powerful energy beam crossed the distance between the ships in the blink of an eye as the smaller ships in both fleets were continuing to creep closer towards each other over the gap.

Kip noticed the shield impact on his tactical hologram of the ship, which sat to his left beside the main hologram of the battlefield. When the battle had started his crew had analyzed the weaponsfire and confirmed that it was an extremely advanced version of heavy lachars…well beyond Star Force’s own capability to produce. The jumpship’s shields held up, being a hybrid matrix that could protect against both matter and energy, but with both juggernauts beginning to isolate their firepower on the Tassadar it was just a matter of time before Kip would have to jump his ship out of range and let the others continue the fight…at least until the shields recharged, then they’d come back in and relieve the others.

So long as there was one control ship on station it could handle all the drone warships in play, else the longer ranges would result in signal lag. Given the telaris comms they now used, that lag would be significantly reduced, but Kip didn’t want his gunners to have to try and work through even a split second’s worth as they remotely piloted the warships. Their firing accuracy would nosedive, and in an engagement like this, where they were not easily the strongest, every shot counted.

That said, he still expected to win this fight. The two juggernauts were massive, and would take a while to take down, but so long as they kept the bloons popping on them they weren’t running away, and the rest of the Skarron fleet, which had quickly come to their aid, seemed reluctant to leave them, making this more of a standard battle that was about to start heating up.

The Tassadar’s fleet had already been deployed, with the heavy cruisers tagging the juggernauts from range and penetrating their shields with each shot, but they were so massive that the damage being incurred was akin to small cuts. Had Kip had an internal schematic for the ships they could have been making surgical attacks against key systems, but since this was a largely unknown enemy they were reduced to targeting weapons batteries as they could see them and, largely, just poking holes in the big ships.

Right now they were acting like battle stations, and Kip knew from the Protovic intel that if they got much closer their other weaponry would come within operational range. That’s why Kip had his fleet screening for the Tassadar relatively close, but still intending to engage the incoming Skarrons at a distance from the jumpship. About half of their fleet was coming his way, with the other half going after the next closest jumpship, the Aiur.

Fortunately the juggernauts were so large that Star Force could hit them from this extreme range with the bloon launchers, and as soon as Kip got a few more jumpships involved he was going to order a change of ammunition, for the IDF laden ‘bloons’ weren’t all that they could fire.

Keeping the ships pinned was the primary objective, and they were so large that keeping all of their potential gravity drives, which they didn’t know exactly where they were inside the ships, was requiring a thorough blanketing of their shields. Some of the bluish/red goo was being blown off by plasma cannons, but enough was being kept in place to hold the pair of gigantic ships in place, though they were maneuvering slightly on conventional engines.

Just then the Skarrons’ smaller ships, which all outmassed their Star Force counterparts, opened up on the Tassadar’s drone warships and all hell broke loose. They didn’t stop their approach, intent, it seemed, to get to the jumpship and knock it out of commission even as more heavy lachar blasts crossed the distance and peppered its forward shields…which Kip saw dip as low as 18% after one combined salvo, then the recharging generators ticked it back up to 19% and continued to climb the numbers, which were then lowered again by incoming weaponsfire.

“Captain, let’s get a few shots off before we have to run. Switch to plasma bloons.”

“Already standing by.”

“Fire…and prepare calculations for a short range microjump out of their lachar range.”

On the front of the Tassadar the defense shields dropped momentarily, allowing the passage of the green plasma bloon out of the thick firing tube as it shot off at incredible speed towards the distant juggernaut. Unlike conventional plasma that dissipated over distance, the bloon’s energy matrix acted as a containment vessel, inside of which the plasma glowed fiery hot blue. The color combination of the matrix made the bloon appear green up until it smashed against the juggernaut’s shields, spilling an amount of plasma equivalent to a fourth the volume of a cutter against its already weakened shields.

From inside the green ‘skin’ of the bloon the blue plasma burst forth, washing over the shields and wicking away some bits of IDF goo as it overloaded and breached the shields, pouring a third of its plasma onto the hull, burning through the armor plates despite the fact that they, like their ground walkers, were made to be resistant to that type of weaponry.

A few second later a second bloon hit the approximate spot, taking out a chunk of shield matrix to the left and washing the overlapping target areas with unchecked plasma, which burnt through the armor and exposed the interior of the ship to space. Air vented out in explosive decompression as more IDF bloons hit the Skarron ship, coming from the other jumpships, and insuring it couldn’t run.

“Are we in mauler range?” Kip asked.

“Barely.”

“Send them one, then jump us out. Arrange to transfer drone control to the other warships prior to jump. Let’s not give the enemy an opening,” Kip said as the forward shields dropped to 7% as the heavy lachars continued to wear them down with repetitive hits. Thankfully Star Force’s shield technology had improved by leaps and bounds over the past century, and was due for even more upgrades according to the research staff reverse engineering a myriad of V’kit’no’sat designs…or rather, their obsolete designs whose blueprints were held in the pyramid database.

After the last green bloon launched, the Tassadar began powering up its gravity drives, intent on making a reverse jump out of planetary orbit, but before it did it launched one more bloon…this one was neither bluish/red nor green, but a fiery orange. It had the thickest bloon containment skin possible, which was necessary to hold the mauler energy in check. Once launched, the two fought an internal battle, with the mauler energy eating away at the bloon to the point of bursting, giving the weapon a more limited range than the plasma or IDF varieties.

The orange bloon spouted a tiny gush of blue energy out the side a split second before it slammed into the juggernaut, with most of the contained mauler energy making it to the target. The Tassadar’s gunners had done well to land it on the damaged and unshielded piece of juggernaut hull, and Kip had the satisfaction of seeing it literally melt through the Skarron armor and into the ship’s interior, completely disappearing as the sensor feed went wonky as the Tassadar jumped away from the planet.

That only lasted a few seconds before the jumpship’s binary drives started to pull against the gravity well it had just pushed off, stalling its momentum and bringing it to a stop far above the planet where it began to clearly pick up the Star Force comm signals again, although this time on a delay.

Kip brought up a diagnostic display and checked the gravity drives’ capacitor charge, seeing that it had barely drained them, despite the hard turnabout they’d just run. They’d be able to jump back in immediately if needed, but right now recharging the shields was the priority.

“We go back in at 50%,” Kip ordered so the bridge crew would be ready when that happened. In the meantime he continued to watch the battle on the tactical holo, with the Skarron ships that had been engaging the Tassadar’s fleet now breaking off and going after another of his jumpships, but it was going to take several minutes for them to reposition, during which time the drone warships would be hounding them.

Kip sent off an order telling the remote pilots on the other jumpships to leave several of them in place for when the Tassadar jumped back in, so that they’d have a screen, and tagged the appropriate ships, letting the others reposition, though they were now two less than they’d just been. A frigate and a corvette had been destroyed by the Skarrons since he’d last looked, with several others having had their shields go down, including a destroyer with a sizeable gash in its armor, but it was still firing away as it trailed a Skarron cruiser across the wide gap between jumpships.

Kip didn’t like losing ships, knowing that it would be a long time between replacing them, given how far away from Star Force territory they were, but it was all but unavoidable given the type of combat they were engaged in. They had to pin the juggernauts in place, and in doing so likewise pinned themselves down to a point, taking a lot of maneuvering options off the table.

“Thirty seconds,” the Captain eventually noted, with Kip tearing his eyes off the tactical holo for a moment.

“Jump when ready,” he ordered, then turned his attention back to the battle just as a slew of new contacts were picked up jumping in. It took the computers a moment to sort it out, then Protovic icons began popping up on the ships, with more than 100 of them coalescing around a generous jump point slightly higher up than the Tassadar had been.

“Looks like they got the message,” Kip commented as their own countdown was about to expire. “Open a comm after we make the jump.”

“We already have an incoming signal, Archon,” the comms officer reported.

Kip glanced at the countdown, which read :08.

“Put it through and continue with the jump. Resume IDF bombardment as soon as possible,” he said, sitting down on his command chair and seeing an image of his counterpart materialize before him.

“My apologies, hold for a moment while we reposition,” he said, raising a hand of apology just as the Tassadar jumped, screwing with the transmission that was already delayed, overly so because the Protovic didn’t have telaris comms and they were having to communicate through lightspeed transmission.

The jumpship reemerged only 8 kilometers off from its original position, further back along the jumpline, leaving the heavy cruisers and other escorts ahead of them as Captain Shannist goosed the engines and brought them back into a more favorable position as several cleansing beams shot out across the gap to the juggernaut and continued to rack up damage on the ship that was already showing multiple hull breaches. It was continuing to get pelted from the other jumpships, though they were showing signs of shield depletion as well, with one already absent, having had to jump out to avoid hull damage of its own.

“Sorry about that. Had to recharge our shields.”

“How are you holding them in position?” Tel’nash’gi asked.

“We’re temporarily disrupting their gravity drives, but we have to keep hitting them to maintain the effect. My fleet can take out the juggernauts from range, can you run interference with their other ships?”

The Protovic nodded his helmeted head. “Gladly.”

The transmission cut out and Kip returned to his feet, walking through the deck space where the Protovic’s hologram had just been and coming up on the tactical hologram again as the Tassadar resumed bombardment of the nearest juggernaut with IDF bloons. On the battlemap, he saw the Protovic’s hammerhead-shaped ships break up into multiple groups, deploying towards the clusters of Skarron capital ships that were still doing their best to chase off the Star Force jumpships, all the while engaging the drone warships, 12 of which had been lost already, with another 18 showing hull damage.

Tel’nash’gi hadn’t brought his entire fleet out, but the ships he did bring ranged in size from corvettes up to battleships and even a carrier, which immediately disgorged a flood of Valeries that zipped across the battlefield far faster than the capital ships, all of which had the same hammer-head design motif, but with an X-wing-like aft split that held cylindrical pylons. Kip knew they contained both gravity drives and weapons, all plasma-based, including their missiles.

The Protovic were solid across the board, with no major strengths or weaknesses in their fleet. Each of their ships had one primary weapon, located in the hammerhead, that was a plasma streamer. Secondary weapons across their hull were orb-style plasma cannons, anti-air plasma shredders, similar in design to lizard plasma shards, only more numerous and shorter ranged, and missile banks which were also located in the hammerhead. Their ships carried good armor and decent shields, built in binary, with a primary physical shield backed up by a secondary and weaker energy shield, giving them a comprehensive defense.

And their crews were experienced vets, which Kip noted approvingly as he saw them maneuver in amongst the Skarron ships with obvious coordination rather than a typical ‘free for all’ approach that many races employed. The Star Force warships adjusted firing lines to give the Protovic ships preferred attack angles, shifting from primary defense to a support roll, and soon the Skarrons saw the writing on the wall and began maneuver towards the edges of the melee, looking for jumplines out.

But the Protovic weren’t keen to let them go, and cut them off at every opportunity. The Skarron ships were bigger than theirs, mostly, but the Protovic’s were slightly stronger. Add in the fact that their battleships were in play, along with their fighters that zipped about targeting exposed weapons ports and dancing around the Skarron anti-air fire, which was considerable, and you quickly had an ongoing rout, with Star Force stepping in and blocking any advantage the Skarrons could get in ship to ship engagements. The cleansing beams, especially, caused the enemy considerable trouble, given the range at which they could be fired, and of the 8 Skarron ships that managed to break free, only six managed to jump out, for the other two were skewered by the CBs, knocking out their ability to jump before they got fully in the clear.

Meanwhile the jumpships continued their bombardment of the juggernauts, along with fire support from some of the heavy cruisers. They alternated between IDF and plasma bloons, with only the Tassadar getting close enough to chance firing the mauler versions. Her shields dropped down to 11% again before the bulk of the heavy lachar counter fire ceased as the CBs picked apart their batteries, after which it was a bloonfest, with both Skarron command ships being torn apart chunk by chunk until nothing salvageable remained.

The Protovic fleet then moved in and further trashed the ship debris as Kip reassembled his fleet and began recovery operations on his own debris, after which he brought his bloon-capable jumpships back to Eshwan where the older versions were holding position. Not all Warship-class jumpships had the new bloon launchers, and only a small percentage of Clan Protoss was currently equipped with them, and most of those he’d brought with him.

Unfortunately the weapon couldn’t be installed on the older models. It was just too damn big and required a different internal hull design. That said, the older models carried with them the most up to date drone warships Star Force had, making them still combat viable, but Kip preferred having his jumpships capable of adding to the battle rather than just sitting back and controlling the drone fleet.

When they returned to orbit, along with the Protovic, Tel’nash’gi informed him that they’d detected 6 outgoing jumps from the system’s star, meaning that the Skarrons had retreated, as well as indicating that their ships contained more powerful gravity drives than most, giving them the ability to jump between star systems individually rather than having to rely on jumpships to carry them.

That, or they’d been desperate enough to get away that they didn’t mind a long coast phase to the nearest star. Kip guessed the former was the case, given that they hadn’t seen any Skarron jumpships within the system, and the information the Protovic had given them on their new enemy hadn’t included any either.

That was one ability that he knew Paul wanted for their fleets, but as of now they were going to have to stick with jumpship transport. It seemed the Skarrons and Star Force were going to make for an interesting conflict, given that each had advantages over the other, which brought Kip to the main problem within the system…that being the supersized walkers the Skarrons had on the surface that the Protovic simply could not stop, and who were leading a path of widespread destruction across Eshwan.

Time for Kip to see if Star Force could do anything about it, aside from knocking off some of their smaller walkers and infantry.

3

February 25, 2465

Retari System (Alpha Region)

Atlantica

Paul watched on the bridge hologram as the Excalibur executed its braking maneuver against the planetary gravity well last in line, dropping out behind his fleet of 15 jumpships. Two were Mammoth-class cargo ships, each more than twice the size of the 13 Warship-class jumpships forming up alongside them. The Excalibur, now the 4th ship to bear that name as Paul took it with him from flagship to flagship, was neither. It was the 16th jumpship in the group, but of a new class entirely, something that Clan Saber and Clan Sangheili had been working together to produce, and as such they’d gotten the first few prototypes off their own shipyards, while the main fleet production centers back in Sol were only starting to produce the new Melee-class jumpships.

Back in the early days Paul had developed a ‘Command Ship’ that had never been quite agile enough for their purposes, and had been relegated to a giant chess pieces to be moved around from point to point that would allow them a mobile stronghold from which to remote control their fleets, but when jumpship technology had come around the Command Ship design had outlived its usefulness, with the Warship-class jumpship taking over the role of primary control center in addition to being a carrier for the drone warships.

That had been necessary at the time, but Paul had never liked abandoning the concept of a big, beefy warship to lead a fleet from. Other races had them, but Star Force hadn’t been able to make it work given their technology…until now.

The Excalibur was the first off the Clan Saber shipyards, measuring in at better than 15 miles wide, as well as being the first jumpship to abandon the elongated design with an armored nosecone. Shield and armor technology had advanced to the point where they didn’t need to worry about small debris during jumps damaging the ship, so the nosecone idea was no longer relevant, with the Melee-class jumpship going back to the donut shape of the original Command Ship, which leaned heavily on the Star Wars Trade Federation design.

Even more so now that Paul had made some additional upgrades. The entire jelly donut shape differed from the Star Wars design, because the interior wasn’t open to space. But like the original design, the Melee-class had a removable donut ‘hole’ that, once the armor plating covering it peeled back, could extrude itself and maneuver as a separate starship if needed…but whose primary purpose was to become a Battletech-esk, 2 mile wide dropship that could deposit a mass of ground troops to a planet within minutes as opposed to using an unending flow of tiny, conventional dropships.

That too Paul had stolen from Star Wars, for the Trade Federation ships could do the same, except that the Melee-class was much bigger. So big, in fact, it looked almost immobile, but it had the most advanced gravity drives Star Force could produce, and as such it was by far the fastest jumpship in the fleet…almost up to Hycre standards.

The rest of Paul’s fleet was much slower traveling between star systems, but once the drone warships deployed they could fly circles around the Excalibur, whose speed was in linear motion, not combat maneuvers. The ship was definitely in the same class as a Super Star Destroyer, meaning that it was a sit and slug it out ship, which Paul had always wanted to have available for some of the nastier fighting the Alliance was seeing, but he knew Star Force’s strength came from having a mobile, redundant fleet of smaller drones, and they weren’t going to abandon that philosophy now, only add to it with a few key pieces that could take the heat in the bigger engagements while the drones were free to do their thing and pick the enemy to pieces.

The 13 Warship-class jumpships accompanying him out from Namek, which was now so well fortified that he no longer needed to personally babysit the planet or system, which he’d left in the capable hands of Duke Monterrey, were all Mk. 16s or older, meaning they didn’t have the bloon launchers that the Mk. 17s did. Also, the drones they carried were 18% new models, with the rest being older versions that were quickly becoming obsolete.

Paul didn’t like recycling perfectly good starships, so he had been gathering them up from Alpha Region and intended to put them to use hunting lizards. Coupled with the Excalibur’s combat prowess, and the presence of some of the newer drone models, he planned on thinning down the lizard opposition in the region. Previously that had been the duty of others, but now with Namek being a stronghold rather than a liability, Paul could get back to combat…something he’d been aching to do for a long time.

The pair of Mammoth-class jumpships with him were purely for cargo. He didn’t even have any ground troops on the Excalibur at the moment, just a slightly better than skeleton crew of Clan Saber personnel, enough to fully fight the ship with, as well as take over remote control of the drone fleet if necessary, though the other jumpships had their full crews on board, leaving the Excalibur merely as backup in that capacity.

Paul’s fleet was stopping at Atlantica for a pair of reasons. First off, the Retari System had been severed from the comm grid over 2 months ago, and via courier ships he’d been informed that a lizard raid had destroyed the transmitter in null orbit around the star. It had been stealth plated, and shouldn’t have been easily visible to their sensors, but somehow they’d deduced its location and slagged it. Kyler was in the process of rebuilding it, along with a few others, and one of the Mammoth’s had a temporary stand-in to get them back on the grid while he worked out the kinks in how to properly place and defend the next ones.

The lizards had abandoned any attempts to reinforce the underwater war…which was now over. Kyler couldn’t rule out the possibility that they still had a handful of bases on the oceanic planet, but if they did they were doing a perfect job of playing dead, for there hadn’t been so much as a peep of activity in over a decade. That said, the lizards were still popping into the system occasionally, and now it seemed they’d found something they could shoot up easily without having to vie with the orbital defense fleet.

Atlantica wasn’t the only place in Star Force territory that the lizards were probing, and Paul knew they needed to keep beating them back in their own territory or they’d get bolder and bolder. He also knew that they needed to drain as much in the way of personnel and resources as they could on this front, for the lizards were pushing hard into Calavari territory, which on the map now had a huge bite out of it that was growing with every passing year. That’s where the thrust of the lizard offensive was going, and Paul wanted to hurt them here as much as he could to draw off resources from the Calavari front, or to take advantage of their weakness here and pluck a few systems from their possession.

If they really were weak. Paul had the sneaking suspicion that they weren’t and were just biding their time, but no major thrust had come into Alpha Region for some time, just probing skirmishes. Several systems were within a handful of lightyears from one another, meaning the two opposing factions were right on each other’s doorstep, but the lizards hadn’t managed to push Star Force back, and Paul had been resistant to push too far the other direction, for fear of weakening their supply and reinforcement potential. If he gave the lizards an opening he expected them to take it, which was why he had been devoting so much time on Namek to building the frontier defense line to his satisfaction.

It wasn’t complete, not by a long shot, but it was sturdy enough to thwart the level of attacks the lizards had thrown at them to date…but not against what they were unleashing against the Calavari. Duke Monterrey was carrying out Paul’s continuing building plans, with the trailblazer checking in via relay network occasionally to make adjustments, but his presence was no longer needed in the design room on a regular basis, and after considerable prodding by Sara and others, he acknowledged that his place for the foreseeable future was hitting the lizards in their weak points and chewing up their fleets as only he could.

Sara was actually out doing the same with her own fleet, as was Greg and Emily, who were hitting the usual targets with quick thrusts to wear down lizard positions without getting into any grand battles. They kept the lizards guessing, as well as making it hard for them to build along the frontier without repetitive setbacks, but Paul was looking for a bit more in wanton destruction, which was the primary reason he’d brought his fleet through the Retari System on his way to lizard territory.

After the Excalibur and her fleet settled into orbit a tiny dropship crossed from one of the defense sedas over to the Melee-class jumpship and deposited a single passenger, whom Paul met in the landing bay.

“Please tell me you found something sweet to hit?” he asked as soon as he saw the petite form with just a hint of swagger swinging her ponytail back and forth behind her head step down from the dropship’s boarding ramp.

“It took a while,” Kara admitted, “but I found quite a few interesting things, including a major construction project they’re trying to keep out of orbital surveillance in the Menversan System.”

“Define ‘major,’” Paul asked as he fell into step with her as the pair of Sabers left the hangar as the dropship took off to return to the seda.

“Big and new…at least nothing that I could match up,” she said, raising her Vorch’nas and mentally ordering it to produce a hologram above her left wrist of the site that she’d infiltrated on the ground. It showed a concealment canopy from the inside, like a giant football stadium dome, underneath which the construction was ongoing, but with little shape to give away its purpose.

“Did you ask?”

“I tried, but none of the lizards I crossed paths with knew what it was, just their individual assignments, and I couldn’t find an administrator or librarian. They were all standard variants.”

Paul frowned as he tried to puzzle out what they were building. The Menversan System was third line back from the border, as he thought of it anyway. Galactic geography was tricky, and 2 dimensional thinking just wasn’t adequate, but in his mind the first line was the nearest systems that Star Force made a habit of hitting on a regular basis. The second line was slightly more developed lizard systems that they hit occasionally, while the third line was far enough back and well-defended enough that they rarely ventured there…though that’s exactly where Paul intended to take his fleet. The question was where to hit.

“There are only two shield generators nearby, which I think we can take out easy enough with orbital bombardment,” Kara suggested as she shut the hologram down and the pair walked into the ship’s interior, enroute to the bridge, which was situated aft of the ‘donut hole.’ “But I think we should start off with either Kerriole or Verikab. Both have large fleets in play, but not large enough that we can’t chew them up. How are you situated for a bombardment campaign?”

“Got two Mammoths worth of ammo and supplies, skewed to the ammo side.”

“In that case there are a few other targets you might be interested in hitting.”

“Any of their big toys making their way forward?”

“A few battleships, and Verikab has a dreadnaught, but none of the BIG ones as yet.”

“You have any trouble?”

“Jumpship got the paint nicked a bit, but other than that it was just in and out as usual.”

“Any new memories cropping up?”

“There’s always something working its way out,” Kara said as they stepped into an elevator. “A week ago I had a dream about an Oso’lon tail kicking a Kret’net…sent the damn thing flying across the room.  Those Ultras are far more agile than they have a right to be, given their size. They’re going to tear our mechs to pieces.”

“We’re working on it,” Paul promised. The Ultras weren’t a race of V’kit’no’sat, but upgraded versions of the other races. It seemed it wasn’t just Zen’zat that got strength and size enhancements, and when applied to dinosaurs that were already gigantic, the Ultras made Godzilla seem puny in comparison…even without their armor. “While you’ve been busy playing with the lizards, some of the others have been working on our second tier mechs. We’ve got some in the field already, but I haven’t gotten any battle reports back as yet.”

“Well that’s a start…a pathetic one, but a start,” Kara said irreverently, but Paul didn’t take offense. She out of all of them had a unique understanding of the V’kit’no’sat and how badly outmatched they were. “I do like the new ship though. I hope she’s as tough as she looks?”

“The cleansing beam alone should be to your liking,” Paul said with a smirk. “It’s the largest we’ve ever constructed, including stations and ground batteries.”

Kara frowned. “I thought the atmosphere interfered with the beam?”

“It does…or rather did. We’ve worked out most of that problem from the tech, but even with distortion, a heavy beam will get enough firepower through the atmosphere to be useful, and on airless worlds there’s no disadvantage.”

“Duh,” Kara said, mentally kicking herself. “How many does the ship have?”

“Just one, but it’s got multiple firing apertures. We can channel partial blasts out simultaneously, so we’ve got the potential for 12 beams.”

“Rail guns, I assume?”

Paul shook his head. “Nope, relying on the fleet for that. This baby’s too big to turn to aim well, and I didn’t like the volume loss of conical units. If we need to hit a planet, the cleansing beam will do the job.”

“Accuracy?”

“About the same. The beam is straight line, but we still haven’t gotten the V’kit’no’sat reticule orrery figured out. The nanotech is giving the techs trouble.”

“Unlimited ammo?” she asked sarcastically.

“I wish, but to answer your question, we’ll get far more shots out of it than a rail gun.”

“Downside?”

“Clouds, storms, and other atmospheric turbulence. Metallic rocks don’t care much, but the beam does.”

Kara nodded as they stepped off the elevator into a wide hall with a scattering of personnel moving about. “What else does this beast have?”

“The biggest bridge to date,” Paul said, crossing the hall and through a double set of doors. The outer ones opened to reveal a short hallway that Paul knew had defense turrets hidden within the walls, which the pair walked through without incident, then the interior ones opened up and Kara’s eyes went slightly wide.

“We could hold trials in here,” she said, looking out over the multi-leveled room that appeared more like an asteroid crater with catwalks crisscrossing the interior. Workstations were everywhere, along with multiple holographic generators…full size generators…popping up at regular intervals across the landscape and down over the slightly angled decline to the center of the ‘bowl.’

“I wanted all the drone pilots in one place,” Paul explained as he led her to the edge of one of the catwalks that would take them out onto the platforms suspended over the crater in the dead center of the room where the command staff were situated. “We’ve got more interior armor surrounding us than most warships have on the exterior.”

“Nice to know,” Kara said, raising her left hand and flying up off the floor to get a bird’s eye view.

Paul rolled his eyes, but in truth he wished he had one of the damn things so he could do the same.

Kara floated a few meters above him, hanging from her Vorch’nas, and followed him across the huge deck to the central command area, seeing dozens of levels higher up that made use of most of the open air, but giving people ample room to jump off and break bones and necks on landing. Curious design, but she liked it. It gave one a plethora of cover and movement options should combat ever break out here, which she was sure was one consideration Paul had when designing it.

When she eventually landed next to where Paul stopped, he telepathically pointed to an input terminal, where she walked over and touched her Vorch’nas, mentally telling it to download the intelligence data she’d accumulated on her scouting mission, which Star Force now had the technology to interpret via flash physical data transfer. The total time of contact lasted .73 seconds, then multiple holograms popped up amongst the command ‘pylon’ on which they stood.

Paul’s eyes were drawn to them immediately, with Kara jumping in at various points to narrate as the ship’s Admiral and others listened in. She’d picked up a lot of intel over the past 8 months, all of which was vital, given how widespread the lizard frontier was and how little they knew of their enemy.

By the end of what became a two hour report, Paul had a good feeling for how they were going to proceed, which mimicked most of Kara’s speculation as to which targets he would choose to hit, though one in particular did surprise her, given that it seemed to be on a world that was of low importance.

Then Paul showed her a tiny bit of information from the ship’s databanks in conjunction with her intel, drawing a raised eyebrow from the ranger. “Sneaky bastards.”

“Very,” Paul confirmed. “Time for us to be sneakier.”

4

February 28, 2465

Krichjan System (Protovic territory)

Eshwan

With the Tassadar back in planetary orbit, Kip stood in a briefing room along with three Clan Protoss mech-specialist Archons and two more from Clan Metal Gear. They’d been studying the ground situation in detail, with information coming in from their advance units as well as from the Protovic, but the bulk of the Star Force troops were still on their jumpship transports, waiting for the major pushback to come.

It was up to Kip to decide where to make it. The Skarrons had already begun aggressively engaging Clan Metal Gear, but the size of their walkers was making their ability to track down the newcomers difficult at best. The Metal Gears kept redeploying their lines, stretching out the Skarrons and picking them apart piecemeal up until a Type-3 walker came up to engage them…which they would respond to with an immediate pullback.

The Type-3s were easily twice as large as the Type-4s, with an extra set of legs bringing them up to 8 in total and standing some 7 times as tall as a Star Force neo. In additional to the plethora of plasma cannon ports covering the thing like zits, the Type-3 had a large anti-air cannon on top, the size of which could put a dent in heavily armored aircraft, such as gunships. It didn’t appear that the cannon could tip down to fire at ground level, which was odd considering its power. It was almost as if the Type-3s had been designed as anti-air units first, then added to with ground defenses second.

Around the cannon mount on the top of the double body, which had two spherical sections connected by a thick middle in which the cannon sat, taking it out of view of all but lateral ground targets, was a ring of anti-air pulse generators that would throw out a segmented ring of plasma to hit fast moving targets. Based on data from the Protovic, Kip had seen the things throw out 10 rings/spheres on multiple angles inside of 3.5 seconds, meaning these things could light up the local airspace if they wanted, making close-in air assaults very dicey…and the same was true of launching missiles on target, which the plasma rings would eat up if they came within a kilometer’s distance.

The Type-2s were even larger, outfitted with additional ground weapons while maintaining their anti-air potential, including long-range missiles that could hit orbiting starships if they came too close. This version also had the grapples Kip had been told about, and appeared to work by creating a localized gravity field around a portion of the target, cranking it up multiple, if not hundreds of times standard, and essentially pulling down a starship or transport and forcing it to crash into the ground.

The grapples were connected by a tether to the walker, which seemed to indicate that it fed the power to the localized generator, making the whole thing look like a ball and chain assembly. The things were too slow to hit skeets, but if he sent in a corvette for close plasma or mauler bombardment, his warship could be at risk of bumping into the ground…or at the least being held in place by multiple walkers as they chewed away at the shields and armor until they penetrated the hull.

The obvious escape maneuver would be to make a microjump and just overpower the grapples…which a starship could obviously do, but if you didn’t time it perfectly you’d find yourself leaving the confines of the gravity fields and traveling far faster than you wanted to…which would shred your ship on the atmosphere, meaning these walkers certainly did pose a threat to close-in starship bombardment.

The length of the grapples appeared to be several kilometers, with the ball assembly having anti-grav to fly it to the targets. It was an ingenious design, and one that spoke of the Skarrons’ fear of aerial attack. Kip was curious as to what had sparked such fear to cause them to create anti-air heavy walkers when they had the technology to make the things so much more powerful against ground targets.

The Skarrons own aerial forces were on the heavy end, situated more for ground support than air to air combat, so maybe their weakness there, coupled with an aerial-strong enemy, had evolved this walker design. It was definitely something to look into, but at the moment Kip had to figure out how to take these things down, and the Type-1s were going to be the hardest nuts to crack.

They were beyond huge, to the point of them being the equivalent of a walking starship. The Skarrons had brought 52 of them to the planet, each fighting in its own region with other walker versions in support, and unfortunately the things were in heavily populated areas, meaning Kip couldn’t call down rail gun rounds against them. He was sure that would kill the targets, despite the circular bombardment shield they carried, equivalent to what would defend a small city.

One oddity of the Type-1s and 2s was that they didn’t have full shielding. Instead they had what amounted to deployable ‘plates’ of shield that they could manifest on any point around their perimeter like a Knight did with his physical shield. The armor on the things was so thick Kip guessed they weren’t overly concerned about lesser fire getting through so long as they could block the big guns. The Type-3s, 4s, and 5s had full shielding when they wanted, but with so many plasma ports they had to keep them partially down most of the time, not able to construct a matrix around each exit point, Kip guessed.

All of this was very odd. The Skarrons had advanced tech in many areas, then almost degenerate designs in others. He didn’t think they were stupid, so there must have been something else in play, something about the enemy he didn’t grasp yet, that caused them to build like this…but whatever the reason, they were kicking the crap out of the Protovic, and Star Force needed to find a way to take their big walkers out…which was going to start with the heavy cruiser he was sending down to the surface.

It was a bit larger than usual, but technically all starships with gravity drives could drop down and hover over a planet’s surface…at least until their fuel ran out. That wasn’t going to be an issue here, for while the ship was heavy, it wasn’t that heavy, and Star Force’s gravity drives were getting more advanced with each passing decade, allowing just this type of maneuvering.

Kip had it brought down far from the Skarron lines, then flown across the surface to within 20 kilometers of a Type-1 over the Protovic cities that had yet to fall in order to avoid the anti-air defenses of the rest of the Skarron walkers had they approached from the backside of the carnage region creeping its way across the planet. That distance should have been outside of grapple range, but it didn’t stop a slew of missiles from popping out of the Skarron Type-1s and 2s nearby, which tracked directly towards the heavy cruiser, which responded in kind by firing intercepts that raced out and met the larger missiles halfway, destroying them before they could get to the ship.

The Skarrons kept firing more, and Kip knew that the warship only had a limited amount of intercepts to use, after which it’d be down to anti-missile lachar batteries that were already starting to hit some of the wayward missiles. He wasn’t sure how many they’d be able to knock down once the intercepts ran out, for it was taking multiple lachar hits to match the destructive power of an intercept, but for this mission all he needed was a single test shot…though the trailblazer was hoping for a bit more.

With the rectangular brick of a warship leveling out to a stable hover, the internal mechanics that aimed the cleansing beam aligned with the distant, yet easily visible Type-1 and locked on to its forward bulge out of the seven that it sported. With the monstrous centipede targeted, the heavy cruiser fired its primary weapon, conscious to keep the line of attack at 0+ degrees so that it wouldn’t come down on Protovic buildings on the far side, meaning the warship was hovering meters over the rooftops as it fired.

The white beam leapt out in a mathematically straight line, a tiny line, burning across the gap between ship and walker, but as the atmosphere interfered with the transit the beam lost its coherency a bit, fanning out rather than keeping its surgical pinpoint as it would have done in space. That said, the now wider beam point burnt into the side of the walker and melted through meters of armor plating within a second, after which one of the walker’s rectangular shields materialized and stopped the cleansing beam for a moment, deflecting the energy as if it had suddenly put up a giant palm to block the attack.

But the beam punched through that palm almost as soon as it was raised, with the last bits of the cleansing beam adding to the hull damage and cutting a tiny, but nasty gash into the side as a rush of even more missiles poured out of the top and sped towards the heavy cruiser. Combined with more coming in from other walkers, some began to get through and detonate against the warship’s shields, draining them remarkably fast.

The heavy cruiser got in another cleansing beam shot, this one on a slightly different location, punching through the revitalized shield in less than a tenth of a second before coring through the armor and into the inner mechanisms. What was hit Kip didn’t know, but some of the external plasma fire raining down on the Protovic defenders ceased, as did its slow and ponderous walk forward.

“Pull it out,” Kip ordered via comm to the bridge crew, with the heavy cruiser beginning to rise up from the surface with minimal shields left. Once it gained a bit of altitude the ship tipped up on end and began to gain speed towards orbit, just as a blur of projectile flashed out from the Type-1 and broke through the heavy cruiser’s shields.

The rail gun splinter shattered against the ship’s armor, simultaneously breaking it and opening up a crater on the top side as missiles began to pound the ship in its wake. Within a handful of seconds dozens hit and one of the gravity drives was knocked out, diminishing its climbing ability.

The anti-air lachars continued to eat up as many missiles as they could, but there were so many coming up from the surface that the warship was swarmed as it wasn’t able to achieve maximum speed through the atmosphere due to the lack of shaped shields that normally gave it an aerodynamic slicing ‘blade’ while climbing.

“We’re going to lose it,” Carson-8332 said.

“Damn it,” Kip swore, opening up the comm again. “Make sure it comes down on the enemy and not over the intact city. Hit the Type-1 if you can.”

As he watched, the big warship tipped over, maneuvering on what engines it had left, including the thrust nubs situated at every corner, and arced its way back towards the Skarrons as it continued to get slammed with additional missiles, some of which looped around upon missing the first pass and hit it from behind.

Another gravity drive went out, with the ship starting to fall more than fly as it gained lateral speed heading back towards the Skarron super walker. Eyeballing it, Kip thought it might just make it there, realizing that it was going to land on the Protovic troops as well, but better where the enemy was than some random place in the city. There was no open countryside nearby to get to, and if they could take down the walker it would help others in the immediate future, so they might as well try.

The heavy cruiser dipped a bit more, making Kip think it was going to hit the ground prior to the walker and hopefully skid into it…but then three grapples shot out from the Type-1 and hit the underside of the Star Force ship as it came within 10 kilometers or so. A moment later the front end got yanked down hard by the gravity fields and plowed the crater-filled hull into the cityscape with an explosion of debris as it hit intact buildings with who knew how many Protovic inside.

Kip ground his teeth together in anger as he saw the mass slide another two kilometers before it stalled out, leaving the Type-1 intact, save for the pair of cleansing beam strikes that had got through.

“Alright,” he said slowly, watching the missile plumes cease and wondering just how many of them they had tucked away inside those massive hulls. “We know how to hurt them. The cleansing beams are the key, we just have to isolate the Type-1s before we engage…which means drawing off their support and taking them down the same way.”

Kip altered the battlemap, highlighting every Type-1 and Type-2.

“These are the targets, but in order to get them away we have to engage on the ground, which means fighting through the smaller types. This is going to take a while, but we can get to the big ones, and we have to if the Protovic are going to have a chance of stopping this army.”

“What if they don’t take the bait,” Shinton-10443 asked, “and stay grouped together where they can overlap missile fire?”

“Then we get creative,” Kip answered the Metal Gear Archon. “They don’t have an unlimited supply of missiles, so plan C is to drain them dry using naval attacks. Plan B is to start sweeping up their smaller ground troops until they decide to either pull them in or bring the big boys out to cover them.”

Shinton poked a finger into the hologram. “If they turn those missiles against our mechs, we’re going to be in a world of hurt.”

“Not if we reconfigure with anti-missile mods,” Carson differed. “That cruiser only had the standard load out. We can put more than that in play with two stars of madcats, properly equipped.”

“Do we have naval mods?” Shinton asked.

Kip shook his head. “Not for what we need here.”

Carson stared at Kip, who had an odd expression on his face. “What is it?”

“The shields went down too fast.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’m wondering if their missiles have shield-draining properties…and if that doesn’t have something to do with the reason their big walkers don’t have full shields.”

“You think they rely on armor?”

“Their navy was heavily outfitted, but their shield strength wasn’t lacking. If they’re used to going rounds with enemies that use shield penetrators, it could be that they’ve designed their ground forces with that in mind.”

Shinton tapped on the location of the downed warship at the end of the scrape mark now blazed across the cityscape. “Their warheads are good sized too. It’s hard to tell with so many hitting, but they might be designed specifically for anti-armor applications.”

“You can’t have both,” Carson said, then caught himself and glanced at Kip. “Can you?”

“I don’t know,” he said, slowly shaking his head. “I didn’t expect to lose that ship, at least not that fast. It looks like the Skarrons have put a lot of effort into anti-air tech, so let’s just assume it’s more badass than normal. We go in on the ground, thin out their Type-3s and smaller, and see if we can isolate or draw out a Type-2.”

“And if we can?”

“We take it down.”

“With what?” Shinton asked. “We can’t take it on the ground without a hell of a lot of mechs, unless you want to allow us to use rail gun bombardment?”

“We might,” Kip admitted, “if we can get them into a deserted part of the city. Bring down a dozen smaller ships and hover them over the target and pound it into pieces…but I think we’ll still lose a ship or two in the process, which I don’t want to risk right now. If their missiles are even partial shield penetrators, then we need to go with an armor solution ourselves.”

“Meaning hoths?” Carson asked.

Kip nodded. “We keep as many missiles off them as we can, and trust in their plating to hold up against the rest.”

“They have less than a warship,” Shinton pointed out. “A lot less.”

“True,” Kip admitted, “but I’m thinking these guys are saving their missiles for air threats, otherwise they’ll run out of them way too fast, and I haven’t seen them used against the Protovic ground troops in the data they sent us.”

“So we’re relying on them staying true to form?” Carson said, cringing.

“No,” Kip said, dismissing the notion. “We’re going to bring in our anti-air mech mods and air assets for distant support, keeping them out of pulse ring range. It’ll be tricky, but if we overlap all our assets, I think we can counter their missile barrages enough to cover the hoths. We’ll give ourselves an out, but even if we do get our butts kicked, we need battle data to study and learn from. Anyone have any better ideas how to get it?”

Jarvis-6291 cleared his throat. “Might I suggest we get proactive and have the Protovic evacuate a region ahead of the Skarron army that we can lay down rail gun fire on from orbit? High enough away that their missiles won’t be a problem.”

Kip raised an eyebrow. “A good idea in theory, but do you know how far those missiles can travel?”

“Not yet, but we might as well find out.”

The trailblazer smiled. “I like your thinking, but if the Protovic could evacuate that quickly they would have done so by now. It may take longer to enact than you’re thinking.”

“Still worth it,” Jarvis argued, “if the Protovic fleet can’t risk getting within plasma range. Maybe not something right up close to the front lines, but for something we can use a month or two into the future.”

Kip pointed a finger at him. “That’s more like it. Start working on probable locations.”

“Just a thought,” Carson added. “If we’re going to try to starve their missile supplies to death, we can’t afford to let them get any supply runs through. Even orbital drops could give them enough to hold out indefinitely.”

“Can’t make any promises there, which is why that’s not plan A.

“Just something to keep in mind as we’re looking ahead.”

“Alright people, let’s start here…here…and here,” Kip said, pointing to different points on the fringes of the current combat zones that had Protovic tanks going up against some of the smaller walkers. “Metal Gears will keep harassing them from behind while Protoss gets to poke the tiger.”

Carson looked over at Shinton. “Want to trade?”

5

March 2, 2465

Krichjan System (Protovic territory)

Eshwan

Kip landed in one of the large Protovic streets, now almost entirely abandoned, a safe distance inside friendly territory via dropship next to a spaceport that was already packed with landing transports. Most were Star Force dropships unloading cargo and taking on Protovic evacuees to carry off to less dangerous parts of the planet, but a few were larger than Dragon-class dropships.

Those transports were bringing down the larger mechs, each of which was bigger than a Hoth-class heavy walker, which could just fit inside a dragon dropship once its legs were collapsed, but its big brother, the hoth Mk. 2, had to have alternative transport, as did several other types of mechs that Star Force had upgraded to over past years.

Normally Kip would take a neo, which would suit the Protovic streets well enough, but given the size of the Skarron walkers he was going to take a voltron and hope to squeeze through the architecture. One good thing about the Protovic cityscape was it was nonstop for hundreds of miles and very irregular, meaning no long streets to fire down. That would make the smaller mechs almost invisible and force a closer type of fighting that suited Star Force well.

Trouble was, the Skarron walkers were so big that some of them were actually stepping over the smaller buildings. They could fire down on the mechs around them with ease, all the while making for easy targets themselves. Kip was tempted to try and nick them to death, but he knew he needed the heavier weapons the larger mechs afforded, so he was going to try the largest one they had built to date.

He’d chosen this section of this city to fight in because of the taller buildings, which would make it harder to maneuver for the Skarrons, as well as potentially hinder their tether launching capabilities, which appeared to be launched from the underside of the walkers. There were other sections of the planet which were more suitable to fighting, some of which had low buildings, some that had none, but the closest gap between cities was too far off and there were too many Protovic people and assets between here and there to concede the area to the enemy.

Kip intended to rip them apart from orbit if/when they tried to cross that gap later on, but right now they needed to stop the enemy where they were…and that was right in the middle of the heaviest infrastructure, sitting atop the cityscape while their ground troops perused the subsurface infrastructure where the Protovic were doing a better job of defending themselves.

That fight Kip was going to leave to them. They knew their own cities far better than Star Force did, and the trailblazer did not want to get his troops caught up in an underground war. The Skarrons couldn’t take their big walkers down there, so it was personnel and tank-sized craft only, which gave the Protovic an advantage…unless the ceiling came crashing down on top of you when one of the Skarron walkers stepped on the wrong spot.

No, Kip was going after the big walkers. They were the key to the Skarrons dominance on the ground and they had to be taken out…he just wasn’t going to start with a Type-1. There were several Type-4s escorting a trio of Type-3s about 20 miles ahead, with the Skarron fighters and the Star Force skeets and gunships going at it above the Star Force landing zone, along with a couple of Protovic Valeries. The enemy knew Star Force troops were incoming and was trying to poach the dropships and transports as they came down…but the Archon and Regular pilots were having none of it.

As Kip walked out onto the Protovic’s wide streets he wasn’t concerned about the ongoing, scattered aerial combat. His pilots and craft were proving superior, and he had no doubt everyone would get to ground intact, for they were coming down to surface further to the east and flying level to the ground to get to this position to avoid the Skarron anti-air, but so far, other than their fighters, there had been no aerial response, though Kip knew the Type-3s could probably shoot this far out with their lachar cannon if they had a decent line of sight.

“Commander,” a nearby Protovic said in the trade language as he approached.

Kip turned to face him as a handful of other Archons walked out of the dropship alongside him.

“Ren’san’do,” he greeted his assigned liaison.

“I’ve just received a report,” the Protovic said from behind his armored helmet as they pair walked towards the main landing zone where the mechs were being offloaded, “that indicates that several Skarron ground teams have broken through in the undercity and are headed for this location.”

“What size?”

“Uncertain, but they’ve secured a route of access to bring in as many as they wish.”

“Alright, I need your people to show mine where the access points are. We’ll set up a perimeter around the LZ and hold it ourselves. How deep do the structures go underneath us?”

“Several kilometers. It is virtually impossible to block off all access to such a large area.”

“Leave it to us, just get us guides for the undercity.”

“Consider it done.”

“And feel free to reroute your forward troops through here as a fallback position.”

Ren’san’do nodded gratefully, then with a tap of his hand on Kip’s armored shoulder he ran off.

Kip likewise accelerated up into a run, turning his green ranger armor into a little blur as he headed off into the landing zone and weaved his way around the unloading areas, not wanting to get stepped on, and eventually ran his way over to the area where the larger transports were set/setting down and found a portable control post set up nearby. It was similar to their firebases and constructed of transformable cargo cubes, but this one was tiny in comparison, consisting of only 9 blocks in a three by three grid.

There was no entry gate through the walls, just a staircase on the outside that he climbed up to the top level on, which held three octagonal platforms with gaps in between that showed the area below, accessible by ladders only, which he knew held extensive comm equipment, plus shield generators and a tiny barracks.

“Where’s my mech?” he asked the tech manning the control console, who had a pair of commandos flanking him in guard positions while another handful stood ready along the wall, keeping an eye out for enemy ground troops.

“There,” one of the commandos said, pointing at a grounded transport, “and there,” he finished, pointing up at another just landing.

Kip nodded. “Give it priority. I need to get out and scout the area while the rest are unpacked.”

“Understood, Archon,” the commando said, gesturing to the tech who was already logging the priority into the database. That cleared deck space in front of the transports, which eventually got around to unloading the gigantic, lumpy bricks of mech out of their holds via internal anti-grav units bolstered by anti-grav tugs that maneuvered the three pieces out into a star formation…or the top three segments anyway.

The other two came down in the next transport and were laid out at the bottom two points. Once they were stationary and the tugs were pulled back, the Clan Protoss commando in charge of the command post gave Kip a go.

The trailblazer jumped off the wall and landed in a crouch on the ground, then sprinted off towards the five huge blocks, running for the one at the top of the star. When he got there he climbed into an access door that was near ground level, then through a short crawlway before getting to the mech’s pilot compartment. He sealed the interior door, then telekinetically hit a switch that pulled armor plates together, removing the access way and giving him meters of protection around his pod.

Next he powered up the life support, which altered the gravity in the pod and sent his feet towards the wall/floor. At the moment the mech’s pod was laying on its back, resulting in the disorientation, but once the inertial dampener and artificial gravity kicked in the cockpit righted itself from Kip’s point of view and he immediately took his helmet off and began unlocking his armor. He stepped out of it and collapsed it down into packet form, then stashed it and his helmet into a bin attached to the back wall for just that purpose.

He took two steps and moved into the control sphere, where he stepped up onto the foot pads and began wrapping the control harness around his legs, getting a decent connective feel through his uniform as he snugged the straps. Other mechwarriors preferred to strip down to their underwear for a more direct connection, same way they did with going sockless in their running shoes, but Kip had never felt the need…and with the way this behemoth moved, he wasn’t going to be getting too creative with the mech’s movements anyway.

Once he got his chest, arms, and head locked in he used a redundant control panel in front of him, one placed there specifically for psionics-capable pilots, and synced the harness alignment with the mech’s…causing limbs to stretch out and go rigid, despite the fact that he was in a block of material rather than a mech.

But that was about to change. Using a combination of hand, eye, and psionic controls he triggered the block that he was in to transform its shape into a torso, then used the anti-grav to lift it off the ground a couple of meters as the block to his right also went through a transformation…or rather a partial one, extruding a thick support pylon.

Kip’s center block, now in torso form, drifted over and pushed into the pylon, sucking it inside the right shoulder assembly and locking it in place before pulling it snug. After that he ‘landed’ back on the ground and let the anti-grav capacitor recharge as the right block finished transforming into an arm, complete with a neo-esk, fully functional hand.

When it did Kip’s right hand in the harness lost its rigidity and he experimented with the fingers, seeing the mech’s operate in sync on the intricate holographic display that now surrounded him in the cockpit. With that arm locked in, he levitated both it and the torso up off the ground and moved over to the left block, accepted its pylon, and got his left arm operational.

He did the same thing with the leg blocks, accepting them one at a time, then finishing the transformation of those pieces on the ground and feeling all maneuvering capabilities loosen up in his control harness. Fully powering up the Voltron-class mech, he bent at his waist and sat the thing up slowly, throwing back an elbow and hand for leverage.

Once in sitting position he looked around, now visibly higher than the ‘small’ mechs roaming about. Seeing that the area around his was clear, he rolled the voltron over onto its right side, got its hands underneath the torso, then came up to a knee. From there he slowly stood the thing up to its full height, some four times taller than a neo and covered in so much armor he literally had more on his forearm than the little mechs carried on their entire frames.

Once Kip was standing he shuffled around a bit, refamiliarizing himself with the controls, for he hadn’t had a lot of training time in this type of mech, and most of what he did have was in simulators. Spinning the headless mech around once, he spotted a pair of hoths off to his west, both of which only came up to his mech’s armpits…but the Mk. 2 hoth further behind them stood more than half again as tall as his voltron. It was a beast of a walker, and definitely earned the ‘heavy’ moniker. Unlike the smaller Hoths, the Mk. 2 had the unique distinction of carrying the smallest cleansing beam ever built, and Kip intended to put that to good use, as he had brought down four of the beasts to this landing zone…or would have, once the rest of the transports arrived.

As big and heavily armored as they were, they weren’t meant for dancing, and were just narrow enough to fit into the Protovic streets. They’d be sitting ducks for counterattacks once they demonstrated their firepower, which was why Kip and the others had to get out ahead of them and engage the enemy, taking down their ‘smaller’ units.

But at the moment all he was doing was blocking the LZ, so he walked his mech off towards the edge of the clearing, making sure not to kick aside the smaller mechs, and made room for others to be unpacked or brought down from orbit.

Kip gingerly walked into one of the city streets, making extra care not to step on anyone below, though the area should have already been cleared of civilians, save for the designated evacuee routes. With so many mechs around it had been a necessity, and Kip was thankful that it appeared that the Protovic natives were adhering to the geographic restrictions.

Risking a little more speed he accelerated up into a brisk walk, then turned one of the angles in the street and began heading off west towards the distant Skarron lines. From his vantage point he could see over more than half of the Protovic buildings, while much taller versions sprouted up around him like trees, both for their height and their penchant for leaf-like landing pads clustered around the tops, which were well above his head, and even that of the Mk. 2 Hoth.

The battlemap superimposed over his view of the city, with him immediately seeing Protovic engagements taking place ahead…a few of which weren’t that far off. He triggered an auxiliary view, with him being able to see the plane of the city from above, and noted that there was a ground battle going on between Protovic tanks, infantry, and what looked like an upwelling of Skarron ground troops coming out of a region below…along with some type of armor that wasn’t their huge walkers.

“Kip, nice to see you in play,” Lonigan-839 said, transmitting from a Mk. 3 raven out on the perimeter of the LZ. “Do you mind if I swing a few boys out and help the Protovic put out some of these fires?”

“Just looking at one of them now. Permission granted, so long as you keep the LZ secure.”

“You know I will,” the mech specialist said, who, ironically, had a higher rating in that division than Kip did…by two levels.

“I’m going to take a stroll and see what’s up ahead, break trail for the heavies. Do you know anything about this small-scale armor I’m seeing?”

“Armor is right. I’ve been in contact with the Protovic field commanders ever since I set down. They say they’re exoskeletons that some of the Skarrons are wearing. Apparently these guys come in different sizes. I’d guess these are their version of Knights.”

“Well, step on a few, will ya? I’ve got bigger targets to worry about.”

“Copy that. Keep your fat ass mech behind the bigger buildings. If they knew who you were, I’d light you up with a missile barrage first thing.”

“I think they’re saving those for air assets, but point taken. There’s two Type-2s within moderate missile range, at least as far as we think they can fire. Still haven’t got firm numbers there.”

“I suggest you take a couple of madcats with you, just the same.”

“Thanks, but the Hoths need them more than me. They’re going to be priority one once they get their first shot off.”

“Take pictures,” Lonigan quipped, with Kip seeing his raven shoot up to a building top on its built-in jump jets…which in this case were anti-grav, now that thrust-based maneuvering had been replaced with the more versatile tech.

“Watch yourself, not all of these buildings are uninhabited.”

“I know,” he said seriously, “but they built them sturdy. At least enough to support a light mech like mine.”

“Just keep an eye out. We don’t want to crush the people we’re trying to save.”

“Once the shooting starts, we might not be that lucky,” Lonigan said somberly.

“I know,” Kip echoed him. “Watch your step and firing lines…save who you can.”

“Ditto…and keep count. The big walkers earn painted tally marks.”

Kip smirked. “Agreed.”

6

Kip leaned his voltron forward, bent the right knee and kicked its left leg back, bringing the torso lower to the ground as he punched into the street, burying one of the armored Skarron infantry beneath his mech’s clenched fist. He pulled it back up and swept the fist side to side, knocking others around as they were annoyingly darting in and out of his feet firing tiny missiles at his escort mechs. A few dodged the giant hand but most got knocked aside, and splattered when he got the chance.

After he’d killed a few dozen he stood the mech back up and continued walking forward, leaving the rest for the smaller mechs. The voltron might not be the most agile of mechs, but it was still built with the neo’s design philosophy of hand to hand combat, meaning the enemy wasn’t going to be able to hide out underneath his feet, and it was time they realized that…for he wasn’t having much luck stepping on the things.

The Skarrons quickly got the message and pulled back from the immediate radius around his mech, taking cover around and in between the stalk-like Protovic buildings, ready to jump out and ambush the other mechs. Each of the Skarrons was a fourth the height of a Raven-class mech, and they could run and jump well enough for quadrupeds, with some of them ganging up and knocking the small mechs off their feet in what looked like an ugly football game…but they didn’t have the weaponry to destroy the mechs quickly, making the things more of an annoyance than a threat, but give them enough time to gather greater numbers and Kip knew that would change.

There were a pair of Starbright-class mechs preceding Kip on the road they were taking towards the first of the Type-4 walkers, bathing every target they came across in plasma, along with several neos spread out onto other streets forming a ring around the voltron, while a handful of ravens were keeping pace with the big mech to clean up infantry that might be getting in the way. Behind the big mech was a pair of madcats equipped as anti-missile platforms, standing ready should the voltron require cover fire against the big Skarron missiles.

The little ones coming from the infantry weren’t requiring any intercepts to be fired, with the lachars picking them off easy enough when given a moment to target, but some of the infantry was running up and firing them almost directly underneath the mechs, chipping away a little shield strength with every shot…something the ravens were trying to keep them from doing.

Kip’s mech group was running point, with 6 others coming up from behind him in a staggered line. Two of those were Mk. 2 hoths with a much larger escort, 3 were original hoths with escorts, and the last one was a rogue group of smaller mechs looking for whatever targets were available, especially the Skarron Type-5s that were likewise biped, the first of which Kip was about to come up to.

His neo escort got to it first and engaged it with probing attacks, finding that it had a primary plasma cannon set in the chest, while the rest of its armament seemed tooled towards anti-infantry operations. It was an extreme flanking escort for the Type-3 that was Kip’s eventual target, which was likewise surrounded by Type-4s, which then had escort rings of other Type-5s…which then had escorts of their primary infantry. So far Kip hadn’t seen any Hobbits, suggesting that skirmish duties probably didn’t mean going up against mechs, but it was still odd that they hadn’t spotted any as scouts.

Then again, if they were out there in the buildings they’d be almost impossible to spot. If they were smart they’d stay out of the mechs’ way, which the Skarrons themselves were not doing. They weren’t going to slow down his voltron with their little missiles, but given enough time they could wear down his escorts.

By the time Kip got up to the Type-5 it was already toast, lying on its back with the chest section torn out. He did notice an open flap between the legs that he thought was a cockpit entry, which suggested the pilot had fled after his ride had been damaged.

Kip checked the battlemap, looking for the next closest target and finding several Type-5s nearby, but he ignored them and set a waypoint for the closest Type-4 for his group of mechs to follow.

“Take out the 5s on your own,” he said into his group comm, “I’m heading for the 4. Lay off it until I can size up what it’ll take to take it down. I might be able to get it without backup.”

He got a host of acknowledgement signals in the form of tiny flashing lights next to the name icons for all the mechs, letting him know they’d heard him without vocally creating a mess of overlapping confirmations. Kip ignored them and goosed his walking speed a bit once he rounded the next bend. His escorts matched his new speed, keeping their spacing as they waded through yet more infantry, a lot of which were just shooting at them with pistols and rifles.

Even though it wasn’t doing much damage, it felt like they were walking through a gauntlet…and had they tried this approach with their own infantry they would have been in for a world of resistance. Thankfully the mechs gave them another option.

Kip saw another Type-5 icon on the battlemap go down off towards the north where his neos had swung out to get it, leaving only one in the direct path between him and the Type-4, which another pair of neos were racing towards, eager to take down another of the Skarron walkers. Meanwhile the other mech groups were making their way forward at a slightly slower pace, with the hoths having to take extra time maneuvering around corners…or stepping over them in the case of the Mk. 2s.

The Skarrons clearly knew they were coming, with the Type-4 repositioning into a low gap between two buildings and stepping onto/into the single-story structure occupying that spot, wedging itself into cover along the street and waiting for Kip to come to it…which was just fine by his reckoning. The hoths might not be able to shoot it with the buildings in the way, but that wasn’t going to be a problem for the voltron.

When he was 600 meters away he opened the plasma ports on each arm, exposing the big ass cannons he was carrying that made the voltron seem like a supersized version of the neo, except that it also had anti-air lachars on the shoulders and one rotating mauler that would pop up where the head would have been had the mech had one.

Kip kept that encased within the armor, not wanting to give the enemy a shot of knocking it out. The voltron had shields, but in order to fire each of its weapons the section of shield along the firing line had to be lowered, same as any other mech, so right now he was going to work with the plasma cannons and see how they took to the Skarrons’ shields and armor.

When Kip got within 200 meters he raised his arms up and pivoted the torso to the left, knowing that he was going to have to walk right in front of the Type-4 in order to target it. He glanced at his battlemap, confirming that his escorts were keeping back a respectful distance. While the Skarron walker didn’t have very strong plasma cannons, it had enough to wreck a neo if it got a good salvo in from the front…which was where he was having to approach from, unless he wanted to circle around and try it from the back side, which would mean stepping on buildings.

Maybe later, right now he needed to get a feel for how much of a beast this Type-4 was going to be. Prepping himself for an onslaught, he crept his mech out into the firing line.

Hundreds of tiny white plasma orbs washed over his mech in the next few seconds, eating into his shields as he pumped a much larger blue orb into the front of the thing…which was a head taller than his neo and had a huge amount of mass up high, making it look even scarier from Kip’s point of view. He squared off with it as it continued to rain plasma down on him like a horizontal thundershower, then the Archon pumped off more plasma shots with both arms at a range of only 120 meters.

He got through its shields on the fourth shot, then started eating into the thick armor after that, knocking out a few plasma cannons but doing little to stop the onslaught of plasma raining down on him. His shield indicators turned to light green over his chest area as the forward shields drained percentage points, but nowhere near as fast as it visually looked like they should be, given his mech’s considerable defenses.

Kip held his position and kept firing, knowing he needed to get a baseline for what it would take to bring one of these things down, so he kept pounding with only his two beefy plasma cannons until he tore a hull breach in the walker’s tapered nose. It tried to twist to the side, but being pinned between the buildings it didn’t have much maneuvering room. As it rotated in place, stepping up and back down again on its six insect-like legs, Kip walked to the side, keeping his firing line on the opening as long as he could and succeeded in knocking out the power to a third of the forward plasma cannons.

A whole slew of the pimple-like emplacements went dark, but the walker continued to rotate around, bringing more intact cannons into play. Kip abandoned the forward breach point as it rotated out of view and picked a new spot on the fat butt of the walker, punching through the shields there with two shots before chewing into the armor while keeping a close watch on his own shields.

He got about halfway through the armor before his own defenses dropped below 50%, at which point he walked off further to the right until the building eclipsed his view of the walker. He held position, letting the power from his mech’s core soak back into the shield matrixes for the better part of a minute until the edge of the Skarron walker lurched out into view and started firing at his side with a handful of cannons, which increased in number with each lurching step it took.

Kip rotated his voltron around and continued pounding the aft armor damage after repopping the walker’s weak shields, after which it was a race to see who got to who first. The Archon didn’t want to take any hull damage, and prepared for a quick retreat when his forward shields dropped near the zero point, knowing that his aft shields would have enough juice to cover his exit.

That didn’t turn out to be necessary, for he got through the armor and breached the interior hull as the walker was only halfway out into the street. Sensing the opportunity Kip walked out and put his mech in between its butt and the other side of the street, half stepping on a low building in order to get the positioning right. From there he stuck his right hand into the breach point and peeled back a bit more armor plating as he launched another plasma orb off his upper wrist and directly inside. A few more like that and the Skarrons’ plasma cannons dropped dead along with the rest of the war machine.

Kip extricated his mech from the tight spot and walked it to the side back the way he’d originally come from. The walker’s legs hadn’t collapsed, making it a smoking statue at the two breach points.

The voltron’s plasma ports retracted, protecting them from hits as Kip ran his mech forward and pushed with the hands against the side of the fat tick of a machine. It didn’t move much, but with no power to the legs they slowly buckled and tipped the heavy top section over onto its side.

Kip grabbed one of its legs with his mech’s left hand and stretched it out, then popped up his mauler cannon, giving the voltron a very low and flat head, and pumped a shot out into the leg, melting part of its armor away. He hit it again and again until the lower leg tore free, then he tossed it aside and retracted the mauler. If the walker wasn’t as dead as it appeared, it was at least going to stay put…else learn how to walk on 5 legs instead of 6.

“Did everyone take notes?” Kip asked sarcastically.

“Nice roadblock,” one of the starbrights commented, seeing the Skarron walker stretching across the street ahead of them.

“I don’t think I can move it,” Kip said, wondering if he could maybe budge it a bit. Its mass was so large he was surprised the damn thing could even walk around…and it was the baby compared to the others. “Just go over or squeeze through.”

“Copy that.”

Kip took his own advice and activated his mech’s jump jets. He bent the mech’s knees and jumped, floating the voltron up into the air as he watched the power gage. The anti-grav wasn’t strong enough for flight, but with a capacitor boost it was enough for short hops.

Adding some horizontal push against the planet’s gravity well he sailed over top of the walker, then dialed back the jump jets and landed on the angled hull, trying to surf his way down the far side…but his footing didn’t work quite like he wanted to and he got his mech’s right foot caught on an angle, causing the voltron to do a face plant into the street…literally. The mech gouged out huge impact craters at the elbows and knees as it landed, popping its own shields into oblivion under the physical strain.

“Doh,” Kip said to himself as he worked the mech’s arms and legs around in preparation to stand back up as a trio of neos came over the Skarron walker and glided past him to more graceful landings.

“Were you trying to do that, boss?”

“Shut up, Parren.”

“I’m sorry, I thought my comm was off while I was laughing.”

The voltron crawled up into a kneeling position then stood up slowly as Kip turned it to face the little neo ahead of him. “Don’t make me dropkick you.”

“You going solo on the next one?”

Kip answered by raising his right arm and popping the plasma cannon mount up, then he fired the largest orb setting he had over top of the three neos, sending it well down the street and into a Type-5 that had poked around a distant corner.

The blast knocked the biped off its feet, as well as vaporizing several Skarron infantry nearby. Two more plasma orbs came in and finished off the smaller mech, with the quadrupeds scattering off the street and opening up their path ahead.

“If the next one corners itself again, yes. Otherwise feel free to add some precision fire to the target points I set. As for the Type-3, we’ll see when we get there. I may hold off until we get a hoth in range, but for now let’s just focus on cleaning up the 4s and 5s and stepping on as many cockroaches as we can.”

“Copy that.”

Kip walked his voltron forward down the more or less straight street, coming to a section of city that he was tall enough to look over the building tops of…at which point his proximity warning lit up as distant missile launches were detected heading his way.

“Madcats,” he said, popping up the anti-air lachars on his mech’s shoulders, “incoming missiles. Get high…now.”

Behind him two of the smaller mechs activated their jump jets and rocketed up into the sky, where they immediately began launching plumes of intercepts off into the distance towards the incoming missiles from the Type-2 that had launched them. More and more popped out of the missile boxes as the mechs descended and landed on top of the Protovic buildings, pausing slightly as they got their footing, then resuming as the lachars pods on the arms began firing off almost simultaneously with those on the voltron.

A cataclysmic collision happened kilometers away, visible by a growing plume of explosions and later smoke and dust as the first intercepts met their targets. Smaller explosions surrounded them as the lachars popped more of the Skarron missiles, with some not exploding at all and merely dropping out of the sky as their propulsion systems were knocked out.

The river-like swarm of big missiles fought its way forward, bringing the destructive cloud closer and closer towards the Star Force mechs until it washed over the voltron, covering Kip’s mech in explosions that ripped through his shields and into the outer layers of his armor…but no further. He checked the battlemap, which indicated that no more missiles were incoming at the moment, then walked the voltron ahead.

“You two ok?” he asked the madcats even as he checked their status remotely.

“They weren’t aiming at us.”

“No damage,” the other confirmed as the voltron pushed its way into clear air. Kip stopped there and raised the right hand, twisting the wrist around flat to the enemy and curling up the thumb and fingers, save for the middle one.

He held the one-fingered salute for the next few seconds, then lowered the arm as he waited to see if more missiles would be incoming…but they weren’t. Maybe the Skarrons didn’t understand sign language.

“Where you guys at on ammo?”

“34%.”

“38%.”

“Looks like we’re going to need more than 2,” Kip said, pulling up the command interface portion of the battlemap and requesting four more madcats with the same loadout to rendezvous at his position…along with a dropship standing by with new missile boxes for this pair once they arranged a temporary LZ, which he assigned the small mech group to creating and securing.

7

March 7, 2465

Alpha Region

Star Force Warship Excalibur (Mid-jump)

Paul pushed off the soft cube with his legs, summoning as much leverage as he could in the zero g training room, and launched himself towards Kara, who was clinging to a position on the ‘ceiling.’ He held his fists out in front of him and tried to maintain as straight a line as possible as his feet left the padded structure, turning himself in a ballistic missile that shot across the medium-sized chamber.

But as he zipped through the air he felt a telekinetic tug on his waist that pulled him off course, landing him some three meters to Kara’s left. Paul somersaulted over and landed on his feet, crumpling his legs to absorb as much of the momentum as he could as he reached for a handhold…only to get head-butted in his side as Kara rammed into him, knocking them both off the lumpy cubular wall and into midair where they proceeded to wrestle each other for leverage.

Paul recovered quickly and got his left hand against her throat, peeling her torso off him enough to raise a knee up between them before their mass bounced off the far wall, sending them both spinning. Kara wrapped an arm around Paul’s leg, making him unable to kick her off, so he created a telekinetic wall between his leg and her body, pushing it out half an inch and prying her grip off him enough to slip his leg free. With a shove to her shoulders he slipped free and went careening across the chamber until he impact the far wall, then he bounced off it to another where he finally got a handhold and steadied himself.

‘Below’ him Kara bounced from one wall nook to another, building momentum with each pushoff in preparation for a strafing run on him…with the ones she’d thrown previously each coming with a vicious kick. Paul may have outranked her by a handful of levels, but her agility had nosed above him, due in no small part, he figured, to her flight experience. She wasn’t using her Vorch’nas now, but she had definitely become more accustomed to maneuvering off the ground, making her more than an even match for him in zero g…while he had gotten back to kicking her butt in just about everything else.

Paul reset himself to another handhold, then clawed his way over to another not wanting to give Kara a stationary target to fling herself at. Then all of a sudden he got a wash of Fornax through his head, which he pushed back against and partially negated, focusing on his hand grips while pouring everything else into the mental tug of war…but he lost out and the Fornax escalated, causing his body to shiver and his head to wash in disorientation.

Which was when he realized it wasn’t the Fornax anymore.

Confirming his epiphany a moment later the small monitor circle attached to his forehead over his left eyebrow beeped three times in rapid succession.

Stop, Paul declared telepathically, not knowing where Kara was as his eyes didn’t want to focus on anything in particular. He heard a crunch beside him, then a blurry mass came over and a cool hand pressed against his forehead, twisting it to the side.

“There yellow,” Kara reported. “What are you feeling?”

“Did you hit me with a Fornax?”

“Yes.”

“It spiked off that. I can’t see much, and my head is spinning,” he said, feeling a strong grip latch onto his shoulder.

“I’ve got you, turtle up and see what you can do,” Kara said, keeping one hand on Paul and the other on the wall handhold.

Paul let go of his own handholds and floated free, letting his fellow Archon anchor him in place. He dismissed his physical senses, which were hit and miss as it was with his disorientation, and focused entirely on the inner turmoil, trying to channel the storm that seemed to be growing in strength with every second.

A hard point formed in his mind with the distinctive feel of Kara. It wasn’t reaching down and in to where he was, for the Ikrid blocks prevented it, but the point seemed to hover just above him, giving him a point of reference that he mentally reached up to and used to get his internal bearings…after which he started pushing aside the disruptions within and shielding a few key areas. With those bastions of calm he began reconstructing his mental armor that had just been washed away.

Paul knew the only way that could happen was from an extremely powerful external mind…but had that happened it wouldn’t have been instantaneous. This was sudden and unseen, meaning his armor had been taken down from the inside…and still was, though he was rebuilding it faster than it was going down.

The hard point in his mind sank lower and touched his consciousness as Kara repositioned her grip to his bare wrist and made flesh to flesh contact, allowing her to hack past the Ikrid blocks.

Do you need me?

I’ve got it. Just keep me grounded.

Another beep sounded from the monitoring device.

1 red…stay with it.

The storm in Paul’s mind continued to grow stronger, but he kept restricting it to certain areas and pushing it out of places it shouldn’t be, focusing the transformational flux where it was meant. If it got out of hand he’d have to squelch the disruption, essentially corking up the flow that he needed to unleash…but he couldn’t have it shredding his mind in the process.

2 red, Kara said, her mental voice imparting concern and elation at the same time.

Paul breathed hard, sucking in a very deep breath and feeling his body start to ache a little bit, though it was nothing compared to the pain starting to ring out through his head.

3 red! Go for it if you can!

Push me off…

Kara gave him a gentle nudge away from the wall and let go, but kept her mental presence within his mind to steady him as the hurricane within him was building even further. She’d yet to experience this herself, but a few of the other trailblazers had…hence the creation of the biomonitors, which they all now wore during training sessions just in case this happened so they could record the changes and hopefully the impetus triggering the transformations.

Kara telekinetically grabbed Paul’s body and steered him out into the middle of the chamber as the three little lights on the monitor went from solid red to flashing red, and she knew he was about to ascend. She could feel fireworks going on inside him, and they didn’t disappoint. Her Zen’zat memories told her what this was, but feeling it firsthand was something else entirely…and with Paul’s mental armor down, she was getting his full mental output, realizing for the first time how much psionically stronger than her he’d become.

Paul’s bodily ache increased along with the hurricane in his mind, then like the flashing lights on the biomonitors his body began to pulse with an internal light in a painful rhythm, with each cycle getting brighter, faster, and penetrating deeper inside his limbs and torso. For a moment he felt like Goku about to go Super Saiyan 3…but then a little explosion happened in his neck, like a crackle he felt inside, followed by another and another that spread out, each spawning into two or three others.

Paul started to convulse as the wave of miniature explosions traveled down his neck and into his body, spreading out quickly with little tendrils down his chest, arms, and legs all the way into his feet, then like a virus they spread out from all points, saturating his body as it underwent hyper cellular growth that had been prepping for several months with small incidents…and now the sudden payoff was finally here.

Paul clenched up his body, riding it out and keeping from screaming out loud, though Kara could clearly hear his mental version.

As the crackles exhausted themselves the mental hurricane continued, slowly decreasing in intensity as Paul floated, twitching in the center of the room as Kara telekinetically nulled out his movements. More than two minutes later Paul finally opened his eyes and released the clenching in his chest, forcing himself to breath normally even though every fiber of his body ached.

How you doing?

Is it supposed to be like that?

Yeah, it is. They wanted it to be quick.

How many lights?

1 yellow.

Paul blinked several times as he held his hands up in front of his face. His eyes still weren’t focusing correctly, but they were better than they had been. He did a mental inventory, still feeling his head scattered and unreliable, but couldn’t make out any new facets yet. He resigned himself to wait for the lights to transition back down through green and then shut off entirely, indicating that the flux was gone, then he should be able to sense a new ability…at least that’s what Aaron had told him.

His fellow trailblazer had gone through this already, earning him the second tier psionic ability known as Leechas, which was essentially a range upgrade to his Ikrid. He’d gone from being able to sense minds at 250-300 meters on up to better than 2 kilometers. Morgan had gone through this process twice, which Paul learned about well after the fact, given that she was still out on the Calavari front, and gained the Snu and Pren abilities, which were an immunity to Fornax and a power boost to Pefbar/Lachka, respectively.

The ‘immunity’ wasn’t quite as encompassing as the word sounded, but it effectively reduced Fornax interference by 90-95%, meaning it’d take 10-20 guys hitting you with Fornax blasts to equal the same effect as one previously…which was possible, but it meant that Zen’zat who’d upgraded to Snu would be difficult to take down, not to mention they could unleash Fornax fields amongst others with Snu and not affect them much, which would be a significant boon in high-numbered melee scenarios.

Pren added a power boost to Pefbar, which extended the size of the detection fields one could produce, as well as increasing the strength or range of Lachka. It was noted in Morgan’s log that she’d been able to telekinetically lift 5 times the mass after the upgrade, as well as being able to extend her range out to a factor of 3…though not both at the same time. The closer an object was the more lifting power you had, and vice versa.

Kerrie, Ryan, Vic, and Rex had also gone through upgrades, and after the first three the medtechs doing the ongoing research into the V’kit’no’sat database discovered that there were specific biological triggers set for each of the psionic abilities past the original 7. They hadn’t found a master list of abilities on the dinosaur side, just the Zen’zat list of all that had been discovered, some 18 in total…15 second tier and 3 Mvor abilities.

The database entry hadn’t even been listed with the psionics specifications, it had been buried in an Era’tran file detailing expectations regarding Zen’zat progression, which was somehow related to field assignments. The entry noted the biological triggers and explained the randomness was a Zen’zat myth, and that there were carefully constructed requirements built in to ensure only the most worthy garnered the upgrades without the need for testing or further genetic modification.

Training, it seemed, was the best avenue to unlocking the upgrades, but they weren’t meant to be trained for specifically. Instead, they were meant to be a reward for those who advanced themselves across the board, which would inevitably lead to stumbling across one or more of the triggers.

Knowing that there were specific triggers, the medtechs had worked long and hard trying to isolate what they were and after considerable failure concluded that the only realistic way they were going to be able to identify them was to monitor the transformation processes when they happened and try to backtrack, citing that pure genetic analysis was next to worthless at this point, considering the sheer complexity of the V’kit’no’sat’s genetic engineering capability.

Hopefully whatever Paul had just experienced on a cellular level would be recorded on the device attached to his head, as well as the status of his body just prior to the transformation. With enough data, the medtechs hoped to be able to isolate the triggers so they could tell the Archons what to specifically train for in order to draw them out earlier than randomness would allow. The trailblazers wholeheartedly agreed, and over the past years Paul, Kara, and the other 99 had worn the biomonitors during training in the hopes of catching more of the upgrades as they happened.

Three green, Kara noted as Paul continued to float and wait out the remainder of the process. Does it still hurt?

Oh yeah. You can withdraw now…and thanks.

Kara’s hard point within Paul’s mind disappeared, which felt like he was in a ship that just cut its mooring lines to shore and started to list about with the waves. That shook him for half a second, then he held his own mental bearings and kept his mental armor intact as the hurricane spun down to a mere thunderstorm.

The remnants faded rather quickly after that, leaving Paul’s mind suddenly clear and his vision restored…but the pain in his body was more persistent, leaving the Archon with dull, heavy ache that wasn’t fading.

Paul coughed, releasing his body’s tension along with that in his mind and trying to relax.

“Pull me over,” he said aloud, with Kara telekinetically obliging.

He put a hand on the wall, grabbing one of the recessed padded handles. “I think I’m done training for the day, my body is fried.”

“That didn’t happen to any of the others,” Kara noted, having been given access to the trailblazers’ logs so she could help them with all things Zen’zat. To date she’d been the only Archon allowed access to their private boards.

“What didn’t?”

“The bodily pain. Their upgrades were mental.”

“Which narrows it down to how many possibilities?”

“I don’t know, but odds are it’s something new,” she said as Paul glanced over at the exit and gently pushed off the wall towards it. Kara followed him but at a faster pace, floating past him and arriving first. She found a handhold and reached her right arm back for him to grab onto, then she shoved him towards the door a few meters further down.

His feet felt gravity half a meter out from it, cementing him to the ground in a jolt that ran the entire length of his body. “Ow.”

“What?”

“Gravity doesn’t agree with me,” he said, pushing the door open and walking out into the hallways as Kara came down behind him. “Where am I at?”

“One green.”

Paul stopped a few steps outside and closed his eyes…then shook his head. “I can’t find a new mental trigger.”

“If your body is hurting…” she suggested.

Paul rotated his arms around in sync, feeling the pain spike with the movement. He locked onto the sensation, mentally feeling out what was hurting, and looking for a link.

It was elusive at first, but once he found it and ‘flexed’ a few times the pathway broke free and he could feel the small reservoir of power within him…but it didn’t feel like the mental powers he’d gained before. This was emanating from what felt like every cell in his body.

“Anything?” Kara asked.

“Hold on,” Paul said, closing his eyes again and tilting his head ever so slightly to the left. Eventually he held up his right hand and pointed it towards Kara. “High five.”

She frowned, but put her hand up and clapped it against his, then jerked it back as she hit something weird…then realized she hadn’t felt skin. She’d felt energy.

Kara reached her index finger out and poked his hand again, this time impacting his palm.

“Sorry, couldn’t hold it,” Paul apologized, concentrating. “Try it now.”

Kara poked his hand again, with her finger stopping short as it hit a tiny energy shield…but one of a matrix she’d never encountered before, not in reality anyway, but she knew it from her memories.

“Bioshield,” she said with an unguarded grin, which Paul matched.

“Now that is cool,” he said, staring at the invisible energy covering his palm.

Kara glanced at the small circle on his head as the last green light disappeared. “Let’s hope that thing got some good data, because I really want those.”

“Phfff,” Paul scoffed.

“Hey, if this thing every runs out of juice…” she said, pointing to her clear Vorch’nas on her left arm.

“How often does that happen?”

“Depends how busy I am. I may look invincible, but this is just armor…plus a few other things. I’m going to need the extra psionics as much as you guys down the road.”

“That’s way more than just armor,” Paul corrected her. “Even the V’kit’no’sat don’t have that, right?”

“Oh sure…so I can just quit training, get fat…it’s all the same,” she said incredulously.

“Alright,” Paul said, getting her point…and starting to get sleepy. Apparently his available bio energy was limited. He wondered if it ate ambrosia the same way Morgan’s Jumat did, for the files hadn’t said. “I’m going to grab some food then hit the sack and try to sleep this off.”

“Good idea. I’d join you, but I’m not hungry yet. See you in 8 hours or so?”

“Maybe,” Paul said as they started to walk off towards the hallway intersection where they’d go their separate ways. “This might end up being a 12 hour deal. I’ll contact you when I’m over it, then you get to start throwing stuff at me.”

“Gladly,” she said, clapping him on the shoulder before jogging off ahead of him and making a right turn out of view.

Paul sighed, feeling a stress headache creeping up. He needed to get some rest in a hurry before it got any worse…but he was going to grab some ambrosia first, just in case that was what his body needed. And a few breadsticks.

8

March 8, 2465

Krichjan System (Protovic territory)

Eshwan

“Get him, Dina,” Kip said as he ran his voltron forward, putting divots in the street from the footfalls as he awkwardly pulled his right arm up and slipped his hand behind his head…save for the mech didn’t have a head.

Kip fought the imbalance with an extra arm swing on the left side as he telekinetically triggered the cargo release switch for the mech’s back, which raised a thick pylon up high enough for the hand to grab. He latched onto it and pulled it free, then swung the stubby ‘ping pong paddle’ forward over top of his head, with the mech swinging it higher than necessary to clear the headless shoulders…one tiny glitch in the control system they’d have to work on later.

“I’ll try,” Dina-1202 said as she worked her own voltron up another street parallel to Kip’s but more than a kilometer over as they both zigzagged their way through the annoyingly unstraight streets to try and intercept the half dozen Type-3s that were crawling their way forward with surprising speed, heading for the formation of hoths behind him that were even now digging into the side of a Type-1 in the distance. Along with them were hundreds of the smaller walkers, all of whom had come together in the same area of the city to strengthen their defenses after the hoths had killed an isolated Type-2 a couple of days ago.

Kip swung the ‘paddle’ forward in front of him, then tucked his arm back and started pumping it to even out his running gait just in time to make another turn without smacking into the side buildings. His mech’s feet dug in deep, leaving furrows as he bled off his momentum, but he successfully made the turn and angled left, running 18 more steps before a shallow right turn, all of which was bringing him closer to another Type-3 that was flanked and preceded by four Type-4s.

He ignored them and the plasma they tried to shower him with whenever they had a shot, but otherwise they ignored him as well, pushing forward to try and get to the Star Force heavy walkers, for the Skarrons had learned quickly they had no defense against the long range cleansing beams and continuous lachars. If they had let events continue, Kip’s mechs could have killed every single Skarron walker from range with their anti-missile cover, which had precipitated a change in the enemy’s tactics.

As dangerous as their walkers were on their own, they were considerably more lethal in packs, and they’d formed huge ones around all of the Type-1s…which Star Force was now trying to take on. The Skarrons fat walkers had proved to be more agile than they looked, with considerable straight line ground speed when they wanted it, and now that Kip’s hoths were within weapons range the Skarrons were charging forward, trying to close distance before they could take down the big one…or at least to destroy them after the fact. Either way, Kip had to keep them off the hoths, and he was relying on the smaller, conventional mechs spread out around him in the city to handle the Type-4s while he and Dina went straight for the Type-3s.

The furthest one forward was closer to Dina, meaning she would be engaging first. He wanted to double team it with her, but the others were pressing forward and would slip by if he didn’t hang to the right, so he kept moving forward, zigzagging towards the closest one as his twin voltron engaged the enemy.

Dina knew what she was doing, so Kip kept his focus ahead…though it wasn’t like he had much choice. A lot of buildings were blocking his line of sight, plus he had to keep his attention close to keep from running into buildings at the high speed he was moving his mech…not to mention slipping on all the Skarron infantry that he was stepping on. There were clusters of them everywhere, and they weren’t holding position…they were rushing forward, trying to get at the hoths themselves.

Clan Protoss’s assaults had inspired an almost desperate counterattack from the enemy, with every unit they had available now turning away from conquering more of the Protovic planet and heading for the newly arrived Humans. Good thing was, most of them were so far away they wouldn’t get to any Star Force positions for days, if not weeks, for they had no air transit that he was aware of.

Bad thing was, they were coming with a vengeance, and along with this one group, which centered on the Type-1 and had hundreds of walkers with it, there were 51 other such groups forming out there, plus a lot of smaller ones centered on Type-2s and down that could move with greater speed…and they were all coming for them.

Clan Metal Gear had their hands full already with the Skarron rear units, but this was by far the heaviest engagement Kip’s forces had seen…and it was only going to get worse. They no longer had the option of nipping at the edges of the Skarron lines, it was either kill them or turn tail and run…and Kip intended to fight the bastards.

He made another shallow turn, immediately taking fire from a Type-4 that was sitting in the street ahead of him blocking his route towards the Type-3 that was a half mile back, though Kip could clearly see its double humps over the ‘smaller’ walker. A few of its plasma cannons shot out and blanketed his voltron with what mechwarriors referred to as ‘spit,’ which was plasma that had outranged itself, cooling and pulling apart as it traveled through the atmosphere, leaving it only harmful to infantry and other unarmored units.

The plasma from the closer Type-4 was another matter, but Kip ignored it and sprinted ahead, finally getting a section of straight street to accelerate up on. His forward shields were bathed in white plasma, but it wasn’t going to take them down anytime soon, so he kept his running line and jumped when he was a dozen or so steps away from the Type-4, activating his jump jets simultaneously.

The biped mech leapt up into the air and glided over top of the Skarron walker, landing on its feet on the far side in a stationary crouch, then Kip pushed the mech back up to speed as the Type-4 fired at his rear and likewise came under fire from a trio of neos and a couple of madcats that had been following him…and behind them came more of the smaller mechs, running through the streets like packs of dogs or hopping over buildings like cats jumping from perch to perch.

Kip let them take the Type-4 as he steadied his mech’s right arm with the paddle still in its hand, then he triggered the activation command and the edges of the paddle began splintering apart and moving forward, interlocking with each other as the light corovon alloy plates assembled into a thin, long sword that Kip then rotated around in his mech’s hand, switching to a reverse grip…a maneuver that most mechwarriors couldn’t have hoped to have pulled off, but with so much personal sword training under his belt the maneuver felt so natural that he had no trouble pulling it off even with the mech’s clumsy metallic hand.

The plasma fire from the Type-3 was more than double what had been coming from the Type-4 and ate away at Kip’s shields, underneath which were the armor scar marks from the missile attack and a previous encounter with a Type-3. He’d held back for too long and took some damage as he’d been feeling out its capabilities a few days ago and wasn’t going to make that mistake this time.

It felt like he was running his mech into a waterfall of plasma, for the orbs were so tiny, yet so numerous, but he held his nerve and accelerated the mech up to as fast of a run as he could and jumped up at the last moment, goosing the jump jets a bit to get a better arc as he double-handed the sword in an overhead grip with the point to the ground.

He came down on the Skarron walker’s bulbous front, driving the blade in through the top with the corovon-laced metal cutting through the thick armor with little effort given the amount of mass Kip had dragging the sword down. The blade cut through then sank in deep, with the voltron’s arms catching the mech before its feet hit the ground. It hung off the front of the walker as the blade stuck firm, with the extra mass pulling the front end of the moving Type-3 down and compacting its legs underneath.

The Skarron machine came to a skidding halt with Kip releasing the sword handle and dropping to the ground, whereupon he popped up his mauler and arm-mounted plasma cannons and started blasting into the armor where the white plasma had stopped firing from. He took advantage of the sword damage and the small blind spot and tore a hole in the armor as the walker tried to stand back up, then Kip dug his hands inside the breach point and pried the armor apart, large enough to fit an arm inside.

He grabbed anything and everything he could and started tearing the components out and dumping them on the street. Apparently he hadn’t tore out enough, for as the walker stood back up suddenly Kip had difficulty reaching into the breach point, for with the legs fully extended the Skarron walker stood nearly twice his mech’s height.

He backed up the voltron and jumped again, landing on top where the sword was still imbedded and forcing the walker back to the ground through sheer weight. Kip grabbed the sword hilt as he slid off the edge and held on tight, yanking the Type-3 over onto its side and into the buildings. Before he could get trapped underneath he let go of the sword and slid down to the legs, where he grabbed one and pushed, completing the sideways flip of the machine and exposing its underbelly…where upon Kip faced a plasma shower as he punched and blasted away at the hull until most of the closest cannon mounts fell silent…though he was still taking fire on the flanks.

A quick look at his shield gage told him he was down to 32% on his torso shields, but he didn’t care. This son of a bitch was going down now, before it had a chance to hit any of the smaller mechs.

With the shields over his arms taken down so the punches would drain them, Kip crumpled and tore off the bottom of the hull, then pried a leg mount off and tossed it back into the street behind him. He dove back into the machine and put several mauler blasts into the delicate machinery, silencing more of the plasma cannons as he cleared the melted wreckage with his hands and tossed it out onto the street like confetti…some of which were Skarron bodies as he tore through the control center.

Eventually his hand hit something more solid, finding the end of his sword. He half climbed into the walker’s carcass and tore out the pieces around it, eventually freeing the handle and pulling it through by the blade. Kip stepped the voltron back out, twirled the blade around, and stabbed it into the guts of the opposite end once, twice, then a third time before pulling back and examining the walker to see if it was fully dead or not.

No weaponsfire came from it as he walked around to the far end, squeezing through the gap between walker and building. He wanted to tear it apart a bit more, just to be sure it wouldn’t ambush a smaller mech as it walked by with a salvo or two, but there wasn’t time. There were four more Type-3s in the area, assuming Dina had gotten hers.

He checked the battlemap, seeing that she was still engaging her opponent with a halo of support mechs. Her shields were still holding, and it looked like she was just taking more time at it than he was…which meant she was good, and he had to get after the next one before they got too close to the hoths.

As he turned the voltron around another of the white beams shot by not too far over his head, but higher than a Mk. 2 hoth should have sat. He glanced back the way it had come, but there were buildings in the way so he did a quick check of the battlemap and saw the four Mk. 2s standing up on their hind legs and bracing against buildings in front of them in order to raise the position of their heads up and over most of the Protovic cityscape in the way.

It looked awkward, but was strategically viable, especially since the buildings they were leaning on were providing them cover from the immediate front.

Kip started his mech walking further away from Dina towards another Type-3 that had slipped past their line of advancement as he scrolled the battlemap over to check on their target…seeing the big Type-1 continuing to walk their direction, stepping over buildings rather than following streets that it was too big to fit in anyway. Its steps crushed structure after structure, and the big behemoth looked to be in quite the hurry as it ponderously ground its way closer to the hoths, which were still kilometers away.

The cleansing beams were eating into its armor in multiple spots, puncturing through to the interior but apparently not having hit anything vital as of yet. The Type-2s flanking it hadn’t been hit yet, with the preceding one having gone down already and been left behind, with the hoths now focusing all of their firepower on the Type-1 as Kip had instructed, now that its blocker was out of the picture. If that thing got within range its plasma shower would be too much for the hoths or his voltron to handle, meaning the only way they could engage it was from range…which fortunately they had the weapons for.

Overhead a trio of Skarron fighters ducked down and fired their small plasma weapons into Kip’s mech, eating up a bit of shield strength before they zipped off elsewhere in the city. So far the Skarrons were maintaining air superiority, for their walkers made it all but impossible for Star Force to operate in the air. Kip had given strict no-go radiuses around the various walkers, but had given orders to pounce on anything that crept outside of them. So far they’d made a few kills, but the Skarron fighters were more interested in picking on the mechs than coming out to engage their aerial cousins.

The hoths had plenty of anti-air mechs protecting them, but this far out into the city was open season on the smaller mechs, though some of them were also anti-air equipped, making it more of an even fight rather than a turkey shoot.

Kip ignored his own anti-air lachars and kept running towards the next Type-3. If they wanted to strafe him go ahead, he had enough shields to hold them off and the more they shot him the less they would be shooting the other mechs. In about 30 seconds he was going to have another big one to deal with, and maybe a few Type-4s as well if his backup didn’t come with him.

Just then a ruby-red streak shot across the street ahead of him. Unlike normal weaponsfire it wasn’t a flash, but a continuous beam that continued for a good 8.2 seconds before the capacitor ran dry and it had to begin recharging. A few seconds later another beam shot out, coming from the second continuous heavy lachar and lasted an equal amount of time before disappearing.

When Kip got up to the next corner he turned it, seeing the bulk of a Type-4 with a hole burnt into the front of it. He raised his arms and fired a pair of plasma blasts, one of which hit the hole and passed inside, before he realized that the beams had already gutted the interior, leaving the walker as another dead statue blocking the road.

Instead of pushing his way through it he turned around and backtracked to the next side street, seeing in the far distance one of the Mk.1 hoths half hidden behind a low building. Normally their lachar tech wasn’t nearly as destructive as plasma, let alone a mauler or cleansing beam, but they’d upgraded their tech enough that they could now produce continuous lachars, allowing the technology a whole other level of badass that had replaced the electrolasers on the original model heavy walkers, which had two of the weapons on the front head.

Kip raised his left hand, throwing the distant walker a salute before turning left and tucking his sword back into a reverse grip as he headed around the local group of buildings in zigzaggy fashion heading for the next Type-3, with his shields recharging a bit more with every second that passed.

“Got him, Kip,” Dina’s voice broke through suddenly. “What next?”

“How bad you chewed up?”

“Just shield damage.”

Kip set a waypoint on the battlemap, attaching it to one of the Type-3s. It wasn’t the furthest ahead, but it was the closest to her, and he redirected his own course slightly to head towards it, temporarily ignoring the others.

“This one…we’ll take it together. We double up on the rest of these to save shield strength.”

“Copy that, on my way.”

Kip checked the battlemap again, seeing that he was going to get to it before she did, but there was a pair of Type-4s in the way, so he diverted onto a side street and moved over one section, intending to smoke one or both of them before meeting up with Dina and taking down the next Type-3.

9

Another cleansing beam shot out across more than 10 kilometers and dug into the front of the pot marked Type-1 as it continued to claw its way forward across the cityscape, occasionally having to make course corrections to avoid the buildings that were bigger than it. The thing’s body was 6 times the height of a voltron and it stood better than 10 times as high on its legs, allowing it to step over most of the Protovic structures. It wasn’t fast, but it was making good time and getting closer to the Star Force lines, which had been contracting as the ‘smaller’ walkers closed in on them in greater numbers than they could chew apart.

The Mk. 1 hoths were assisting there, leaving the big Skarron to the Mk.2s…which had already hit the thing with some 70+ cleansing beams. They didn’t know what they were shooting at, given they didn’t have a schematic of the interior, so they were poking holes in through the armor at different places, probing and hoping to hit something vital. Though they couldn’t see it in the walker’s movements, they’d already succeeded in taking out several power conduits, cutting juice to a chunk of its plasma cannons and the ‘plate’ shields on the port side.

Then the big walker took another cleansing beam to its ‘face,’ which was the front most bulbous section on the caterpillar-like design of 7 unique segments mashed together, and suddenly the four legs sprouting from that section locked up, plowing into the buildings ahead of the others that continued pushing forward, with the ‘head’ of the Type-1 dipping down and ramming a mid-level building that otherwise it would have cleared by 20 meters.

The building disintegrated under the pressure of the hit, but the walker didn’t move much beyond it as it struggled to get its footing back as another cleansing beam from the northernmost  Mk. 2 hit it on the top of the front section that was now angled down. That beam cut into an anti-air cannon situated in a depression that had been shielding it from view. Next to it were the missile ports, which the cleansing beam nicked, detonating two that were still inside.

A plume of debris shot up into the air out of the ‘head’ of the Type-1 as the forward section went completely dead…pinning the walker in place unless it wanted to drag the unpowered legs behind it.

Which is exactly what it did. It took another poke from a cleansing beam as it turned around, swapping front for back, and began crawling its way forward again at considerable speed.

“Son of a bitch,” Kip whispered as he saw the ‘front’ section of the Type-1 half standing on its locked legs between half-crushed buildings as the other 6 segments moved off without it. Somehow the big thing was designed to release its individual segments.

On a hunch Kip got a closer look at the discarded piece via a rooftop raven acting as a spotter and feeding the rest of the Star Force troops battlemap info on the Type-1 and the remaining pair of Type-2s that were now well ahead of it. The trailblazer zoomed in on the section of the walker that had been bonded to the others, quickly seeing it was of a different color than the exterior, as well has having multiple interlocking components now exposed, and he assumed the opposite end of the Type-1 contained the same…both without armor plating covering them.

Kip placed a waypoint on the back side of the moving pieces of the walker and opened his all-troop comm frequency.

“The hoths just disabled the front piece of the Type-1, which then jettisoned that piece and is continuing forward on the other 6 segments. The backside of those segments is not, repeat, not armored. If anyone is in position to do some long range flanking attacks have at it.”

With that Kip ignored the oncoming Type-1, knowing the hoths were going to continue picking it apart as long as they could, but even now they were coming under attack from the ground. Thousands of the Skarron ground troops had flooded around their feet, hitting them with small arms fire, missiles, and whatever else they had available. There were so many of them they’d managed to bring down the defense shields on their legs and were starting to chew away at their armor…which would be a problem if they were allowed a few more hours to do so.

Dozens of ravens were darting in and out of the area, killing the Skarrons on the ground as much as they could, but if they ran up against too many all at once they could go down themselves, which two of them already had. The pilots had been rescued from their downed mechs before the ground troops could get at them, but Star Force had had to use the Starscream-class mechs to get to them in time…which was dangerous, because the flying mechs could have come under anti-air fire, but fortunately their mechwarriors kept them low to the city streets and out of the aerial firing radius of the Skarron walkers.

Trouble was, the starscreams were weak mechs, both in terms of armor and firepower, though with regular strength shields. They’d been at as much risk as the ravens when they’d gone in, coming up from the distant LZ, and had only got to the downed mechwarriors due to the support of a squadron of thors that had happened to be nearby.

Those mechs were doing better against the infantry hordes, even if they weren’t as fast and nimble as the ravens, because they were bigger, heavier biped mechs that resembled a giant Human in armor without the backwards-canted legs that the ravens and madcats had. The compact form also helped them navigate the city streets in formation, stomping on infantry for a third of their kills while lighting up the others with missiles from a shoulder launcher and multiple small plasma cannons located on the arms and chest, with a baby mauler slung under the left arm.

They’d learned quickly that they had to stay together to keep from getting overwhelmed by the infantry, who’s armored troops liked to get in close and latch onto the mech’s legs and try to trip them up with some kind of cord they were carrying so the others could pound them on the ground when their shields popped on impact.

The streets around the pair of Mk. 2s were clogged with gore, so much so that some of the mechs were having to make small jumps over the piles of Skarron bodies to avoid getting tripped up, all the while more of the enemy ground troops skittered across their fallen comrades, peppering the air with tiny plasma orbs and weak missiles, so much so that it occasionally looked like blowing snow.

Kip had been forced back to take out a pair of Type-4s that had gotten within firing range on one of the Mk. 1 hoths, which was in turn intercepting them before they could get to the Mk. 2s. The Mk. 1 had taken down the first of the Type-4s before its shields went down, then took some light armor damage from the second until Kip’s sword skewered it and dragged it behind a nearby building where he took the time to properly finish it off.

His own shields had failed multiple times, leaving him with a deep gash on his right upper arm and lesser damage across his mech’s torso and legs. His aft side was unscathed, but that was only because he’d been running towards the enemy most of the time, which he was even now as he headed towards the intersection point of two continuous heavy lachars. One faded out before the other, but not before Kip saw rivulets of armor running down the surface of the Type-2 they were attacking. It wasn’t within plasma range yet, but a few more minutes and that would change, which meant he had to do something to help, otherwise he was sure they were going to lose at least one of the Mk. 1s.

With most of the smaller mechs now pulled back to deal with the infantry that kept rising up from underground in too many points for Star Force to block, only the pair of voltrons was left for excursions out into the oncoming walkers, and they’d been focusing on the remaining Type-3s, given that most of the 4s and 5s had already been eliminated by the smaller mechs. The battlemap showed six smaller walkers around the southernmost Type-2, and they were holding their formation, making it virtually impossible to approach without getting annihilated with plasma, even for the voltrons.

That left him only one slightly insane approach…which was to flank the southern group and come in at the Type-2 from behind, either getting a clear shot at it or forcing the other walkers to turn around and move backwards to provide covering fire.

Kip was already on his way, with Dina following a few seconds behind him. They’d been doing well to double team the enemy walkers, but she was carrying armor damage too, meaning the longer this dragged on the less combat capable they were going to be. So far they each had 100% of their weaponry intact, but a few deep hits on the arms and they’d lose a plasma cannon, which was why they were taking as much time as they could afford to recharge their shields in between bouts.

Kip knew the two of them alone weren’t going to be enough, so he finally made the comm call he’d been hoping he wouldn’t have to make.

“Vyr, you there?”

“Been wondering how long it’d take you to come to your senses,” the Protoss Archon said with a touch of frustration.

“Tell me you can do something without flying into a massacre.”

“You’re heading for the southern Type-2?”

“Yes.”

“How much weaponry do they have underneath that thing?”

“A lot of plasma cannons. It’s not a safe spot to be.”

“Well nuts…there goes that plan. Don’t worry, we’ve got a few others worked up. We’ll pull some of the heat off you.”

“Don’t go crazy,” Kip warned. “Those pulse rings…”

“I know better than you do,” Vyr reminded him. “We’ll stay low. By the way, avoid these spots.”

Kip received 8 no-go zones on his battlemap, not making out what their significance was for a few seconds, then nodding appreciatively as he belatedly understood.

“Ok, get going.”

“Already am. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Dina and I are hitting it from the backside, if that matters.”

“Noted, but wait until we can give you a moment of opportunity. That thing has enough plasma cannons to slag a voltron without much trouble.”

“I know,” Kip said as Vyr dropped his skeet in altitude. The comm channel cut off, leaving both Archons to their individual tasks. Vyr-2051 had been standing by for days along with the rest of the Clan Protoss aerial forces that Kip had brought down to the planet, forbidden to go close to the Type-1s, 2s, 3s, and even the 4s, though Vyr thought they should have been able to take them, given they were only equipped with anti-air lachars, and Star Force knew well how they functioned.

He’d been assisting the Protoss with the Type-5s and infantry clusters where he could, as well as defending transports from the Skarrons’ own fighters, but most of them were sticking close to the walkers and picking at Star Force’s mechs as much as they could. That hadn’t ended well for them, for the anti-air madcats had plenty of aerial kills on the day, thanks to Vyr’s people running replacement ammo packets up to them at nearly street level elevation.

But now was the time to get fancy and show how good he and his people actually were, for the Skarron anti-air defense was by far the best Star Force had come up against to date, making the lizards look easy by comparison…but there were always holes to exploit, if you knew where to look for them, and the Skarrons’ anti-air defense seemed more concerned with things above them rather than things below or even on low laterals. While that did help shield their anti-air batteries from ground fire, thus preserving them to maintain their head cover, it did allow pilots to fly low and get under their firing lines.

Problem was, there was a lot of buildings in the way, and he was fairly sure that the walkers could tip to the side on their legs and change their anti-air batteries’ firing lines to hit low if they wanted to…though that was just a guess, because they hadn’t seen any do so to date.

“Starscream wing, you are green to go on points 1 and 2. Gunships, Type-4s are yours, watch your proximity to the 3s. Skeet commanders, stand by until I make a go through, then coordinate with our voltrons and make the most of their distraction. Don’t get sloppy or brave, and expect luck to be on the Skarrons’ side…but that said, they fear aerial for a reason. Let’s not disappoint,” Vyr said, switching over to his squadron’s frequency. “On me, let’s go.”

Vyr ducked his neon blue skeet down into a street and decelerated, playing flying tank as the other 9 members of his squadron did likewise, following him in single file. He eventually turned and headed southwest, with each of the other skeets breaking off at various points so that when he finally did turn fully to the west, he and the others were all traveling down individual paths, intending to spring up on their target from multiple angles in a crisscross and run for your life attack pattern.

Seeing the others slightly ahead of him Vyr increased speed, approximately catching back up with their predetermined timing and getting to his launch point half a second behind all the others, whereupon he pulled up and flew between two larger buildings before swinging around and staring down the flank of a Type-3.

As soon as he was in the air a huge ring of white plasma ‘snow’ pulsed out from the walker in a hemispherical halo…and all of which missed high by 80 or so meters. That first pulse was followed by more and more, filling the air around and above the walker with tiny bits of plasma that would be impossible to avoid, cutting off the airspace around the Type-3 and forcing Vyr’s squadron to stay extremely low to the ground.

Larger white orbs shot out from the conventional plasma cannons on the sides, but the pilot was able to fly a slightly evasive path and duck past the front of the walker as it continued to crawl forward, whereupon he released one of four objects slung underneath the skeet’s belly with a trigger pull as he sighted in on the underside box where the forward legs came together and connected to the huge body.

After that he went to ground and zipped underneath the walker, seeing the flash of a few belly plasma cannons in his peripheral vision as he shot through the gap between two buildings on the other side and took back to the street canyons as he moved off, leaving the engagement zone as he saw one of his squadron go down on the battlemap.

As he commed the downed aerofighter to confirm that the pilot was still alive, the mine he dropped floated forward on its own anti-grav and came to a stop on the point on the battlemap that Vyr’s trigger pull had laid down a waypoint...along with 9 others that clustered together on the underside, then detonated like a chain of fireworks.

Kip saw the detonations via a spotter raven, then saw the damage estimate as the walker continued to move forward, seeing that the armor underneath had been torn apart with several breaches available for mechs to target the upper leg joints. He nodded, knowing that would help, then frowned as he saw one of the fighter icons go out as it passed under the walker and never rose back up, slamming into the side of a building. A few moments later a new icon popped up marking the distress beacon, which gave the position of the skeet’s armored ‘cradle’ that had preserved the pilot, even though it was now buried inside a Protovic structure.

Just then he heard a chorus of cheers over the comm, only to realize that the Mk. 2 hoths had just knocked out another section of the Type-1, stopping it in its tracks while it discarded the forward segment and began walking forward again…this time without an armored front, for both ends now had exposed segments.

Turning a corner in his voltron, he stepped on another cluster of infantry, nearly losing his traction as he did so, and continued to run on as he watched another blinding white streak pass through the sky overhead and saw it hit on his battlemap and do a corkscrew spiral, slicing into the front of the Type-1 with no resistance and gutting the inside of the thing.

Internal components began to spill out and the front end fell down on legs that no longer had any power. What was left of the Type-1 did a nose dive just as a tall Protovic building alongside the Type-2 Kip was headed for blew apart at the base.

The trailblazer switched his attention back there as he saw eighteen starscream mechs clinging to the back side of the building, with it blocking the walker’s firing lines on them, as they pushed with their anti-grav engines like they were toppling a tree that had been cut at the base, and rode the tall cylinder-shaped building over with near perfect timing. The building landed on top of the Type-2 near the front as another red continuous lachar beam ended, hitting it between the first two of four body segments and pushing it to the ground with the legs splayed wide and most of its anti-air weaponry on top now covered with debris.

“Dina, that’s our opening. Push it,” he said, turning another corner that would lead to the street the walker had more or less been following. Kip got up to it just in time to see a white flash at a different angle, and checked his battlemap as a cleansing beam tore into the front of the pinned Type-2 along with the continuous lachars as the walker struggled to stand up and shake the debris off.

The other Mk. 2s hit the Type-1 again, which was not moving at all, telling Kip that they’d probably disabled it enough that it wasn’t going anywhere, and in just a few more minutes they should have the southern Type-2 out of commission as well, emboldening him to skip the roads and jump into the air with his jump jets driving him across the building tops, giving him a very good view of the battlefield as the other Skarron walkers continued forward, taking hits from a Mk. 1 hoth as well as hundreds of smaller weapons from a scattering of mechs poking out of cover here and there.

Then there were larger explosions from the skeet mines, and blossoming debris clouds from where the gunships were throwing missile after missile into their target walkers, all the while the enemy was showering the area with white plasma, both anti-air pulse rings as well as the hundreds of plasma cannons covering their hulls.

There was still a lot of work to do here, but Kip knew they had them…this group anyway. One of the 52 Type-1s was down, 51 remained. There was no way they were going to take down the others, not with the armor damage his mechs were racking up, but if they could get continually resupplied he knew they could take down all of them over time and save this planet…so long as there was enough of a Protovic army remaining to handle the Skarron infantry.

This war was going to take months, if not years, but as soon as this battle was over he was going to send a jumpship back to get as many mech spare parts as he could sent their way, along with ammo and any new models the rest of the Clans could spare…along with a request for more Clans to join the fight, for Eshwan wasn’t the only Protovic planet under assault, and it seemed that Star Force was their only hope to turn back the Skarrons once they fought their way to ground.

10

June 9, 2465

Rexxikar System (lizard territory)

Ajakaba

Paul knelt low behind a chunk of ice, his back nestled into a crevice as he waited for Kara’s telepathic signal…which he got a few second later, informing him where the lizard patrols were surrounding their outpost, one of which was almost to him, but still out of his own psionic range.

Trusting her, he left cover and ran down the small crack of a valley between what looked like small glaciers, knowing that somewhere up top on the rim was Kara playing spotter, but given her ability to fly she could have been anywhere up there, and there wasn’t much of the sky he could see from his point of view. There was plenty to see below though, with dozens of quadruped fur balls meandering through the rough passageway, causing him to move with care, jumping over or under the natives of the planet.

The lizard patrols were also moving through them, which cut off their major lines of sight and offered Paul movement options as he worked his way towards the subterranean base entrance that Kara had spotted the last time she was here doing recon. She hadn’t gone inside what looked like a primitive little outpost on the ice world at the time, having fallen for the ruse their enemy had laid out.

It was the only lizard presence on the planet, or in the system. A single outpost, containing no more than 500 lizards, and situated dead center in the middle of a herd of natives. The lizards weren’t harvesting them, so far as Star Force knew, nor were they killing them to get them out of the way. Instead they were simply ignoring them, for they couldn’t get inside their base, and the warm temperature-loving lizards didn’t go outside it save for regular patrols through the surrounding topography.

That had immediately tipped Paul off, but he already knew from some captured logistical charts that the lizards had been routing some jumpship traffic through the system…far more than this little outpost required. Then there was also the overly large landing pads on top of the outpost, three times the amount the lizards usually used, denoting a higher cargo transfer situation than this lonely little waste of a base rated.

Normally the lizards would have cleared out the indigenous populations, with the fact that there were thousands of the fur balls around their base and they were literally rubbing up against the walls suggesting that the lizards wanted them there…with the only reasonable conclusion being that they were a shield against Star Force bombardment. The two sides had been at war long enough to have gotten used to each other’s methods, and it had been obvious in the past that Star Force had orbital bombardment capability that could obliterate a base like this within half an hour…and the lizards also knew that Star Force fought to protect indigenous races, making this situation stand out to the trailblazer as an obvious living shield.

So no bombardment here, and with there being nothing worthwhile on the ice cube of a planet, and no major lizard infiltration, it was likely that Star Force would just skip over the planet and system, else send down a small ground team to take the facility…which he assumed the patrols were out here to detect and counter. His best guess was the lizards hoped the facility would go unnoticed all around, but Kara’s recon of the system had spotted it, though even she admitted it had been hard to find.

Paul ran up to a harsh right turn and slid underneath one of the white-furred creatures as it also rounded the rocky corner from the other direction…with the trailblazer psionically calming the thing before he could startle it into stomping on him.

He slid under its right front leg and out the far side, then got back on his feet and disappeared into the other masses of white following the creature that did a double take but otherwise ignored him and continued walking. Paul’s white armor blended in well, allowing him to almost disappear in the light snow that was falling, all the way up to the base entrance in the ice crevice where he sensed two more lizards standing guard before he came within sight.

Two Fornax blasts straight through the ice took them to the ground, then as he came around the outcropping he killed both with precise plasma shots to the chests, burning through their cold weather suits, offering more heat than they wanted. Disoriented, they went down without firing a shot in return or sounding an alarm, giving Paul access to the single door set into what looked like an ice wall, but was really the edge of the lizard outpost covered over in sheets of frozen precipitation that had built up over the years, leaving the entrance inset as it had been continually cleared off.

I’m here,  Paul told Kara telepathically as he walked over to the corner of the small crevice outcropping and pressed his armored back against the wall, trying to blend in as much as he could while she caught up to him…which didn’t take long. Soon she was sliding off the top of the crevice and down in beside him, her armor white and somewhat shimmery in a way that reminded him of summer heat that caused mirages. Regardless, it made her hard to see, but he could clearly sense her presence where his eyes might have been caught off guard.

Door, he told her as he grabbed the closest of the bodies and hauled it over to the entrance, then kicking its skid tracks out of the snow as best he could with his feet, after which he used his Lachka to erase his tracks coming into the offshoot from the crevice, eventually backing all the way up to the door that Kara had already hacked her way into and gotten the first lizard through.

Paul grabbed the other while Kara telekinetically pulled its weapon through the air and into her hand as she stood in the doorway waiting for him. Once they got the bodies and weapons inside she closed the door, smoothing the last of the snow with her psionics even after it had closed.

What do you see?

Kara’s armor, which had already shifted back to its normal blood red color, scanned the interior of the base, getting several levels worth of blueprint-like schematics in a glance.

Central access shaft with two auxiliaries. Closest one is this way, she said, adding a waypoint to their paired battlemap that she’d taught her Dragon tech to mimic as she walked down the narrow corridor and took a right turn before a passing lizard got a chance to see either of them.

Paul followed her over the relatively short hike to the northern auxiliary shaft, seeing that it contained a circular lift that was currently several levels down and had a few crates stacked on top of it.

I don’t think the quiet route is going to work this time.

Time to kick the bee hive, she prompted, glancing at the helmet of his new striker armor. If you get in over your head, get out or ask for help.

I won’t need either and you know it, Paul telepathically answered, pulling a pair of plasma pistols off his back rack and jumping across the shaft to the other side before ducking into an open doorway and heading towards the nearest lizard minds.

A few seconds later Kara heard the firefight starting and she stepped off into the shaft, floating down it until she gently landed on the lift, sensing no one immediately nearby.

She knelt down next to one of the crates and popped her armor’s Dre’mo’don up on her right wrist, mentally configuring it to fire in a microscopic cutting beam discharge. Pointing her wrist down, she rotated it around cutting a crude circular plug out of the lift and telekinetically grabbing it as it fell through…or trying to, for it was too heavy for her to lift, so she slowed its fall and dove through the hole head first, flying down after it.

Kara got a hand on it and stopped its fall, then flew back up to the underside of the lift and stuck her free arm up through the hole and dragged one of the crates over top of it, using her Lachka to nudge its edge over the rim of the hole when her hand would no longer fit. Sensing that Paul was already racking up a good kill count above, she carried her metallic plug with her down the very deep shaft to the bottom, so far down that her sense of Paul’s position and the lizards above disappeared, leaving her only in comm contact with him if necessary, though how long that would last was questionable.

Paul shot two more lizards in the room to his right without even looking in the door as he passed, using his Pefbar to sight them through the wall, then pulling the trigger four times when the opening arrived, emptying the clip. He tucked his right arm back and reattached the empty pistol to his rack as another standard variety lizard popped out into the hallway in front of him some distance down. It was a stretch, but Paul got a telekinetic grip on his rifle and yanked it aside, sending the plasma blast into the ceiling as he fired his own blue streak towards it, nipping the lizard in the arm as two more popped out alongside.

As they fired Paul sprinted forward, taking a few inconsequential hits to his shields before he was on top of them, punching two into submission and gutting the third with a double blast to its abdomen.

One of the lizard rifles floated up off the ground and into Paul’s grip, which he used to kill the closest to him before kicking the other as it jumped up. Its claws scrapped against his leg armor before it was knocked back a meter into the wall, leaving tiny scratch marks in the white camouflage coating, revealing the black coloration underneath that was standard for striker armor.

Paul shot it with the rifle in his right hand as he reached back and stowed his Star Force pistol, saving the last few shots in it for later, then he knelt down and picked up another rifle, dual wielding the enemy weapons and finding them slightly heavy, knowing that was going to throw his aim off a touch, but not enough to constrict him to using only one.

He sensed a few more lizard minds heading his way, but they didn’t know exactly where he was, giving him a few seconds of anonymity that he used to cut around through another room and come up behind the foursome, gunning down two before they even realized he was behind them. A few more shots and they were down too, with the briefly returning green plasma impacting his chest shield dissipating like a snowball hitting a blast furnace.

The shields on the striker armor were stronger than what the adepts, acolytes, and rangers had. Their protective shield was standard, while their armor got progressively denser, allowing more protection to the higher ranked Archons who could handle the extra weight, and likewise Paul’s black striker armor was heavier than the others, but not any thicker. The material was denser, with a few flecks of corovon thrown in throughout the structure that gave it a much higher physical defense rating, while still melting under intense energy attacks.

The armor weighed almost as much as he did, but thanks to his enhanced strength he was able to manage decent combat agility…though unlike his previous armors, the striker version that he currently wore was a prototype incorporating a lot of new tech. He and Morgan were the only ones using it, as they were the only strikers at the moment. Paul was a level 1, Morgan a level 3, and each of them had a design technician assigned to shadow their assignments, learning from their training and battle experience and making upgrades to the armor as needed.

The shields and armor rating were impressive, but the biggest change came in the form of a telepathic interface and what it controlled. Consciously it had only one switch, which was off/on, but subconsciously it was having a much bigger effect…or it would when Paul finally decided to use it, and hunting these scattered lizards certainly wasn’t requiring it.

It wasn’t until he worked his way around to the main lift shaft when a car came up full of the little buggers that he mentally flipped the ‘on’ switch and felt the heaviness of his armor disappear.

Paul ran out of an access shaft as fast as if he hadn’t been wearing anything more than a T-shirt, shorts, and running shoes, plowing into the hoard and firing his captured lizard rifles at the first dozen or so, then tossing them aside and resigning himself to go hand to hand with the lizards, who were so densely packed together most of them couldn’t get out of his way if they wanted to.

He took a lot of plasma hits at first, but once he was in amongst them on the basketball court-sized lift most of them couldn’t shoot him without hitting their fellow soldiers, leaving him with an intimate cover that only continued so long as he stayed up close to them…while dropping the dead or injured ones behind as he moved through the mass.

His muscle movements were no longer moving the armor about alone, but were now being aided by mechanical propulsion…the kind of which he and the other trailblazers had strictly forbidden the techs from creating, due to the problems it posed. After Kara had got her Dre’mo’don that had changed, as they saw what powered armor was capable of, as well as seeing a technology that avoided the problems most ‘dumb’ suits posed…such as moving in a direction the person didn’t want and wrenching your arm out of socket, or worse.

Paul’s striker armor had pressure sensors covering the interior that sensed his movements and added strength to them, but the technology hadn’t been sufficient for it cut down on their reaction times. The delay was unavoidable, so the Archons had just kept with the traditional muscle power until the telepathic interface technology had advanced to the point where they could put it to use.

The system was still crude, from Paul’s point of view, but it was acceptable, using neural mapping sensors to monitor the control signals passing from his brain to his muscles to anticipate what his next move was going to be, calculate how the armor needed to move, and then wait for confirmation from the sensor grid inside the suit. In this way nothing moved unless Paul moved, but with the delay being greatly reduced. It wasn’t quite the same as moving without armor, for the feel was slightly off, but it was close enough that his speed increased across the board compared to what he had been able to do in his ranger armor…or even a set of adept armor that he’d experimented with, now that he was far stronger than necessary to fight in it.

This striker armor beat the adept armor in terms of agility and speed, no contest, when it was powered up…which was accomplished by several redundant power sources worked into the structure at thicker points, so that if one was damaged or destroyed the suit wouldn’t lose all power, but even if it did it would just revert back to ‘standard’ mode without locking up or otherwise hindering the wearer.

Paul was still waiting for something to go wrong, but he’d gotten comfortable enough with it to take it into combat, and right now, punching, kicking, twisting, turning, and jumping all seemed effortless as he tore through the lizards on the lift in a shockingly short amount of time. Once they were all down he pulled up a rifle from the mess and began finishing off those who weren’t already dead, reminding himself that despite their inability to hurt him at the moment they’d kill him without a second thought if they had the advantage…and he wasn’t in a position to be able to take prisoners.

“Ah, hell with it,” Paul said aloud after shooting five of them as they crawled across the ground. He dropped the plasma rifles and pulled a short cylinder off his rack, pressing a button on the handle that extended out a full length sword blade in interlocking segments.

Paul flicked on the stun sword and jumped around from spot to spot, jabbing the wounded unconscious after deciding that if they had survived this long against him they deserved a chance to live to fight another day. That, and he just didn’t like killing the helpless…which was what they were right now, given that they couldn’t hurt him.

Suddenly the lift started to descend, prompting Paul to run to the side and jump up, clinging to the rising edge of the wall and pulling himself up easily with the suit’s power on. Once he got back to his feet he mentally disengaged the power, returning its movements solely to his muscles. He knew that such a technology would greatly enhance the lower level Archons’ combat capabilities, but he also knew that he was able to carry the weight of the striker armor because he’d worked his way up through the lesser armors. If they gave the powered movement to the adepts, they’d never grow as strong as Paul had become, making this new technology a double-edged sword.

Until they worked out how to implement it without hindering Archon development, it was going to remain a striker-only technology, and they were going to keep the on/off switch, reserving the extra power for when they needed it, whereas a rookie would keep it on all the time. Moving about in the armor, whether it be in the sanctum or on the battlefield, was a workout that the powered armor would deny them. The trailblazers were wise enough to know not to use it often, but that couldn’t be said of the younger Archons, who just didn’t seem to get the concept of weighted training clothing, no matter how many Piccolo references he threw out.

“Paul, how you doing?” Kara’s voice asked over his comm.

“Peachy. What’d you find?”

“Pretty much like you said. They’ve got a huge industry base down here, but what you didn’t guess was they’re tunneling out to other locations. They’re planning on using this one base to build an unlimited network underground, shielding it from orbital bombardment and prying eyes, and they’re going down pretty deep, or plan to, based on the files I hacked.”

“How many are down there now?”

“A little under 10,000. They’re keeping the population low until they’ve got enough room to house and feed them. They don’t want too many cargo shipments coming and going to give away the ruse.”

“Too late.”

“Yeah. It’ll take some time, but we can handle these guys on our own. They’re all standard variant and not heavily armed.”

Paul laughed…then thought about it.

“Well?” Kara asked, knowing he was considering it.

“Do they have growth chambers?”

“Not yet. They’re all imports.”

“Alright, here’s the game plan. We know about their little project here, and we let them know we know. Start working up a priority list on the machinery they’ve got, we want to hurt their construction efforts, not bring the walls down. We leave life support and foodstuffs alone for whatever lizards don’t get in our way, then they can tell their buddies when they get here how bad the two of us kicked their asses. They’ll either fortify the base or abandon the effort…and I’m hoping the later.”

“Then I come back in a couple of years and check it out?”

“You or someone else.”

“Sounds good. You clear up top?”

“More or less. You may have to send a lift back up for me.”

“I’m on it,” Kara promised as Paul retracted his stun sword and put it away, picking up two of the lizards’ weapons. He didn’t know how long Kara’s Vorch’nas weaponry would last, but there was no way his Star Force ammo was going to hold out against the numbers below, meaning he was going to have to do a lot of battlefield scavenging for weapons…or just rack up a wicked hand to hand kill count.

Either way, it looked like his prototype armor was going to get a thorough field test.

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1

February 2, 2466

Ferinor System

Star Force Warship Blue Ranger (Null orbit)

Morgan ‘stood’ atop two cushioned blocks, her legs out wide to either side as she held a side splits over a disqualification pit some several meters down that had a number of turrets imbedded within it. Falling off would end the challenge immediately, but maintaining her balance wasn’t the issue here…maintaining her balance while blocking attacks was.

The chamber in the sanctum onboard her flagship was more or less a sphere, with two small blocks magnetically positioned as strong points in the middle of the chamber with nothing else around to hold on to. Each block was 10 inches cubed, and felt sturdy enough to have been physically attached to the walls via struts…but they weren’t. They were levitated into place, leaving all approaches open for the tiny little thuds the turrets would be firing Morgan’s way, which, if they hit certain exposed areas, would hurt like hell, adding another incentive not to fail.

The trailblazer wore her hair up and knotted into a nub on her head so that it wouldn’t fly around as she knocked down the incoming attacks. Other than that she wore a training bra and a skin tight pair of mini shorts, leaving the rest of her skin exposed. With the inside of her ankles dug into the semi-soft cubes and her posture held perfectly upright, she brought her hands together over her chest, pushing them palm against palm and reminding herself not to move them. In order to maintain her balance she needed to focus on throwing concussive energy, or Jumat, from her core rather than from her limbs.

Morgan gave herself a moment to relish the hanging stretch, then summoned up the goosebumps that accompanied her internal energy production, which she channeled into a holding aura that she’d learned to develop after getting information from the pyramid database. Part of the control mechanism for the Jumat included a close range containment ability. This allowed her to produce the energy within her body and hold it just outside, letting her bypass her clothes or armor, before throwing it off. Somehow the energy was in a different form internally before it became ‘concussive,’ which originally happened whenever it passed through her skin.

Now she could hold it in its original form for about half a meter out, though it took extra effort to do so. When she tried to push it further than that she lost her grip and the energy converted…blowing off randomly. Morgan had been working to extend that range and had been gaining centimeters over the years, allowing her to now pool the energy around her body to the point where she could experiment with it, allowing her to train for other applications, one of which was a concussive shield barrier…which was what this challenge would prod.

Morgan took a slow breath, letting it out as she filled the area surrounding her entire body, minus the underside of her ankles/feet, for several inches. More tingles followed, adding yet more energy as she focused to control it all as she transformed it into a hybrid form…then telekinetically hit the start button on the far wall.

A three count warning tone sounded, with the thuds flying the moment the third tone emitted. Five of the marble-sized projectiles shot out at her from different angles…too many for her to consciously track and stop individually, forcing her to use an area of effect defense. She could have done so telekinetically, but instead she used her Jumat, with the little thuds hitting her invisible energy and penetrating slightly…but their contact to the pent up energy caused the portion that it hit to fully transform, which pushed back on the projectile.

The more it penetrated the more energy was released, eventually sending it flying back out on a random trajectory for the light hits, and more precise reversals for the deeper ones. Morgan didn’t need to see the things coming, only refill the gaps in her aura that they made. That meant continuous waves of tingles forming within her body and being channeled out, transformed, and mashed in with the existing aura, which responded like goo, in that it didn’t refill quickly.

She had to keep pressure on it, pushing in the right places to get it to fill back in faster. As more of the thuds came in, hitting her Jumat field in different locations, she played a mental chess match, countering move for move as she struggled to hold everything together. There was a counter on the wall indicating shots fired and time elapsed, but she didn’t see it. Her eyes were closed and her Pefbar was off, but she could ‘see’ her Jumat in mind’s eye and that’s where she put her entire focus.

Well, save for the part that was required to maintain her balance. If she delved too deeply into her trance she’d fall off and lose by default. Because she needed to be able to attend to her Jumat aura during combat, she had to train where physical activity was also needed, forcing her to split her focus. Doing the splits wasn’t active in a running or jumping sort of way, but it did require continuous and precise movements…stuff so small it would normally get ignored in the numbness of the mental effort she was expending.

The harder she pushed, the more her sense of balance would fade, forcing Morgan to hold back enough to split her focus and stay on top of the problem. Sheer force was the enemy here. She had to remain cool, steady, and stable…even as the painful little pricks tried to pelt her. A few days ago she’d caught one directly from underneath, which had dropped her to the disqualification pit real fast. After that she’d found herself leery and over protective, but like anything that was out of balance in Morgan, she didn’t tolerate it and got back up on the floating cubes and forced herself to relax and push away the memory of awkward pain.

She continued to block the incoming thuds, refill her aura, and continue the process through several waves of 500…then the challenge increased the firing rate. It would eventually overwhelm her, with the point being to hold out as long as possible. As the minutes ticked by her aura couldn’t be replenished enough, so Morgan shrank its thickness, cannibalizing sections that were intact and forcing part of their energy into the compromised areas.

This challenge was meant to test her endurance, while another would have the thuds concentrate their attacks on specific areas, sending 20 or so to one location over three seconds, trying to breach through that specific point. That was an altogether different problem to tackle, with this one being ‘easy’ in comparison, but the duration challenge gave her a great deal more practice, like a 5 mile run compared to a sprint, which would force her body and mind to adapt, giving her even greater abilities down the road.

‘Grinding’ is what it was, and no matter what the training exercise entailed, grinding workouts always worked up a lot of sweat…which in this case wasn’t good, for it was making her feet slippery as Morgan made tiny adjustments to keep her balance.

Before she could fall off or the thuds penetrated her defenses a different tone sounded, causing her to open her eyes and almost lose her grip on her Jumat aura, which would have let all of the thuds through after it dissipated, but she caught her focus in time and held it intact, though she stopped replenishing it. With a telekinetic press of the wall controls she paused the challenge and opened the chamber’s mic and speakers to the incoming comm.

“What is it?” she asked, not letting herself get annoyed. If someone was interrupting her during training they’d have a good reason for it…otherwise they’d get an unpleasant lesson in proper protocol.

“Morgan, we’re about to come under attack,” Captain Wilkinson said calmly. “Nestafar warships are a few minutes out at best.”

“On my way,” Morgan said, rolling backwards and letting her legs go slack. She fell down through a reverse flip and landed in a crouch on the padding below, then jogged over to the staircase that led up to the control panel and door, switching off the comm and the challenge program telekinetically as she ran out into the sanctum’s corridors.

She headed for the exit and then straight up to the bridge, not bothering to stop for a uniform or shoes. If there was going to be a naval battle it wouldn’t matter much what she was wearing, unless the hull was badly breached or they were boarded, neither of which was likely, meaning the sooner she got to a tactical holo the better.

By the time she reached the bridge the Nestafar had already arrived, with the Blue Ranger’s fleet still deploying to counter them along with the 8 other Star Force warships she had with her. With them were some 103 Calavari starships, 16 of which were warships. As Morgan padded her way up to her command chair on sweaty feet she saw a group of newly arrived Calavari ships slightly ahead of the Nestafar, suggesting the reason for the attack.

“They were followed,” Wilkinson summed up as she stepped beside him.

“How do we stand?”

“Escorts are in good position, and should provide us adequate time to launch the rest of the fleet, but we don’t have firm numbers on the Nestafar yet. They still have ships incoming.”

“I’ll be in the nexus,” she said, running off to the side of the bridge to a concealed alcove. She came through a very short tunnel and turned right, entering the cylindrical room that held a command nexus terminal in the center. Morgan stepped up to it and placed her hands on the Ikrid sphere, mentally powering up the system and interlinking with the battlemap and system commands far faster than button presses would have allowed.

An image of the battlemap appeared in her mind as well as in holo around her, cutting off vision of the room and replacing it with a map of the empty star system. Aside from the yellow/orange star in the center there was nothing else here, no planets, asteroid fields, space stations…nada. It was completely empty and unclaimed, making for a good staging area for Morgan’s fleet as they rounded up Calavari survivors from surrounding systems.

The main group was located well out from the star, with the Calavari ships over-braking to arrive in the system this far out. With no gravity wells other than the star, ships passing through had to stay close to the single gravity well and use some conventional thrust or tricky navigation to maneuver around to an exiting jumpline, given that there weren’t any distant planets to push off against for maneuvering purposes. By allowing some entry drift towards the star you could drop into a failing orbit and get some lateral maneuvering options from the pushoff potential, but rising up to a higher orbit was a no go…because you’d have nothing to push on to come back.

Neither the Nestafar nor Calavari had binary drives, meaning the Calavari ships parked next to the Star Force ones were essentially stuck in the system, else they approach the star very slowly using conventional thrust. Morgan had convinced them to come here with the promise of modular gravity drives that could attach to their ships and help them maneuver around, much like the Hycre had, save Star Force’s version were tiny in comparison, rather than full jump cradles.

Morgan had seven such devices imbedded into drone corvettes that would nestle up against another ship and extend pylons out that contained IDF generators. Once the entire ship was blanketed, the small binary gravity drive would allow the Calavari ships to move where the Nestafar couldn’t go.

Trouble was, it was a slow process, and there was a backlog of Calavari ships waiting in near the star to be moved out to the holding area, where the Blue Ranger and the other warships were located, save for one that was with the Calavari fleet at the staging area. Morgan immediately recalled it with instructions to leave a few drones behind, just in case, but she knew the Nestafar couldn’t get out to them unless they over-braked on a jumpline near their position.

The Nestafar had over-braked, following the Calavari in to an elevation above the star about halfway between Morgan and the staging area, but well around the circumference of the star. That location would make it easier for the Star Force tugs to bring the Calavari over, but it was still a long haul. She assumed the Nestafar knew nothing about that and were merely matching the Calavari’s acceleration curve…which sorry for them left them stranded well out from the star, meaning they only had thrust-based acceleration to work with.

Which left them sitting ducks…but so were the Calavari at that position.

Morgan started issuing orders, with the drone warships that had already been deployed zipping off on micro-jumps within seconds of her commands going out to the remote pilots. She sent one of the jumpships on ahead with them, but had the rest continue deploying the smaller vessels to get them in play as soon as possible, then the Blue Ranger and other Warship-class jumpships followed suit and zipped over to the entry jump point using an ‘in and out’ course that brought them back closer to the star to get more lateral pull, then a short angular course correction followed by another push to bring them out to the incoming fleets.

Morgan began to get battlemap data before that, and even as her ship came into position she saw more and more Nestafar arriving, all of whom were using the navigational data being relayed back through the line to give them the desired drop out point so they wouldn’t risk ramming each other…and so they could stay hot on the heels of the Calavari.

And it wasn’t a small fleet, save for ship size. The largest registering was a Nestafar destroyer, with the bulk comprised of corvettes and frigates, but there were more than 100 of them already with more on the way…and Morgan soon realized why when she looked at the Calavari fleet that had just arrived.

She’d been expecting survivors from the Alatis System, where they’d fought a battle to secure the planet several months ago. They’d arranged rendezvous here for any surviving ships the Calavari in that system could scrounge up, for Star Force just didn’t have the transport capacity to move the Calavari en mass. Morgan had expected a scattering of ships to arrive at some point, but the Alatis Calavari had far surpassed her expectations with literally thousands of smaller ships, all of which were now packed so close together that they read like larger vessels on long range scans.

What they were doing was sharing shields, which was a Calavari tactic that she’d become familiar with long ago. As a race their warships sucked, so they made up for it a bit by configuring their shield matrixes to interconnect so they could pool their combined energy into a single shield that had less surface area than the individual ships combined would have had. That meant putting hulls right up against other hulls, but in the case of unarmed or lightly armed transports it could means minutes of battle longevity, which in this case could very well save their lives.

The fact that they had no gravity drive maneuvering options left them essentially adrift anyway, so clustering together made a world of sense…especially when they had Valeries to launch. Morgan saw hundreds tagged on the battlemap, maneuvering around on thrust engines and gravity drives where applicable when they could push against the star. The fighters were fairly fuel efficient, but Morgan knew they’d have to return to their carriers regularly during a prolonged fight, which made those ships high priority for protection…which Morgan quickly tagged on the battlemap.

Whether out of wisdom or a lack of ability to run, the Calavari refuge fleet organized itself well, allowing Morgan’s ships plenty of room to decelerate as they jumped in, then the drone warships became cats on the prowl, literally flying rings around the Nestafar warships who, at best, limped around in pathetic maneuvers, trying to gain some strategic alignment, but they never were able to coordinate, strung out in the long line that they were. The Calavari had had more than an hour to reposition their first ships, but the Nestafar had no such luxury.

Morgan didn’t offer up any surrender terms, giving orders to her fleet to take out the bastards. Star Force would pick up survivors, but she wasn’t cutting the Nestafar any slack. They’d come here to kill a mostly civilian fleet of people running away from the war zone, expecting easy targets. She knew they wouldn’t have offered surrender terms to the Calavari, for they were out for blood, and she was happy to turn the tables on them.

One after another the Nestafar ships were swarmed and destroyed by the Star Force fleet…which didn’t lose a single drone thanks to the careful battle plan employed by Morgan and the jumpship Captains. They were able to tackle each enemy destroyer with five or six of their own ships, while the rest of the Nestafar fleet looked on helpless from a distance, waiting for the Humans to work their way down the line to them.

When a drone lost shields, or was near to, it was pulled back and another inserted into its slot, with Morgan patiently overseeing the destruction of some 294 Nestafar warships when all was said and done…and not because of firepower, armor, or shielding. This battle had been won simply because Star Force had binary gravity drives and the Nestafar did not. She knew Paul would appreciate that irony, and was grateful for them having the advanced technology for a change. For most of her years in Calavari space, Star Force had always been the little guy poking at the big enemy’s flanks, and it felt good to finally lay out a smackdown of this magnitude.

She knew that Star Force was on the rise, technologically speaking, as they got more and more tech upgrades from the pyramid, but to date it hadn’t mattered much in the overall war. A 294/0 rout would certainly send a message that there was a new sheriff in town, and Morgan was going to deliver it via the survivors…if there were any to pull out of the mess Star Force had made of their fleet…which she’d drop off in a system the Nestafar controlled or contended on the way to pick up more Calavari.

Word would get back, she hoped, and give these bastards the message to stay clear of the local region of what had once been Calavari space that Star Force was now operating in, and what Morgan privately considered her turf in this gigantic free for all of a war.

2

October 1, 2466

Jasne System

Drema

The Blue Ranger decelerated against the Calavari planet’s gravity well first in a long line of ships in Morgan’s convoy, finding the planet as it should be…still in Alliance hands. She hadn’t been back here in nearly 3 years, having been shuffling Calavari away from the pickup points via other escorts, but this was the largest fleet of refugees collected to date and Morgan intended to see it through to completion…not to mention she needed to resupply, and bringing her fleet in was easier than running cargo ships out to them.

As the Blue Ranger got its sensors back into alignment a host of Star Force signals popped up on the battlemap, some of which belonged to Taryn’s fleet, which was a day from leaving, having just finished resupplying. In addition to them were a host of warships designated to help the Calavari protect the planet/system, as well as a huge number of cargo jumpships bringing supplies up the conduit and taking Calavari back to HTC.

Two new additions were Star Force defense platforms. Each was a remote-controlled space station, similar to the drone warships, but designed to sit in orbit and fire at anything that came close with both short and long range weaponry. Each platform had a cleansing beam and an insane number of missile racks, not to mention plasma and mauler cannons. Morgan immediately felt safer, knowing that Jenna was stacking the deck in terms of planetary defense, and saw several other new additions to orbit as well, first among them being a storage/repair yard.

The massive cube held the facilities to repair, refit, and replace her drone fleet, which had become extremely battered over the past 3 years. The original repair yard still floated in orbit, and was at the moment attending to a jumpship, with the much larger cube on a lower orbital track with dozens of Taryn’s jumpships sitting nearby. Morgan immediately queried the computer systems for an inventory count and was relieved to see that there were still replacement drone warships available, though far less than the entire station could hold.

There was enough to reequip her fleet, with more coming up the conduit by the month. At first the Calavari on Drema had been resistant to Star Force establishing a permanent presence, especially when they realized that Morgan’s people were taking Calavari refugees back to Star Force territory, but as the condition of the Calavari empire deteriorated their resistance slackened, and when it became clear that Drema could not take on any more refugees, the local government graciously facilitated their transfer out of the system, encouraging many who were skeptical to go with their Human allies.

The number of jumpships traversing the conduit had increased exponentially over the last three decades, so much so that there were ships coming in and going out almost daily, with those coming in sometimes containing Star Force Calavari. Equipped with warships and weapons that were a combination of the two races’ tech, they became the best recruitment tool of all, pulling experienced warriors off the battlefield and convincing them to go down the conduit to receive the same training, then come back and help the Star Force Calavari carve out a new empire in the rubble of the old.

To date they had, with the Humans’ help, secured two neighboring systems in addition to Jasne, and in all three they had established small colonies that were using the Calavari techs returning through the conduit to begin expanding their infrastructure in a typical Star Force manner. One stipulation was that no native Calavari would be welcome in the colonies until they’d gone through Star Force training, something that the ‘new’ Calavari were insistent on…which was something the others couldn’t understand until they saw the battle records from Nanten.

The system was far from Drema and the conduit, but it was the first place the Star Force Calavari had gone into battle on their own terms. The Star Force fleet had engaged the Nestafar occupation forces on a pair of planets, clearing them from orbit, with the mainline units ground landing on one to assist the natives with the destruction of the Nestafar troops while the Star Force Calavari got their own exclusive mission on the other planet with the same objective.

The documentation of that assault and successful retaking of a world from the Nestafar, small as it was, filtered out through the remains of the Calavari empire. After a few years Calavari ships started showing up at Drema looking for these converts and either offering their assistance in battling the Nestafar/lizards or wanting to join them. As it was, Drema’s high orbit was cluttered with abandoned Calavari ships that were either being refitted or recycled by Star Force, as their crews had already been shipped back through the conduit for training.

Some stayed in Star Force space, helping to grow the new Calavari empire on HTC, but many more returned, not wanting to abandon the original Calavari territory altogether. Three systems may not have been much, but word had spread of there being other holdouts, and the resistance gave the Calavari hope…and more importantly, an objective to fight for, rather than just rolling from one defeat to another and hoping to make the next transport so they wouldn’t be left behind.

But so many still were. As many planets as Star Force evacuated, there were hundreds more that had been caught between severed supply lines, Nestafar invasion, or simply deemed inconsequential, with their small defense fleets being pulled off to pool together to protect more valuable locations. It was a sad, depressing, and overly demoralizing combat theatre that had once been a great race, now reduced to a large population spread across disparate systems with no central controlling factor.

Star Force, the Protovic, and other benefactors were stepping in to fill part of that roll, but it was the Star Force Calavari that garnered the most response from the war torn planets…for they weren’t only revitalized and reequipped, they had naval assets on par with Star Force, whose fleet, while small in comparison to what the Calavari originally had, had always been superior. Naval was the Calavari’s weakest area, but these new Calavari touted it as their strength…something that seemed impossible within Calavari society.

With their empire effectively dead, many had given up hope and consoled themselves to holding out and trying to weather the storm until the day of their destruction finally arrived, but when word spread of the Star Force Calavari, along with recorded proof of their limited battle history, those who still had a spark of defiance left in them took up a new battle cry. That battle cry was to survive the enemy until they could get to Star Force, or Star Force could get to them, precipitating a mass exodus for those who had jumpship access…and long coast phases between star systems for those ships without.

Word had gotten around to the Nestafar as well, who’d come looking to squash the Star Force ‘hope’ that some of the Calavari worlds were rallying around, but on multiple times they’d been repulsed from Morgan’s turf, though often it was Taryn’s and Leif’s fleets doing the fighting while Morgan pressed further out into the war zone, picking up survivors and spreading the word.

And the word was Rebirth.

So it wasn’t altogether surprising how many Calavari ships Morgan saw parked in orbit around Drema, but it was still an impressive sight. Even more so were the number of Star Force jumpships, which to her meant more badly needed supplies flowing in, among which were foodstuff shipments for Drema and the Crecchon and Tarvis systems. It wasn’t much compared to the need, but it kept the Star Force Calavari supplied while they established their own bioharvest facilities, as well as adding to the limited foodstuffs that Drema had available for the swarm of refugees populating its surface.

The 3,412 Calavari ships that Morgan had brought with her began deceleration braking behind the Blue Ranger one and two at a time, with the bulk still being several days behind. Her other warships had stayed back with them, ensuring the Calavari didn’t get the jump on them at the previous system before all were away. The Calavari jumpships had been sent on ahead weeks earlier, leaving Morgan to shepherd the slow convoy at a snail’s pace, but after several months they’d finally arrived at their destination, safe and sound.

Give her ships a couple of weeks to resupply and they’d be heading back out to round up more Calavari, picking them up wherever they encountered them as they limped their way towards Drema. So far the Nestafar hadn’t hit it directly, but Morgan figured it was only a matter of time, which was why she’d left a considerable warship presence behind, which it seemed Jenna had been adding to nicely, based off the ID tags on the battlemap, which included several new models that the Ninja Monkey had apparently been holding out on Morgan.

They’d have a little chat about that later, but protecting Drema was Jenna’s primary mission, so Morgan wouldn’t hold it against her too much. That said, there were a lot of assets showing up in orbit, meaning the trailblazer was going to have to do some administrative work before she headed back out…and if Taryn was still insystem she wanted to discuss the situation with her personally.

A day later she met both Taryn and Jenna onboard the partially operational Calavari seda in low orbit that was still under construction, but in typical ‘death star’ fashion the pieces of it that had been built were habitable, with the rest of the building effort being held up for lack of supplies. Its weapon systems weren’t up and running yet, but the interior was large enough to accommodate well over 1,000 Calavari, who found it a great honor to have all three Archons, let alone two trailblazers, use it as a summit point.

“We’ve been seeing a lot of activity here,” Taryn said, pointing to the star map. “Nothing large, but a lot of Nestafar smaller ship traffic. No conflicts as yet, but they’re moving through the system, I think to around here,” she said, making a circle with her finger around a cluster of star systems. “I think they’ve got a resupply base or colony in there.”

“Damn,” Morgan whispered, chewing on the end of her finger.

Jenna raised an eyebrow. “You think they’re coming for us?”

“Not much Calavari left around here to target,” Taryn answered, “unless they’re trying to sweep up scraps, which I doubt. They may have more of their empire intact, but they’ve been hurt nearly as bad as the Calavari. They don’t have resources for auxiliary campaigns.”

“I agree,” Morgan said, nodding once. “There are a lot of small systems out there that they’ve passed over for annexation. They’re out to kill Calavari and are focusing on their major worlds. There’s a cluster here,” she said, pointing into the central region of Calavari space, which ran up and down on the 3d map further than it did side to side, “that they could be staging for a future campaign, but I’d put my credits on us.”

“How do you want to play it?” Jenna asked.

Morgan and Taryn exchanged glances, with the redhead answering.

“If we waste time or resources hunting this base down it means recovering less Calavari. That’s our primary mission, so we’ll let the Nestafar come to us.”

“That sounds like a…bad idea,” Jenna admitted. “If they’re setting up a stronghold, best to hit it before it gets too developed.”

“Normally I would agree,” Morgan said, a frustrated look on her face, “but when there are billions of Calavari out there needing to be saved, we can’t waste time on maybes. We’re not due to probe that far out anytime soon, and we’re not going to divert…no matter how much I want to.”

“If they are coming here, we need a battle plan,” Jenna noted. “More than I’ve got set up, anyway.”

“What have you got?” Taryn asked.

Jenna adjusted the hologram, pulling it out to a system-wide view.

“I’ve got sensor stations around all the planets, so if they poke in for a look we’ll know. Right now I’ve got 13 fully loaded warships stationed around J-19,” she said, pointing to the outermost planet in the system that had no name. “They don’t have binary drives, and that’s the most remote position that I can place them for easy recall. If the Nestafar are counting ships in orbit, these won’t show up. I’d planned on stationing more further out, as we get reinforced, but I don’t want to leave orbit naked.”

“How are you organizing the Calavari fleet?” Taryn asked.

“The abandoned ships are just parked in high orbit with a few drones guarding them. The Calavari refuge fleet I’m keeping within distance of the defense platforms, so they’ll have a place to run to if necessary. The Calavari warships we’ve accumulated are spread out in pairs guarding the orbiting infrastructure. They’re not a match for the Nestafar, but they can delay them long enough for help to arrive…or drive off a single ship trying to poach targets of opportunity.”

“Our Calavari,” Jenna continued, “have two fleets insystem. One is stationed here, guarding the seda until it’s operational, and the other is patrolling high orbit. If the Nestafar do jump in, they can come in behind them and cause trouble. Our mainline fleets are sprinkled around low orbit, ready to reposition as needed.”

“Valeries?” Morgan asked.

“We have a lot, actually, but most are atmospheric only. The starfighters have been mostly obliterated in naval combat, but their aero-only versions have been popping up regularly, a lot in handfuls scrounged from evac zones, but they’ve been accumulating. They’re standing ready in surface bases to try and intercept Nestafar dropships on the way down. If they get their walkers on the surface things will get real bad, real fast. The Calavari have a formidable army on station, but their hovertanks are crap against the walkers.”

“Believe me, I know,” Morgan said, staring at the locations of the surface bases, of which a few more had been added since her last visit. “How many mechs have we got?”

“On the surface, we’ve got two galaxies, all Calavari. All mainline mech units are still on their jumpships waiting to go out with you,” Jenna said, using the Battletech-inspired unit system, in which a ‘galaxy’ was 500.

“How many of the Calavari mechs are mauler-equipped?” Morgan asked.

“About a third.”

Taryn shook her head. “Mauler is the only weapon that works well against Nestafar armor. Have we given them any heavy walkers?”

“Not that I know of yet,” Jenna said, unsure of what was going on back in Alpha Region where the Calavari were being trained and equipped, with Jason and Jace making the decisions there. “All we’ve received are scale 1.”

“You’ll want to put together all-mauler stars to take on the bigger mechs,” Taryn said, speaking from experience. “Use plasma for the giraffes and missile heavies for support. Let the maulers strip the armor off and the others to finish them. Fastest way I know of,” she said, glancing at Morgan.

“I concur. Do we have any air assets on the ground?”

“Only Calavari, and they’re Star Force Valeries…with a few gunships thrown in, but the native Valeries far outnumber ours. How much you expecting the Nestafar to throw at us?”

“There’s no way of knowing,” Morgan said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Nor when. We just have to lay out as much defense as we can and work the problem when it happens.”

“That’s cheerful,” Jenna quipped.

“The only other option is to pull in one of our fleets,” Taryn explained, “which we are not going to do.”

“I know, I know. If we sit on our hands the Nestafar win by default. I just wish I had more ships to work with, but everything that comes through needs to go to you three, so I’m in a tough position not knowing what to prepare for.”

“You got any more of those defense platforms on the way?”

Jenna looked at the pair of trailblazers, then over to Morgan. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Who sent them.”

“No. Should I?”

“They were a little gift from Clan Saber, with three more on the way. Jason said he’s sending something a bit bigger, due in 5 months or so.”

Morgan frowned. “What are those two up to?”

“I don’t care,” Jenna said, “so long as they’re sending toys our way.”

“Don’t they have enough to worry about on the lizard front?” Taryn asked.

“Couple of no good schemers,” Morgan mumbled. “They’re still vying for IlClan.”

“IlClans,” Taryn corrected.

“What’s that?” Jenna asked.

“Something between trailblazers,” Taryn scoffed. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Now I want to know.”

“Just them doing their power twins routine…again,” Morgan half-explained. “One war front isn’t good enough, so now they’re playing in two.”

“And that’s bad?”

“No,” Morgan frowned, “it’s a good thing.”

“Which is what makes it so frustrating,” Taryn finished.

“Are we really caring about this right now,” Jenna asked, “with the Nestafar on the prowl?”

Taryn rolled her eyes. “Still a newb.”

“It’s called multi-tasking,” Morgan explained to her fellow Ninja Monkey. “When you get as good as we are you can deal with doomsday scenarios and compete with your fellow Archons at the same time.”

“I thought that only applied to sarcasm,” Jenna joked.

“’Multi’ means more than one,” Morgan reminded her. “I’m still kicking their ass in ranks.”

Jenna looked at Taryn. “Are you all like this?”

“Pretty much,” the trailblazer confirmed.

“You guys must have been nuts in basic training.”

“We still hold most of the records,” Morgan reminded her.

Jenna set her elbows on the holoprojector. “My point exactly.”

3

May 31, 2467

Ghanis System (Beta Region)

Ettiana

“Captain, we have a system-wide warning flag!” a Kiritas crewmember shouted excitedly on the bridge of the H132 jumpship in its high pitched voice.

Erica Sorvela looked up from the datapad in her hand and uncrossed her legs as she rapidly sat up. “Show me.”

One of the Human bridge crew brought up the holographic text in front of her command chair, along with the tags on the orbital map, indicating enemy warships on approach. She took a moment to read the brief message, then even longer to analyze the map, noting that the incoming Skarron ships were not on a jumpline near her ship, meaning she had a few minutes at least to work with.

“Hold all outgoing dropships and get the ones on the way up here inside as fast as possible. Navigator, get me three quick options out of planetary orbit, but avoid the star. If the Skarrons are incoming that’s where they’ll be coming from. Comms, inform the spaceport to stop sending additional ships, but that we’ll wait for those already enroute if able. And get me a close up on the incoming ships.”

A secondary hologram appeared on the right, detailing the Skarron fleet as it jumped into middle planetary orbit in the form of single ships, one popping up every couple of seconds as they came in on a stellar jumpline. Already there were 18, and they appeared to be holding up just off the jumpline…gathering their strength, probably, to begin the assault on the planetary defenses.

Sorvela used her command chair controls to search around the map until she found the defense fleet, which was likewise assembling from its varied patrols, but unlike the Skarrons it was coalescing into several pieces, the closest of which was a group of 12 drone warships moving out towards the Skarrons, probably to hit them before the rest of their fleet arrived…which begged the question just how many were coming.

Then all of a sudden a huge new contact jumped in, with the computer tagging it as a ‘Juggernaut.’

“Eta on the dropships?” Sorvela asked with a forced calm.

“14 minutes.”

She nodded, biting the inside of her cheek to stay focused as more and more Skarron ships poured in. The cargo ships and other vessels in orbits closer to the attackers, including some from other races who happened to be insystem, scattered like insects moving away from an incoming boot. 14 minutes should be a safe margin, she hoped, given that their updates on the Skarrons had only made their way to her ship months ago. Before then she’d only heard of them in rumors.

Who knew what they had in terms of technology, and that fact rattled her as she was forced to sit and wait…for she wasn’t abandoning the dropships. She could have, forcing them to return to the planet, but if she’d been onboard one with an enemy invasion incoming, she’d have wanted the ship to wait for her if at all possible.

So they were going to wait, then they were getting the hell out of here and let the military deal with the Skarrons…though the more ships that popped up into orbit gave her the feeling that this wasn’t some raid they were going to fend off. She knew never to underestimate Star Force’s military might, but by the time the third of the massive juggernauts appeared she was swearing up a storm in her mind, with one thought pounding through her consciousness as the last dropships were on approach to the hangar bays.

RUN.

Two days later…

“Here it comes,” Etito said to his fellow Kiritak as they waited in the shadow of a half-destroyed barrier wall that surrounded their barracks at the mining colony. It still stood half again over their one meter height, but had originally been twice as tall, with the top section of the concrete wall laying in chunks all over the inner courtyard from where an aircraft missile had hit the small defense turret on top.

“Just one?” Movo asked in a whisper as the six Kiritak guards were hunkered up against the wall in their dark green body armor.

An explosion elsewhere on the perimeter silenced Etito’s reply, with the small Kiritak putting its three fingered hand out where the others could see and counted down with each digit, pulling all three into a fist.

When he did the last Kiritak in line sprinted out, followed by the fifth, then the fourth and so on until Etito was the last to jump out of cover. When he did he saw a huge alien down the trail ahead of them. It stood three times as tall and many times wider, with four massive legs and four long arms coming out the top. It was beyond ugly, even without a head, but it did have a mouth that looked big enough to swallow one of them whole.

The next thing Etito saw was two small objects moving through the air towards the Skarron, who fired at the little Kiritak with two white plasma orbs from squarish guns on the end of its forward arms. Before it could fire again the two objects hit the thing’s tough yellow skin and bounced off, exploding a few inches out as the Kiritak who threw them triggered the remote mines.

Etito heard a huge roar from the alien, but it walked forward through the smoke and continued firing, now with a wound oozing dirty white blood. Two of his fellow guards got hit and knocked down by the blasts, but their shields held up to the shots and they got back to their feet as the others fired their plasma pistols and chucked two more Kiritas grenades.

They exchanged fire, white orbs for blue lances, for a few seconds, then with another explosion the big thing finally went down with a thud onto the dirt trail.

“Make sure it’s dead,” Etito said, shooting it three more times with his pistol, and the others joined in…save for Movo.

“You hit?” Etito asked, walk/hopping over to his fellow Kiritak.

“What’s it look like?” Movo said angrily, holding a tiny hand over a hole in his leg’s thin armor.

“How bad is it?” Reloni asked, seeing some blue blood seeping through his fingers…but not much.

“Surface burn,” Movo said as he stood up wincing. “It hurts like mojorni’s girdle, but I think I can walk.”

“Head back inside,” Etito said as another white orb flashed over their heads, followed by a splattering of smaller ones coming from the trail up ahead.

“Shit!” he said, firing back at one of the equally small aliens with a flat head that were coming through the brush ahead of another one of the big ones coming up the trail. “Fall back!” he said, firing as fast as he could pull the trigger, with most of his shots going wide in his haste.

“They’re everywhere!” Movo yelled, hopping as fast as he could with one leg to get back to the entrance in the wall. A warm spot on his tail told him he’d taken another hit, but fortunately this one didn’t burn all the way through his armor.

“Hurry up!” Etito yelled, seeing that Movo was falling behind. “Ahhh!”

Etito ducked down just before getting to the corner as a mass of red nearly ran into him. He ducked and the Archon jumped over his head, avoiding a collision, though the Kiritak felt a bit of liquid in his pants none the less.

“Kick their ass!” he yelled as he turned around at the wall and took cover, shooting at one of the little aliens as the Archon shot several others on approach, then jumped up into the air and came down on top of the Skarron between its four shoulder joints and stood up, firing directly down into the thing’s back with plasma blast after plasma blast as it tried to shake him off, to no avail.

The Skarron went down with another tremor felt as much as heard, then the Archon leapt off to Etito’s left and started shooting and kicking the little aliens into submission. The Kiritak stepped out of cover and threw one of his grenades at a trio of aliens well ahead to the right. It fell short, bouncing across the ground and ducking between the feet of the front one.

Etito pushed his hand trigger, blowing it up underneath and knocking all three down, the first of which landed in pieces. Blue lances from the other Kiritak clustered near the wall finished off the other two as they tried to limp off bloodied, then Movo took another hit by an errant plasma orb.

“Ah shit, not again!” he cried, rolling over on his tail as he jerked around, trying to rub away the heat in his chest that was burning through his clothes and scorching his skin.

“Behind you!” Reloni yelled, pivoting around and firing at a couple of the small aliens that were coming out of the barracks’ door across the courtyard.

“Ah, they’re inside!” Etito yelled as he turned around and fired. With the fire others they blanked the two Hobbits with blue streaks, two thirds of which missed, but the rest were enough to take them down, though Etito took a hit to his shields, with his helmet monitor informing him that its effective strength had been reduced to 13%. It would recharge slowly, but if he got hit again soon it would go straight to his armor and he’d end up like Movo, who was still on the ground, crying, but no longer thrashing about.

Etito pointed a middle finger towards the barrack’s door and one of the other Kiritak ran over to it and looked inside…taking a plasma orb to the face and getting knocked back onto his tail. He scrambled off to the side as the other Kiritak shot the next Hobbit to come out.

“Too many, too many…” the Kiritak said as he ran back to the others. “Where do we go? What do we do?”

“We shoot them,” Etito said, not knowing what else to do as another small alien came out, but before he could shoot it a single blue streak hit it in the chest, coming down from overhead. Etito turned and looked over his left shoulder, seeing the tall, red armored Archon standing behind him.

“You five, come with me,” he said in the typically low-toned voice of the Humans as he reached down and picked up Movo by the tail and slung him over his left shoulder. “Move!”

“Coming,” Etito said as he and the other four ran/hopped as fast as they could, following the Archon outside the barrier wall and to the left. He led them down the wall for 50 meters or so, then ducked into the forest, keeping off the trail and heading away from the barracks…and everything else.

“Where are…we going?” Etito asked after a few minutes.

“Away,” the Archon said, zigzagging between trees and purposely avoiding a straight line, it seemed to the Kiritak.

“But what about the other Kiritak? Why are you leaving them behind?”

“I’m not leaving anyone behind,” the Archon said over his shoulder as he continued to jog as fast as he thought the Kiritak could move. “The mining colony is lost. Everyone else is dead.”

“Already?” Etito asked in disbelief.

“There are a lot more troops on the ground than you can see…hold up.”

The Kiritak stopped behind him, grateful for the breather.

“Thank…the Randy,” Reloni said, huffing.

“Can you put me down now?” Movo asked meekly, clearly still in pain.

“Not just yet. Hang on,” the Archon said, looking to the sky through the trees. He couldn’t see much, but there were enough brakes here and there to get a partial image of a large ship passing overhead.

When he was sure it hadn’t spotted them he pulled Movo off his shoulder and gently set him down on the ground.

“Stay here,” he said, running a few steps and jumping up to grab a low tree branch as he started to climb.

The trees on Ettiana weren’t large, nor were they stiff, so every branch he climbed up gave a bit, but overall the plant was firm enough to support his weight up to the near top, where he stopped as he felt a bit too much give forming in the primary stem. He reached out and pushed aside several branches full of red and orange leaves the length of a banana, opening up his view back to the mining colony. In the near distance he could see the barracks where the workers lived, then further off was the much larger industrial facility…and smack between the two, over the forest that surrounded everything, was a huge, rectangular starship hovering in place.

But it wasn’t a perfect rectangle, and it was far longer than most, with hooks and arms all along the length, two thirds of which were empty. The ones that weren’t held small items in their grasp, of varying sizes, one of which was released on the far side. It dropped into view, landing on its six legs as it crashed down into the trees, then it slowly stood up to its full height as the starship moved off to the east, gaining altitude.

A rustle nearby caught the Archon’s attention as Etito climbed up the tree next to him, hopping from one branch to another and latching on with his small arms and tail, when necessary.

“What do you see?” the Kiritak asked.

“Trouble,” he said, pointing in the direction of the Skarron walker as it began to stomp off across the trees.

“It’s huge!”

“It’s a Type-4 Skarron walker, and nothing short of a mech will take it down.”

“You said everyone was dead…”

“So why drop it now? Good question. Maybe they’re expecting a counterattack, maybe they’re just fortifying their position. The battlemap relays are still active, for the moment, and I can’t see any troops nearby for that thing to fight, so I’m not sure what they’re up to. But we have to stay away from that thing or we’re as good as dead.”

“Where do we go? There’s no other colonies near here. Too far to walk. And we have no food.”

“No, it is too far. We wait here. Star Force isn’t going to let this invasion go unanswered, so our mission is to survive until help arrives.”

“How long?”

“Weeks at best, maybe months.”

“We starve before that.”

“No,” the Archon said, shaking his head. “The food’s down there. Unless they burn it. After things settle down I’ll sneak around and see what I can find. Until then, let’s see if we can’t find a hiding spot further away. They’re going to have their little buddies on patrol, no doubt, and their fighters might be able to spot us if we’re in a clearing.”

“How did they get here?”

“The Skarrons came with a large fleet, too much for our warships to fight off.”

“No,” Etito said, “I mean how did they get here.”

“Flying transports dropped their troops at various points around the perimeter after their fighters took out the defense turrets. They didn’t walk, if that’s what you mean.”

“Nothing we can steal?”

The Archon shook his head. “I wish, but no. They flew off after they made the drop off, just like the big ship that brought the walker.”

“Where did you come from?”

The Archon pointed across the forest to the southern side of the barracks.

“Way over there is what’s left of my skeet.”

“You’re a pilot?”

“Pilot without a ship.”

“How many did you kill?”

“Six…their fighters are slow, but they coordinate well in groups.”

“You alone?”

“The rest of squadron went down earlier. I flew off trying to find some smaller enemies to kill, and still bit off more than I could chew. Let’s head back down.”

“Ok,” Etito said, dropping from one branch to another and landing on each with a bird-like agility until he got to the ground…whereas the Archon simply dropped, grabbing a couple on the way to slow his fall until he landed on the hard ground in a crouch.

“Let’s move,” he said, walking over and picking up Movo again, but holding him in front of him for a moment to examine his wounds. “How you doing little guy?”

“Hurts…less,” he said between clenched teeth.

The Archon saw little bits of green gel soaking into his burn marks from the edges of the holes in his armor, which was a good sign, for it was an anti-infectious, medical gel built into the armor that also included a pain numbing component.

“Just stay alive until I can get you a proper med kit. Same goes for the rest of you,” he said, swinging Movo over his shoulder again as if he weighed almost nothing. “I’ll find us food, water, and whatever else we need in the colony later, after the Skarrons settle in. Until then we hide out here…or rather out there somewhere more to our liking. So let’s get going, and keep an eye out for the enemy or any good hiding spots you see on the way.”

4

June 4, 2467

Ghanis System (Beta Region)

Ettiana

In the dead of night Ben-161339 came up to the edge of the forest surrounding the Kiritak barracks, already having evaded a Hobbit patrol. There were several more at the barrier wall openings, which was why he was going over the wall itself, despite not knowing what was on the far side…other than the supplies he and the 6 Kiritak badly needed.

Watching the positions of the roaming sentries, Ben sprinted across the small clearing surrounding the wall and jumped up, grabbing the topside edge and pulling his helmeted head up enough to look over.

He dropped back down immediately and retreated to the woods, having seen a pair of Hobbits walking his way on the inside. The Archon kept a mental calculation going as he watched the sentries outside, then over a minute later he sprinted back across and jumped again, peeping over the edge.

When he did he saw that he had a short break, so he hauled his armored body up on top of the wall and slid over the far side, dropping to the ground as quietly as he could before running into the compound through a nearby door that had been blasted open by the attack. He hesitated at the entrance, glancing inside to make sure it was clear, then he ducked into the short hallways that were perfectly suited for the Hobbits…but were too small for the Skarrons to enter, luckily.

They were designed for the Kiritak, for they were the only ones who used this facility. Using his night vision, Ben went inside the low ceilinged dark hallways, seeing lights, doors, and just about anything not attached to the walls broken and burned, but with no sign of the Hobbits. Using that to his advantage, the Archon made his way through the somewhat familiar infrastructure to the cafeteria, quickly seeing the backside storage rooms had already been raided.

There were blue blood stains everywhere, with open packets of foodstuffs scattered over top of them…but no bodies, suggesting the Hobbits had already cleaned up a bit, which was a sign that they intended to stay and make use of the facility, otherwise they would have left them where they lay.

The cafeteria was deserted, so Ben tiptoed his way through the trash over to the storage rooms, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw a cluttered, but not empty mess of foodstuff containers.

That took care of item number 1, but he wasn’t going to collect any now. Not only did his armor not have any pockets, there were other things he needed to find, and the less he disturbed the less chance there was of him being discovered…plus, he’d be a lot less agile carrying around a box or two.

Before he could get out of the cafeteria he heard footsteps approach, so he hunkered up against the wall beside the doorway to an outside hall and waited, ready to jump whoever came through if they noticed him. After a few seconds in walked a Hobbit…who didn’t see him, let alone turn his head in his direction. All the lights were out, and the Hobbits weren’t wearing any head gear, so Ben didn’t know if they naturally could see in the dark or how they were navigating, but he took his good fortune and slipped out the door behind the little alien, then headed off through the dead facility enroute to the med bay.

It was likewise trashed, but like the cafeteria most of the contents were still here, making it look like the Hobbits had just wanted to mess stuff up, or either they were looking for something they hadn’t found. Granted the Kiritak were small, but they couldn’t hide in every cabinet, so maybe the enemy was just having fun trashing the place.

First off Ben retrieved a mobile med kid, which was a small, flat box that had a concealed strap that he pulled out and slung over his armored shoulder. Into the standardized box he added a few items from the other shelves that caught his attention, including a can of casting foam, and compressed the lot to get it all to fit inside so he could get the latch locked in place.

With Movo taken care of, the next thing he went for was the auxiliary storage areas, passing one lackadaisical patrol in the hallways on the way by crouched down in a nook and waiting for it to walk past. First thing inside storage that he went for was cargo sacks. They were designed for the smaller Kiritak inhabitants, but they effectively acted like small backpacks made of netting. Ben took four of them with him, then started hunting for random supplies they would need, filling two before he got to the weapons storage.

Inside the small armory had been turned inside out, with most of the weapons broken. From the debris he was able to salvage ammo clips for the Kiritak pistols and rifles, as well as a few of the weapons that had escaped damage. He pulled open a low cabinet and found several containers still inside and pulled them out, seeing the hockey puck grenade/mines that the Kiritak favored.

Filling the third sack with as many as he could get in along with the weapons and plasma clips, he held off on the fourth sack as long as he could, but eventually gave in as he came across some spare armored suits, which he disassembled and stuffed inside, realizing he’d have to get more cargo sacks for the foodstuffs and water on the way out, for the planet’s surface was fairly dry with few streams to pull from.

Not wanting to overstay his welcome, and hoping to come back and raid the place for more supplies later, he avoided the Hobbits roaming the hallways and took a different route back to the cafeteria. Before he got there he smelled smoke and other scents coming from a different area of the barracks, as well as a fair amount of noise.

He chanced a little exploration, just wanting a peek at where they were and what was burning, but when he came up to a fire-lit doorway and poked his helmet around to see what was inside his stomach sank down to a pit and his ire rose, causing him to clench his jaw to contain his emotions.

There was a fire, crudely built in the center of what had been a recreation area, on top of which there was a pair of carcasses cooking…Kiritak carcasses, with bits and pieces of several others looking to have already been devoured. The damn Hobbits were eating the dead while there were rooms full of foodstuffs just on the other side of the facility.

Ben saw a stack of bodies on the far side of the room, piled up haphazardly almost to the ceiling. Blood was everywhere, and it seemed the ‘cleaning’ effort throughout the rest of the barracks hadn’t been for tidiness sake after all.

Wanting to kill them all but knowing he shouldn’t betray his presence, Ben clamped down on his anger and turned away, heading back down the dark hallway and making his way around to the storage areas, grabbing another three cargo sacks, and returning to the cafeteria where he filled two with foodstuffs and the third with water containers…until he found a portable atmospheric condenser, which he made room for, along with a field power pack.

With all seven sacks and their chords making for a mess of his armor, he decided to hold them together by hand and toss them over his shoulder, med kit included, rather than try and wear them. He felt like Santa Claus, and looked like it too, after a fashion, given his red armor, and knew he’d be just as conspicuous on his way out, so he took his time and worked his way around the inside of the barracks, looking at multiple exits and picking what he thought was best after doing a few test runs out to the wall and back without his cargo.

He thought he had the Hobbits’ patrol patterns figured out, so pulling his 8 piece bundle over his left shoulder he decided to go for it and ran for the wall near where a turret had been destroyed. The blast had knocked the top section of wall off, making it low enough that he wouldn’t have to climb as high.

When Ben got up to it he tossed the bundle over first, then hopped over himself, spotting a sentry to his right that had its back turned to him some distance down. Apparently it hadn’t heard the noise, so the Archon picked up his stash and darted off into the forest, beginning the fairly long trek back to the Kiritak’s hiding spot, though even with the load he was moving faster than he had been with the six little guys in tow.

“Damn it to hell,” one of the Star Fox control room staff said loudly.

Sendra-4339 turned away from the star map she was studying and gave the tech a harsh glare. “What is it?”

“We have another distress call coming in. It’s Ghanis.”

“Son of a bitch,” Sendra bit out as she pounded a fist on the rim of the holoprojector in front of her. “Get a message out to Mensolon requesting their status. If the Skarrons are in Ghanis they might be there too. Hell, they may end up here before too long,” the acolyte said, thoroughly vexed. Randy had left her in charge of Iona after the first distress call had come in from Rotunna, with him leaving with most of the Star Fox fleet that had been in the system, along with calls to pull ships from the other Beta Region systems to assemble at Iona, which she was to bring out to Rotunna a few weeks later once they all arrived.

Then yesterday, after Randy had already left, they’d received a distress call through the relay network from Brenns…and now from Ghanis. All three systems were on the Calavari side of Beta Region and the closest to the Protovic/Skarron conflict where Kip was leading four Clans on a ‘save their ass’ campaign. It seemed the Skarrons hadn’t liked Star Force getting involved in the conflict and were now striking back at them…only it wasn’t an individual system, it was now three, with who knew how many more to follow.

She only had a handful of warships within the system, and those had to stay here to defend Iona. She might be able to peel off one to send along with the reinforcements from the other systems as they came in, but the numbers attached to the distress calls from Rotunna and Brenns had been staggering, and she doubted they would be any less impressive from Ghanis once their battle data got transmitted.

There was no way Clan Star Fox and the 32nd mainline fleet, which had been assigned to Beta Region, could handle this…not even with Kiritak and Kiritas support. Star Force was flat out getting overrun.

“Prep a message packet to Sol, with a copy to Epsilon Eridani,” she said, heading for a private chamber set off the control room. “Bump it to the front of the line. I’ll have it recorded within 10 minutes, then I want every ship within the system on full alert…and cancel all cargo shipments to Ghanis.”

Davis sat in his office in discussion with two other Star Force administrators later in the afternoon when his desk suddenly lit up with flashing emergency holographic icons appearing in midair, startling all three men.

The Star Force Director tapped a few keys and a pre-recorded message began to play.

“Davis,” Randy’s image said from his office on Kirit, “our Kiritak colony in Rotunna has come under Skarron attack. Information is limited at the moment, but it appears they’ve come with a fleet large enough to overwhelm out local defenses. Shortly I’m going to be heading out with a relief force from Iona, but I wanted to get this message sent as soon as possible.”

“I don’t have enough military resources to defeat the enemy fleet, but I’ll do my best to chew them up until reinforcements can arrive. I’m ordering additional ships from Beta Region to rendezvous in Iona, then to follow me in. Whether or not that will be enough to deal with this threat I don’t know. Their actual ship count we don’t know, but as of the last update from Rotunna there were over 200 warships, including a pair of juggernauts. See the information files about those.”

“I’m not going in and getting ourselves killed, so expect my fleet to be around when help arrives, though in what condition we’re in is anyone’s guess. We know the Skarrons don’t have binary drives, so we can evade them when necessary. I will need supplies eventually, but first and foremost I need you to send ships to reinforce my other systems. I’m shortchanging them to have a response fleet, leaving them very vulnerable. Time is of the essence, so get whatever you have available moving immediately and secure Iona first. It’s the key to Beta Region and we cannot afford to lose the Kiritas.”

“Sendra will keep you updated as more information comes in. I’m leaving the system within the next two hours, and expect to be engaging the enemy no sooner than a month and a half from now. It’s possible Brenns and Ghanis will have sent limited reinforcements on their own, but I have no way of knowing given the distances involved. Either way, they don’t have the ships needed to do more than annoy them.”

“You should get this message in 9 or 10 days, so I’ll still be enroute when you’re listening to this. Don’t skimp on the reinforcements. Better to send more and not need them than to have to wait months for more. I also don’t know the Skarrons’ aim here, but there have been rumors that they’re taking out a number of smaller races now that the Nestafar are more or less out of the picture. This could be an attack meant to bloody our nose and intimidate us from getting involved, or to punish us for involvement with the Protovic…or it could be the start of a full scale war.”

“I’m sending a separate message to Corneria and the other trailblazers, so you shouldn’t need to do anything yourself, I just wanted to make you aware of the situation and the need for as many reinforcements as possible. We’ve been holding back our fleets from the lizard and Calavari campaigns in case of an attack against our own systems, and now it’s happened. Don’t jeopardize Sol’s security, but give me what you can. According to Kip these guys can be beat, but it’s going to be like chopping wood, and I need more axes.”

“Also, keep in mind that our ability to send cargo shipments back home is going to be hindered, so start taking whatever economic measures necessary. I’ve left orders for Beta Region to continue as much production as possible, but I can no longer guarantee amounts.”

“And in case you’re wondering whether or not it was a good idea to help the Protovic, put that question aside. It was the right thing to do, and this fight has been a long time in coming. We’ve been staring at each other over the ‘fence’ for quite a while now, sizing each other up. This fight has been in the cards ever since I came to Beta Region, and if we don’t tear these bastards a new one they’re going to continue preying on the weaker races out there. The fact that they’re willing to hit the Protovic says they’re serious about this and have the military might to back it up.”

“We have to hit them back and hit them back hard…now, else I fear this will escalate out of control. Star Force’s days of sitting back and joining in the wars when and where we choose is over. We’ve been preparing for this, and now it’s time to act. Sorry it had to be on my turf, though. I’d hoped we’d have more time to prepare.”

Randy hesitated for a moment.

“I guess that’s it. I’m ticked and embarrassed, because it feels like I just got caught with my pants down. I know it couldn’t be helped, but I still hate being sucker-punched. I don’t have a clue where the Skarrons are basing out of, their territory is nowhere near us, so right now all we can do is face them on our own turf and play it by ear. If the relay in Rotunna is still intact when I arrive I’ll send an update, if not, you won’t be hearing from me for a while and neither will Beta Region. I thought about sending someone else with the fleet, but I have to be the one to go and make the most of whatever situation I find, and you and I both know that I can do that better than anyone else out here.”

“Time to do what you trained me for. Wish us luck.”

Davis stared at the message end symbol for a moment, with the two administrators across from him wide-eyed with concern. Almost theatrically slow, Davis reached out and deactivated the hologram, clearing the air above his desk.

“Who are the Skarrons?” the administrator on the right asked.

“We’ll get a data file out to all of Star Force tomorrow,” Davis said. “Until then hold your questions…and excuse me while I attend to this.”

“Of course,” the other administrator said as they both got up in tandem and hurried out of the Director’s office.

Once they were gone Davis flipped the button that activated his holoprojector pad, retracting a section of carpet to his right to expose the metallic circle. He stepped onto it and began contacting various logistical personnel within Atlantis and her sister cities on Earth, attending to the part of this problem that he could tackle, knowing that the military angle was something that the Archons would take care of promptly.

5

June 15, 2467

Solar System

Mordor

Dan-028 played back Randy’s message for a second time, knowing he’d heard everything correctly, but wanting to let it all thoroughly sink in. He’d expected the lizards to be the ones to hit them first, cutting past Paul’s defensive corridor around Namek and hitting the more vulnerable worlds in Alpha Region. Randy’s expansion in Beta Region he hadn’t expected, nor the Skarrons, but given the fact that Kip was fighting them in Protovic territory should have given him some warning, yet Randy’s message had caught him completely off guard.

Then again they each had their own areas of focus, with Dan’s being the expansion of Clan holdings in the Core Region and extending out into Delta Region, which was above the Core on the galactic plane. There were already Star Force systems in Delta, but since the Clans were mandated to operate independently, their own supply lines differed from those that Davis and his minions set up. While they did work together in many cases, their economies were completely separate, with the Clans having to establish their own trading and transportation networks, though the latter was optional.

Dan was focusing on expanding his own Clan, the Star Claws, as well as coordinating with 23 others that were interested in pushing up into Delta Region. Establishing independent supply lines meant securing territories in the current Star Force systems, which was doable and the Clans did regularly enough, but the trailblazers knew that the Clans needed to have other options, which meant Dan was overseeing the colonization of less attractive systems in the Core that many others used as transit points or avoided entirely.

A few were already inhabited with races that hadn’t yet achieved space travel, but many simply didn’t have habitable planets. That didn’t bother Star Force, who more often than not colonized airless worlds, but as gravity drive technology increased and the time delays between the stars diminished, they’d been searching for more preferable worlds rather than just colonizing everything within reach, much like they had in Sol.

Dan was going the other way and claiming the unwanted systems and establishing at least some presence in many of them, giving the Clans a chain of systems to connect up to Delta Region from, and while there didn’t have to be colonies in a system in order to pass through it, it was preferable in case of mechanical malfunction or damage, such as say hitting a small object during a jump. Better to have a safe harbor nearby to run to rather than be stuck in an empty system.

It also made sense to have ships and supply sources nearby, rather than having to send for them from multiple lightyears away, so creating connecting lines of Clan-inhabited systems up to Delta Region was useful in a forward thinking manner, though not necessary in the here and now, as Delta Region colonization was already underway.

Dan had gotten so enthralled in his own work that he hadn’t been paying enough attention to what the others were doing, or he would have realized the Skarrons were a threat…though, by Randy’s tone it seemed he was also surprised to have been hit, so maybe it wasn’t a lack of attention on Dan’s part, but a blind spot that Star Force had. Beta Region technically didn’t have an end, but beyond where Randy had established the current frontier systems little was known about who was out there. Some scouting had been done, but with thousands upon thousands of star systems in play, there was just no way that they could get to them all.

And the further one got out from the Core Region the wider the area became…up until you hit the galactic ‘ceiling’ and ‘floor,’ each of which were about 500 lightyears away and far beyond Star Force’s current reach, meaning the Core Region sat in a sea of systems, and the further away you got the more there were given the spherical expansion. Star Force had always been working in the blind, so to speak, but through diplomatic relations and scouting they’d acquired a decent idea of who was where in the nearby areas…but beyond Beta Region was still largely a mystery, due in part to how far Randy had pushed their borders.

The Skarrons operated out of that ‘dark’ area, and while the rumors they heard detailed a powerful race, that was nothing new compared to their allies in the Alliance. The previous reports he’d heard of them attacking the Protovic and others suggested that they were only taking the initiative because the Nestafar were diminishing, suggesting that the winged aliens were the stronger…but if the Skarrons were willing to pick a fight with just about everyone in the area, including the Protovic, Dan wondered just how strong they really were, given that they now were interested in coming after Star Force.

Before Dan could get around to issuing any orders he got an incoming message from Aaron, one of only two other trailblazers in Sol, but due to the distances involved they still weren’t close enough for real time communication.

“I assume you’ve already got Randy’s message. I’m taking the 19th, 22nd, and 41st fleets out of Sol within the day and heading straight to Rotunna. If this is a more widespread attack in progress, we also need to secure Iona, for that’s where Randy will have drawn most of his ships from. I’m assigning whatever Clan Nova Wolf assets are available within Sol to you or whoever else is going to assemble the Clans. I think you’ll agree we can’t suck Sol’s defenses dry, and the same goes for the surrounding systems, meaning we’re going to have to pull Clan resources…and probably Canderous too.”

“I’ll relieve Randy as soon as possible, but we have to hit the Skarrons with a wall of reinforcements, else we’ll risk playing whack-a-mole with the comm delays. By my last count Beta Region contained 13 Star Force systems, though Randy was planning to expand to a few more. I don’t know how far along he is, but let’s assume he’s got a least a couple more colonies up by now. That’s 15 systems and we need to reinforce them all, along with having a force that can poke back into Skarron territory, because there’s no way we’re tolerating this.”

“Pull whatever Clan ships from the surrounding systems as you can and get an armada to Iona ASAP. I’ll send word back through the relays or by courier once I get to Rotunna. Hopefully I can give you a heads up on enemy strength if Randy doesn’t first, but if I were the Skarrons, the first thing I’d do is cut the relays, so I’m assuming we’re going in blind. Better pack a few spares if there are any available in the system.”

“If you two are coming, make it snappy and make sure we have enough of a fleet to deal with this. If you’re not, make sure whoever is doesn’t come light.  Even if this is an isolated attack on a single system, we need to send a message…and if it is a larger war forming, we need as much of a head start as we can get.”

The message ended, with a copy notice that it had been sent not just to him, but to Larissa-048 as well.

Dan hit the ‘replay to all’ button and stood up on his own holoprojector plate, staring out the vidscreen ‘viewport’ at the heavy grav surface of Mordor, which lay on the very edge of the Solar System, so far out that the sky appeared dark even in day.

“Aaron, good call on the immediate response. I’ll stay back and beat the bushes to get as many ships as possible out of the surrounding systems, then I’ll take what we get and head to Iona and work things from there. Larissa, if you want to head out quicker than that, take whatever Clan resources we’ve got in the system save for my flagship and get going. If not I’m sending them on ahead, then waiting around for the others at a rendezvous point and sending them in bunches.”

“I think we can survive 50% reduction in mainline units in Sol and the nearby systems. Do you concur?” Dan asked, leaving that as the end of the message. He hated the lag times, but even with telaris comms there was no getting around the billions of kilometers between planets.

He knew he needed to wait and respond as soon as he heard back, so the Archon planted himself in his office and pulled up a schematic of the Solar System, which was defaultly centered on Mordor.

It was a hellish world, given the volcanic activity, but that internal heat kept the surface fairly warm at around -10 degrees Celsius on average. The unstable regions were well defined, crisscrossing the planet’s surface with the cities spaced in between them. The world was larger than Earth, with a gravity of 152% that required inertial dampeners and artificial gravity within all the cities to make them livable, though some sections allowed for the natural gravity for training purposes.

The atmosphere was thin and comprised of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, but thick enough to allow for winged flight, and growing negligibly thicker as the volcanoes spewed out more gasses over the years. The Clans didn’t care about the environment, given that they were living indoors anyway, but overall it was more hospitable than Venus, as well as being completely off the Earth grid, which was the largest selling point.

Mordor was a Clan-only world, and unlike the other Clan worlds in Sol, Mordor was off limits to the public. The only ships that came to and from Mordor were Clan, and while Clan citizens could transit there, others couldn’t for the simple reason that the Star Force transportation grid didn’t link in. Only registered Clan citizens could purchase transit tickets, though becoming a Clan citizen was easy enough, so it wasn’t exactly a secure world.

But it was out of the public view, in so much that the planet maintained a very insular society that was comprised of all 100 Clans. The smallest ones had an embassy-level stake, much like they did in Antarctica, while the larger Clans on the world controlled huge tracks of land, Clan Star Claw among them. Whereas Earth was the industrial powerhouse for Star Force, Mordor was the heart of Clan industry, both on the planet and in orbit, not to mention housing well over 9 billion Clan citizens in total.

That was why Dan had remained here, despite the fact that he was on the extreme end of his growing system chain up into Delta Region. While other trailblazers overseeing Star Force and/or Clan expansion had moved out to more centralized hubs within their target areas, Dan knew that part of his success lay not in only establishing the Clans in Delta Region, but in growing his own Clan to a point where it could secure Delta Region, and a lot of those efforts were taking place on Mordor and elsewhere in the Solar System.

In overall power rankings Clan Star Claw sat in fifth, but Dan had been pressing it hard to expand and now had territories on a total of 19 worlds spread over 8 systems. While tiny compared to mainline Star Force, Star Claw was developing near to a level where they could start taking on new projects solo rather than having to co-op with other Clans to gain the necessary resources. Dan’s Clan wasn’t the only one with this mindset, but there were only a few putting as much effort and resources into expansion…which led Star Claw to have one of the smaller military fleets.

That said, none of its troops were currently engaged on the lizard or Calavari fronts, leaving them free to redeploy to Beta Region so long as there were still mainline units in the systems to cover for their defensive loss…which wasn’t going to be the case in all, meaning Dan was going to have to pick and choose what to pull off and what to leave behind. With the distances and comm delays involved, it was very easy to wait and monitor a system until its defenses left, then assault it shortly thereafter with the defenders unable to call for help.

That was the unfortunate reality in interstellar expansion, and while he didn’t know of any threats to the Core Region at present, he hadn’t expected the Skarrons to hit Beta either, so out of prudence he and the others couldn’t take every ship available and run off to help Randy.

On the up side, a lot of the Clans were in a similar position to Star Claw, being that they had military assets lying around defending systems that didn’t require them, given that mainline fleets were already on station, and a great deal of them were right here in Sol. Those would be easy to assemble, it was the other systems that would take time to rally, once again due to the comm delays. At present the interstellar relay system could send a signal crossing 6.8 lightyears in a day, faster than Star Force’s gravity drives, but that left signal lag at more than a day for even Epsilon Eridani to Earth, and vice versa.

As Dan was doing a head count of all other Clan warships and ground troops within Sol he got a response from Larissa, and brought up the holo, superimposed over the asset map.

“I concur with the 50% mark. I’ll remain here and shift mainline assets around as needed to maintain security in Sol, so take all the Clan assets you can with you. If they resist, pull rank. I’ll keep the system safe until you return and have already ordered all Clan Meteor troops loaded up onto jumpships, including every mech we’ve got in storage. You’re going to need them with those Skarron Walkers.”

Dan nodded agreeably as the message ended, seeing that they were of like minds. Even at 50% strength Sol would have a solid defense force. They didn’t need to hoard ships…unless they were hit, then that 50% number would see rather ridiculous, but to quote James T. Kirk, “risk is our business,” and there were no safe calls to make here, for the in the vastness of space you never knew who might be on the prowl.

But Dan was comfortable with 50%, and so was Larissa. A few minutes later and a message from Aaron would seal the deal, which spurred Dan to get moving. Contacting all of the Clan leadership within the system…all of whom were not trailblazers…he arranged for their combined fleets to load up and head towards the central star and drop into parking orbits. Dan joined them there once his own Clan assets on Mordor had been assembled, along with drawing in those from Triton and Ganymede.

Altogether he had 18 warships and 28 cargo/transport jumpships from Clan Star Claw with him, and he would pick up more as his message went out through the network to surrounding systems. Those between Sol and Beta Region would assemble over the following days and be picked up by the main armada as it passed through a specified series of systems. Those not on the Beta side were told to make best speed to Iona, with Dan knowing they’d arrive considerably later.

That couldn’t be helped, and holding up everyone to travel in one massive group wasn’t logical, which was why he sent along an option for those systems closer to Beta to send ships immediately if they were of a mind to. Piecemeal reinforcement wasn’t always a good idea, but in this case time was of the essence, and a few dozen ships arriving a couple of days early could make a big difference in the right circumstances.

The ‘pick up’ order was more about establishing a minimum departure date, underscoring the importance of the situation for those Archons in those systems that may or may not understand the gravity of the situation. There wasn’t a trailblazer in every system, and some of the deployments didn’t even have an acolyte in place where the locale was deemed to be remote and secure. What they did have were Regulars and the warships that they inhabited, with them needing to be whipped into transport mode sooner rather than later, for it took time to bring mechs up from a planet’s surface, not to mention supplies that would be needed for a long campaign.

Dan explained all of this in a very long, comprehensive message packet that he sent out to every system in Star Force territory, even the ones that he knew wouldn’t be sending reinforcements, such as Namek which was on the opposite side of the Core Region from Iona. Plus those fleets were in place to counter the lizards and couldn’t be withdrawn except under exceptional circumstances…which this didn’t qualify as, given that there were other fleets to respond with.

But Dan wanted everyone to know what was going on, and he didn’t want to waste time recording multiple smaller messages. Once he sent the message out he waited onboard his flagship, a Mk. 17 Warship-class jumpship that had been built in orbit of Mordor less than 5 years ago, and one that had yet to see real combat, which the same could be said of the bulk of the Clan fleet.

Four days later Dan jumped out of Sol enroute to the Merovingian System, the first stop on a chain of jumps to get them out to Iona, bringing with him the largest fleet Star Force had ever assembled, including a small contingent of Canderous warships whose design, as to date, had never been battle tested.

That didn’t stop them from immediately volunteering, for the military civilization considered themselves too sheltered as it was, with only a small presence on the lizard front. They were eager for righteous combat, and so too were the Clans.

6

July 14, 2467

Iona System

Horizon

Dan’s flagship, the Wolf’s Gaze, decelerated into orbit around the Clan Star Fox planet while the rest of his 2,473 jumpship fleet was coming into the system and parking around the gigantic white star. Dan had come through first and microjumped out to the fourth planet so as to avoid the time lag with communications, and pulled an immediate data uplink from the planet when he arrived, as well as contacting the ranking local Archon.

Enroute he’d picked up multiple updates from Beta Region as they passed from system to system through the relay network. Randy’s reinforcement of Rotunna had yet to arrive, given the extreme distance out to the system, but a few of the local defense fleet had survived and sent data back through the relays for a while, detailing their harassment of the Skarrons in orbit while the enemy maintained control of the surface, fighting with the few Star Force units that remained. They’d managed to keep their jumpships intact, forgoing one massive, costly battle, and were nipping away at the enemy ships and reducing their 531 count wherever they could as the Skarrons set about conquering the planet.

In addition to the warships, the Skarrons had also brought a fleet of jumpships carrying cargo and troops for the ground campaign. Those ships were considerably bigger than their warships, but their warships didn’t need jumpships to carry them around, meaning that even while Randy’s fleet would outnumber the Skarrons by a factor of two, each of his drones was considerably smaller than their counterparts in the Skarron fleet.

If push came to shove, Randy had said he thought he could neutralize the enemy fleet with his own, but even if he succeeded and they canceled each other out, he had no resources to mount a surface campaign, and according to sensor records the planet was already crawling with Skarron walkers.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. Based on the reports coming in, Brenns had also been hit with 629 warships and Ghanis with 489. Last he knew that was as far as the Skarrons had gotten, both those three systems were not close to one another, spread out across more than 40 lightyears in an almost perfect triangle that was slightly lower on the galactic plane than Iona. That made them as far apart as the Core Region was wide, and they occupied one small corner of Beta Region. Given that the Skarrons were willing to hit systems so far apart, there was no guarantee that was the furthest they were going to hit, and Dan was relieved to see that Horizon still stood intact.

“I’m very glad to see you here,” Sendra said as her hologram popped up in front of Dan’s command chair. “And according to the sensor grid it looks like you brought friends.”

“Aaron is on a direct route to Rotunna with 3 mainline fleets, I’ve brought the Clans here with enough numbers to fight this war…or at least I hope so. I’ve been picking up bits and pieces on the way, have we lost more than three systems?”

“Two days ago we got a report from Iverie that they’d come under attack, and we’d already pulled most of their defenses and rerouted them to Rotunna before we understood the scale of the invasion…though it probably wouldn’t have mattered, given the numbers the Skarrons are arriving with.”

“I’m looking at those now,” Dan said as updated information began to come in and his bridge staff was sorting through it and relaying the key pieces to his holographic display. “Are the relays still functional?”

“As far as we know, yes. The Skarrons may not even know they’re there, and the surviving warships in all three systems are still feeding us intel. Nothing new from Iverie as of today.”

“I’m glad they’re not all destroyed,” Dan said, partially relieved. “How are our guys stacking up?”

“Plasma weapons are less effective, but if you can keep the enemy at range you’ll own them. The system commanders have been sending back data, and Randy sent an updated assessment of the Rotunna files with suggestions.”

“We’ve already uploaded all pertinent files, so I assume it was in the batch?” he asked, glancing at his Captain…who nodded in the affirmative. “Yes, we’ve got it.”

“How many ships can you leave me?” she asked bluntly.

“The bulk of the fleet stays here to secure the system and be in a position to send support out to the rest of Beta Region. I’m sending 200-300 warships out to each of the systems, meaning that will leave you with over 1000 to work with, plus cargo ships.”

“1000 warships or drone warships?” Sendra asked to clarify.

“1000 warships, each with 50-100 drones onboard. I brought all the Clan ships I could get my hands on, including some from Canderous.”

Sendra let out a loud sigh of relief. “If you were down here I’d kiss you. I’d recommend sending groups out to at least the nearer inhabited systems, maybe even the Kiritas colonies. I held off doing so with the reinforcements that have already came in in case Iona got hit. I don’t know if the others are going to be targeted or not, and I didn’t want to gamble. If the Skarrons do hit another system it’d be best if we didn’t let their walkers get to ground. I hope you brought some ground troops with your fleet?”

Dan nodded. “We did.”

“Then I’m happy to turn things over to you. I’ve been crossing my fingers and hoping the Skarrons didn’t get here before you did. I wasn’t sure if what we had plus the Kiritas fleet was going to cut it.”

“More ships are on the way, though how many for sure I don’t know. I couldn’t wait for all of them. Keep what you need here and reinforce where necessary.”

“Gladly.”

“What’s the traffic look like?” Dan asked, referring to the inter-racial commerce that routed through most of the Beta Region colonies, but especially Iona, which had the Babylon 2 diplomatic station.

“Very heavy. The Skarrons aren’t just hitting us, they’re hitting lots of people coreward from here. We’ve got ships hanging around that have nowhere else to go at the moment…and unfortunately most of them aren’t warships.”

“Any scuttlebutt on where the Skarron fleets are originating from?”

“Nothing solid, no. Are you planning to hit them back?”

“Secure our own worlds first, worry about payback later. But it’s on the tentative to-do list.”

“Good,” Sendra said, iron in her tone. “Sign me up.”

Ben crept up on the edge of the barracks again, noting that the sentry patrols had still not resumed. It’d been six weeks since the Skarrons had taken the place, and the planet, he feared, but they didn’t seem too keen on laying claim to this piece of infrastructure. The last time he’d snuck in for supplies it had been virtually deserted, with him only coming across a handful of Hobbits inside.

That had got him curious, and in all the copious spare time he had on his hands he’d made the trek through the forest over to the mining complex to see what was happening there, but making sure to stay well clear of the Type-4 walker that was still on guard. Even now he could see it from the barracks, standing in place like a statue between the two locations, just on the inside edge of the mining site. Ben had gone the long way around to avoid it, whereupon he’d discovered that the Hobbits from the barracks had repositioned to the mine…along with a lot of others.

There were plenty of Skarrons around, with the walking tanks acting as commanders for the legions of Hobbits and ‘Engineers’ as Ben thought of the others. What their actual name was he couldn’t remember, but the little aliens were all arms and legs, looking like a pint-sized version of Calavari…only without the bulk. They had four scrawny arms and a central body not much thicker, with a set of five tiny eyes in the center of their head with no discernible mouth…and it seemed they were the ones doing most of the technical work as the Skarrons took control of the mining facility and had begun converting it over to their own uses.

The Hobbits provided some of the manpower, but it was mostly the Engineers that were learning how to work the Star Force equipment while bringing in key pieces of their own to get the mine functioning again, and as of now they were churning out a steady, yet small stream of raw materials that regular dropship flights were coming to pick up.

Ben didn’t know where their ships were taking the materials, but it was clear the Skarrons hadn’t just come here to kill Kiritak and Humans. They wanted the planet, and were wasting no time in laying claim and getting to work.

The Engineers, Hobbits, and Skarrons were living out of the mining complex, so the Archon guessed they’d deemed the barracks too far away to bother using. Fortunately their trashing of the place had left most of the stuff he and the 6 Kiritak needed to survive still there, just strewn about with a lot of broken components. Still, he needed to be careful, for the last thing he wanted was to give the Skarrons a reason to take a second look at the place.

Studying the wall carefully, he ran up and jumped into position where he could look over the edge. Seeing no patrols inside the wall, he pulled up and slid over top, then hurried to the nearest entrance and quietly made his way inside.

The power was still out, with the main generator lines having been slagged by the Hobbits. It was possible, he thought, to get some power back after repairs, from the reserve batteries even, but he wasn’t ready to risk bringing the Kiritak back just yet. Living in the forest off sacks of supplies wasn’t fun, but they were still alive and that’s what mattered. If the little guys weren’t around he might have tried to take out a few of the enemy quietly here and there, but saving them was tops on his priority list, given how many of the loyal Kiritak had died when Star Force was unable to protect them.

That didn’t sit well with Ben, and he wanted to get these six through this if at all possible. Movo was still badly hurt, but at least he was no longer bleeding and had avoided infection. His pair of plasma burns had responded adequately well to the healing patches, but his skin wasn’t regrowing yet, which the Kiritak suggested wouldn’t happen until he could enter a proper sleep cycle…something that none of them were getting. The Archon hadn’t known it before, but apparently the Kiritas physiology had a Jedi-like healing trance to help them repair a myriad of injuries…but it left them with a slower than average healing ability the rest of the time.

Movo needed stable, quiet conditions with an abundance of heat, food, and water to slip into his willful coma, and despite trying several times hadn’t been able to do it out there. If the Hobbits were gone from the barracks, Ben was going to try to move them back inside. If they weren’t, then this was going to be another supply run with an eye on some equipment to fabricate some kind of tent or shelter that would let the Kiritak out of their armor, which they’d been living in ever since the attack.

The days on Ettiana were warm to hot this time of year, but with so little moisture in the atmosphere the nights were cloudless and got uncomfortably cold without dropping below freezing, in most cases. The planet had a slight incline to its axis, giving them mild seasons compared to Earth, and at the moment this geographic location was in winter. To top it off the Kiritas were warm weather freaks, more so than Humans anyway, and they reacted worse to the cold than expected.

Roughing it in the forest for so many weeks had taken its toll on them, even if all they had to do was stay put. To keep their strength up and to give them something to do, Ben had them go through a light workout every morning and afternoon during the 33 hour days, which consisted of running and calisthenics, but if he didn’t get them to better accommodations soon he wasn’t sure how much longer they’d last.

They still had some ambrosia left, scrounged from the barracks, but Ben had been out ever since that first day he’d spent with the Kiritak in the forest. The adjustment hadn’t been too unpleasant, but he was definitely feeling an energy drain…while at the same time he had more energy than normal, given how little in the way of workouts he was doing. He knew that was a temporary bleedover effect, and after the first three weeks he’d started to feel it wearing off and his body losing strength. How much he didn’t know, but sitting out here and waiting for help to arrive was driving him crazy, prompting more of these supply and intelligence runs.

He needed to do something, and if it wasn’t killing the enemy or training, it was going to be getting supplies or figuring out what the Skarrons were up to. In truth he’d expected Star Force to get reinforcements here by now, meaning they either didn’t know of their situation or the Skarrons were hitting them other places and they hadn’t been able to get any ships here, or at least not enough ships, to retake the planet.

Ben had also hoped some more survivors would have made contact, despite the distances involved. The mining colony was somewhat remote, with no land lines linking it to other facilities, but ever since he’d gotten shot down he hadn’t received any comms or battlemap updates. His transmission range was short, but he could still receive from other sources in orbit or anywhere above the horizon, and there hadn’t been so much as a peep of activity, making him wonder if he and the 6 Kiritak were the only survivors on the planet.

His logic circuits said no. Archons were incredibly resilient, and their technology was designed to amplify that fact…which was why he’d made it out of his skeet crash. The fighter had been mangled, but thanks to the armored cocoon and IDF technology he’d hit the ground without feeling so much as a bump, though a piece of shrapnel had partially punched through a few inches away from his head, which he counted himself lucky for missing.

He’d had to pry himself out of his cockpit, then with only the plasma rifle held in a compartment alongside his feet and a limited amount of ammo and foodstuffs, he’d taken off through the forest enroute to the closest location on his battlemap…which had been this barracks, after a very long run through the forest.

He hadn’t been back to the crash site, for he knew there was nothing of real value there to salvage, though he was curious to see if he could get the transmitter working. It was most likely junk with the rest of the ship, but sitting and waiting was torture for an Archon when they didn’t know how long it would be. Give them a timetable and it became a mission. Give them an uncertainty and it was a constant reassessment of what to do, round the clock.

Ben wanted to fight and evade, and was working himself up to do it and leave the Kiritak behind where the Skarrons couldn’t find them, but he knew that without him they wouldn’t make it, which was what was holding him back. Still, a few little commando missions over to the mining site might not be a problem. After all, if some of their Hobbits went missing they wouldn’t think to come look all the way over here, would they?

Once inside the barracks he looked around…and around…and around, but couldn’t find any of the Hobbits, nor sign that they’d been here recently, which he took as good news. Gathering up what he could into a heap of sacks, Ben spent the next two hours scrounging from the barracks and seeing not a single intact body remaining. Maybe the Hobbits had only stuck around long enough to eat, but Ben was glad the barracks was of a size to accommodate over 1000 of the Kiritak, meaning there were ample supplies for himself and his little rogue band.

He didn’t care for most of the Kiritak food, but a few items were edible by his tastes, and so far he hadn’t run out of them. He was badly missing his ambrosia, but that couldn’t be helped, and the Kiritak version wasn’t suited for his Human physiology, little of it that he’d found intact.

A thorough check of the storage areas yielded several valuable construction materials, enough anyway for him to tinker with once he got back to their hideout. If the barracks was still uninhabited on his next supply run he’d consider bringing the Kiritak back here, but if not he should have enough to build them a proper hideout rather than the dirt hole they’d dug into a hillside.

7

July 17, 2467

Ghanis System

Ettiana

It was just before dawn, with a shallow purple haze filling the bottom half of the eastern sky, as Ben was pulling another vial of water from the condenser. It wasn’t much, but the Archon pulled off his helmet and tipped the small container up and into his mouth, swallowing the pure water that the machine had slowly extracted from the atmosphere. With it down his throat he put his helmet back on and replaced the vial, letting the slow drip replenish its contents.

The Archon walked up and over the hill that the Kiritak were sleeping in, having burrowed out a sizeable chamber that was now lined with materials Ben had brought back from the barracks. The condenser sat outside and at a higher elevation to ensure a good air flow as it pulled the moisture from the relatively dry atmosphere. Most of the rest of their supplies were inside, out of view, just in case someone came looking for them, but to date no one had, nor had there been any flyovers. They were ghosts as far as the Skarrons were concerned, but they couldn’t go on like this forever.

The supplies in the barracks would eventually run out, meaning that eventually they were going to have to fight the Skarrons or starve to death, and Ben was seriously considering doing it now rather than later, while he still had some strength left in him, but every time he did his mind went back to the Kiritak and how they’d be worse off without him.

The Archon knelt down on the hilltop, looking at the growing light in the east through several gaps in the trees, aware that his mind wasn’t clear. He kept running through logic circles, but he always stopped himself short of doing something reckless, and today was no different. He just wished his mind would shut up for a while, but in truth he knew he just needed something to do.

A few minutes later that all changed as his helmet HUD registered a beacon far to the north. It was a battlemap signature, amplified to reach out as far as it could, and intended to make contact with other units or equipment. As he watched, the ID tag updated into a skeet on a very fast and high trajectory…the first sign of other Star Force personnel he’d had since rescuing the Kiritak.

Ben saw that the beacon was getting closer, but it wasn’t going to pass straight over him, rather, it looked like it was going to do a flyby of the mining facility, probably looking for survivors.

With a few quick commands via arm pad and eye line, Ben amped up his own battlemap transmitter to maximum, overriding the safety measures used to dampen the communication to the point that enemies were unlikely to be able to detect and hack into it. Such dampening shortened the range, but gave them a fairly secure, private network to utilize, but at the moment he just needed to let the skeet know that he was alive.

Shouting as loud as his helmet comm could, he set his own ID tag to ‘beacon’ mode, hoping that the skeet would pick it up. For 43 seconds the craft maintained a straight line, with three Skarron fighters attempting to intercept it, visible now to Ben thanks to the skeet’s shared sensor data. They weren’t going to catch it, given that the skeet was faster, though it had slowed considerably for this flyby. Still, he didn’t think the Skarrons were going to be able to catch it…

Then all of a sudden it turned, pulling a sharp spiral downward and dropping to the forest tops and out of sight, but Ben could still see it on his HUD…and the fact that it was moving towards him. He dialed back the intensity of his signal, returning to normal battlemap transmission protocols, and activated his comm.

“Skeet, confirm receipt of transmission,” he said stoically, not sure how far his helmet comm was going to reach.

“Transmission confirmed. I need a 20 second status report,” the pilot said, making a gradual circle around the area, including the distant barracks and mining site, but staying well away from the Skarron walker’s anti-air defenses…though that didn’t stop the thing from taking a few shots at him anyway with its lachars. The white streaks stabbed out across the sky, but none of them hit the low flying skeet as it bobbed about evasively, making its gradual loop around the infrastructure.

“7 survivors, 1 Archon, 6 Kiritak security guards. Mining site is under new ownership, barracks is all but deserted. We’ve got foodstuffs and water to last us a while, but we’re continually weakening, and one of the Kiritak has plasma burns, but is stable.”

“Copy that. Hold tight and we’ll get an evac team to your position as soon as we can.”

“Much appreciated,” Ben said, a flood of relief gushing out of his chest and infesting every fiber of his body as the skeet finished its long circle around the complex and climbed back to higher altitudes before zipping off and away from the slower Skarron fighters that couldn’t quite get within weapons range.

Ben watched it go, then hurried down the hillside and around to the entrance of their little hideout. He pulled off the door ‘hatch’ and crawled inside, finding the six Kiritak where he’d left them…all huddled up together in one corner outside of their armor and underneath blankets he’d recovered from the barracks, trying to conserve and share body heat.

“Wake up, guys. I’ve got good news,” he said, with his helmet’s external speakers registering loudly in the tiny space that had otherwise been near silent.

Etito pulled his head up from underneath one of the blankets and looked at the Archon wearily. “Not another run. Please. Just let us sleep.”

“It’s not daylight yet,” Ben told him, slightly amused by the Kiritak’s grumbling. “A skeet just did a flyby.”

The little alien’s eyes widened and he sat straight up. “Help?”

“I made contact. There’s going to be an extraction team coming to pick us up. Not sure when though. But they know we’re alive.”

Etito smiled and poked the body next to him underneath the blankets, resulting in a very rude hiss.

“Wake up, wake up! Rescue is coming!”

It took a while, but Etito finally roused the others, with Movo coming around last. His plasma burns had scabbed over, but they were causing him continuous pain. Ben had him running workouts anyway, figuring that if he was going to be in pain regardless he could at least get some benefit out of it.

“Really?” Movo asked, looking from Etito up at Ben.

“Really. We just have to stay alive long enough for them to pick us up, and be ready to go at all times. There’s still that Skarron walker nearby, so when they come they might not have much of a window. We might also have to move to another spot. Regardless, we’re going to get out of here.”

“You better not be lying, Archon,” Movo said, his eyes burning with doubt.

“I’m not. If you’d been wearing your armor you would have seen for yourself.”

Etito scrambled across the small chamber to where their armor was stashed and pulled his set out, putting on the helmet and accessing the battlemap. Ben sent him the replay, knowing that they’d turned their suits off and hadn’t received the beacon, allowing him to see for himself the skeet on approach and its loop around the mining complex.

“He’s not lying,” Etito said excitedly. “Skeet flew by. They know we’re here. We’re getting out of here!”

“Ben, copy?”

“I’m here,” the Archon said two days later as another skeet flew by, this time further to the west of the barracks and closer to their location.

“We need you to reposition, coordinates coming.”

A waypoint popped up on his battlemap…or more accurately an arrow on the side of it, indicating that he needed to scroll further west or zoom out. When he did he saw a position some 17 kilometers away.

“Coordinates confirmed. ETA?”

“Give me one,” the pilot prompted.

“10 hours.”

“We’ll be there.”

“Thanks, Hank.”

“Six made it, if you’re wondering.”

“Any chance of more?”

“We’ve had boots on the ground, so I doubt it.”

“See you in ten,” Ben said, ending the conversation and allowing the skeet to fly off. There were a myriad of lachar streaks stretching out across the sky, but he only saw one of them hit, or rather wing the skeet, but its shields held, and would for several more, he knew from experience.

He watched his fellow pilot gain altitude and fly off, then returned to their hideout to get the Kiritak moving.

“Armor on, guys. We’re heading out. LZ is 17 kilometers to the west. We can’t risk a dropship in this close to the walker, so we have to move. They’ll be there in 10 hours, so let’s not waste time.”

“Are we running?” Etito asked.

“Depends. Movo, how you doing?”

“If it means getting out of here, I can run. Don’t know how far.”

“Alright, we start out running the first kilometer, then walk from there and alternate as needed. I’ll carry a sack of weapons and foodstuffs, you guys just move yourselves. The rest of our gear stays here. Grab a snack and some water now, then we stay on the move until we get to the LZ.”

The Kiritak got armored up and gobbled down a few foodstuffs, with Ben eating as well, then the group headed out through the forest, using their battlemap memory to navigate by. The terrain was mostly flat, but it got rolly enough that keeping a straight line was difficult. Ben knew their 17 kilometers was going to end up being more than that as they zigzagged their way across the forest, so he kept the Kiritak moving and ahead of pace at all times.

As promised they ran, or in Ben’s case jogged, the first kilometer, then walked the second. From there on out they ran half a kilometer, walked a full, until they eventually came to their LZ, which was little more than a dry riverbed, but devoid of trees that would otherwise hamper a dropship landing.

They got there with an hour and a half to spare, then camped out under cover while Ben scouted the area. There shouldn’t have been any Skarron activity nearby, but his spidey senses were tingling…whether from a real threat or just anxiety he didn’t know.

Maintaining a perimeter around the Kiritak, he patrolled in a repetitive circle, spiraling out and then in to keep an irregular pattern, up until he got Star Force contacts on his battlemap. Two skeets at first, followed by a Falcon-class dropship, then four more skeets coming in at various angles that suggested they hadn’t been flying in formation, possibly having to fight off some Skarron fighters on the way here.

Didn’t matter at the moment, getting onboard was the only priority, then he could worry about the tactical situation in the air.

When he got back to the Kiritak they were already aware of the incoming ships via their own battlemaps, and were waiting anxiously where he’d left them. The seven of them stayed under cover until the dropship was nearly over them, then inched up to the edge of the riverbed as it set down and lowered its boarding ramp.

The little Kiritak ran forward eagerly, with Ben letting them go ahead of him as he watched the surrounding area, half expecting an ambush, but none came. He followed a ways behind, then caught up just as the last of them were getting onboard and accepted a handshake from an Archon acolyte waiting just inside the doors with a plasma rifle, also ready for trouble.

“Thanks for the lift,” Ben said, feeling better the moment he stepped off the dirt and onto the artificial floor.

“Thanks for still being around to pick up,” the acolyte differed. “We’re extremely shorthanded.”

“What’s the situation?” Ben asked as the boarding ramp raised and he walked through the fairly large dropship’s cargo bay and up towards the passenger area where the Kiritak were already headed at the behest of several techs, one of which was having Movo pull off his armor so she could examine and treat his plasma burns.

“We lost,” Fenson-45332 said bluntly. “Every Kiritak colony has either been destroyed or taken over by the Skarrons. The only thing we have left is the Alpha Site.”

Ben pulled off his helmet as a tech walked up to him with a box of cookies…and from the markings in the icing he could tell they were ambrosia doses. He pulled out two of the medium doses and took a bite, relishing the taste after having to eat Kiritak food for so many weeks.

“Alpha Site?” Ben asked in between bites, for he was unfamiliar with the term.

“Randy had Clan Star Fox build at least one hidden base on each Kiritak world without their knowledge, subterranean, to act as a fallback position in the case of attack. The Skarrons couldn’t find it, and we’ve been gathering up what survivors we can find and consolidating them there. We’ve got several enemy walkers patrolling in the area trying to pin down us down, so our approach is going to be awkward, but as of yet they haven’t been able to pinpoint the location. We’ve maintained air superiority, but the closer those walkers get…before long we won’t be able to cover our comings and goings and we’ll either have to turtle up or fight it out. And fighting it out isn’t a good matchup for us.”

“How are we fixed for supplies?” Ben asked, taking one more smaller dose cookie and dismissing the tech with a ‘thank you’ nod.

“We’re good for more than a year with what we had in the base, and we’ve managed to scrounge up some more from various locations. How fit are you?”

“Weak, but eager for some activity. I’ve had to babysit them, otherwise I would have worked on racking up a kill count. I couldn’t take the risk of leading the Skarrons back after they’d forgotten about us.”

“How soon until you’re ready for a firefight?”

“Now if necessary. Though I’d appreciate at least a shower first.”

“We’re running hunter/killer ops around the perimeter of their encampments. Unfortunately we don’t have anything capable of taking down their big walkers, but we can still kill their infantry if we can get to them. We’re having to set down at distance and hoof it to our targets, but we’re bleeding them of troops and we’ve got plenty of ammunition. The real question is if you’re up to that much running?”

“How long are these ops?”

“Shortest ones are 8 hours, longest 72.”

“Sign me up for a short one. I probably don’t have enough stamina now for the others, but a couple weeks of training should change that.”

Fenson nodded. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

“How many people do we have left?”

“174 Archons, 132 Regulars, 2 Knights and around 500 Kiritak, but most of them are techs.”

“Do we have any support personnel?”

“We have a skeleton base staff plus a handful of administrators, engineers, and medics that we pulled out of the combat zones…though to be more accurate they were slaughter ranges. How much did you see?”

“Enough…though most was from the air,” Ben said as the numbers sank in. The planet hadn’t been heavily defended, but there had been at least 2,000 Archons overseeing Kiritak security forces that numbered well over 200,000. After that, there were better than a billion of the little guys here as workers. “How many facilities have you managed to contact?”

“Most of them, unfortunately. Yours was one of the last few.”

“I saw the Hobbits eating the Kiritak corpses…”

Fenson was silent for a moment. “From what we’ve seen, they’re killing everything in sight and trashing our cities. There just aren’t very many survivors to rescue at this point, which was why we were glad we found you seven.”

“We’re glad to be found,” Ben said with a depressing tone. “Do we have any ships in orbit?”

“A few harassing the Skarron fleet that make contact occasionally. We’ve replied from auxiliary facilities so they know we’re still alive, but we can’t risk communication from the Alpha Site. I don’t know how well the Skarrons are monitoring transmissions, but we’re not going to give them a signal to follow back to us.”

“I thought help would have come by now.”

“So did we,” Fenson admitted. “Makes me wonder who else is getting hit out there. If they took Iona, we could be on our own for a very long time.”

“Relays?”

“I don’t know. If they are still up there we can’t risk trying to link in, and the starships haven’t passed on any information, one way or the other. I’m guessing the Skarrons toasted them along with the orbital defenses. I do know that several jumpships got out as the attack began.”

“Did we get a signal out?”

“The people who know the answer to that didn’t make it.”

Ben closed his eyes for a moment, realizing just how tired he was, which was surprising, considering he’d been sitting around on his ass most of the time.

“Come on,” Fenson said, nudging his armored elbow. “It’ll be a few hours before we get back to base. Sit down and catch a nap on the way, then we can get to work later.”

“Is it safe enough to go armor off?”

Fenson thought for a moment, then nodded. “Keep it handy, but I don’t expect to get shot down. Our pilot has gotten experienced at evading their patrols, and our escorts can kill just about anything that comes at us.”

“They come at you in packs and try to isolate you, I know. Learned that the hard way,” Ben said, stopping shy of the personnel section of the jumpship where everyone else was. “Don’t suppose you have any spare skeets left around?”

“No, but we rotate as needed. What’s your aerial rank?”

“72.”

“You’ll get your seat time then, I promise.”

Ben spotted an empty row of padded seats near the back and gestured to the spot as he set his helmet down and began to unfasten his armor around the neck.

“Think I’ll be camping out here.”

“Rest up, we’ll get the full debrief later.”

Ben nodded and continued to pull open his armor, eventually stepping out of the boot sections and laying down across the seats. It took less than a minute for him to settle in and nod off in the bliss of cushioned furniture.

8

Several hours later the dropship flew an evasive route around the Skarron army formations probing the area around the Alpha Site and headed off to one of 28 different entrances spread out over 150 square miles of untouched forest. 18 of those entrances were large enough to admit dropships, and though the Skarron fleet in orbit could monitor their position, the enemy had yet to realize how the Humans were disappearing.

One moment the dropship was flying across the treetops…the next moment it vanished, and with no fighter presence in the area, for the skeets were preventing that, there was no way for the Skarrons to laterally see the huge section of dirt and trees that had leveraged itself out of the ground and risen up on a thick platform, underneath which was a tunnel entrance.

The dropship flew inside at speed, then the piece of forest lowered back down into the ground, with the trees and rocks returning to much how they’d once been, with only a slight dirt line to show for the maneuver, and one that couldn’t be seen through the thick canopy from above where the walkers traveled. One would have to be on the ground, and as of yet none of their Hobbit troops had stumbled upon the little dirt lines.

How long that would last no one knew, but the dropship ducked into the tunnel that quickly descended down through the bedrock before leveling out, after which the craft ‘flew’ through the tight confines several miles before coming to the subsurface hangar bay with the claustrophobic tunnel spreading out into a large chamber that held multiple dropships and fighters, along with several mechs, some of which were still battle damaged from the initial invasion.

A handful of people were about, but otherwise the hangar was mostly deserted. Ben walked out with Fenson and the others onboard the dropship, with the Kiritak being led off to a different location by some of the on base little aliens while the Archons headed for the small sanctum that had been built into the base. Ben took a shower and got a fresh set of clothes, then Fenson started running him through a series of drills to reawaken his sluggish body, all the while assessing his current fitness.

Even with ambrosia back in his body Ben was constantly fatigued…the result of so much time off. When one’s biology adjusted to everything you did, or in this case didn’t do, getting back into the training flow was the equivalent of turning a gigantic boat around and heading the opposite direction. It was doable, but took some time and effort.

That said, all those years of training weren’t lost to him, his body had just gotten really rusty, so he went through a ‘derusting’ series of light workouts designed to give his body the taste of full workouts and to get it back on track before attempting anything near normal volume or intensity. Three hours later and he was feeling much better, but very drained and his muscles were hot with inefficient burn…but the light pain felt good, because it and the headache he had meant his body was readjusting. He didn’t have much experience is coming back from non-training spells, for Archons didn’t take time off, but he could feel changes happening already, which put an end to his mind’s limitless cycling.

Fenson left him after the first hour of workouts, satisfied that he wasn’t injured or overly weakened, so Ben hit the cafeteria afterwards alone, finding only two other people there. Normally Star Force cafeterias were busy round the clock, which underscored how few people had survived the Skarron invasion.

The Archon ate up…a lot. More so than normal, considering he wasn’t going to get a second training session in today. He was going get a good, long sleep in, so he left the cafeteria thoroughly stuffed, then headed up to the control room to get a quick sitrep before heading to the quarters he’d been assigned on the 7th level where the majority of the Archons were bunked.

By the time he got to his bed he knew the full extent of their defeat. There were still a few areas that the Alpha Site team thought might contain survivors, but the vast cities that had been churning out the resources Star Force needed to fight the lizards and Nestafar, and expand Beta Region’s infrastructure even further, now lay in rubble. Though they were far from finished, the Skarrons were knocking down every building that they didn’t feel like using, with them mowing down the tower fields that had housed the Kiritak workers with their larger walkers, steadily and painstakingly remaking the landscape into what, he didn’t know, but they were working, and working hard towards some goal.

Occasionally some survivors were located within those cities, and they’d been making regular dropship runs out to them so they could plant a few scouts to organize an extraction of personnel or leftover resources, or to look for more, but with every day that passed the odds of Star Force personnel surviving diminished, with most of the raids now being for equipment or to kill a few hundred of the enemy’s infantry.

Alpha Site might have been a hidden hole in the ground, but it was a hole that the Archons were striking out of, little as they could, but there was nothing they could do to counter the enemy walkers…at least not while the Skarrons controlled orbit.

“Captain, they’re on the move again.”

Leona Daverson looked up from her datapad and reached over to hit the comm switch near her bed, enabling the return mic. “What have we got this time?”

“Looks like another attempt to bait us out. Four destroyers and a cruiser bouncing from moon to moon on patrol around the 4th planet. Hercules says they’ve got an intercept fleet stationed in Ettiana orbit on a jumpline for the planet.”

“How do the numbers look?” she said, sitting up and putting her book aside.

“Good enough to poke a few holes.”

“I’m on my way up. Hold position until I get there.”

“Copy that.”

Leona pulled herself out of bed and slipped into her Captain’s uniform in under 30 seconds, then was out the door and enroute to the jumpship’s bridge. The Wildfire and Hercules were all that was left of the system’s defense fleet, with the other Warship-class jumpship having been severely damaged during the initial attack, with hull breaches compromising a third of the ship. Those areas had been sealed off and contained, as they were unable to make significant repairs without access to Star Force infrastructure…which had already been destroyed in orbit by the Skarron fleet.

The Wildfire hadn’t received any hull damage, but they had lost 2/3rds of their drones. Recalling others from the battle that had been permanently assigned to orbit, Leona had pulled out of the direct fire zone with 54% capacity, while the Hercules had none remaining. Currently that jumpship was stationed high over Ettiana operating as a scout, while Leona kept her warship elsewhere in the system, waiting for an opportunity to take out another of the enemy ships…but without losing any of her own, which was the tricky part.

Had she stayed in orbit until all of their drones were depleted, then her ship would have been next to useless when it jumped out of planetary orbit. The Wildfire was an older version warship, a Mk. 15, and while it had weapons, they were designed for defensive operations only, and if she tried to use the ship to attack even a handful of Skarrons they’d be all over her before she could do much damage. Jumpships just didn’t have the speed to chase down and kill other ships, but the drones did.

Ever since the initial battle, she’d been sniping at the Skarrons whenever and wherever possible, and had succeeded in killing two destroyers and heavily damaging a cruiser. Since then the Skarrons, unable to intercept the Star Force ships given that they had binary gravity drives that allowed them to travel on jumplines that the enemy couldn’t, had been deploying small groups of ships around the system, trying to draw them out. Leona had obliged several times, but had lost a frigate in the process…though in exchange for the damage done to the enemy cruiser.

After that she’d held back, knowing that with superior maneuverability she had to wait for opportunities to hit the enemy that didn’t involve losing any of her own ships. If they just traded off she’d run out well before the Skarron fleet did, meaning she had to get devious.

How many people were left alive on Ettiana she didn’t know, but it was her duty to cause the enemy as much trouble as possible until help arrived…and to be in a position to assist those on the surface if the opportunity arose. Her last communication with them, or rather to them, had been a handful of days ago detailing the reinforcements that had arrived to the Skarrons, which had been a pair of cargo ships and a destroyer in escort. She’d wished they had detected their arrival soon enough to intercept them, but the sensor grid they’d established in the system had been one of the Skarrons first targets…including the interstellar relay, though it had taken some time for them to get to it in null orbit twice again as far out from the star as Ettiana was.

The Wildfire was currently sitting in its own null orbit between the 3rd and 4th planets in the system, which were currently orbiting close to one another. It wasn’t on the jumpline between the two, and was probably visible to Skarron sensors, but only as a small blot, much as the Skarron ships were to them. The enemy could jump towards their position, but would never be able to slow down in time, effectively putting them out of reach, meaning the Skarrons had to lure them out.

And Leona was about to take the bait.

“Show me all tracks,” she said as she got to the bridge, with her crew throwing up the holographic routes from their present position into the 4th planet and its 5 moons, each of which had a significant gravity well to maneuver off of.

They’d already prepared several navigational options for her, and she picked the one she wanted within 10 seconds, ordering the ship in without delay. They had to hit fast before the ships could reposition, and given the sensor lag they were pretty much guessing where the Skarrons were going to be in order to jump in as close as possible…which in this case was to the innermost moon.

The jump took all of 34 seconds, at the end of which they got sensor images of the Skarron ships, which allowed them to make alterations to their course to keep from ramming them if necessary…but it wasn’t, for they were well off, orbiting around the moon with what looked to be a gravity drive assist, for it wasn’t a ballistic course anymore. They were repositioning for another microjump, with Leona’s jumpship considerably out of position for this type of intercept.

Fortunately the Skarrons were here to fight and settled into a stable orbit, but without chasing the Wildfire. Instead they let it come to them, burning up precious seconds while they sent a message to their waiting fleet.

“Take us directly in,” Leona ordered. “Let’s give them something else to shoot at. Deploy all enroute and begin calculating exit jumps.”

With the Star Force jumpship settling into its own augmented orbit, it raced around the curve of the moon spawning drone warships as it went. They drifted off and fell into formation with it momentarily, then zipped on ahead given their greater maneuverability and speed, but they didn’t go in alone, rather waiting to form 4-6 ship groups, the first of which went exclusively for one of the Skarron destroyers.

Weaponsfire exchanged early on, lachars against lachars, then plasma against plasma as the ships got close to one another. One of the Star Force frigates and two corvettes in the first group of 6 were equipped with maulers, so they closed to pointblank range as the single heavy cruiser that Leona had disengaged and targeted the Skarron ships from afar, letting the jumpship close while it stayed back and peppered the ships with cleansing beams.

The Star Force drones took heavy shield damage almost immediately, but before they could start losing armor they redeployed, breaking formation and pulling out of the battle almost as if they were on strings that someone was yanking away. One of the Skarron destroyers followed, diminishing their group strength as the Wildfire itself came into the battle. Fortunately it drew a considerable amount of fire while the smaller ships rotated around, with those with full shields going forward and the others dropping into firing support positions.

The Skarrons weren’t stupid, and continued firing on the damaged ships and repositioning when possible to make it more feasible, but they were both bigger and slower, allowing the smaller ships to get free if they wanted to, some of which came back in from their tiny jumps out, and the Skarron destroyer as well as it quickly realized it couldn’t keep pace with them.

But that too had been a ruse, an enticement to sweeten the pot, so to speak, and cause Star Force to move on the weaker ship group all the while the relief fleet jumped in to the moon’s orbit above them and began to deploy into blocking positions…or rather, as many as they could. Star Force could pretty much jump anywhere it wanted, but with dwindling fuel reserves the higher cost maneuvers were pretty much off the menu…something else the Skarrons had taken into account.

But Leona got what she wanted, damaging one of the Skarron destroyers, before she ordered her fleet out. Like little fleas the drones made microjumps of their own, very low powered ones, that curved around onto other jumplines that the Skarrons couldn’t follow, getting them out of the firing lines while expending small amounts of fuel.

The jumpship was another matter, and it was quickly being surrounded by the Skarron fleet, but Leona had timed it right and while its shields were getting hammered by long range lachar fire and some plasma from the first group of ships, it ducked down closer to the planet where the Skarrons weren’t and zipped off on a high powered maneuver, pushing against moons, planet, and star to get an acceleration line underneath the enemy fleet that put it clear of their blockers, after which it made a casual jump out away from the moon with 23% shield strength remaining.

Once they were away Leona breathed a sigh of relief, but knew it would take time to recover their scattered drone fleet, and if they weren’t careful the Skarrons could jump them in the process. To that end they organized a rendezvous circuit across planetary orbit, stopping here and there for the little ships to dock with the jumpship and eventually recollecting every one of them…all without hull damage.

Leona had expended a great deal of fuel, not to mention plasma, but in exchange they’d gutted one of the destroyers, which even now wasn’t maneuvering. Part of the Skarron fleet was surrounding it to discourage a return…but then their ships eventually peeled off one by one, yet another lure for her to take, but one that had the other Skarron warships still in planetary orbit and far closer than they had been the first time.

It was a question of how bold she was going to get, with the Skarrons clearly challenging her at the same time as they were denying her the easy kill, meaning they would be stationed here for some time, leaving Ettiana less guarded.

Unfortunately the fleet there was far larger, and any tactical significance of having drawn and temporarily pinned this group down here was lost. She’d managed to do some damage, without taking any of her own, but that’s all she could have hoped for…well, aside from fully killing the ship, which she’d hoped to do, but still, the damage was significant, and she’d given the Skarrons a lame duck to carry or abandon, and if they did the latter she would most definitely finish it off.

Successfully hitting and disabling the ship felt good, and it was enough to satisfy her for the moment. She might not be able to defeat this superior Skarron fleet, but she could keep them honest and expose any weaknesses they showed her. If they got sloppy she’d make them pay for it, being a gnat that they couldn’t find a way to swat. Her two jumpship fleet couldn’t protect Ettiana, but it was certainly going to avenge it…even if that meant tiny piecemeal engagements.

9

July 25, 2467

Ghanis System

Ettiana

Ben flew out of one of the Alpha Site’s underground tunnels, ducking under the chunk of forest lifted up above the entrance and shooting out across the tree tops in a green/brown Star Fox skeet third in line behind two others. A fourth followed him out, then as a group the quartet rose to altitude and engaged their super pursuit mode. With their altered shields elongating them into aerodynamic spikes, the fighters accelerated up to extremely high speed within the upper atmosphere, crossing the landscape with no worry about being intercepted by Skarron fighters…at least not until they wanted to, for this mission was designed specifically to hunt down and kill some of the enemy aircraft.

Trick was picking a spot where they didn’t have walker support, or drawing the fighters off from where they did. Today was going to be the later, and Ben’s formation flew across Ettiana’s surface towards one of the larger cities that the Skarrons had been in the process of demolishing. It had originally been built to house millions of Kiritak and the processing factories necessary for transforming the raw materials being harvested across the planet into transportable units, such as metallic ingots or crushed grain, to be shipped off planet with the minimum volume necessary by stripping out unwanted materials or dead airspace.

A part of the cityscape had also been using those resources to fabricate construction materials that were being used to expand the city and build others across the planet. Apparently none of that industry was to the Skarrons’ liking, for they were wrecking all of it and taking down the buildings like dominoes, one by one, section by section.

Ben didn’t know if they planned to build anything in its place, but the city was certainly in disarray when he and the other pilots arrived, making him wonder if they weren’t just trashing everything in sight as an insult to Star Force.

The Skarrons had seen the skeets coming from a ways off and had already redeployed their fighter patrols their way…along with launching more from surface sites nearby, which suggested the enemy had at least encampments set up, even if they weren’t building permanent structures just yet. The skeets were outnumbered 34 to 4, initially, with more fighters rising up on anti-grav at a delayed pace, but that much they’d expected. This mission was a quick hit, engage, and run op, and they didn’t intend to stick around long enough for the sky to fill with their opposition.

Because they were going to engage the Skarrons at a distance from the city, the skeets slowed down early to draw them even further off and ensure the anti-air defenses on the walkers wouldn’t get involved. The Skarrons didn’t seem to mind the ploy, for they sent their fighters on out after them as fast as the thick craft could fly. Each one was the equivalent of an aerodynamic rock only slightly smaller than a Sparrow-class dropship and easily in excess of 10x the mass of a standard skeet.

The things were covered in their plasma dampening armor and good shields, but their maneuvering ability was slow and they relied on cluster fire to take down targets which they accomplished similar to the walkers…with multiple small plasma cannons scattered across their hulls, which also allowed them to fire in all directions, meaning you couldn’t drop in on one’s ‘tail’ and expect to be safe.

They also each had a lachar turret on top for anti-missile operations, though they did use them to target the skeets early in response to the Human’s own lachar attacks that they launched at maximum range on one target. The energy/particle cocktail didn’t do much damage, even though the skeets were using as concentrated a version as Star Force had produced, which literally lit up the sky in a very brief flash of green light, given that these skeets had been produced by Clan Star Fox, and nowadays the color of your lachars matched your paint job, at least as far as the aerial and mech divisions were concerned.

“Ben, since this is your first time just stay with us and try not to get lost,” Chev-34822 said from the front of their diamond line, which had them in single file but space out around their central axis on four points, giving each a clear firing line ahead. “Concentrate all firepower on a single target or it’ll take us forever to knock these things out.”

“I’ve already got my share of Skarron kills,” Ben told him, referencing the beginning of the planetary assault. “I know how tough they are.”

“Tougher now that they’ve gotten use to our craft and tendencies,” Chev added.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Ben said as he crossed into outer plasma range and began squeezing off a few shots, most of which dissipated in the air, but a little bit reached out to the target fighter, which they’d nicknamed a ‘lightning bug’ for the way their entire hull seemed to glow when they began launching plasma…which the 10 or so bugs did a moment after Ben began the primary engagement.

The other three Archons joined him a moment later when their plasma range dipped into the  moderate distance and they began eating away at their target’s shields more fiercely, even as their own craft began to take a few hits…but only a few, for their skeets had a very narrow forward profile, making them hard to target. Most of the hits they took were Skarron lachars, but none of the skeets had their shields go down on the first pass, nor even below 70%, but the lightning bug didn’t lose full shields either…though it had come close.

The four skeets flew through the other Skarron fighters and pulled back around through a long loop that each of them followed, maintaining their snake-like formation as they came back in at the same lightning bug into a snowstorm of white plasma orbs. Ben hit the target with his own blue plasma spheres, which were considerably larger than the enemy’s, though numerically they had more given the size of their craft and their multiple cannons. For every one Ben fired the lightning bug threw 10-15 back at him, but fortunately their accuracy wasn’t great and only a few hit.

As Ben’s skeet flashed by the bug he hit it with a mauler blast, with the cockpit computer indicating hull damage to the enemy craft as the Archon flew an evasive route through the other lightning bugs as his shields got bathed in plasma hits, along with a few more lachar strikes. He came out the other side, still maneuvering at high speed with the other three pilots, all of which had avoided hull damage, though Ben’s shield strength had dropped to 24%.

“One more fellas, spread formation. Let’s knock this guy out before he gets his shields back up. I’m going scorpion, so don’t wait up on me.”

“Copy that,” Ben said, drifting to the left and spreading out with the others, giving the enemy craft four points of attack to deal with this time while they more or less hovered in place waiting for the Humans to return. The Skarrons moved about, mixing their positions up, but overall their formation held together over the same bit of ground, figuring they had good odds against the stupid little skeets, especially as the Skarrons had a scattering of reinforcements heading their way and getting closer with every second, coming in ones and twos that would add to their numbers even if they lost a few fighters in the engagement.

But what else could they do? The Skarrons had decent linear speed, though still not as much as the skeets, and their agility outright sucked, so playing aerial turret was their best bet here and they were making the most of it, hitting Ben with a better placed wall of plasma just as he ducked down towards the treetops to avoid it. He knew the enemy craft could carry missiles, but either they were choosing not to use them or only had them for ground support missions…and right now his money was on the later.

He arced back up, with the fire hose of enemy plasma readjusting towards him with every maneuver he made. By the time he came up on the target lightning bug he only got a few plasma shots off, plus one mauler which added to the other two and blew out a chuck of the enemy fighter’s hull.

Chev didn’t fly past with the others, but braked hard, throwing off the enemy’s firing lines a bit, most of which were still on the other fighters, and came up right in front of the target, letting his altitude sink as he blasted away with is mauler cannon, getting several shots in that eventually dropped the Skarron craft out of the sky.

Chev dove beneath it, using it as a block, and rocketed out the far side just before it crashed into the trees. He weaved side to side as the Skarrons decided to chase him, then the other three skeets came around on a flanking run and hit one of the fighters, blindsiding it with a lot of damage given their slower attack speed that offered them more shots per pass.

Chev eventually broke free of the engagement and got some altitude and distance away from the others, coming away with 3% shield strength remaining…which was a victory. No hull damage and the enemy had lost one of theirs.

He flew an evasive course as some of the lachars tried to track him from afar, but for the occasional hit his shields recharged evenly while the other three skeets continued to gang up on one of the lightning bugs, but doing so in widely spaced runs, having to let their shields recharge more with each pass or risk hull damage.

By the time Chev got back to them they were throwing every formation and trick they had at the Skarrons to keep their focus split and their formation changing. At the end the four fighters were going at it solo, flying highly evasive routes through the enemy formation and getting some of them to shoot each other in the crossfire. The skeets managed to down four of the lightning bugs before the Skarrons regrouped and reorganized enough to make the Humans pay more for each attack run, after which the quartet flew off due east, seeing if the Skarrons were going to follow.

When they did their lines stretched out and the Archons used that weakness to circle around and pick on another of the lightning bugs and kill it before they enemy could resume its ‘bee swarm’ formation. After that the Skarrons didn’t follow when the skeets moved off again, which ended the engagement. Ben and the others would have tried to get another, but by now there were well over 100 enemy fighters in the air, half of which were still enroute to their position, making the environment too unfriendly to risk further attacks. Get too many plasma cannons in the air and even with badly aimed shots they’d rack up kills just through sheer numbers.

So the four skeets regained altitude and transitioned into super pursuit mode, heading back to the Alpha Site with five kills between them…a small victory that reminded the Skarrons they didn’t own the planet just yet, and that the Humans were going to be damn hard to fully exterminate. At least until they found their way into Alpha Site, and with a little luck that wouldn’t happen until Star Force got a relief fleet out to the system.

A week later Ben was inserted into a ground op at one of the smaller Skarron-infested sites. He and 9 others were dropped at distance by dropship then ran cross country to get to the mining outpost, this one smaller than the facility he’d been stranded at, but like the other it also had a Type-4 walker guarding it. The barracks was built into the main facility, which was located atop one central shaft going down several miles that would eventually branch out and make use of extra infrastructure up top once it was built later on.

The outpost was just a startup, but a useful one none the less, and that wasn’t lost on the Skarrons who were actively using the Star Force equipment to mine a plethora of minerals, of which they were interested in the Archons didn’t know, but Star Force had been extracting carbon-rich minerals, including diamonds, with loads of unrefined ore stored in cargo containers on the surface landing pads.

Those pads were now off limits to aerial insertion, given the Type-4 nearby, but Skarron transports had occasionally been coming to the outpost to pick up select containers. The others they either hadn’t gotten around to transporting or didn’t want, but unlike most other facilities there appeared to be no demolition occurring on the exterior. The Skarrons had simply moved in and set up shop.

As the Archons got near to the outpost they circled around so they could approach on the opposite side from the walker, putting the outpost between them and its cannons. As a group they sprinted out of the trees and scaled the low boundary wall, dropping over the far side with a pair of scouts being taken out by precision plasma rifle fire.

The shots didn’t go unnoticed, but within a few seconds the Archons were moving inside the building and fanning out, with Ben getting his own hallway and section of the facility to himself. He ran off and started mowing down every Hobbit and Engineer he came across, much as he’d wanted to do weeks ago, but couldn’t because of the risk of exposing the Kiritak.

Well, now there were no Kiritak, just Archons, and being exposed wasn’t a concern, so he ran down the hall, shooting those that came into view while checking every room that he passed. Those with enemies inside he cleared before moving on, but a lot were empty and ransacked as they’d been at the other mining site.

Running through ammo quickly, Ben slung his empty rifle onto his back rack and pulled out a rare shotgun, taking down a few more Hobbits before getting a room to himself. He stayed inside where he could still see the hall and make sure no one got past him, then began to reload his rifle using spare rounds in an ammo pack on the small of his back. He dumped the empty shells on the ground and filled the rifle up, then headed back out, saving the shotgun as his backup, for he didn’t have any replacement ammunition for it.

Ben worked his way through his assigned section before meeting up with two of the others in the vehicle garage. He wasn’t the first one there, evidenced by the firefight that he ran out into. There were Hobbits everywhere, of which he shot several before one of the huge Skarrons turned and fired at him with two of its arm guns. Ducking to the side he returned fire as he ran over to cover behind a half blasted crate, then instead of hunkering down he ran around behind it, out of view for a moment, and came across the bay from a different angle…seeing that the Skarrons had turned this larger room into their living quarters.

It looked more like a nest, but there were some 19 in here by his count, with two of them already dead. The other two Archons were elsewhere in the bay, shooting away at the big beasts while Ben tried to pick off the Hobbits and eliminate their small, but lethal plasma fire from the battlefield.

Soon another Archon joined them, then another. By dodging the Skarrons’ plasma fire the Humans bought time for them to rack up plasma shots on the larger creatures who couldn’t dodge theirs. Ben took one hit to his shields, nearly losing them entirely on his left leg before getting out of the line of fire and letting them momentarily recharge. Then, one by one, the Archons cut down the unarmored Skarrons, with two finally fleeing and running outside as all 10 of the Archon team were finally reunited and combining fire on the enemy.

Ben hesitated from going out the wide open doors after them, for he could feel the light thuds of Skarron walker feet nearby. He couldn’t see where it was, but all of a sudden a flurry of white plasma orbs far larger than what the Hobbits, or even the Skarrons, had been firing flooded the bay doors and blasted into the concrete just inside. All the Archons pulled back immediately, with some getting a considerable wash over their shields from the ricochets of plasma and rubble…then the roof started to come down as the walker decided to target the facility itself.

“Fall back!” the team leader yelled as he put a waypoint on a different exit from where they entered…one opposite from where the walker now was.

Ben and the others ran back through the hallways as the plasma torrent tore through the vehicle bay, then started to penetrate other portions of the facility. For a while Ben thought they were out of it, for the upper levels near the center were shielding them from direct fire and it would take quite a while for the walker to burn through, but as they were getting to the far side he heard a wicked screech of twisting metal, then a few seconds later he was knocked off his feet by a tremor that was quickly followed by a wave of debris.

“Anyone down?” the team leader asked.

Ben was covered in tiny bits of debris, his shields gone, but his arms, legs, and torso were still free so he didn’t respond and picked himself up as he continued towards the exit point.

“I am,” a voice said over the comm. “I could use some help.”

Ben saw the ID marker in his HUD and redirected back a hallway and crossed over to a collapsed section of the building, under which Viken-98320 was buried. He got to him a step behind another set of red armor and together they pulled a piece of bulkhead up half a foot, exposing a lean-to sort of mess of improvised tunnel underneath.

“Hold that,” the team leader said, diving under it in his silver armor.

Another adept came up and added his strength to the pair’s, setting his back underneath and using his legs to reinforce what they were holding with their arms as Ben heard repetitive plasma blasts from underneath, then eventually  the silver boots returned, dragging a broken set of red armor out.

“Clear.”

Ben held his leverage until the adept underneath extricated himself, then he and the other let the beam down…only then did he turn around to see the broken legs of the pinned adept. But to his dismay the man stood up on them, with the armor crunching and flaking off in spots.

“Can you walk?” he heard the team leader ask over the teamcomm.

“I got a little pinched, but my armor took the pressure. So long as it doesn’t lock up on me I can run out.”

“How are we on the wall?”

“The walker is repositioning…we need to go now,” an Archon outside in scout position said.

“Move people!”

Ben ran out, letting the team leader deal with Viken, and quickly got himself to the wall and over top of it, hearing the thud, thud, thud of the walker on the other side of the outpost. He ran up and into the tree line, then turned around behind cover and looked back…only to see the entire central tower section of the outpost had been toppled over onto the facility.

A few large plasma orbs shot across the top of the rubble into the trees, causing Ben to flinch, but most of the walker was still behind the edge of the outpost, with only a few topside cannons visible as Viken got over the wall with some help, but was visibly limping as he dropped to ground on the near side. He jogged forward, with the team leader staying a step behind him the entire way, then the group of Archons was reunited and they all disappeared off into the forest where the plasma couldn’t follow.

10

August 18, 2467

Ghanis System

Ettiana

Ben woke up in his bunk to an alarm, sitting up underneath his covers as his mind instantly realized that it wasn’t his chrono talking to him, but a base-wide alarm. Whether it was just for the pilots or not he didn’t know, but in recent days he’d been getting more flying time in as the Skarrons inched their way closer to Alpha Site, though as yet they hadn’t stumbled upon any of the entrances.

His armor was standing beside his bed in the tiny quarters he’d been assigned, and after slipping on a pair of casual shoes nearby he stepped into the boots and began securing himself inside, finishing off with his helmet. It clicked into the neck latches and secured the atmospheric seal, though the small cage over his nose and mouth was still exposed to the outside air and would only lock up when necessary to prevent decompression or toxins from getting inside.

Ben flicked the power switch and immediately his HUD lit up with a battlemap warning, calling him to the hangar for immediate flight duty.

He didn’t bother using the comm, but left his quarters and went straight to his assigned skeet, seeing that most of them were alright maneuvering out of the hangar into the short tunnel that led to the ring around the base, into which all the large tunnel entrances connected.

“What’s going on?” he asked a nearby tech, belatedly realizing that the mechs were missing from the bay.

“We caught a Type-4 by itself and are taking it down, but the Skarrons are sending aerial support. Knock them down before they get to the mechs.”

“Happy to,” Ben said, climbing into the skeet and pulling as quick of a startup as he could, knowing that he could finish the rest enroute. With the anti-grav enabled he ‘drove’ across the bay and out into the tunnel spur, accessing the battlemap for navigational instructions. The engagement was occurring only 73 miles away, with the walker in question having strayed off from the others. Normally the mechs couldn’t fight them in the forest, for while the Skarrons could walk over the treetops the same couldn’t be said of the shorter mechs, but this walker had ventured out into a clearing…making it open for target practice.

Ben got himself into the tunnel assigned for departure, which was coordinated by the command center to bring him up away from the other walkers searching the area around Alpha Site, and accelerated up to speed as much as he dared in the close confines as he brought the rest of his skeet’s systems up to standby readiness, including weapons and shields.

The trip out to the exit took several minutes, then he shot up into the sky underneath the forest camouflaged tunnel cap and activated his comm. “Talk to me guys.”

“Nice of you to join the party,” Ken-39111 said from his skeet, miles away. “Double up with Amber and see if you can break up their incoming lines. Delay them as much as possible, the mechs have their hands full at the moment.”

“Where’s their dropship?”

“Safely away. It’ll come back for them when the air is clear…which is up to us.”

“Copy that,” Ben said, finding Amber-49288’s ID tag and seeing that she was only slightly ahead of him, heading towards a stretched out formation of Skarron fighters, some 43 strong, that were heading towards the mechs. Judging from the distances involved he could easily get to them first, but if they didn’t want to play tag there was no way they were going to be able to stop them from getting to their walker in time…and with their mobility and firepower they’d eat up the mechs without trouble.

“Am, I’m following you in. Don’t wait up, and see if you can draw some of them off. I’ll link up as soon as I can.”

“Hurry,” she prompted. “The mechs weren’t expecting fighters this close.”

“Where’d they come from?”

“Someplace in the forest that we didn’t know about. Probably a makeshift airfield to keep them closer to Alpha Site.”

“Don’t suppose they’d turn around if we started to blow it up?”

“I wish, but it’s too far off anyway. They’ll be at the mechs before we could get to it. Something to put on the to-do list though.”

“What’s your game plan?” Ben asked, transitioning to super pursuit mode, in lower speeds given that he was still in the thicker atmosphere. There was no time to climb to thinner air, so he got what he could out of the craft skimming above the treetops.

“Last first. If they others want to turn around and help they’ll have to slow down. If not, we pick them off one at a time moving up the line.”

“I’m down with that,” Ben said, seeing that a dozen or so other skeets were already buzzing around the enemy walker at low altitude, trying to give supporting fire without getting lit up by its topside lachar, but a few of them were already moving off to intercept the incoming fighters, and he assumed the rest would be soon. If they could kill the walker before the lightning bugs got to them the mechs would be in a much better defensive position, which was why they weren’t all moving out to intercept the fighters.

Ben watched as Amber got to rear end of the Skarron line and crisscrossed over the last fighter, drawing flashes of plasma from the five ahead of it. He watched the battlemap closely, wondering if they were going to redeploy, but they didn’t…meaning that the two skeets were going to have easy pickings so long as the opening remained.

“They’re not taking the bait,” Amber reported. “They must want the mechs pretty bad.”

“Watch your shield strength,” Ben reminded her. “I’ll be there in a moment.”

“I’m not that reckless,” she joked, but didn’t take much time off between attack runs as she looped in multiple times before Ben caught up with her, having the honor of finishing the Skarron fighter off on his first strike, gutting the thing with three slow approach mauler blasts that dropped it out of the air to crash into the forest below.

“One down,” Amber said, already hitting the second and taking a scattering of plasma fire from it and the ones ahead, but none of them turned around or grouped together…they were all making top speed for the small grassy plain ahead that the mechs were fighting in.

Ben couldn’t watch, busy as he was with the fighters, but there were 6 mechs in two trios, each flanking the Type-4 walker and staying out of its forward prime firing zone. Already its shields were down and its armor pot marked, but it was still spraying plasma quite well, and was far from dead. One of the braver skeet pilots flew in at grass level and shot it from the left flank, passing between a neo and a raven and hitting one of its legs with plasma and a mauler round, expanding on damage already done to it as the skeet turned hard left to avoid hitting the legs.

It flew so fast that only one of the plasma orbs hit it, and that was more by luck than skill. It arced back up into the air before it hit the tree line nearby that the Skarron was walking towards, knowing that the mechs couldn’t follow.

The mechs knew it too and kept hammering on that leg, eventually melting it off at the elbow joint and reducing the walker down to 5 functioning legs. It fell over when the leg broke, pinning it in place as it continued to flood the mechs with plasma, but each trio kept rotating in and out and blocking for each other to share the shield load, though 4 of the six mechs had already lost shields and were taking armor impacts.

They could have moved off, being far faster than the Type-4, but they had to stop it from getting out of the grass and into the trees…and they also knew the fighters were coming. They’d been lucky enough to catch it in the open in the first place, and now they had to press their advantage before it evaporated.

In truth the Archons were so pissed that they wanted the kill, even if they were being a bit reckless given the circumstances…but they were all of the same temperament, and they were going to make this happen no matter what.

Ben and Amber were no different, pushing their diminishing shields near the breaking point as they took slower and slower attack runs, allowing them to pour more firepower into the Skarron fighters and down them faster, but with the speed the lightning bugs were moving they had to get even closer, for the atmosphere was interfering with the plasma and flaring it out more than normal, as well as moving it off target when they fired from a lateral trajectory.

The pair of skeets kept swinging back and forth, going wide to avoid the Skarrons’ return fire when their shields dipped low, and staying directly being them in line when they weren’t, getting into mauler range more often than not, and working their way up the line. They killed 7 of the fighters before the trees underneath them transitioned over to grass, leaving them 20 seconds out from the walker and mechs.

By that time all the skeets were in the air harassing the fighters, and their line of transit suddenly broke up into a more traditional fur ball…with Ben realizing that the mechs had succeeded in disabling the walker. It was still shooting out waves of tiny white plasma orbs, but it was on the ground and not moving, with the mechs having dispersed into more distant firing positions, recharging their shields when they could and turning to fight the enemy aircraft, knowing that they could come back to the walker later.

With the mechs turning their weapons up to the air they coordinated with the fighters, as they’d practiced many times in simulators, and used the largely immobile mechs as a hard point to maneuver the Skarron fighters around, setting up attacks from the skeets. When the Skarrons adjusted and pursued the skeets, they set up passes that brought the fighters around to prime firing positions of the mechs.

Neither approach worked quickly, for the Skarrons weren’t stupid enough to let the mechs get them with their heavy weapons, so the entire engagement began a game of movement, with the six mechs taking the majority of the beating. But as the engagement progressed the skeets increased their kill count, losing only one of their own in the process as the Skarron walker threw a lucky swath of plasma up into its path.

Amber went down hard into the forest, shredding the skeet in the process, but her cockpit armor held and she activated her beacon for pickup, indicating that she’d survived the crash…but Ben couldn’t dwell on that, for while the lightning bugs were thinning they were still peppering the mechs, who by now had lost their shields and a lot of their armor. They had, as a group, run off down the length of the plain to where the walker’s plasma was turning into spit, and with that tactical maneuver the mechs became more aggressive in their anti-air efforts.

They began grouping together and thickening their firing lines, which the skeets drove the Skarrons to as often as possible. One of the lightning bugs got caught by a plasma orb from a neo, which shattered its armor and left a smoking hole in the left side as it veered off from the others and headed off across the plain on its own. Ben went after it and swung around to target the damaged side, running up close to it enough that he nearly rammed the thing to deliver a mauler blast that matched the hole with 95% overlap.

He spun off, doing a skeet slide, and visually followed the lightning bug down to the ground where it plowed out a short trench before it came to a smoking halt. Confident that it was out of the fight, Ben accelerated to catch back up with the others…then suddenly his comm activated on the all-Star Force channel.

There was no voice, just music…but it was absolutely the best sound he had ever heard. An unrestrainable grin crept over his face as he picked one of the few Skarron fighters remaining and headed for it as he listened to the repetitive ‘Imperial March’ playing nonstop on the comm, which a quick glance at the battlemap confirmed was being transmitted from orbit.

“All drones are free.”

“Heavy cruisers concentrate fire on the juggernauts,” Tim-410 said as his flagship sat on the upper edge of low orbit along with 14 other Star Force jumpships, all of which were deploying warships that the Skarron fleet was maneuvering to intercept…but as they did more jumpships came in, microjumping from the star directly into planetary orbit and arriving on precise points fed to them by Tim’s command crew.

Each of the jumpships spewed warships, with the count escalating gradually but consistently, with the Skarrons not knowing how many were incoming.

But Tim did, crossing over to the command nexus after seeing the enemy fleet’s layout. Tweaking his own fleet’s positioning he brought in more jumpships on blocking routes, having them disperse their drones into clouds of armed debris that gradually encircled the Skarrons. By the time the enemy realized what was happening, and that the Humans had brought far more ships than they could handle, they were contained within a hemispherical bowl, leaving them few maneuvering options.

Inside that bowl was a great deal of carnage occurring on both sides, but all the Star Force crews were safely onboard their jumpships outside the perimeter, with more incoming as the battle progressed, thickening the bowl and forcing the Skarrons down towards the atmosphere as they tried to flee in the final stages of the battle, but they couldn’t get away from the smaller drones. They swarmed the larger ships, using the few IDF equipped interdictors to slow them down long enough to penetrate their shields and force them into desperate microjumps.

Those jumps ended in collisions with the Star Force ships, which ended in the Skarrons’ vessels disabling themselves in the impacts and falling prey to the drone swarm…but they had no other options, for there were no available jumplines, and the Skarron ships wouldn’t have fared any better going down to the atmosphere, which would have boxed them in even further.

Tim’s fleet destroyed the bulk of the Skarron assault fleet before all of his 312 Warship-class jumpships arrived, with the remaining enemy patrols ships in the system fleeing with the knowledge of how many reinforcements the Humans had sent, for they stayed around to observe the battle and the full arrival of the relief fleet, including the mass of troop jumpships and their unloading of scores of dropships delivering mechs and aerial craft to the planet to begin countering the Skarron units on the ground that the warships weren’t targeting with orbital bombardment.

Satisfied that they had the intel they’d been previously ordered to gather, the Skarron ships left their individual assignments across the system and high orbit around Ettiana, each jumping out from the star individually and taking their scouting reports back across the jumplanes over the following weeks until they reached Skarron territory. There they combined their data with those that had returned from Rotunna, and eventually Brenns and Iverie, giving the Skarron leadership their first substantive look at the true strength of Star Force...after which they began formulating their invasion plans for the larger war yet to come.

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1

August 15, 2467

Rotunna System (Beta Region)

Inner Zone

Aaron-010 watched from the bridge of the WS113 Warship-class jumpship that he was commanding the 19th fleet from as the system-wide battlemap began to update as the ship finished its braking maneuver against the larger of two gravity wells that were the Rotunna System’s binary stars, one orange, one yellow. Aaron had brought the first of his three fleets in against the larger yellow star, using the differential function of the gravity drives to ignore the presence of the other so it wouldn’t push them off jumpline as they arrived, with his ship being 13th in line out of the 100 warships in the 19th fleet.

The 22nd and 41st fleets also had 100 warships each, as every one of the mainline fleets was tasked to maintain. Their ground, aerial, and aquatics units traveled separately in cargo jumpships, which were trailing the warships. Each mech unit had 5 galaxies, each aerial unit 250 squadrons of 10, split between skeets and gunships. Commandos numbered 100,000 and were comprised of a mix of Regulars, Knights, and Archons, while aquatics operated on a minimalistic fleet lineup, given that their larger ships were hard to transport between planetoids.

The 19th fleet/army had been assigned to Sol along with many others, of which Aaron had taken three full units. They’d been partially packed up prior to his departure order being given, so that they could respond to any incursion within Star Force’s home system, while other units had been dedicated to certain planetoids. The 19th had several mech and commando units on Mars that it had to retrieve, but given their extensive training they’d been able to recall all their puzzle pieces into their waiting jumpship transports within hours, then they’d set off for the 2+ month journey from Sol out to Rotunna to reinforce Randy’s smaller fleet that had gone to aid the first of the Star Force systems to be invaded by the Skarrons.

Rotunna was the most distant Beta Region colony, and as such it was well away from the others, making supplying it difficult, but of all the systems scouted by Star Force in Beta Region it was by far the most valuable, which is what had prompted Randy to snatch it up sooner rather than later.

The system contained 7 habitable planets and 2 habitable moons…which was exceedingly rare. Finding a single planetoid within a system that was habitable per your race’s biological requirements was quite a find, but to have 9 was nearly unheard of. Sol only had one, being Earth, so securing and colonizing Rotunna had been a priority for Randy, despite the fact that it was a considerable distance away from Iona, his regional headquarters.

Rotunna was one of the newer colonization efforts, but it had been given more resources than the others, including an army of Kiritak and Star Force engineers to get to work setting up shop in the system, and they’d done a good job of it, with the first exports of foodstuffs coming out of the system within 3 years of their arrival.

With Star Force’s presence in the system came the attention of other races, and like the other Kiritak colonies in Beta Region, Rotunna had become a way station for the nearby races as they passed through enroute to other locations. A trading market had been established in orbit with a decently-sized defense fleet stationed there to make sure that everyone was clear that the system belonged to Star Force and no one else was going to be able to stake out any territory for their own.

That defense fleet had been steadily growing over the years, but the Skarrons had come with too many ships and overwhelmed them, though the actual number was still unknown given the fact that the relays had been cut. All information from Rotunna had ceased transmitting after that point, meaning Aaron didn’t know what the full situation would be when he arrived, but the smaller insystem relay satellites spaced around the system had not been destroyed…at least not all of them, and they linked in with his warships the moment they came out of their jump, updating them to the current positions of all Star Force assets.

As Aaron watched, the map of what was supposed to be there tallied up losses of orbital stations by the dozens…but not all of the icons went out. In fact, there were two planets that appeared not to have been hit, in orbit at least, which Aaron found both reassuring and odd. As more information updated a preprogrammed message came through alerting all Star Force reinforcements to travel to Othalla, the 7th planet in the system, and one of the two that appeared to still be in Star Force hands.

“Admiral, pass the word down the line. All incoming ships transition by groups to Othalla. Then take us in.”

“Aye,” Admiral Nellis confirmed the order, then set about organizing his fleet into deployments. In a few minutes time the WS113 made a microjump out to the planet in question, then linked up by direct comms to the small defense fleet already in orbit.

“Wakey, wakey, anybody home?” Aaron said over a private channel to the ship tagged with Randy’s command icon.

There was a considerable delay, then an image of an Archon appeared, though it wasn’t Randy.

“Apologies, Aaron, but Randy is currently off on a mission,” Kraven-602 said with a loose smile on his face. “Though I do hope you’ll stick around anyway. It’s very lonely out here nowadays,” the Archon said dryly.

Aaron nodded, understanding what he meant. “Where is he?”

“Pulling a ground op on Ida. We’ve managed to neutralize most of the Skarron warships…or at least scare them off for the time being, but they’re pressing their ground campaigns and we’re having hell dealing with their walkers. The only saving grace is we’ve maintained air superiority and they’re having to land the things far out from our colonies, but once they get in close they’re killing everything in sight. We’ve lost more Kiritak than I can count, with even more fleeing to the wilderness when their habitats are destroyed. We’re evacuating as many as we can, but the Skarron fleet is intercepting our transports whenever possible and we’re having to play games just to get them into position, both in orbit and in air.”

“How many ships have the Skarrons got left?”

“That we know of, 32 warships of varying sizes. Randy kicked the crap out of their original fleet once he arrived. Might want to watch a replay, he really took them to school over the course of three weeks. Othalla wasn’t the Skarrons original target, and I think they didn’t know we’d colonized multiple planet’s beforehand, because they seemed unwilling to put down anywhere but Ida at first. That was the first planet we colonized, so their information appears to have been out of date.”

“They’ve got smaller incursions on three other planets, but Ida is the real war zone and we’re getting our asses kicked. I hope you’ve brought some toys, because when their walkers get inside city limits we can’t kill them from orbit.”

“I’ve got 3 full mainline fleets with me,” Aaron said, bringing a smile to the other Archon’s face. “What exactly is Randy up to?”

“Um, well, he’s trying to take down some of their smaller walkers.”

Aaron’s eyes narrowed. “How?”

“Remember Star Wars, the Empire Strikes Back?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Aaron said loudly, part dismay, part jealousy. “Has he got any yet?”

“Reports say two Type-4s.”

Aaron shook his head as if to clear it. “He always was a reckless mother fucker. What’s the standing orders? We got a recall order as soon as we arrived in system.”

“The Skarron fleet has gone dark. They’re learning from us and vice versa. He didn’t want anyone to get ambushed on the way in, though we weren’t concerned about a fleet of your size.”

“Any objections to my getting to work?”

“Please do. We’ve been stuck in guard position so long we’re going stir crazy, so if you don’t mind, replace our ships here and let us get in on the action.”

“You’ve earned that much,” Aaron said, gesturing to the Fleet Admiral who began setting up the transfer orders so Othalla orbit wouldn’t be left unguarded. “As soon as the rest of the 19th gets here we’ll move on Ida. Have your ships ready to jump.”

“We will be,” Kraven said, eager for some payback.

A little green blur of motion sprinted through the jungle, concealed beneath the thick green canopy as it raced to catch up with a Type-4 Skarron walker that was breaking trail for three Type-5s. The spider-legged mechanical tick was dragging its belly low and knock or bending trees over that the shorter biped walkers were then stomping down as they made their way towards a small, independent bioharvest facility that was located in the middle of Ida’s globe-spanning jungle. No access roads or clearings were available around it, with the only way in or out being by air transport.

Star Force had skeets in the area keeping enemy transports at bay, so the Skarrons were making the long hike in to the facility by foot, and cutting out their own crude pathways through the jungle on the way. From higher altitude you could see the Skarron roads crisscrossing the planet and expanding out like a thin spider web, with this tendril reaching out into previously untouched territory.

The little blur of Archon ranger armor was alone, having been deposited via skeet some kilometers back and left to approach on foot. Irregular as his path was, he was making better time than the walkers, though at a cost of considerable strength, for he’d been running for the past half hour and putting most of his effort into making the catch. He wasn’t low on ambrosia yet, but at the speed he was moving it wouldn’t be much longer until he felt the first effects of his body’s saturated supply diminishing.

But Randy wasn’t concerned about that, for he had already made the catch. That was the hardest part, for he needed to get to the walkers when they had their shields down, and he could only do that when they were far from the combat.

The trailblazer paced the last of the three Type-5s, matching its speed but running some 120 meters to the west on the same heading as he got a ‘feel’ for the situation with his Pefbar, extending it out into a spotlight-like pylon that reached through the trees and touched the walker that his eyes couldn’t see. It was stomping what was left of the vegetation that the first three had yet to knock down, leaving a mess of timber in its wake that would be difficult for Randy to maintain even half speed running over.

“Ok,” the Archon said to himself, off comm, “we’ll try a different approach this time.”

Accelerating up into another continuous sprint…or at least that’s what it felt like with the constant adjustments he had to keep making for trees and debris, Randy pushed his way up to the second Type-5 and turned hard right, crossing the safety gap between him and the Skarrons in a handful of seconds, finally stopping short and jumping up into an intact tree that had been spared from the walkers’ passing.

The trailblazer climbed fast, then walked out on a thick branch halfway up the tree that got him an approach to clean air and waited for the third biped walker to come up. It had two very thick legs that supported a short torso with a large golf ball-like sphere top that contained the pimple pattern of plasma cannons across its surface, much like the larger Skarron walkers had. The thing had no arms, making it look like a fat Lego man, and it walked about the same. Apparently the quadruped species wasn’t all that keen on biped movement, which raised the question why they had built biped machines in the first place.

Randy had only a few seconds to wait, then he took his chance and ran a few steps along the length of the branch, pushing through smaller sprouts and crunching his way towards the end where he jumped with all his strength and flew out into the clean air and fell down into the broken tree mess below. He landed 15 meters shy of the walker, but managed to get a good left foot plant against an angled tree trunk and caught himself before he could slide down further into the mess of branches. Using that point of grip he ran up the broken trunk two steps and jumped to another one nearby.

Two more short hops and he leapt up against the side of the walker’s left leg…where he stuck onto the side, thanks to the boxing glove-like add-ons to his armor. He wore no pack, no weapons rack, nothing at all aside from his basic ranger armor with the thick grip gloves attached over top his normal armored digits.

Randy hung in place for a split second pulling a Garfield, then disengaged the right gripping device and one armed himself higher up on the leg. Reattaching it he released the other and climbed, with little help from his legs, up above the mess of jungle debris washing by him and threatening to peel him off. Once he got to the knee joint he was free of most of that concern, and focused on getting past the moving parts, which required some delicate timing and one armed hanging swings to get to the upper leg.

Randy was glad no one had shot him as he’d gotten to the walker, meaning that hopefully they hadn’t seen him and wouldn’t see him in this close, but there were no guarantees. Two days ago when he’d tried this he’d been spotted and took half a cannon blast to his shields before he’d dropped off like a dead flea. He’d hit the ground hard, then ran off in his melty armor with a kink in his left arm where the material had resolidified and interfered with the normally smooth movement of the elbow joint.

But that was the chance he had to take to get in this close, and even now that he was clinging to the side of the Type-5 he wasn’t safe, for if the walker turned on its shields he’d been pinned in place as if an invisible wall manifested itself with the Archon inside it. His own shields would keep it from being a hard lock, but if a body part was bigger on the inside then there was no way it could fit through the hole in the Skarron shield and he’d be truly stuck, but he’d learned that the Skarron shields weren’t directly on their armor, but rode several inches above it, meaning that most of his body would hopefully be inside the perimeter, though even if a hand was outside it’d get burnt off by enemy plasma…which was why up until this point he’d only tried taking down single walkers that couldn’t shoot him if he got pinned in place.

So with that threat in mind he climbed as fast as he could, transitioning up to the torso and around to the back side where the 2nd Type-5 couldn’t see or shoot him. Randy felt inside the machine for the mind of the pilot, finding it to be further up top than the center of the sphere, so he continued to climb up the ball with his body and feet hanging off as he had to maneuver up the underside.

The grip gloves held firm though, as they’d been designed to do. Another useful bit of tech recovered from the pyramid database.

Randy climbed up the curve and eventually got his legs back on the hull. He diverted his line of ascent twice to move around plasma cannon ports that were the size of a trash can, and eventually made his way three quarters up the curve until he was the closest to the Skarron pilot as he could get. He’d have liked to have attempted this from farther away, but his mind wasn’t nearly that powerful…at least not for the precision control that he was going to need.

Setting the grip gloves to lock into position, Randy trusted the technology to hold him in place then disengaged his mind from the majority of his senses and let his psionics link him with the mind of the single Skarron pilot inside. What he found was violent, as the others had been, but more large in scope than powerful. Using his psionics he linked to the mind and asserted control over it. Pulling the override required a lot of skill and power, hence the need to get as close as possible, but thanks to the practice Randy already had he locked down the pilot and kept him away from his own bodily functions, essentially blacking him out while jumping inside the thing’s body.

That was the creepy part…having four arms and four legs, no head, etc. Randy had to do it this way in order to get the precision movements he needed, else he could have just enslaved the Skarron’s mind and made it do what he wanted while allowing it to be partially conscious. Even now the thing struggled to wake up, but a consistent mental pressure kept it down and Randy used what was left of his psionic power to operate its limbs, see through its eyes, and interface with the pilot controls. The Type-5’s was a bit different from the Type-4s he’d messed with earlier, and it took him a few minutes to figure them out as the mech continued to walk forward under computer control, with Randy only having to make micro steering adjustments as he got situated.

When all was said and done he activated the walker’s shields, pinning his body in place with part of his back and butt showing through the shield barrier, but the rest of him was underneath it. That didn’t matter, because he was hanging off the back and the other walkers were in front, and with all the trees around them it was going to be difficult for them to flank him.

Ok, here goes, Randy thought as he activated the walker’s weapon systems, ignoring the anti-air cannon up top and focusing on the dozens of small plasma cannons on the walker’s surface. He linked them to group fire to track a single target, then powered up the primary plasma cannon that sat on the front side of the golf ball in the thing’s chest.

Picking a spot in the back of the right knee of the duplicate walker ahead of him, Randy fired the primary cannon, then triggered the smaller ones to attack the same spot, pouring as much firepower as he could into the walker before it could realize what was happening and get its shields up.

2

The joint’s armor was lighter than the rest, but it didn’t give on the first hit. Rather it took three blasts from the main cannon and a torrent of the smaller white plasma blasts to melt through and get at the internal structure. The fourth blast hit shields, delaying the walker’s collapse, but Randy kept hammering the same spot as the Type-5 ahead of him tried to turn around, getting tripped up by the tree debris that was everywhere.

Before it could swing around and bring its main cannon into play the anti-personnel cannons on the back side fired on Randy’s appropriated walker, splashing off his own shields as they traded fire. A few more direct hits from his main cannon and the shielding over the knee went down and Randy delivered the fatal blow, melting the inner mechanics from the heat of the plasma. The liquid slag cooled quickly, causing the joint to seize up. That stuck the walker in place, lest it fall over, and gave Randy a blocking silhouette against the other two walkers that were already turning around as they tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

The trailblazer knew the internal comm system was pinging the Skarron pilot, but he wasn’t answering, so with one of their own shooting at them they did was anyone would do…they shot back.

Randy kept close to his target in the downed tree trench and poured fire into the center of the walker’s spherical top, chewing through the shields and then working on the armor as the Type-4 ahead of them rose up to its full height and fired down on Randy’s Type-5, getting a sliver of a firing angle. The Archon held firm, knowing that he needed to kill the smaller walker before jumping ship, and chewed through the thick Skarron armor until he had a breach point. After that his plasma slipped in and soon the bottom hatch of the walker opened up and the pilot dropped to the ground between the machine’s legs and tried to run off before it could get roasted inside, though it had a difficult time navigating the mess of tree debris.

Randy would have shot it, but it wisely headed off on an angle that had its walker blocking the Human’s firing line, so the Archon continued slagging the inner workings of the Type-5 up until he was thoroughly convinced that it was dead. After that he turned the walker to the left and walked it through the trash, making sure to take small steps and mash down as much of it as possible as his shields took a torrent of plasma from both of the other walkers.

He approached at an angle to keep his body from coming into the firing line, and headed into the forest in the direction of the other two that had also veered off to the left to circle around towards him. As soon as his walker was in the trees the incoming plasma reduced greatly, leaving him to pushing his way through, laying over one tree stalk after another as he slowly created his own path forward.

With that cover in place the Type-5 was shielded from its twin, but the Type-4 was still firing down on the top of his walker, now penetrating the shields and beginning to tear into the armor. Randy shoved his way through the trees as fast as he could without tipping the giant machine over, intent on getting to the other one before he had to jump clear.

He did…barely. The front of his walker had a gaping hole in the armor that was nearing the pilot’s compartment as he pushed through the last of the trees and ran head on into the other Type-5. Both walkers fired at each other at point blank range, with Randy’s taking the worst damage, for the other’s shields were still up.

That was alright, for he wanted the walker he was riding to go down…one less for the enemy to use, but he wanted to take the other with it, so he pushed ahead with as much torque as he could get out of the legs and rammed sphere against sphere. Like a slow motion monster wrestling match, the two locked up and tipped over, with his landing on top of the other’s legs and pinning it in place as the plasma from the Type-4 continued to fall down.

Randy disengaged his psionic link before the walker fell and got his hand grips released halfway down, allowing him to knee-slide off the back and land in the tree mash between its legs as the plasma fell down on the sphere where he’d just been. He let himself hit bottom, sliding between tree trunks and down into the mass of twigs and leaves, all of which helped to hide his green armor from the Type-4.

He imagined a heated conversation taking place as the Skarron he’d been controlling woke up, but the plasma continued to fall regardless as Randy snuck around underneath the small pile of trees, gradually working his way to the edge and into the clear forest, seeing one of the Type-4’s slender legs punch down through the canopy ahead of him as the big walker moved in for a closer look at the others as it continued to fire on the traitor.

Randy ran towards the leg, knowing that its shields would be up and any attempt to climb it would be fruitless, but he needed to get close and chanced running up underneath it, now that its belly was riding above the canopy instead of crashing through it. Its other five legs repositioned, knocking over trees or snapping off branches, making Randy stay alert and mobile. He wasn’t sure what its next move would be, but if he was going to have a chance of taking it down he had to stay close.

Eventually the plasma bombardment ceased, with the Type-5 moving overtop the others. At first Randy thought it was going to try to push the dead walker off the other, then he saw a compartment on the underside open up and a projectile shot out, landing a claw on the walker. Two more followed, and then the connecting lines pulled taught and a loud ground sounded as the Type-5 he’d appropriated began to rise up off the other.

The one underneath pushed its way out, kicking its thick legs to break loose, for it appeared the Type-4 didn’t have the strength to pull the dead weight all the way off.

Randy knew the shields had to be down, at least around the exit points for the tethers. He was half tempted to try and climb one up into the walker, but if the cannons on the belly saw him he’d be toast, so he scratched that plan quick enough.

Next idea he had sent a piece of wood the size of his thumb telekinetically up through the canopy above him. He watched it with his Pefbar as he sent it to impact the underside of the walker, paying close attention to the impact point…and seeing that the thing’s shields were in fact down all over the walker.

That was his opening, so he ran towards the nearest leg and began to climb up on the underside to keep from being painfully visible. If he stayed directly under the angled leg, he’d come up to the box-like connective point where the legs intersected with the body where there were no cannons. There would be cannons all around that point, but if he could get to the hull he could climb up around them, for they didn’t have the ability to tip to the side far enough to bother him.

Randy had made it up to the elbow joint on the leg, just beginning to transition to his ‘hands only’ grip on the underside of the walker’s leg, which left his own dangling beneath him as he monkey climbed up when he felt a gigantic surge of motion.

The walker below and to his left dropped back to the ground as the tethers went slack, but the Type-4 also stepped to the side, running Randy up into some thin branches that he was fortunate not to have been knocked off by. Just as soon as he got his legs up into a crunch position and had his feet planted above his head against the walker’s leg did the whole thing drop down towards the ground.

The leg bent heavily, undoing the angle and turning Randy’s handhold into more of a ceiling hold. Only when the walker steadied itself and the sound of a disengaging panel crackle/whined its way out of the belly armor did the trailblazer notice the mind of a Skarron on the forest floor below. It was the one that had jumped ship when Randy had toasted the first walker, and now it was coming up underneath the big one.

With his eye line set on the underside of the walker’s leg, Randy used his Pefbar to look behind him and underneath the machine as a type of boarding ramp extended out of the hull between armor segments that had peeled off. It telescoped the rest of the way down to the forest, and Randy could sense the Skarron heading for it.

“Haha,” the trailblazer lightly laughed as he suddenly had a far easier option present itself. He reached out with his Ikrid and got a feel for the three Skarron minds inside the Type-4 and began to send waves of Fornax blasts toward them as he released his grip from the leg and dropped down to the ground.

With his focus on the psionic workload, Randy’s balance was less than adequate, tossing him to the right suddenly as his feet hit a curved trunk. He banged his head good on impact, but sent out more Fornax blasts immediately to keep the cannons from firing or the ramp raising if they saw him. He got to his feet and sent a fourth Fornax blast into the one heading for the ramp, causing it to trip and fall over its own legs as they suddenly ceased to work.

Randy ran after it, hopping over tree debris while throwing more Fornax up into the walker’s hull. He kept all four Skarrons subdued while he jumped up onto the back of the closest one and leapt off it up onto the ramp and climbed the ladder-like catwalk up into the walker.

Inside there was a cramped chamber…by Skarron standards anyway. It contained a central corridor with six pods spaced around the stalk, each of which was huge for Randy’s physique. He walked into the corridor and found it was also like a catwalk, but with round holes in the structure rather than slats.

Making sure not to trip on any, or to let his foot slip through, he reached out to the three minds inside and placed them, numbing one as it reached up a weapon and aimed at him. Randy didn’t move, but kept it in check while trying to do the same to the other two. He didn’t move its gun arm, nor any other body parts, for he couldn’t do that without focusing exclusively on one of them and he had three to hold at bay.

Which quickly became four as the one at the base of the ramp camp up and poked its ugly front end inside. He stretched out his Ikrid and nulled it too, essentially freezing it in place by not allowing it to make any additional movements, but while maintaining its current posture.

“Out,” he said, pointing towards the one at the ramp. It didn’t understand English, nor the trade language for that matter, but Randy got the telepathic impetus through, along with a heavy dose of influence. He couldn’t take control of its body, but he could tell it to.

Slowly the Skarron backed out of the entrance and headed down the ramp, seeming to crawl backwards as easy as it did forwards…with its foot claws digging into the holes in the metal for extra grip. Randy kept his Ikrid link to it strong, despite the meters of distance it was putting between them, then he pointed to the other three and thumbed backwards over his shoulder.

“Everybody off the bus,” he said, taking a step to the side as the big quadrupeds climbed out of their pods. Randy put a hand on the curved wall for support as his mental effort had to increase greatly as the fourth one got to ground. He switched over to nulling it, which saved a little mental expenditure, but influencing the other three to do what he wanted was pushing his Ikrid to the limits.

The first one went by, not bothering to look at him, then headed front first down the steep ramp, gripping it with its feet claws that emanated from the underside rather than the front where toe nails would have been. The second one did the same, but the third stopped at the edge and just stood there, and Randy could feel his grip on its will slipping. It was on the verge of questioning what it was doing, at which point the ruse would end. He had to keep it distracted, and too much thought in any direction would break the hold.

To that end he released the furthest of the Skarrons. With the lesser load Randy increased his mental pressure on the last one, remembering what Obi-wan had said about the Force having a strong influence on the weak minded…and this Skarron was stronger than the others.

“Run!” he yelled, with is mind imparting the same message. “Run, run, run!” he repeated so fast that the Skarron didn’t have time to think. It charged down the ramp, knocking the one in front of it off before ramming the one that Randy had released as it came back up. With that tangled mess breaking his hold on the pair he released all three and send a Fornax wave in their direction and held the production until he got to the ramp controls, already having gleaned their location from one of their minds.

Randy held the Fornax as the ramp pulled back into itself, then leveraged up into the underside of the hull, with the last steps being the peeled back armor plates to seal over it…leaving Randy alone inside.

Almost immediately his captured walker came under fire from the lone Type-5 remaining, thanks to the Skarrons and their personal communicators.

“Ok, what now?” Randy said, running and looking around. Some of the controls were familiar, but a lot weren’t, and this was his first time inside one of the Type-4s…in person anyway. When he was linked to a Skarron’s mind everything had context, but now it was just him and what he could remember.

He jumped back and forth between two pods until he found the shield controls and powered them up as a portion of the front hull began to lose armor, along with a plasma cannon mount, he thought, based on one of the display panels. After that he looked around, playing with various controls, most of which he had to use his fist/elbow to toggle, given how large they were. Eventually he determined that one of the pods was a restroom, then climbed up into the highest one and found the weapon controls, still trying to clear the smell from his nostrils. His armor might not have deemed it toxic, but his biology certainly did.

As the walker got pounded on the outside Randy got the weapons controls working…only to discover that they were for the anti-air weaponry. Abandoning that pod he tried another, eventually getting to the plasma cannon controls in what seemed to be a multi-tasking format. Maybe one of the other pods controlled them directly, but what he had functioned well enough, with him targeting the Type-5 outside that had already broken through his shields and was busy melting off armor with its primary cannon.

Fortunately it had a decently long cycle in between shots, so Randy wasn’t in immediate trouble. He aligned all of his own plasma cannons within the appropriate firing arc for the other walker and synced them to one targeting reticule and placed it on the enemy…then he couldn’t find the firing trigger.

He looked around, belatedly remembering that it was on the floor. He couldn’t reach it and the aiming controls at the same time, so he stared at the control knobs for a long couple of seconds then dropped down to the floor of the pod and stomped on the button.

It didn’t fire, nor did it depress all the way, so Randy tried again, jumping with both feet, and this time it went all the way into the ground.

Outside every plasma cannon in range fired once, then fell silent.

“Crap,” Randy said, jumping on it again, then climbing up halfway to get his head within view of the readouts. Telekinetically he moved the controls, realigning his targeting reticule to a more favorable spot, then jumped back down on the firing button, pounding it into the ground multiple times like a child throwing a tantrum before climbing back up again to see what he’d hit.

The Type-5 had moved, but only partially, with his plasma still landing on the spherical ‘head.’ Randy readjusted his firing line and went back down to the ground, repeating the awkward attack function over and over again until the Type-5 was damaged enough that it tried to flee.

“Oh no you don’t…bastard,” Randy said, running over to another pod and getting the walker walking, albeit slowly. He set it on autopilot, meaning it just went in a straight line, knocking down trees and hoping they didn’t trip it up, then ran back over to the weapons pod and got another salvo of shots in on the other walker.

That process repeated itself for over an hour as the two walkers played tag, with Randy running himself silly trying to operate the controls that were designed for an elephant until the Type-5 finally went down, literally, and Randy pounded it further with plasma until it was a smoking mess of melted metal.

“Oh, god I don’t want to do that again,” he said, sitting down and leaning back against the curved wall at the bottom of the central shaft as he activated his helmet comm. “Anybody out there hear this?”

“I’ve got you, Randy, but faint,” the dropship pilot who’d brought him to the walkers replied.

“Come pick me up. The three Type-5s are junk, and I’m inside the Type-4, so don’t worry about it shooting back. What firearms do you have onboard?”

“A couple of pistols, one plasma, one stinger. Why?”

“There are Skarrons loose on the ground. We need to clean them up, and I don’t think the skeets will get a clean shot. Comm for a ground team and mark this location.”

“Copy that, I’m on my way in.”

Randy cut the comm and sighed, taking a moment to rest before heading over to the ramp controls and opening the damaged mech up. With the shields down and the armor already damaged, the skeets would have an easy time finishing it off, so his work here was done, so long as he didn’t let any of the Skarrons back inside, and given how far the machine had walked he had no idea how close they were now.

When the dropship arrived he triggered the ramp closing mechanism and jumped out, sliding/falling down the angled metal as it closed up, then dropping to the ground after bouncing off a couple of intact branches that the Type-5 hadn’t hit on the way through. Randy took the fall well then ran out into the opening created by the downed trees and signaled to the dropship to come down and get him.

Once onboard he called for the skeets and waited until they were on station and blowing the crap out of the walker before he let the pilot leave.

3

August 17, 2467

Rotunna System (Beta Region)

Ida

“Ships are in bombardment position,” Admiral Nellis said for Aaron’s benefit as the 19th fleet stood broken up and holding various positions in low orbit.

“We’ve still got two red flags, Admiral. Commence firing on all other targets,” Aaron ordered, watching the bridge tactical holo. A few moments later metallic rain began falling down through the atmosphere and targeting the Skarron walkers that were away from population centers. The two ‘red flags’ were inside cities where the inhabitants weren’t all clear yet, and each of those held a Type-1, making them primary targets that needed to be eliminated from orbit, lest there be a much larger fight on the ground.

Ida had 29 tier 1 colonies under construction, which when fully completed would be self-sufficient entities of their own on the planet’s surface spanning hundreds of square miles. Other auxiliary facilities dotted the landscape as well, but overall Ida’s population was spread out with a ‘work in progress’ feel to the planet, despite the fact that it already held some 2 billion Kiritak and several hundred thousand Humans.

A lot of those were dead, but many had been able to flee from one city to another given the slow speed of the Skarron armies. Air superiority was being split between the two factions, with the handful of conquered cities remaining in Skarron control while Star Force still held sway over the others. Not wanting to wreck their own cities with orbital bombardment, even the empty ones, Star Force had been engaging the Skarrons via mech drops and trying to draw them out into the open…which in the case of Ida meant the regions of forest that had been cut down to facilitate further expansion or to create roads from site to site.

The Skarrons had taken the bait, mostly, and the mechs had dragged their forces out away from the cities, even if only a few hundred meters beyond the perimeter on the dirt plains preceding new construction.

On those plains and roadways the Skarrons fell prey to the rail gun slugs coming down from orbit. Star Force had already pulled its armies back, drawing the Skarrons out further or causing them to give up the chase. The aiming of the metallic shards wasn’t precise at a range of 110 miles, plus the thick atmosphere of Ida would play havoc with the descent as well, but over the centuries Star Force had gotten good in containing the randomness of the bombardment and concentrating it to select areas, carpeting the ground with so many impacts that through statistical probability the Skarron walkers were going to get hit.

As soon as the rain began to come down every Type-1 and Type-2 within range started popping missiles that shot up towards orbit, intent on taking down the warships dropping the ordinance. The few walkers that got hit initially remained intact, protected underneath large circular defense shields that stopped the falling metal in superheated splashes, sucking vast amounts of energy out of the protective barriers…energy that they could not replace fast enough, meaning that if the walkers didn’t take out the warships they were going to succumb to the attack in short order.

But that’s what the Skarron anti-air defenses had been designed to thwart, and the missile plumes rising up towards the drone warships were thick and fast moving, not to mention carrying very strong warheads. Those plumes diminished as they passed out of the upper atmosphere as addition elements of the 19th fleet, stationed around the edges of the rail gun-equipped formation, began pouring lachars and launching intercepts at the coming swarms that continued to rise up unceasingly from the walkers.

The collision between ordinances was heavy, but nothing was going to stop the rail gun slugs from falling. Some of them took out missiles on their way down, but there were so many coming up that a lot got through the maelstrom of destruction in between the ships and atmosphere that was ballooning out in an ever growing debris cloud.

Anti-missile lachars on the bombarding ships opened fire in the last moments, picking off a few more as the leading missiles hit shields, with each explosion firing multiple weapon systems within the warhead, one of which was designed to suck energy out of the shields above and beyond the kinetic impact. Another element was a shrapnel component that threw out small chunks of material that effectively sandblasted the shields over a wide area rather than a pinpoint attack that the primary blast afforded. The smaller impacts drained the physical component of the Star Force shields, as well as diminishing the energy pools around the center of impact.

Those energy pools, in some shield designs, could be redeployed to adjacent areas to quickly cover weak spots rather than waiting on more energy to come through the emitters. By diminishing this amount in the same missile detonation, each attack blasted a wider divot in the shields and set up a longer-lived weakness for the next missile to exploit.

Star Force shields had gotten progressively stronger over the years, now on par in strength to all others in the Alliance save for the Kvash, so they didn’t go down quickly, but the swarming effect of the missiles didn’t give them time to recharge, so after 15-20 seconds of nonstop pounding the shields on smaller drones went down, opening up the hull armor to the attacks.

It looked like all the missiles were getting through to Aaron, but he knew better. The other ships were knocking down more than half of what was coming up, but there were so many the bombardment ships were visibly being clouded by the detonations. Never the less they continued firing until their weapon systems went offline, including their plasma and maulers, which they were using to take out missiles at point blank range by simply pointing and firing them into the swarm.

The first drone went offline at 43 seconds into the engagement, with many more following. Aaron kept an eye on the walkers, seeing several of the Type-3s and 4s being scrapped, with some of the 2s starting to get hit as their shields failed, but the Type-1s were still untouched and continuing to pump out missiles…far more than it looked like they should have been able to carry, but from intelligence gained from Kip’s ongoing war in Protovic space he knew that the things were literally walking armories.

Then again, if Star Force had a walker that big and slow Aaron would have been concerned about it being taken out from orbit too, and he had to admit the missile plumes were a significant deterrent, though the walkers weren’t going to be able to rearm, so once they ran out they were out, but to get them to that point Star Force was going to have to lose ships.

Aaron hadn’t expected that initially, given the number of ships at his disposal. He’d expected to spam low orbit and knock down all missiles coming his way, but the sheer number of walkers deposited on the surface in overlapping firing ranges shocked him. Still, he could have pooled his ships into one place and took out the walkers with near impunity a handful at a time, but neutralizing them quickly was more important, and he was only going to be able to lure them away from the ground infrastructure once, so he had to spread out his ships and attack them all simultaneously.

As his interceptor-laden warships began to run out of ordinance before the Skarrons did they moved off, making room for others to close in and take their place up next to the bombardment fleet. Meanwhile a host of cutters and corvettes dove into the atmosphere on attack runs, staying clear of the bombardment corridors, but heading down to engage the walkers at close range and making the Skarrons choose who to shoot at.

Altogether Aaron had 8,372 drones in play, that being the full complement of the 19th fleet spread out around planetary orbit. The 22nd and 41st fleets were split up on multiple missions throughout the rest of the star system, with the trailblazer intent on hitting the Skarrons as hard and as fast as possible on all fronts, for he knew the longer he took to engage the enemy the more Star Force personnel they’d kill, and he’d rather lose some unmanned ships than fail to come to his people’s aid fast enough.

A small flashing light updated one of the red flags with a green icon, indicating that the Star Force personnel in the area had been withdrawn around a Type-1 and its escorts within one of the cities. It hadn’t been drawn outside the boundaries, for it hadn’t been a skirmisher. Others had moved out to engage the Star Force mechs miles away, but the Type-1 sat within the city, pumping out missiles at other targets while the fleet designated to take it out sat waiting overhead.

Aaron really didn’t want to bust up their own city, and hoped no one had slipped through the cracks in the evacuation, but now that he had a green from the ground commander he acted on it.

“Admiral, point 14 is clear. Bring the rain.”

Nellis nodded, inputting the command into his control board. “This is going to get messy.”

77 drone warships, ranging from cruisers down to frigates, began launching rail gun slugs with impunity on the Type-1 and four Type-3s ringing it at various points on the Star Force city streets. Fiery streaks came down in straight lines, burning from the friction with the atmosphere, and slammed into city buildings, shattering their structures and blowing out plumes of debris.

The defense shield over the Type-1 activated, with its missiles diverting around the edges of the circle, flying horizontal a short distance before angling up to continue firing on the nearby attack group rather than the one Aaron had just ordered to engage it. That was wise, for spreading out their anti-orbital firepower would allow Star Force to shoot down more missiles before they could make it to target, but it also left this Type-1 vulnerable, essentially giving the Humans a free shot.

Streak after streak came down atop the shield, while many more hit around the edges, blasting apart buildings and every now and then coming down near one of the Type-3s that were creeping their way off from the Type-1 and spreading out the targeting area. With 30 or so rounds hitting per second, the attack wasn’t light, but neither was it heavy, given that not all of them hit the Type-1. It was the consistent and unrelenting nature of the attack that gradually wore down its shields, eventually letting some of the rounds through to hit the armor and buildings that the shield had been protecting.

More infrastructure than enemy was hit, but that was unavoidable. The slugs that hit the thick armor didn’t deflect, nor did they explode, instead they stuck inside it like a pin cushion being hit by lava, for the impacts sites glowed orange as the rounds deformed partially from the sudden deceleration. It wasn’t a sudden as a shield impact, but the torsion literally tore the rounds apart as they dug through the heavy armor.

The long, caterpillar-like chain of seven body segments took damage irregularly, but the missile swarm continued to flow out of each body segment until a round slipped into the launching port on the third segment and eviscerated the inside. Those missiles stopped launching after a large internal explosion marked the airspace above the walker with a mushroom-shaped cloud.

Around it one of the Type-3s got hit by a smaller slug from one of the frigates. Its shields held up, but the impact knocked the walker over, twisting its end around and tangling up the legs, causing it to list to the left and ram into a building, after which it dropped halfway to the ground before the legs supported its weight. Some shield matrixes were standalone, others were hard linked to the emitters, meaning that a physical impact to them would move the emitter and whatever was attached to it, and in this case the Skarrons had the hard links on the Type-3s. That might not have seemed the best tech choice to make seeing as how the impact had knocked it down, but had it been a standalone the point blank deceleration stress probably would have penetrated the shield.

The more technologically advanced a race became the more shield options one had, but in this case none would have saved the Skarrons, for the Star Force fleet had full magazines and jumpships standing by to resupply them if/when they ran out. The rain continued to fall, obliterating both buildings and enemy walkers, and punching a circular wound into the city, visible from orbit after the smoke and dust eventually cleared.

Randy observed the Type-1 go down from miles away, him having been the ground commander clearing this section of the city. Originally that task had been slated for another Archon, but Randy’s last mission had ended early so he’d come over to personally oversee the evacuation.

Standing atop one of the tallest buildings on the other side of the city he watched Aaron’s fleet do its work and take out the walker that would have been extremely hard for their ground troops to take down. The sight of the vicious bombardment reminded him how naval superiority ruled all, and how much infrastructure he was going to have to throw together to defend against something like this.

Bigger shield generators, anti-orbital weapons batteries, etc…but if an enemy had time to plan and assemble what was necessary, there was virtually no surface target that couldn’t be taken down from orbit, and that fact chilled him to the bone even as he felt an enormous amount of relief seeing the Type-1 and its minions go down under the continuous rain.

Others would have been concerned, being so close to the bombardment, but Randy wasn’t, knowing full well the accuracy their weapons had. Four miles away was sufficient, as well as giving him a good view while additional evacuations were taking place beneath him. The Kiritak they’d just pulled out of the other half of the city were being funneled into an underground rail line…one that was still intact…that led to another secure city, via a transition at a mining outpost.

The train cars had been removed and the tunnel opened up for hover traffic, with all manner of vehicles pouring down into the well-guarded opening. Randy had two stars of mechs covering it, with several more around the perimeter hunting down Skarron infantry as they made their way across the city. He’d had to abandon many of their previously held positions in order to clear the bombardment zone, putting distance between them and the Skarron lines, but some of the ambitious bastards had followed them out and now had to be killed, with Randy’s troops on constant alert not to let even a single one of their Hobbits get through, for almost all of the Kiritak waiting for evacuation were unarmed.

Randy watched the Skarron missiles shoot off on a slight angle up into the sky, along with plumes from three Type-2s elsewhere on the horizon but outside the city. The sheer amount of firepower they were throwing up at the orbiting warships was impressive, but the rain continued to fall and Randy watched it all from the rooftop, with each stream of missiles eventually cutting off. The Type-1 continued firing up until each of its seven segments took hits, making Randy wonder how much more ordinance they had inside.

He glanced at the battlemap in his helmet, seeing that one of the Type-3s was still active, so the bombardment continued up until it was killed, then suddenly the sound of the impacts ceased and the smoke was let to drift into transparency, revealing a battered and shattered cityscape more akin to a sandbox than anything structural.

Randy uplinked to the fleet and declared the bombardment site a black flag, indicating that it was done and making sure that no more rain would fall without checking with him first. With that status logged, he ordered his mechs to begin sweeping the city out from their current positions and identify remaining Skarron infantry locations for the Archons to clean up.

Taking one final visual look around the city, both of the intact sections and the damaged zone, Randy spotted a glint of armor moving in one of the streets off to the south. He called in a nearby dropship to pick him up, after which he had it drop him near the Skarron armored infantry, knowing that they were tricky to take down with anything short of a mech…or a ranger.

4

September 12, 2467

Rotunna System (Beta Region)

Ida

Randy sat crosslegged on top of a table with his eyes closed as Aaron walked in the door behind him, seeing the large containment field separating his fellow trailblazer from the Skarron prisoner on the far side. The elephant-sized quadruped was pacing back and forth, only able to walk a few meters in either direction, but its pent up energy was manifesting itself in obvious contrast to Randy’s static pose.

Aaron walked over to the table, hopping up on top of it to sit next to Randy as he stretched out his Ikrid to take a brief assessment of its mind, which to him seemed a chaotic mess. The Skarron didn’t like being imprisoned, and was not one to take the matter lying down.

With the arrival of the second Human the Skarron lashed out with two of its arms and punched the containment field, though Randy didn’t react. Aaron flinched microscopically, but the shield held firm and the Skarron returned to its lumbering pacing.

“Nice to see you too,” Aaron said, knowing that it wouldn’t understand. So far they hadn’t established a common language…any language…with the Skarrons, which was making the prisoner interrogations exceedingly difficult.

“Any luck with the engineers?” Randy asked, his eyes still closed.

“Not really. All I can get are a few visuals and emotions. I’m not very good at reading non-Human minds. That’s your specialty.”

“Just takes practice, but this bastard is giving me trouble. I could use some help.”

“How so?”

“Processing power…use me for context,” Randy said before Aaron could ask the question.

“Alright,” the Ikrid specialist said, linking to both the Skarron and Randy, though for the latter he had to grab the other man’s wrist. When he did he followed a mental prompt to the vector Randy was using to access the Skarron’s mind and immediately saw that it was, as he had inferred, underpowered.

That was to be expected, for Randy hadn’t spent nearly as much time developing his Ikrid as Aaron had, though his own training had been focused on communication and combat applications with other Humans. Delving into the path that Randy’s mind had already ‘cleared’ through the Skarron’s mental geography, Aaron expanded on it, though the pieces he was accessing he couldn’t understand, so he fed the information to Randy, and once they got in sync with one another the pair’s abilities acted as one.

With Aaron’s greater strength of ‘signal’ and Randy’s familiarities with the quirks of alien minds, the two began making steady progress sorting through the Skarron’s memories and emotions. None of the language would transfer over, however, but there were ways around that, Randy knew, and slowly, bit by bit, the two trailblazers started to glean information on their enemy.

Tracking back from where this one had gone, there was a Skarron-inhabited world being used as a way station. This one had been picked up there, then shipped out over a considerable distance for the assault on Rotunna. There was no way of knowing how many lightyears they’d crossed or jumps they’d made, but the overall impression was that the Skarrons had traveled a considerable distance to get here.

That wasn’t surprising, for if they had worlds near to Beta Region Star Force most likely would have known about it, whether through their own scouting expeditions or from the other races in the region whom they conversed with regularly. Even now some of those races’ ships were coming in to Rotunna, unaware that there had been an attack. Some had left immediately, others had stayed behind to conduct business or gather information that they’d spread on their journeys. It was through this commercial transit that most information flowed, slow as it was, but if the Skarrons had been nearby someone would have noticed, just as they were now, and spreading the word.

There were glimpses of ships and troops, all in large number, but the trailblazers couldn’t isolate anything in particular. This Skarron was infantry, tasked with leading a Hobbit unit on skirmishing missions. It wasn’t the lowest ranking position, but it had zero strategic knowledge of the war aside from what was common knowledge amongst their troops.

That common knowledge was where Aaron and Randy got their most useful information, spread over several hours of interrogation. This particular Skarron had been born far from here, deeper into the core, but still on one of their outlying, mid-level worlds. It was highly urbanized, with grassy plains covering the remainder of the dry planet. The Skarron structures were oblong shaped, with internal corridors more akin to blood vessels than hallways. The architecture had a very biological feel to it, though it was definitely technological.

This Skarron had departed from that world long ago, having been moved around their frontier worlds fighting in a number of small wars, all of which were routs. This attack had been deemed of higher priority, linked in to the major expansion underway against another race that both Aaron and Randy agreed was the Protovic, though the name didn’t translate. What this Skarron knew was that a large power in the region had gutted itself in a war against another, allowing an opening for the Skarron empire to expand into the surrounding region, with the Protovic being the strongest power there, on which they were going to base their annexation force.

It seemed the Skarrons only sent as many troops as they deemed necessary, while having more in reserve should they be needed. That was a red flag for the trailblazers, but it only got worse the more deeply they delved into the alien’s memories. The Protovic regional expansion on the part of the Skarrons was, as far as this one was concerned, a minor affair given the total military efforts of their empire, which was expanding on multiple fronts. This rimward expansion was deemed useful, but the major action was occurring elsewhere.

Fighting against opponents that could at least partially defend themselves had spurred this one to great hopes, both of advancing within the Skarron hierarchy and finally being able to test its skills, something its former opponents had been ill-equipped to manage. At the moment it was cursing its luck and their intelligence, for they hadn’t expected such a large orbital bombardment capability. Normally that was a means of attack closed off to their opponents, and intentionally so, for they knew well the dangers of it. Someone had badly anticipated the Human response, else they would have had more walkers on the ground to counter the threat of the starships.

It seemed the Skarrons also weren’t used to other races using rail guns, though they themselves had them. Plasma was by far the most typical weapon they encountered, with missiles making up the orbital bombardment threat in most cases, along with the occasional kamikaze run.

Aaron and Randy sorted through a lot of the Skarron’s assessments, most of which came in the form of remembered emotions. What had happened on Ida had been a surprise, given the Skarrons’ normal domination over the rimward races. They hadn’t expected to get beaten, bringing with them what they thought had been sufficient to take and hold the planet as reinforcements drifted in through the jumplanes.

The Protovic worlds already taken were considered ‘secure’ despite the ongoing fighting, with Star Force’s ability to take out some of their walkers being a concern. That small danger was what had prompted this attack far ahead of schedule. In fact, the Skarrons probably wouldn’t have come this far out in the near future, having a great deal of territory to digest from their recent conquests.

With that revelation came the Skarron’s memories of what their race typically did with conquered worlds. Those of value they’d keep, those that weren’t they’d ransack and destroy. Ida was somewhere in between, deemed unsuitable for colonization but useful as far as natural resources. The Skarrons were going to keep it as a staging base after exterminating the local ‘infestations’ as they considered the Kiritak and Humans to be.

The same thing was happening over hundreds of star systems between Beta Region and the Skarron’s coreward territory. Some races they ignored, mostly those without space travel, but anything even resembling strength had to be dealt with. The Skarrons, like nearly every other race Star Force had come across, didn’t possess every star system within their borders, but they did make sure none of the unwanted systems could harm them, and regularly patrolled the ‘dead’ regions to make sure that none arose or slipped in uninvited.

That pacification was what was occurring in the area past Beta Region, with the bulk of this expansion army heading for the Protovic.  Once they secured that area they’d backfill, hitting other regions around the thin tendril of conquered systems they’d carved out from their core territory, some of which would bring them into conflict with what remained of the Nestafar, but at the moment the Skarrons weren’t concerned with that. The Protovic were the main priority. The others could wait, so long as they didn’t poke the tiger.

Which is what Star Force had done by coming to their allies’ aid. The Skarrons didn’t want to encourage that sort of thinking, intending to intimidate the Humans by metaphorically bloodying their nose…only it hadn’t happened the way they thought it would.

This Skarron assumed the Star Force victory here would draw more armies and fleets out to avenge the loss, though it knew that would not occur in time for it to be rescued. It was scared, because it didn’t know what they were going to do to it, and was wishing for a way it could die fighting, fearing it might be tortured or experimented upon.

That Aaron and Randy could sympathize with, wanting to go down fighting, but neither this Skarron nor any of the other handful of prisoners they’d taken from the three Skarron races were going to be killed. Star Force engineers had been putting together a prison facility to match the larger race’s physiology, meaning that this Skarron and his buddies were going to be their guests indefinitely…and when they finally cracked the language barrier they were going to be having lots of Ikrid chats.

Randy knew that the language issue would probably be solved by obtaining a translation from one of the races who already had contact with the Skarrons, and he’d put out word long ago that Star Force was interested in linguistic databases from any race they’d yet to collect, and would be willing to pay a hefty sum for it. That had brought a considerable amount of data to him, along with spreading the word that Star Force would pay for information, which spurred many entrepreneurs to pass through one of their systems offering up whatever they thought might interest the Humans, hoping to make some quick profit by sharing knowledge they already possessed.

But to date not much had come back to them about the Skarrons, and now Randy was beginning to understand why. It took a long time to get a feel for how this alien thought, but eventually he and Aaron were able to get a scale map of their territory, as this one remembered it. At first they thought they were interpreting it wrong, but with several different memory corroborations they were forced to admit that the Skarrons were a much larger threat than anyone knew.

Their territory was spread out through the local region of the Sagittarius Arm of the galaxy. Earth, Star Force territory, and the territory of the entire Alliance and lizards combined only made up a tiny piece of the Orion arm, which was outside the Sagittarius arm and separated by a thinner region of star systems which was often thought of as a gap, though that wasn’t technically true.

This Skarron thought of it that way, noting that there were few useful systems there and that their empire usually skipped across it to their Orion Arm colonies. That was where this one had been born, but most of the Skarron empire was in Sagittarius spanning 10,000 lightyears in width and some 6-8 thousand in reach coming out from the barrier towards the core.

That barrier was where the Skarrons wouldn’t expand. It was a no-go region with a powerful enemy lurking on the other side. The Skarrons wanted to keep a buffer region between it and them, for as vast and powerful as their empire was, they were completely outmatched by those in the core. Fortunately, they’d learned if they kept their distance they’d be left alone, so the Skarrons’ territorial expansions were focused along the length of the Sagittarius Arm and out into Orion.

Both revelations floored Aaron and Randy. Star Force’s territory, reaching from Alpha Region to Beta, was around 200 lightyears in width. The thickness of the galaxy was around 1,000 and Star Force’s mapping expeditions hadn’t even come close to either the upper or lower boundary. The sheer volume of the region the Skarrons apparently held was mild boggling, making the lizards’ territory look inconsequential in comparison.

The trailblazers knew there was no way the Skarrons controlled even 1/100th of the systems in that area, given the density of the Sagittarius arm, which this Skarron’s memories confirmed, but it left them as the big dogs over a very wide expanse…whom Star Force had just attracted the attention of, first by aiding the Protovic, and now by rebuffing their first strike.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. The Skarrons didn’t matter, as ridiculous as that sounded, and after several confirmations were made Aaron slid off the table, breaking his Ikrid link with both the Skarron and Randy, and hurried out into the hallway.

Randy followed him out, seeing his friend leaning his head against the wall and taking some long breaths. He, on the other hand, was still numb inside, but Aaron’s obvious emotion was eating away at his constraints. Slowly the dread filled him, along with a wave of helplessness that he immediately clamped down on as he punched the wall in frustration.

“So much for them being dead,” Aaron commented.

“We knew they weren’t,” Randy said, turning and leaning his back against the wall as he looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “It feels like day 1 all over again.”

“When Davis told us?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too,” Aaron agreed. “Now that we’ve got some context to work with, I don’t think I fully understood how screwed we are.”

“If they find us,” Randy countered. “But yeah, I know.”

“What are we going to do?”

“About the Skarrons or the V’kit’no’sat?”

“Both.”

“I don’t know…play for time.”

“We’re fighting on three fronts now,” Aaron reminded him. “And we don’t have the ships to do much more unless we strip the Core Region.”

“I know. The Kiritak resource base was the first piece in the puzzle, but who knows how much that’s been damaged. Even when we rebuild, who knows when and where the Skarrons are going to hit us next.”

“We need a game plan,” Aaron insisted. “Our current playbook just became outdated.”

“How much attention do you think this has earned us?”

“If Dan follows up and boots the Skarrons out of the rest of our systems, I doubt they’ll ignore it. Question is how many fleets they’re willing to devote to this frontier campaign. Long term, I think they’ll come for us. I got the feeling from that one that the Skarrons don’t take well to losing.”

“Who does?”

“They’re coming,” Aaron insisted. “Just a matter of when, where, and how many of them.”

“Still feel like hitting them back?”

“No…yes.”

“Well that helps, though I’m feeling the same way.”

“No, I mean we need time to build. Hitting them back, even if we could find one of their worlds, would just spur a quicker reaction.”

“Agreed.”

“But we do know where they are now, and with the relief fleet we’ve got way more ships here than we’ll need to defend the system…I hope.”

“Happy hunting,” Randy said, a bit envious.

Aaron looked at him. “You’re ok with this?”

“If we’re going to survive we need allies. The Protovic fleet can’t handle their walkers once they get to ground, but we can. We save them they help us, if by only remaining another target for the Skarrons to go after. And it offers us some payback.”

“Tell me how many ships you need, and don’t skimp. I’ll take what’s left and head out tomorrow.”

Randy nodded in full agreement, then pushed off from the wall and headed down the hallway. “Let’s start running the numbers.”

5

September 27, 2467

Prolio System

HTC

When Jason returned to his quarters onboard the seda orbiting the Star Force Calavari planet post workout, he checked the comm grid to see what had come through the relay system over the past 9 hours. There were several message packets from Sol and Epsilon Eridani, as was usual, for they pumped out status updates through the grid multiple times per day, but a few others had come in from other systems, including a priority update on the trailblazer-only boards. The title of which read:

V’KIT’NO’SAT LOCATED

Jason opened it immediately and poured through the update from Randy concerning what information he and Aaron had gotten from a Skarron prisoner.

He took a moment to sit quietly and think upon finishing the reading, something Jason rarely did. Normally his mind was working multiple threads simultaneously, with him flipping back and forth between them like he was changing channels on a vid screen. Right now there was no changing, nor planning, nor reacting. He just soaked it in, letting the truth of the extremely limited intel reawaken old memories with a new light to shine on them.

For over 400 years Star Force had been building towards a defense against an enemy they’d never encountered, nor heard of from any source other than the pyramid…and the dragon, whose knowledge predated Earth’s abandonment.

He’d never doubted they were still out there, nor had any of the others, but they’d been working on old intel, making guesses and essentially fighting against a ghost. But now it was all becoming very real, even with this whisper of their existence. Randy had said the Skarrons didn’t know them by name, but that he knew there was no other possibility. The V’kit’no’sat were there, their empire shrunken, but right where it was supposed to be.

And they were not weak. As scary as the revelations of the Skarrons’ true nature were, the fact that they wouldn’t touch the coreward side of their territory spoke volumes. The V’kit’no’sat were there, unaware of Earth’s existence, and given the amount of territory between here and there they were unlikely to find them anytime soon, but if word reached back to them of their existence he had no doubt they’d show up on their doorstep in the blink of an eye.

Randy’s report had included several questions about what to do in the future, both about the Skarrons and their true enemy. Questions like this were common, being posted to their private board and floated around for months, if not years, with them chiming in for a very lengthy back and forth as the updates were transmitted across the comm grid, but none had been more pointed than this latest one.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, and if we make too much noise the dinos take notice. What the hell do we do now?

Jason wasn’t the first to see the post, for six other trailblazers had already responded, with mixed ideas of how to work the problem, but it was the most recent post from Dakota-041 that was a moment of epiphany for Jason.

When we get hit our natural reaction is to hit back, but in this case we need to assess our goals, the first of which is not to attract the attention of the V’kit’no’sat until we’re ready to face them, which will be far into the future, if ever. We know we can kick the crap out of the Skarrons, lizards, and anyone else given enough time to unlock the tech in the pyramid, so time is on our side with them and we need to maximize it. Even as fast as the lizards are expanding, the key to beating them is our own advancement, and that’s where we need to put our focus.

In order to get the numbers we need to fight any and all of our growing list of enemies, we need to expand to new systems. We can turtle up in the Core Region and make use of less optimal sites or we can continue like we are and look for more prime worlds to colonize. Those worlds cannot bring us closer to the V’kit’no’sat, which means we need to establish a coreward line with the Beta Region colonies and go no further. Maybe even no more scouting expeditions in that direction.

Like the Dragon told us, the Rim is where the V’kit’no’sat cannot go, and that is where I think we have to build our powerbase. Earth is on the very edge of their own maps, and planets like Namek are already off their grid. That’s the direction we should be heading with our expansion, but we need to go further. Much further. Hit the highways and get out of the Orion Arm out to the real Rim, stretch our territory out from a sphere into a tendril, leaving the lizards and the Skarrons behind.

We don’t like to run, and I’m not advocating abandoning any of the systems we currently have, but if we’re going to put down firm roots we need to do it in a place of our own choosing, and that needs to be as far from the V’kit’no’sat as we can get. And if they do come looking for us, they can steal our maps from our allies, or even our own tech. We need a sleeper expansion plan, with a new map formed that won’t, can’t fall into enemy hands. Several actually, if you want to get bold.

I’m not sure when our gravity drive technology will get to the point where we can move that far out, but we need to find the highways before then and stake them out. Like Sara said that first day we were all together when Davis asked us what we could do…our only play is to run, and if we’re going to run we have to run far. Earth may be our home, but it will also be our grave if we keep thinking of it as our center. Forget the Skarrons. Defend Beta Region against them but don’t entertain the notion that we’re going to take them out down the road. To do that brings us too close to the V’kit’no’sat, and the effort might catch their attention by rumor alone.

We are Zen’zat. If word gets around we’re dead. If the V’kit’no’sat start branching out to colonize again we’re dead. The Rim is our only hope against them, so I say we keep that first and foremost in our planning as we fight this and every new enemy that pops up in the coming centuries.

I want to bust up the Skarrons too, and same goes for anyone that hits us, but we have to be smart about this and not slip into StarCraft mode, with us just throwing drone warships at them in a counterpunch mentality. We play to win or we don’t play, and we can’t beat the Skarrons because of their proximity to the V’kit’no’sat, so we have to play another game.

Same can be said for the lizards. Defending ourselves is one thing, but to take them out entirely, as much as we would like to one day, would bring too much attention to us. I suggest we start drawing lines and developing a defensive mentality, protecting our own and establishing a sanctuary region for our allies to flee into. We all know the Alliance will fail, the lizards have their number, but we can survive if we play it smart, and in this case I think less is more. Pick our spots and hold them while the lizards run wild elsewhere. We can’t contain them at our current strength level anyway, so we should stop thinking about it.

I want to kick the crap out of the bad guys as much as you, but we’re not operating out of a position of strength. We like to think that way, but Earth is a liability, and we need to start minimizing that sooner rather than later.

Dakota’s words were a gut check for Randy, but he couldn’t argue the logic. His natural reaction was to go after the Skarrons, but if that revealed their existence to the V’kit’no’sat it would be game over. They’d lived under that threat for so long Jason had started to get numb to it, and that was a mistake…one that Dakota was fortunately pointing out.

As large as Star Force’s territory was, spread over some 200 lightyears, it was a drop in the galactic bucket, which meant that it was possible to hide in plain sight if they didn’t push out any further and just became, as Dakota suggested, a safe haven against the lizards, Skarrons, and others rather than actively pushing back against them.

Paul had already developed that mentality with Namek and establishing a border with the lizards to keep them at bay. He was hitting them across that border to weaken them, but not to take systems. Their original plan had always been to cut into the heart of lizard territory when they were ready and break the back of their enemy, but maybe Dakota was right, and turtling up was the better call. The lizards would continue to expand, and the only way to stop them would be to wipe them out entirely, which was virtually impossible given their ability to ‘grow’ new colonies from a very small technological seed, much as they’d tried to do on Corneria all those years ago.

This was going to require a lot of careful thought, so Jason posted a few thoughts then composed a private message to Paul with a more lengthy exposition. They had a slightly different dialog between them than they shared with the others, and Jason wanted to get on the same page with him before making any suggestions to the rest of them.

Aaron and his fleet of 198 Warship-class jumpships arrived in Protovic territory, not in the Krichjan System, which Kip had already helped their allies retake, but in another of the Skarron-invaded systems, one in which the enemy had completely conquered a Protovic planet, overrunning and eradicating their army even as the naval battles continued above.

The Star Force fleet entered into orbit around Aranpria, one of two inhabited Protovic worlds in the system, and the one that they still possessed. The other was Vivak, now under full Skarron control. Both races had large fleets insystem, but thus far neither had been able to break through to their other’s holdings, creating an active stalemate.

The Protovic had been recalling more of their fleets from Calavari space to halt the advance of the Skarrons across more of their systems, but the Skarrons were coming in force, with reinforcements regularly arriving, making Protovic territory a hotbed of activity. The Skarrons wanted it badly, but the Protovic weren’t pushovers, and with their sizeable fleet keeping the Skarrons from landing on any new planets, the invasion had run into a standstill, which was to the enemy’s advantage as it gave them time to digest their holdings.

Star Force’s ability to slowly overcome their walkers had allowed the retaking of one system, but beyond that there was little hope of reclaiming the others. The Protovic were in damage control mode, unwilling to completely abandon their Calavari wards as they were still engaging Nestafar fleets coming their way.

The warship count around Aranpria was impossible to determine given that Aaron’s fleet was coming in on a single vector, but even with the back side blind to them, the Star Force sensors tagged in excess of 12,000 Protovic warships, along with twice that number of support or civilian vessels in orbit. How many more were elsewhere in the system was unknown, but the Protovic presence was a considerable one, especially given that this was one of their smaller systems.

Aaron’s sensors were picking up Skarron warships, but not in planetary orbit. They were clustered above Vivak in such numbers that they were visible even from interplanetary range.

“Incoming comm,” one of the bridge crew called out.

“Put it through here,” Aaron said from his bridge command chair.

“If you’re here to fight,” the holographic Protovic said as soon as it appeared, “then you’ve come to the right place.”

“That we have,” Aaron said in the trade language. “The Skarrons hit our territory as well, and we’re looking for some additional payback. Figured we’d start with the ones on your doorstep.”

“You repelled them?”

“Eventually, but we lost a lot of people waiting for reinforcements to arrive.”

“As have we. The Skarrons caught us off guard. Until they invaded we knew little about them, but they were well prepared for us. My fleet outmatches theirs, ship for ship, but I don’t have enough numbers to rid Vivak of their presence and secure this world. Are you aware of the situation?”

“Somewhat. We’re here to help however we can. I have warships and ground troops ready to deploy where applicable.”

“How many ships?” the Protovic asked, seeing the Star Force jumpships still dribbling into planetary orbit.

“Nearly 200 jumpships, each carrying a small fleet of their own. Our ships are smaller than the Skarrons, but I’ve got enough with me to hurt them. How many do they have at present?”

“They have a little over 6,000 line ships, but 232 juggernauts. I assume you’re familiar with the design?”

“We are.”

“Those numbers continue to fluctuate, with both incoming and outgoing ships, but they’ve maintained a fleet strong enough to decimate whatever I can throw at them while they secure their surface bases. Frankly, they’re digging in, and the longer they stay there the less likely we’ll be able to retake the planet. They’ve got surface missile batteries that will engage any warship in low orbit, similar to their larger walkers, and they’re building them in great numbers.”

“Does their fleet ever leave low orbit?”

“Only when they’ve tried to hit us here. We both make occasional raids against one another, but the bulk of their fleet stays where it can receive ground battery support.”

“What’s the condition of your people on the surface?”

“Most are dead by now. We have contact with a few holdouts, but every attempt to evacuate them has failed.”

“Missiles?”

“Yes. When clustered together they make for a potent anti-orbital defense.”

“What about something smaller?”

“They have starfighters on standby to intercept anything we send down fast enough to evade the missiles. They can’t catch our Valeries, but our transports are another matter.”

“Have you picked up anyone with the Valeries?”

“A handful, but the Skarrons adjusted their patrols to keep starfighters close at hand so they could intercept us when we try to land. As of now, we’re completely locked out of the surface of Vivak. I know you have formidable ground troops, in so far as your ability to take down their walkers, but I don’t see how you could get them to the surface intact.”

“Have they landed anything on Aranpria?”

“They tried before I got here, but the system defense fleet shot them down. They got a single walker deployed, but it was taken down after some effort. As of now Aranpria is fully Protovic.”

“And your shipyards?”

The commander sighed. “The bulk of those facilities were in orbit of Vivak. They’ve been destroyed, despite our efforts to hold them. As of now we have only three battle stations in high orbit around the planet that remain ours, and what they guard is not shipyards. The Skarrons haven’t seen fit to attack them yet.”

“What are they guarding?”

“Habitats and warehouses. The stations are largely missile boats to accommodate a defensive perimeter around the civilian apparatus. They’ll kill quite a few Skarron ships if they want to take them down, which is why I think they haven’t bothered.”

“Have the civilian stations been evacuated?”

“Yes, early on.”

“Then if you don’t mind, I think we’ll take up position there.”

“What do you plan to do?”

“Cause them trouble.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“I need time to study the situation, and if they’re reluctant to leave low orbit we’ll provide a bit of a distraction. If they come out to us they won’t have surface support. If they go after you here we can hit the planet.”

“How do you plan to get past their surface missiles?”

“We have orbital bombardment capability, recently tested against Skarron walkers.”

“What type of weapons?”

“Kinetic.”

“Any damage you can do to the enemy will be greatly appreciated, but I would prefer if you consulted with me before launching any assault so that we can make the most of any subsidiary opportunities that arise.”

Aaron nodded. “This is still your turf, we’re just here to help where we can.”

“For that you have my, and our, thanks. Is the rumor true that a portion of the Calavari have joined with you?”

“A small part, but yes.”

“Then we find ourselves in similar circumstances. None of our other allies have responded to our requests for support, and most have abandoned the Calavari as well. We’ve begun to question whether or not the Alliance continues to exist.”

“In this region, perhaps not, but in other areas of Calavari territory the Kvash and others are shielding some Calavari worlds, and I know there’s an Alliance fleet at their capitol, last I heard.”

“Our connection to the relay network has been severed, so news is slow in coming to us.”

“Several relays to the far side have been cut, but we still have a least one connection all the way through to the Bsidd. Though for how long that will last I do not know. I’ll pass along all Alliance updates my ships have onboard. And if you’ll return the gesture, I’d like to see what the Skarrons are up to across your territory.”

“Agreed. I wish I could answer that question myself, but their overall strategy is perplexing. They are continually sending small reinforcements to bolster their fleets and resupply their armies. We have not, to my knowledge, discovered their point of origin, but given the distances involved, large blocks of reinforcements would seem to make more logistical sense. Neither I nor our analysts can ascertain a feel for the enemy, making their future actions unpredictable.”

Aaron blew out a slow breath. “I may be able to help a bit in that regard, but you’re not going to like what I have to tell you.”

6

November 3, 2467

Zanor System (Protovic territory)

Erentia

Kip ran through the undercity, crossing from section to section unsure of where he was going aside from a general heading on his battlemap. He was the first Star Force member into this region, thus his helmet sensors were making the battlemap as he went and transmitting it out to any close enough to receive, though how much it would transmit down in the undercity was anyone’s guess.

His green armor clashed with the clean silver and neon yellows that predominated the subsurface architecture, but then again the dull grey armor worn by the Protovic soldiers following him was equally misplaced, but not so much as the Skarron infantry that had invaded the city.

Kip locked onto the mind of one ahead in an offshoot of the hallway and signaled to his right with an outstretched arm as he approached, throwing a Fornax blast its way and crumpling the Hobbit to the ground. He passed it by, but the Protovic following him turned the corner and took it out with a handful of plasma blasts, then ran to catch up to the Archon.

Kip continued forward, getting directional advice from Ren’san’do, who followed a couple of steps behind him. The Protovic had been his liaison ever since Eshwan, and had traveled with the Human across the planet and now to this Protovic system, having become a trusted friend, who in this case was keeping the trailblazer from getting lost in the claustrophobic, twisting undercity.

Up on the surface a few kilometers from this location Star Force mechs and Protovic tanks were taking down the remaining ‘smaller’ Skarron walkers after having taken down a Type-2 inside the city. Kip had been in a voltron for that, but he trusted his fellow Archons to handle the rest of the mechs while he and a lot of the higher ranking Clan leaders had taken to the city streets in conjunction with Protovic units.

It was a tactic they’d developed during the latter days on Eshwan, coupling the psionic capability of a single Archon with the tactical unit savvy of the Protovic’s special forces. While their regular infantry was spread out across both the surface and undercity engaging/defending against the Skarrons, the Archon lead teams were punching holes in the strongest infantry defenses, with Kip’s rifle spending most of its time on his back rack. He was acting as spotter and disabler, letting the Protovic lay down the firepower…a combination that worked well, if you had an Archon powerful enough to sustain the effort.

There were all of four rangers in Protovic territory, meaning that acolytes had to be relied upon to lead most of these special teams. Already the Protovic had noticed a clear difference between the two, with the most elite alien commandos being assigned to Kip, not only to assist him with tearing through the Skarrons, but to protect their allied commander, who unlike the Protovic commanders preferred to be on the front lines rather than leading from midfield.

Ren’san’do had been adamant about keeping Kip safe, which was why he’d suggested going through the undercity where the enemy couldn’t use its walkers against him. The Protovic didn’t doubt the Human’s skills, which he grew more envious of by the month, but rather he knew that for the sake of his own people he needed to keep Kip alive because of his skills, which were irreplaceable.

That and he was also a friend, which was why Ren’san’do had insisted that he travel with Kip’s team, even though his own combat skills were nowhere near special forces level. He was acting as Kip’s guide and comm officer for when he needed to converse with the Protovic army, a relationship that they’d long ago polished to an efficient combination.

The Protovic stood a few inches taller than Kip, but otherwise they appeared identical…in their armor anyway. Outside it they appeared very different, with Ren’san’do being the equivalent of a walking glow lamp. His eyes especially set them apart, with the Protovic’s neon purple orbs giving him a Thrawn-esk aura.

But inside their armor he and the others appeared Human, though on average they were faster and stronger…but not as agile. They were strong and thin, but didn’t reverse direction very well, making them good in straight line attacks but ill-equipped for mixing it up at close range. Give them an opening and they’d run right over you, for their military philosophy had been predicated on maximizing their strengths, which meant that if Kip could disrupt the enemy infantry, even slightly, the Protovic behind him would finish the job in one lightning fast strike…and that kept the unit almost always on the run.

Kip didn’t have to slow down much for them to keep pace, though he did have to make sure Ren’san’do had enough breath to be able to give him directions. Their target destination was a primary power station for the city that the Skarrons had taken, but not destroyed, which was odd, for they usually ransacked everything. They had restricted the power flow to certain areas, all of which they already controlled. Kip’s unit had transitioned out of the dark areas and into the lit regions of the undercity a while ago, which coincided with them running into their defensive lines.

Or expansion teams. It was hard to tell the difference with the Skarrons, for they always seemed to be on the move. The up side of that was they weren’t in the habit of establishing strongpoints…the downside was they always seemed to have units nearby to reposition and flood troops against incursions.

And Kip was the psionic arrowhead that was going to get the Protovic through that mess of enemy infantry.

“Down left, then sharp right,” Ren’san’do said through his comm link with Kip, then he followed the Archon down a steep ramp and around a corner into a curvy hall, seeing a hand signal from the Human that caused him and the other Protovic to slow up. There was a thick enemy group ahead and Kip was going to use his area of effect attack, meaning they had to let him get far enough ahead or their presence would limit his range.

Kip disappeared around a curve, then Ren’san’do let the other Protovic ease in front of him just before they ran into a mess of the Skarrons’ smaller infantry…all lying on the floor, along with their weapons, which most of them had dropped as Kip ran through them and across the reception area to a set of wide doors that he was disappearing into.

The Protovic special forces made short work of the 30+ Hobbits, with Ren’san’do never having to stop running, though he did have to hop over a couple of bodies on the way to the doors that Kip had gone out. When he got to them his comm activated, causing him to slow his pace again.

“Large infestation with Skarrons. Move to flank on entry,” the Human said.

Ren’san’do steadied himself, grasping his plasma rifle tightly as he fell to the back of the formation that included 26 Protovic. On the other side of the doors lay a ‘parking garage’ for the undercity streets, meaning a wide open area large enough for the enemy’s prime infantry. He didn’t know what he was going to see on the other side, but once he moved through the short hallway connection and the armored suits in front of him split to either side, his eye line was opened to a mass of Skarrons below them several meters and spread out across one of their nesting sites.

Blue plasma orbs flashed into the middle from the edges as larger white orbs in lesser number shot back out, with a single line of blue coming from Kip’s Star Force plasma rifle…which was nearly dead center in the middle of the Skarron formation. All around him Skarrons were down on the ground, twitching and kicking and temporarily out of the fight, with the Human shooting them while dancing around avoiding most of the shots of the others outside his psionic range.

Ren’san’do fired his own rifle over a railing as he dropped to a knee for cover behind it, shooting at one of the innermost Skarrons focusing on Kip as the other Protovic worked from the outside in. His friend was drawing a lot of attention his way, but Ren’san’do worried if it was too much, for several direct hits were absorbed by his shields. They were a bit more resilient than the ones that the Protovic suits had, but the Skarrons’ rifles were much larger as well, with each hit landing the equivalent of a small cannon’s worth of plasma on the target.

He needn’t have worried, for the Human used the bodies of the Skarrons he’d just killed as cover, giving his shields time to recharge in between hits, all the while the Protovic were massing fire on the unarmored and unshielded Skarrons. After several intense minutes the fighting was over, with Ren’san’do following Kip across to the far side and directing him to the next junction as they did a quick injury count.

They hadn’t lost anyone, but two Protovic had lost shields and gotten toasted inside their armor, which now had shiny, smooth patches where it had melted upon contact with the plasma. One of them was still fit to fight, but the other one was sent back the way they’d come, unable to keep up with the group due to painful burns beneath the affected material.

Kip didn’t wait around more than a few seconds, letting the Protovic worry about organizing themselves. Ren’san’do followed him out with the other 24 Protovic dropping into a 2x2 formation and following the Archon forward as he lead them further into enemy held territory.

“How’s it look?” Kip asked Ren’san’do several hours later once they were inside the power station’s control room.

“They’re siphoning off power, to where I can’t say, but the breach is occurring here,” he said, pointing to a diagnostics map of the facility that ran both above and below ground like a giant carrot growing in the dirt.

“Do we have any intel on what’s over there?”

“None that I’ve been given, but whatever they’re drawing power for is going lights out in a few seconds.”

“Good.”

Ren’san’do hesitated a moment, looking down at the control board, then turned to look at Kip on his left. “Movement on the perimeter.”

“On it,” Kip said as he ran off to join the rest of the Protovic in the defense of the control room.

Ren’san’do let him go and focused on the power controls, selecting certain regions of the surrounding city to black out in order to deny the Skarrons the power they’d been stealing. While there was a redundancy in the systems, the drain was occurring on a main conduit from this station, and even if power flowed in from other generators to the blackout areas, this power tap should be eliminated…in theory. Ren’san’do wasn’t a Protovic tech, so his understanding of their infrastructure was limited to what the control board was telling him.

Working the problem as well as he could, he cut off power to the Skarron tap along with the chunks of the city also being fed by that line, then observed the results…seeing that several small areas didn’t receive transfer power.

Those areas would have emergency backups for minimal lighting and life support, if they weren’t exhausted already, by he had no way of knowing how many people were still in those areas. No Protovic, he hoped, but there was no way of knowing. If the power was completely gone from those areas, which was a very low possibility, then they’d be blacked out with the air going stale, though with the open passageways it shouldn’t lose all oxygen.

To the Protovic the dark wasn’t a problem, given that they produced their own light, but it would make them obvious targets to the Skarrons, creating major problems if they didn’t have armor or an envirosuit on. He hated not knowing who he was affecting, but disrupting the enemy seemed to be the smart play, so he left the power off to deny the Skarrons their tap…for whatever it was they were doing over there.

The next day Kip returned to orbit and boarded the Tassadar for some badly needed sleep and workouts, but when he got out of the atmosphere and got around to taking a look at what was in orbit he saw new contacts on the battlemap…Star Force contacts, in the form of a fleet of jumpships. He contacted Captain Shannist on his way up and got a quick rundown on the reinforcements Aaron had sent his way, along with the notification that he’d opened up a second Star Force front in Protovic territory against the Skarrons…along with the news that they’d invaded Star Force territory and had been repulsed, but at a cost.

That shocked Kip, who had no way of being notified other than by courier ship now that he was off the Star Force comm grid. He asked a few basic questions from the dropship, then waited until he got onboard so he could run through the data personally. He headed straight to his quarters, having the Captain shunt it there, intent on grabbing a badly needed shower and hitting the sack after doing some reading.

The jumpships weren’t warships, but troop carriers. Aaron’s message said that their fight against the Skarrons involved naval engagement and that even if they managed to whittle down the Skarron fleet to the point the Protovic could take them out, there was estimated to be very few Protovic remaining alive on the Skarron-captured world of Vivak. It was full of Skarron walkers and anti-orbital batteries, most of which Aaron assumed they’d be assaulting with orbital bombardment, so he’d sent Kip half of his ground troops so they could be put to better use than sitting on their ships training in simulators.

The number of ships Aaron had sent him nearly matched the force he already had on planet, underscoring just how serious the Skarron invasion had been, for the ships had come directly from Rotunna, excluding those left behind to secure the system. They would be a huge boon to the efforts here and he intended to put them to use immediately, which he sent a text note to Shannist via the comm terminal in his quarters regarding the initial deployment orders. Kip would get to the specifics in the morning after he’d crashed, ending his 8 day run of catnaps between ground ops.

Tired as he was, and with his recent warm shower pushing him even further into sleepiness, his adrenaline spike him back into full combat readiness when he read the intel report passed along from Aaron and Randy regarding the Skarrons’ knowledge of the V’kit’no’sat’s current location…not to mention the little side detail about the true size of the Skarron empire.

“Damn it,” he whisper swore, reading through the rest of the sketchy intel from the Skarron prisoner and then the two trailblazers’ input on the strategic situation. Kip had been fighting the Skarrons more than any other Human, and he had a good sense of their strength, which was superior to Star Force in a number of areas, namely the size of their walkers and warships…and everything else.

But Star Force had a weapons tech advantage, and with care could beat the Skarrons 2 to 1, maybe 3 to 1 on the naval front without any fancy strategy, just basic hit and withdrawal to range forcing a mostly long ranged engagement that would put Skarron lachars, which were stronger than the Star Force version, by far, against Star Force lachars and cleansing beams. The cleansing beams were the superior weapon, hands down, and that advantage alone gave them naval superiority.

Plasma versus maulers was also a Star Force advantage, but Skarron naval missiles beat anything Star Force current fielded…though their interceptors could shoot down the missiles with great efficiency so long as they had enough of them. Gravity drives were also a Star Force advantage, for their binary nature, though intel from the Protovic had suggested the Skarrons’ movement speed between star systems was superior to anything they possessed, and based on the numbers Kip agreed it was better than theirs as well, but insystem that largely didn’t matter, for all jumps were micro-jumps, and being able to jump by pulling against a gravity well in addition to pushing was a major tactical advantage.

The Protovic had some advantages over the Skarrons as well, primary in infantry engagements, but also in naval, though their superiority edge wasn’t as great. They had numbers, in terms of warships, that Star Force couldn’t hope to match, which meant the Skarrons were having to engage them with forces far larger than they’d hit Rotunna with, but now that he had a glimmer of the size of the Skarron empire he knew that eventually they’d send enough ships to overwhelm the Protovic…unless this theatre didn’t rate high enough on their priority chain, and the fact that the Skarrons were pushing hard to expand suggested otherwise.

Meaning that this theatre was the shark bump…the test to see how much resistance the Protovic could put up. So far they were holding the Skarrons at bay, though they’d already taken several systems. Eventually the Skarrons would bring in more ships, if they had them nearby, and according to Aaron and Randy’s report they were using the galactic ‘highways’ to travel at great speed throughout their own territory, including a jumpline that brought them out towards Beta Region, though they didn’t know the exact location.

Those ‘highways’ were black hole to black hole jumps over great distance. If you could find such a route that was clear of debris you could achieve insane speeds, even with the most basic of gravity drives, given that their pushing power was based off both the strength of their engines and the strength of the gravity well…with black holes massing far more than any star.

There were no available black hole lines within Star Force territory…not that they knew of, though it was possible that there could be one passing through from one side to the other, for such jumps usually covered hundreds if not thousands of lightyears. If the Skarrons had access to several of these, it would allow them to pull troops and ships from across a wide area, and that meant that if they wanted to hammer the Protovic, or Star Force, they could summon them up far quicker than standard star to star jumps would allow.

That meant they were both in trouble, and Kip’s crashing session in his bunk was delayed for several hours as he worked through the strategic situation, unable to put his mind to rest before he weighed their options…which resulted in him sending out a courier ship with a message for the rest of the trailblazers, which was then deposited into the nearest Star Force relay the ship came across.

7

November 18, 2467

Lonigan System (Epsilon Region)

Outreach

Yori-007 eyes widened as he heard the pithy news update. “Where are they?” he demanded icily.

“Inner edge of the Sagittarius Arm,” Steve-004 told him across the holo comm.

“Gives us some breathing room,” Yori told his old team leader. “And explains why they haven’t discovered us to date.”

“There’s more,” Steve prefaced. “Get your butt groundside and I’ll fill you in.”

“On my way,” Yori said, cutting the comm and standing up from his bridge command chair. “Captain, find us a nice parking spot. I’m heading to ground. Suck some fuel and supplies and I’ll get back to you on the crew rotations.”

“Who are the Ve’kat’no’set?” Emberle asked.

Yori stopped a few steps from his chair and glanced back over his shoulder at her. “Scary monsters that hopefully you will never need to worry about. Archon stuff.”

The Captain nodded, understanding what he meant by that last bit. There were a lot of things the Archons knew that others weren’t privileged to, and they had a habit of talking freely in front of the bridge crew, which meant some things she’d just have to squelch her curiosity on. That said, she never knew what was restricted information or not, and Yori had never minded her asking.

The Archon waved lazily as he turned and walked off the bridge at a good clip, heading straight for his warship’s hangar bay. He left the Goldeneye and his 5 jumpship mapping fleet in Emberle’s care and flew down to the planet’s surface via dropship, passing through the thick cloud layer to arrive in the clear lower atmosphere where Steve was building up Star Force’s stronghold in Epsilon Region, and from the look of things he’d been quite busy over the past 4 years that Yori had been off charting new jumplanes past where the V’kit’no’sat maps ended.

The small city Yori had left was now spread out to the horizon in all directions around the spaceport, though the truly massive buildings were still under construction, giving Outreach’s capitol a significant footprint, if not yet a high density. It was odd that Steve was taking that approach, but they were both 0s and he knew him well, which was why he pushed aside his curiosity until he saw the full blueprints, for his fellow trailblazer was always thinking long term when he built, which was why he’d taken on this mission.

While Yori had been scouting out new systems, Steve had been taking a chunk of supplies from the Kiritak colonies and using them to construct Outreach, the first of 6 planets in this system slated to be colonized. They were located some 98 lightyears from Sol, putting them well out in the middle of nowhere, which Steve was supposed to turn into ‘somewhere.’ Outreach was meant to be the focal point for opening up the entire region, with the other 5 planets insystem reserved for Clan expansion once Steve spearheaded the effort with a functioning mainline colony and defense fleet.

Epsilon Region had been well scouted out previously, with a lot of less than friendly races present, but none of the size or strength to worry about…at least not on a scale comparable to the lizards or the founding members of the Alliance. The strongest in the area were the Zenarks, who mostly kept to themselves, though their approximated size was half that of the original Calavari.

Their technology was limited, however, and they existed primary as an economic entity, with trade relations established with over a hundred local races. Star Force had established contact with them in that regard, making themselves known, but as of yet they hadn’t conducted any business with them. A conglomeration of smaller races in association with the Zenarks formed a unified defensive force that kept a lot of the nasty races at bay, stabilizing the lower portion of Epsilon, for the rest of it was highly lawless and if one wasn’t careful would end up a victim to the predatory races and pirate coalitions that roamed the area.

That was why Star Force needed a strongpoint to begin colonization, in addition to just common sense, and Steve had half the 8th fleet in the system guarding it while the local shipyards got established and began churning out drones that could be controlled from the surface. Normally those construction slips would be orbital, but as far as drone construction was concerned Steve had taken the unusual approach of having them constructed in surface yards that fell under the protection of the city defense shield…assuming he’d gotten one set up by now.

Yori studied the infrastructure from above as the dropship descended, curious as to what had been added since he was last here, but most of his thoughts lent themselves towards the V’kit’no’sat. For centuries the Archons had considered how to fight their ancient nemesis, and he was glad that they’d finally located them rather than the reverse being true, which would have quickly ended in their defeat and eradication.

When the trailblazer landed in the spaceport he took a mongoose through the city streets over to the command building, then hit an elevator up to Steve’s hideaway in the single ‘tall’ building on the planet, rising more than 2 miles up. The Outreach command center wasn’t at the top, but midway up in the thick of the narrowing tower that was capped with its own cleansing beam defense turret. In fact, the entire building had no windows, but was coated with armor plating, making it more of a military structure than a habitat.

Yori found Steve leaning over a planning table with a host of small holographic icons moving about an inch or two above the surface, and like normal, he was the only one in the private chamber, preferring to think things through in isolation rather than having a tech or administrative team around him.

“What’s the other stuff?” Yori asked, closing the door as he came in.

Steve stood up from his slight bend and turned around, sitting on the table and ‘squashing’ several holographic icons.

“Did you check the boards on the way down?”

Yori shook his head. “Not even the news updates.”

“Skarrons invaded the Protovic, Kip went in to help them with their oversized walkers. Skarrons didn’t like this and invaded four of our systems. Rotunna partially held up until reinforcements arrived, but Iverie, Ghanis, and Brenns all fell, with nearly total casualties. We’ve taken them back, but some 9 billion Kiritak are dead, and we lost 4822 Archons…not to mention Regulars and others.”

“Shit,” Yori said, his jaw dropping.

“That’s not the worst of it. Aaron took three fleets from Sol and went directly to Rotunna to back up Randy, while Dan gathered the Clans and everyone else he could and went to Iona, then branched out and retook the other three systems. Randy and Aaron took a few Skarron prisoners and did the replicator ‘hand in the head’ deal and found out their territory is massive…like huge.  They occupy a good chunk of the Sagittarius arm and are expanding spinward, anti-spinward, and rimward into the Orion Arm. Guess which way they’re not going?”

“That’s how you know where they are?”

“Yeah. The Skarrons didn’t mention them by name, and we haven’t worked out a translation program yet anyway, but there’s a force so powerful they won’t mess with it and keep a buffer zone between them and it at all times. Randy said it was the V’kit’no’sat and I’m not inclined to argue.”

“What’s the talk going around?”

“Skarrons are a big problem, but if we go super saiyan on them and kick their ass over the next millennia…”

“…it could draw the wrong attention.”

“Bingo. Plus we’ve still got the ‘small’ lizard problem rimward. Dakota has suggested that we start planning to run out to the rim and ignore the Skarrons beyond a battle line. The V’kit’no’sat are the real threat, and beating the Skarrons will mean nothing if we wake up the dinos in the process. What’s your take on that?”

Yori tapped his teeth with his fingernail as he thought. “Have you downloaded the map files yet?”

“I haven’t checked,” Steve said, sliding off the table and turning around to access the holographic controls. He dove into the city/planet’s database and checked the logs, seeing that they had in fact gotten a data transfer from Yori’s fleet. From there he went to the master galactic map, popping it up in holo between the two trailblazers as they bracketed the work table.

“I got pretty far out this time, thanks to a Leggal map I picked up enroute. There’s a black hole 329 lightyears out that links to three others, two of which go low on the galactic plane. The other slides high, but is more or less a straight shot out past lizard space. I wasn’t sure how accurate we could make the jump, but the probe we sent returned so I risked it. Smoothest jump I’ve ever made. The gravitational base width of the well considerably extends our line control. We only had to make a tweak enroute, and the destination gravity well was three times stronger.”

“How far?”

Yori highlighted the lengthy jumpline on the map, a straight shot through territory that otherwise would have meant dozens, if not over 100 ‘normal’ jumps. “946 lightyears.”

“Well that’s definitely a record.”

“For us. We passed upwards of 10000 ships on the way out, and they weren’t holding to the right side of the road rule either.”

“Any close calls?”

“A few until we drifted well off the jumpline. We did get passed by several, and at considerable speed.”

“Busy jumpline then,” Steve said, looking at the map and the region of new system data at the far end of the black hole link. “How long did it take?”

“Point to point was a little over 2 and a half months.”

“Faster than our relay network.”

“There’s room to expand out there, but if we’re really considering heading to the rim we’ll have to go a lot farther I’d imagine.”

“There’s been some debate surrounding that point, and it seems like if we are going to do this we’re going to do it in secret. No point in running from the V’kit’no’sat if they can steal a city and download our maps and find out where we’ve run to.”

“Good point,” Yori agreed.

“So some have suggested a handoff system with jumpships dedicated to a specific region so none will have the full map available. Another idea is keeping the rim maps exclusive to the ship Captains on a datachip so they won’t fall into enemy hands.”

“With a dead man self-destruct, I assume?”

“Yes. We’d also have to keep our allies in the dark.”

“Allies or allies?”

“We’d take Kiritak with us, for sure, but the others wouldn’t know where they went, and I don’t see a reason to take the Calavari, though in the extreme long term it might be useful.”

“So we’re doing this or just throwing ideas around?”

“Ideas for the moment, but if you know another option for staying clear of the V’kit’no’sat feel free to chime in…otherwise, we could use your thoughts on how difficult it will be to set up a chain of systems out to at least the next galactic arm.”

“Very difficult, but possible if we have enough time and no one with a bad attitude notices us. How’s our anti-bad guy technology progressing?”

“Still waiting on the Erruvium, but they’re getting closer,” Steve said, referencing the element that they would have to synthesize in order to produce a slew of next level technology, and developing the equipment to synthesize the ‘Arc’ elements was a milestone achievement that Star Force hadn’t yet gotten to yet, though the techs said they were getting close.

The elements in question contained corovon, but they weren’t C-type elements. They had the same number of protons as standard and C-type, but their subatomic configuration was altered away from a clump of particles into a ring or sphere with an empty inner section. This alignment allowed the somewhat unstable elements to access a slew of properties that produced exotic energies and accessed smaller constituent particles down into tier 3 and tier 4…with protons, neutrons, and corovon occupying tier 1, which contained the largest subatomic particles.

Yori shook his head. “Without the badass tech we’re not going to be able to get anywhere near the rim and keep our territory linked. Best we could do is a splinter colony…which I do not like.”

“I agree, we need to stay in touch. Don’t want us spending millennia in between visits,” Steve half joked.

“I can see us securing territory out to the black hole link, or maybe another if we can locate one, but that barely scratches the surface with the speeds the V’kit’no’sat can manage. This might be a good idea in the long run, but right now it just isn’t feasible.”

“A few others echoed your sentiments, but most want to get started sooner rather than later, even if it is just baby steps.”

“And you?”

“Not sure yet. Either way we’re going to have to build up in Epsilon and that’s where my focus is right now.”

“Only to abandon it later?”

“That’s not clear yet. I see no reason to abandon systems because the V’kit’no’sat might find them, but I’d really hate not to have a backdoor to run out of if and when they show up.”

“Then you might want to start your own secure network of bases off the regular map out here. Sometimes hiding in plain sight is the best bet.”

Steve stared at him. “Now that’s something that hasn’t come up yet, and I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. Canderous especially.”

That suggestion spurred another thought in Yori, which was how trailblazer to trailblazer conversations usually went down.

“Public map system, with secure networks overlapped, maybe even in the same systems…outer edge sedas?”

“Damn, why didn’t one of us come up with this sooner,” Steve said, lightly thumping a fist on the table and passing it through several thousand holographic stars. “It’d keep the V’kit’no’sat, Skarrons, and anyone else in the dark as to where we had our infrastructure. We’re pretty sure they knew where our Kiritak colonies were because that’s public knowledge. They haven’t done any scouting as far as we know.”

“Pretty hard to rule that out.”

“They hit us across a wide region, so they knew where to go. And given the short timespan between our involvement with the Protovic and when they hit us…”

“Point taken.”

“The mainline fleets would be more useful if they didn’t have to guard all our systems, and up until now we’ve been working off an upfront policy.”

“Keep it secret, keep it safe?” Yori asked, quoting ‘The Lord of the Rings.’

“Exactly. Why have we been so stupid?”

“Because it’s not easy to hide a planet. If some cargo ship comes through and sees you’re there word will spread.”

“So we go Rebel Alliance and build underground or in out of the way locations?”

“Canderous can easy enough, but we’ll have to choose worlds that are less than appealing.”

“We have before, we’ve just gotten picky as of late.”

“It’s those choice worlds that are of the most value,” Yori reminded him. “And if we have any large populations, how are we going to hide the jumpship traffic?”

“Back to self-sufficient rules?”

“When we need to build as fast as possible, not so sure that’s a good idea.”

Steve nodded. “You’re right. Still, there are a lot of permutations to go through. Let’s write this up and get it out on the grid and see what the others come up with. You sticking around for a while or heading back out?”

“I was going to head back out, but given the current circumstances I want to stay in contact for a while. Stars can be mapped later, and I need to change out crews anyway. They need some planetside gravity.”

“Good,” Steve said, opening up a writing prompt on the table. “I could use someone to spar with that can keep up with me, more or less,” he said, throwing the trailblazer a sarcastic grin.

Yori returned it. “Challenge accepted.”

8

December 25, 2467

Hammer System (Core Region)

Ironhold

Cora-005 aimed the arms of her Morpheus-class mech using the harness control system in the cockpit and triggered two low powered laser shots that hit the moving target sled that stood twice as high as her mech. The sled hovered over the ground with only a few meters of clearance and returned fire with its own lasers, shooting up the chest of the morpheus and causing her to twist to the right and bring the vulnerable area out of the firing line.

That didn’t keep her from getting another shot off as she accelerated up into a run that took her parallel to the sled and around the narrower back end, but several of the sled’s turrets were continuing to track and rack up simulated damage on her prototype mech.

“Hurry it up, Kenny,” she said to the other Archon behind her in the oversized cockpit. “I can’t keep us in play for long.”

Even as she said the words she hit and knocked out one of the turrets on the sled…which drew even more attention towards them as the five mechs in her star assaulted the moving target.

“Working on it,” Kenny-927 said as he sat in a stationary control chair about two feet behind her harnessed, moving body. It was a tight arrangement, but still gave the pilot full range of motion without fearing hitting the coordinator in his/her seat. Using an unusual control board the secondary Archon was remotely controlling the other four mechs in the star, two of which were brawlers, along with a starfire and boxer.

The other mechs were also prototypes, designed without cockpits and working like the drone warships the navy used. The increased internal space allowed more armor and weapons to be carried, as well as opening up new tactics given that there wasn’t a living pilot inside to jeopardize. The downside was, in this arrangement, that you only had to take out one mech, the morpheus, in order to disable the other four…more or less.

They could be programmed for autonomous battle, say by linking them to a target like the sled and telling them to attack until it was no longer returning fire or showing movement. If there were other units in the area they could take over control of them, but in this exercise there was only the one control mech, meaning that Cora had to keep them moving and intact while Kenny coordinated the rest of the star.

“Work faster,” the trailblazer said, reversing direction and ducking behind one of the brawlers, though the top of the mech still showed above the standard height mauler. Because the morpheus was more valuable, as well as carrying two personnel, it had been built oversized with a heap of armor…but not enough to make it a walking turret. That was the goal that Cora had set when Clan Scorpion had begun developing the mech, and now she had the responsibility of making it work on the practice field, else they’d have to do a third redesign, which was something she was hoping to avoid.

The sled was programmed to attack the highest threat profiles, so it wasn’t going strictly for the Morpheus, but in order to beat it the five mechs had to rotate their attacks and recharge their shields, meaning that Cora had to bring the morpheus in and mix it up with the sled rather than standing back and coordinating…something she wasn’t going to do anyway. The purpose of the morpheus was to fight while carrying the coordinator rather than being the coordinator, which ran a fine line between combatant and VIP.

Cora let the brawler in front of her block several of the shots coming in at her flank and torso while raising the mech’s arms up high enough to shoot over the shorter mech. Her weapons were simulated plasma streamers set to pulse for .7 seconds with each trigger pull while suffering through a 2.4 second recharge period, with the optional setting of switching to orb fire and plastering targets with an unlimited stream of plasma shots.

The brawler was tagged with maulers, which gave it its name, for all of its weaponry was short range and its armor and shields matched. It was designed to take a pounding and dish it back out in close combat, which was why Cora didn’t mind taking cover behind it. Thought it was a smaller mech, its shields were slightly stronger than the morpheus’s, not to mention it carried thicker armor plates, given that it didn’t have a cockpit to accommodate in the design.

“Got a breach forming, port side,” Kenny said, with Cora running around to the other side of the sled as it continued to glide across the grassy plain that was one of the practice fields that Clan Scorpion had on the planet. Ironhold had a varied climate, much like Earth’s, and it gave her Clan a wide variety of landscapes to practice its specialty mechwarrior skills on, along with developing new tactics and technology, to which Cora devoted most of her time in addition to training younger mechwarriors from the mainline units, Clans, Canderous, Calavari, and even a few Australians.

Ironhold was the place to go to learn the art of mech combat, and Cora reigned supreme as the Queen of Mechs, despite some fierce competition in that department as far as individual skill levels went, but no one had such a comprehensive agenda as she and her Clan did, making her stand out above and beyond the others with more than 40 prototypes in the works at present, including an aquatics variant that she’d been trying to work out for more than a century, but had never quite got it to her liking.

The morpheus was progressing better, and she knew the twin cockpit idea would work, but it wasn’t going to be a one size fits all tactic, due to the fact that it could be directly targeted. When and where to make use of it was going to be a judgement call, but like all things it was best to have options to work with, and this was one that Star Force needed badly, especially when engaging the Skarron walkers, who to date had made a mess of any mech units that dared to venture too close.

Heavy walkers were of less interest to her, and she allowed other mech specialist trailblazers to tinker with them. She was interested in the bipeds only, and was really liking the drone mechs for the compact power they carried. They were like disposable chess pieces that she could position around her, or hide behind, without having to worry about their ultimate fate. Something she’d never do with a living pilot.

Mark was doing the same thing with the aerial fighters, all the way out on Daka, but according to her information they were going to have to evacuate that planet soon, for the lizards were on the way and there was no way they were going to be able to hold out. Where Mark would end up she didn’t know, but most of the design aspects of the aerial division, if not industrial production, had been coming from Daka and the work Mark had been doing there, along with many alien influences. Losing that communal pilot training facility was a big hit to the Alliance, and it was just such an environment that Cora was trying to develop on Ironhold for the mech division, save her facilities were Star Force only.

“I see it,” Cora said, laying two plasma streamers onto the position her HUD tagged as armor damage on the sled. The starfire came around from the opposite direction and pointed four continuous lachars at the same spot and held their beams on target as if they were never ending Star Trek phasers. Both mechs received a lot of return fire, with the morpheus’s shields going down again, but Cora didn’t back off, instead she came in closer, walking two of the sled’s cannons out of alignment so they couldn’t track her mech.

The sled then pivoted, swinging itself around 180 degrees and Cora had to dance the morpheus back so as not to get knocked over. She dove the mech forward so an impact wouldn’t occur, coming down on the left elbow and running her feet around in a third of a circle to get her balance again. She tucked her knee up near the elbow and leveraged the tall mech back up, feeling its top heavy weight pull more than she liked…but then again anything heavier than a neo she didn’t like, and with the larger cockpit the morpheus was never going to meet up to those expectations.

As the sled spun around it opened itself up to the boxer, which unleashed a pointblank torrent of missiles from the four boxes on its shoulders that gave it its name, in addition to two plasma cannons in the tiny arms. 80 tiny simulated, self-guiding projectiles leapt out together, in perfect synchronicity, and rammed into the armor breach.

Two seconds later the computer tagged the sled as dead, even though in real life it continued to hover above the ground unaffected.

“Challenge completed,” Kenny said in case Cora didn’t see the readouts, busy as she was running the mech around, literally.

“How’d we do?”

“Yellow on brawler 2 and us,” he said, referencing the level of armor penetration. “All others showing green.”

“Crap,” Cora said, bringing the morpheus to a standstill. “I was hoping we’d kept one in the blue.”

“Negative.”

“Set it up again, we have to do better,” she said, with ‘blue’ meaning no armor damage. The key to winning most battles was unit longevity, and the point of the coordinator controlling the star was to overlap strengths and defend weaknesses, taking down the sled in this case without any hull damage. Shields didn’t matter, for they could be regenerated, but armor couldn’t be replaced outside of a mobile field base or mech bay.

“Resetting,” Kenny said. “Any suggestions?”

“Try having the boxers and starfire lead the brawlers up, then keep them hammering at the door. I’ll work us in.”

“Worth a shot,” Kenny agreed. “Return to start point,” he told her as he remotely sent the sled back as well.

The pair of Archons kept at it for another 3 hours, eventually ending up with two blue as their best result. Their exercise data would be analyzed by teams of techs and mechwarriors over the coming days, and more often than not they’d come up with suggestions for new tactics or equipment upgrades. Such was the work of developing prototypes, as Cora had learned long ago back in Atlantis when they’d just been trying to get a machine to walk and pivot around a corner without falling over. They’d come a long way since then, but the process for making further advancements was remarkably the same.

After getting in two hours of physical training Cora hit the cafeteria and filled up before heading back to her quarters and checking the message boards before bed, intent on getting an early start working with another prototype in the morning, this one a shield mech tagged as Umbrella-class, but when she saw the most recent message posting from Kip her thoughts about tomorrow disappeared while reading her fellow trailblazer’s bold suggestion.

Bold, but incredibly insightful. Some of the others had added suggestions and Cora did the same, throwing out the possibility of including the remote mech technology if/when she got it working to her satisfaction, then sending it off through the comm grid for the others to chew on. She’d check again tomorrow and every day that came, with the responses from the others coming in gradually as they were shifted back and forth across dozens of lightyears. It was a bit of a chaotic and nonlinear method of discussing things as a group, but it worked.

On top of that, they usually knew what each other were thinking anyway, thus there wasn’t much clarification required when someone posted a suggestion, just amendments that made it better as the various proposals were passed around, with Kip’s being the same.

Greg was resupplying his fleet at Namek when he got the message updates all at once, having been out of relay range for several months hunting lizards and messing up their nearby systems as much as possible to keep them from encroaching on Star Force’s territory. The more they let them build the worse the situation would get, so Greg, Sara, Paul, and others were going out regularly to cause as much trouble as they could.

The location of the V’kit’no’sat was a shock, but something that had been a long time in coming. The plan floating around to eventually head for the Rim seemed like nonsense at first glance to Greg, but the more he read through the various rationales and permutations he realized that they weren’t planning on abandoning Earth and everything they’d built up to date, only adding to it so in the case that it fell they’d have somewhere to pull back to…but the Rim was far from here and the idea of stretching a tendril of their territory all the way out to even the nearest part of it was, well, ambitious to say the least.

The more immediate suggestion laid down by Kip and amended by others involved giving technology to the Protovic in order to strengthen them against the Skarrons. Normally that was something that Star Force wouldn’t do, for unless they were a part of the ‘family’ they weren’t going to trust other races, not even their allies, to the point of giving them weapons they could turn around and use against them later on. However, in this case they were going to get destroyed by the Skarrons anyway, and the idea of strengthening them really didn’t have a foreseeable downside, given the revelations about how large Skarron territory really was.

One of the additions to that idea involved the Hycre, and Greg agreed that they needed them to be as strong as possible against the lizards, and giving them cleansing beams would be a significant boon against their enemy, as well as the idea Cora posted about giving them remotely controlled mechs so they could actually engage in ground campaigns…or at least give them enough so they could learn to build them themselves. A low flying naval ship could act as the controller, and suddenly they’d have a means to strike at the lizards in a way they’d never been able to before.

Greg didn’t know if they’d want it, for they hadn’t developed any technology in that regard as far as he knew, but then again when the Hycre didn’t have legs or anything even remotely like them, the idea of them building walkers was a bit absurd, so maybe it was just a psychological blind spot. The idea definitely had merit, and Greg gave it his blessing with a note to Cora ‘if she ever got them working.’

He didn’t doubt that she would, but he wanted to take the opportunity to annoy her a bit, for she’d been promising working units for some time now and hadn’t been able to deliver quite as fast as she’d expected.

It was the suggestion of a secure network of colonies that caught Greg’s eye the most, and he immediately volunteered his Clan Firestorm to begin setting up a network of outposts in Alpha Region, seeing that several other trailblazers had done likewise in other Regions or in general. Setting up full-fledged colonies was over the top, given their current expansion projects already under way, but setting up small test bases and seeing if they could successfully stay ‘off the grid’ was worthwhile. If successful they could gradually enlarge those outposts into whatever facilities they needed, and the gradual construction timeline wouldn’t draw the attention that a massive construction project normally would.

Greg brought up a map of Alpha Region and immediately began picking systems to scout out, knowing that the others would take care of the batch of suggestions afloat. If/when the lizards came at them hard in Alpha, they might need a secondary route from the Core out to Namek, and by secondary Greg meant none of the existing and well established cargo routes that saw regular Star Force jumpship traffic.

No, he’d need to set up inefficient ones that would have his people travelling extra lightyears to stay off the ‘beaten path.’ The trick would be to work out a system for resupply that wouldn’t lead others directly to your secret base, and he immediately thought of a deep system rendezvous. They had binary drives, so they could jump into a system then microjump out to the edge and pull back against the star to come to a point that wasn’t located on a gravity well.

He could put a seda or other station there, or rather just leave it a set of coordinates for drops or transfers…though drops would be kind of risky, but doable if it was cargo only. Other ships within the system would meet at the rendezvous point and take the cargo back to their base sites while the delivering jumpship never contacted the base in question.

Yes, that was workable…if the transfer ships were sensor stealthed. Reduce the range of enemy or even allied detection and you could dance your way around any snoopers enroute to hidden locations, on planet or not. And if one of your allies chose to backstab you like the Nestafar had, they wouldn’t know the location of every world you possessed.

The more Greg thought about this the more he liked the idea and was kicking himself for not thinking of it sooner. He wrote out a lengthy suggestion and sent it off to the other trailblazers, then began writing out orders for Clan Firestorm so they could begin assembling resources and research teams towards developing the equipment they’d need to sneak around. They’d share their findings with the others, and vice versa, but even if no one else wanted to pursue this Clan Firestorm would, because Greg saw an immense value in this strategy, even above and beyond the implications noted by the others.

9

March 22, 2468

Epsilon Eridani System

Babylon 1 Station

“Hello,” Dakota-041 said as he walked into the Hycre embassy, seeing one of several floating gasbags on the other side of a very thick transparent wall in their natural environment…extremely hot and loaded with sulfur dioxide. The translation software built into the room picked up his greeting and translated it into the Hycre’s language on the other side, prompting one of them to drift over in his direction using internal atriums as air jets for propulsion.

The Hycre reached out one of its six tentacles and tapped the ‘glass’ in greeting.

GOOD MORNING ARCHON, the computerized translation spoke back in a synthesized tone.

“I have a matter of great importance to discuss,” Dakota said, crossing his arms behind his back.

PROCEED.

“Have the lizards taken any of your worlds to date?”

THEY HAVE NOT, THOUGH THEY CONTINUALLY TRY.

“What is stopping them?”

THEY CAN DESTROY OUR DEFENSIVE FLEETS IF THEY COME IN SUFFICIENT NUMBERS. THEY CANNOT REACH US IN OUR WORLDS. THEIR PLASMA CANNOT PENETRATE THE ATMOSPHERE. WHEN THEY ATTEMPT TO ENTER WITH THEIR SHIPS THEY ARE EASILY DESTROYED. THEY ARE NOT ACCUSTOMED TO SUCH COMBAT.

“Are they improving?”

THEY ARE ALWAYS IMPROVING.

“Yes they are. How is the rest of the Alliance faring?”

DO YOU NOT RECEIVE THE SAME UPDATES WE DO?

“Yes, but we don’t have assets in the other regions. Your territory is spread far and thin. I assumed you know things that we do not.”

TO BE DEPRESSINGLY CANDID WE ARE LOSING. THE HYCRE CANNOT STOP THE LIZARD ADVANCE. THE ALLIANCE CANNOT STOP THE LIZARD ADVANCE. IN TIME YOUR WORLDS WILL FALL PREY TO THEM AS WELL. IT APPEARS UNAVOIDABLE AS THEY GAIN STRENGTH AND THE ALLIANCE WEAKENS. THE NESTAFAR BETRAYAL DOOMED US ALL.

Dakota raised an eyebrow. “That’s more candor than I anticipated, but we agree with your assessment of the Alliance. We do not agree on our fate. As you know our technology is advancing at a considerable rate. We believe that in time we will have enough of an edge to hold the lizards at bay.”

YOUR PROGRESSION IS REMARKABLE. BUT DO NOT ASSUME FUTURE ADVANCEMENTS. RESEARCH IS UNPREDICTABLE. YOU ALSO UNDERESTIMATE THE LIZARDS’ ADVANCEMENT RATE.

“No I don’t. We are well aware of how innovative they are, but we’re confident that we’ll outpace them technologically. What we do not have are their numbers, nor do we expect to be able to compete with them on that level. We had once hoped to be able to defeat the lizards, and had planned an assault on their core systems, but that now appears untenable given how far they’ve spread and how long it will be until we’re strong enough to attempt doing so.”

“We know they have additional technology that they haven’t revealed to us yet, as we shared with you previously, so how we match up with it is still a question mark, but overall we have already surpassed the lizards in several areas. We intend to stake out borders that we will defend, but not push beyond, creating a sanctuary for the Alliance and any other friendly race caught up by the lizard aggression. We are going to fortify this region as a fallback position for the Hycre and any others, but we are not ready yet.”

AMBITIOUS. I FEAR YOU ARE OVERESTIMATING YOUR ABILITIES AND UNDERESTIMATING THE ENEMY’S.

“As it stands now, I would agree, but we are building and building fast. Currently we’re holding the lizards at bay along our rimward border, but we both know they’re only playing with us. They’re holding back their main force for later. Even what they’re destroying the Calavari with isn’t their true strength.”

WE CONCUR.

“Most of your systems do not fall within the proposed sanctuary borders. Do I assume you will continue to defend them all, or do you already have contingency plans?”

WE WILL DEFEND. IF THERE IS A GRAND BATTLE PLAN, I HAVE NOT BEEN INFORMED OF IT.

“As I said, we need time to build and fortify this region, and we think you are the key to buying us that time.”

YOU HAVE A PROPOSAL?

“No, I have a gift,” Dakota said, holding up a data chip, then inserting it into a slot on the table behind him and transmitting it across the divide to the Hycre databanks. “These are the technical specifications to several items of advanced technology that we think will be of use to you. We are also offering tech support to help you convert the designs to your own technology, including the construction of prototypes. The stronger we can make you, the longer you will delay the lizard advance.”

EXPLAIN.

“We are giving you cleansing beam and mauler tech, two weapon systems that have proven effective against the lizards. They are both power hogs, but worth it when used correctly. The cleansing beam is a long range energy weapon. The mauler is a very destructive short range energy weapon that will also disrupt physical shield matrixes.”

I AM FAMILIAR WITH YOUR DESIGNS. THE LIZARDS NO LONGER EMPLOY PHYSICAL SHIELDS. THEY HAVE UPGRADED TO A HYBRID DESIGN.

“Yes, I know. But the cleansing beam will penetrate them with ease. Your military will confirm that from past joint operations.”

YOU BELIEVE THESE WEAPONS ARE SUPERIOR TO WHAT THE HYCRE CURRENTLY POSSESS?

“In their respective fields, yes. We are also including several new shield matrixes and armor variants. We believe that when this technology is incorporated with your own, your naval fleet will be far superior to the lizards. We are building ships as fast as we can, but we don’t have a tenth of your industrial output. You can put it to more immediate use than we can.”

“We are also offering you an option to use a prototype remotely controlled mech force. We’re still working out the basics, but in theory you could control an army of the machines from a nearby warship in orbit or the atmosphere, which would give you the ability to strike at lizard targets that you previously have been unable to. This project will take longer to implement, and would be a joint venture, given that we’re still developing it for our own uses.”

IS THIS GENEROSITY OR DESPERATION? YOU OFFER MUCH.

“It is a strategic decision on our part.”

WHAT DO YOU SEEK IN RETURN?

“You not dying as soon,” Dakota said bluntly.

OUR CONTINUED SURVIVAL IS YOUR GAIN.

“That and your expertise in naval combat. We’ve learned a lot from you and are interested in seeing how you put these new weapons to use. There is also the matter of the Skarrons, who are a far larger threat than the lizards, crazy as that sounds. Have you read the report we filed?”

I HAVE. IT IS LIKELY THAT THE PRISONER WAS EXAGGERATING.

Dakota shook his head. “No, he wasn’t.”

YOU CANNOT BE SURE OF THAT.

“I can’t, but the ones who interrogated him are, and I trust their judgement. They confirmed the intelligence.”

DO YOU HAVE A STAR CHART?

“No.”

THEN HOW HAVE YOU CONFIRMED THE ASSERTED SIZE OF THEIR TERRITORY?

“We’re willing to share technology with you, but some secrets we will keep.”

UNTIL WE SEE SUCH CONFIRMATION OUR SKEPTICISM WILL REMAIN.

“Understandable, but know that we are convinced and are being forced regardless to fight a war on two opposite fronts, and if you count the Nestafar/Calavari theatre that’s three. We need you to be as strong of a deterrent to lizard expansion along the rim of our territory as possible while we strengthen both the rim and coreward fronts.”

OTHER THAN BUILDING MORE SHIPS, HOW DO YOU DEFINE ‘STRENGTHENING?’

Dakota smirked. “We have quite a few projects in the works. Given enough time, it will become very difficult for the lizards to evict us from a system we’ve set up in, and they’ll burn through fleets of ships trying.”

3 months later…

“It’s here,” Kip said, clapping his friend on the shoulder as he walked up behind Ren’san’do in a Protovic command center in one of the contested cities on Erentia.

“What is?” the Protovic asked, with a few others glancing over at the Archon through their faceplates.

“A gift…I would have talked to you about it sooner, but I needed to get approval from the others first, and it came in along with a jumpship full of equipment and techs.”

“What do you mean?” the senior ranking Protovic in the room asked, walking over to the pair.

“Though it won’t make a difference immediately, Star Force is going to give you some tech upgrades to help you fight the Skarrons.”

The Protovic’s head tilted back slightly, but that was the only reaction Kip could see…though he could feel a sense of shock rippling through the commander and the rest of the aliens in the room, including Ren’san’do.

“It will take some time to alter our designs into tech compatible with your ships, which was why I’ve asked for techs to help you with the crossover. They’ve got equipment with them for you to study and are standing by to teach you everything you need to know to add our cleansing beams, maulers, and binary gravity drives to your fleet, along with some shield and armor options, though you’re pretty solid there already. That should give you a tactical advantage over the Skarron fleet, once you’re able to incorporate the weapon systems into your ships…but be warned, they’re power hogs.”

“What is it you’re asking in return?” the Protovic commander wondered.

“Kick the Skarrons’ collective ass,” Kip said, throwing a glance at Ren’san’do.

“You’re serious?” his friend asked.

“Yes,” Kip said, taking his helmet off. He put it on a nearby table and pointed at his nose. “See, this is my serious face.”

“Races don’t just give away tech freely,” the commander said, still in disbelief.

“Our race isn’t led by representatives, civilians, pacifists, or egotists,” Kip explained. “It’s led by warriors. Warriors that know the dangers of sharing weapons tech with others and the threat they could pose if turned around and used against us. We’re not worried about that happening with you. Our relationship is a new one, but it’s been forged in battle, and that has a tendency to cut through the crap and get straight to the truth.”

“We know we have to work together to push the Skarrons back from your territory and establish a firm boundary to defend,” Kip continued, doing a little mental digging to find the Protovic’s doubts and allay them. “To do that we need your larger fleet to be as strong as possible, and we figure if we give you the tools you’ll make good use of them…though I would recommend constructing cleansing beam towers in your cities to keep enemy walkers at bay, along with several other ground applications.”

“That…would be very useful,” Ren’san’do said, immensely grateful. “We hadn’t expected that sort of assistance…from anyone, let alone a lesser race. No offense.”

“Some taken,” Kip kidded with his friend as the other Protovic looked on with a mix of emotions, primary among which was eagerness…for most of them had seen the Star Force weapons in use and knew of their effectiveness. They were the only reason the Protovic were slowly taking planets back from the Skarrons, with Erentia being the second in a short list. The Protovic had returned from Calavari space in time to stop the invasion from rolling from system to system, but where their enemy had gotten to ground they’d dug in deep and the Humans were the only ones proven successful in getting them out, though they had to be paired with Protovic units to be effective, given their small numbers.

The commander took a couple of steps closer to Kip and removed his helmet as well, cracking the faceplate off and retracting the headpiece down into the neck, revealing a tattoo-like pattern of glowing patches on his face bracketed by nearly black scales over his head that formed a light exoskeleton that traveled down across his back, arms, and legs, though those weren’t visible through his suit.

He stared at Kip with his deep, radiant purple eyes, with the Archon staring back unflinchingly.

“You’re truly willing to give us your most advanced weapons, asking nothing in return aside from battling our common foe? Something we would do anyway out of self-preservation.”

“Yes I am. The strategic logic is favorable…to both of us.”

“You have said you are one of Star Force’s leaders. How high of rank do I have the privilege of addressing?”

“I am one of 100 senior commanders, all of whom share equal position. The others agreed with my suggestion and sent the jumpship back.”

“You are a Lord of your race, and yet you engage in the deepest of battles? Why do your subordinates let you take such a reckless risk?”

“In all our battles not one of us has been lost, so it’s not as great of a risk as you might think. That and if anyone tried to stop us we’d kick their ass. We’re the leaders because we’re the strongest.”

“And the oldest,” Ren’san’do added.

“The two go hand in hand for Archons, in most cases,” Kip explained. “And we belong where our skills will do the most good. We dislike sending weaker personnel in first as cannon fodder. We dislike it greatly.”

“And now you seek to strengthen us?”

“A warrior who does not seek greater strength is not a warrior,” Kip quoted.

“Forgive me,” the commander apologized, “but our opinion of your race has been small since our first encounter at the Alliance summit. You have been regarded as inconsequential until you came to our aid when the rest of the Alliance would not or could not. Now I am beginning to feel we are still underestimating you, perhaps because of your smaller population. I must ask, what are these special skills that some of you possess and have been aiding my special forces with?”

“Something that is not well known, even to all of my people,” Kip confided. “But on the battlefield such secrets are irrelevant. We call them psionics, and only our most advanced Archons possess them. As I and my brothers and sisters are the strongest, we possess the most, which is why it is essential that I assign myself to the integrated teams. No other Archon in this system matches my strength.”

“What are these psionics?”

“Biological energy weapons, more or less, the dynamics of which we are going to keep a secret.”

The commander nodded. “I do not begrudge you that, though I envy the rumors I’ve heard of their effectiveness.”

“I will admit,” Kip said, pointing to his nearby helmet and floating it slowly through the air and into his hands, “they are cool.”

“A biological tractor beam?” the Protovic said, amazed.

“More or less. We like to keep our full capabilities known to only us, but Ren’san’do has seen more of their use than any other Protovic, I’d wager,” he said, tapping his friend on his armored chest. “Most of the time I’m using the equivalent of mental white noise to temporarily disable enemy units. It’s quite effective when you have a Protovic team behind you to make the most of the opportunity. Your units are well organized and efficient. It’s a pity they’re not backed up by better mechanized forces. I hope our tech upgrades will help to counter than deficiency?”

“The Skarrons have imposed on us the need for such. I give you my word we will not squander your gift, nor the assistance you have provided us here.”

“The sooner our techs get to work the better,” Kip said, accepting his promise with a nod. “Where is your primary development facility?”

“Achion, at fleet headquarters.”

“With your permission I’ll send the jumpship there directly, though an escort or emissary would be appreciated.”

“Of course,” the commander said, “though we don’t have a jumpship available at the moment. If you’d be willing to travel at a slower speed I’m sure we can arrange for a ship from the defense fleet to accompany you.”

“With time being critical, it’s best not to waste even a few days. If you can have an emissary travel onboard, either in person or in a small vessel that my jumpship will carry, that will be sufficient. I just don’t want it to show up insystem unannounced, and I can’t go myself because I’m needed here.”

“I’ll go,” Ren’san’do volunteered.

“No, I need you here with me,” Kip insisted.

“I will arrange a small transport with representatives that will clear your jumpship through capitol protocols,” the commander promised, turning around and gesturing to one of the control room staff. “Get me a comm to the Sarnor.”

“They’re equipped with provisions to stay insystem as long as necessary to get your people up to speed,” Kip explained. “You’ll have to handle all production yourself. We’re offering the knowledge, not our own fabricated weapons.”

“We understand,” Ren’san’do said slowly, “and thank you, my friend.”

“You can thank us by killing Skarron ships. Right now, we’ve got more of their walkers to deal with. How are your people set up at the Gamma target?” Kip asked, getting back to the business at hand.

The Protovic were slower to make the transition, literally giddy with the news of the promised technology, but the trailblazer slowly pulled their focus back to the city and the ongoing ground war, getting them set up for an attack run on another Type-1.

10

July 8, 2468

Trantiss System (Lizard territory)

Ollsonat

Paul watched from the bridge of the Excalibur as the ship’s cleansing beam severed the last remaining lizard battleship along its midsection, hitting it almost squarely in the middle flank of its 2 kilometer long mass as it tried to flee, plagued by IDF-laden goo sticking to its shieldless hull. The tiny white beam virtually disappeared by the time it hit the ship, so distant as it was from the 15 mile wide behemoth of the command ship, but that didn’t matter when the concentrated nature of the beam could melt apart material on contact. Even a beam a millimeter wide would be sufficient in cutting a ship in half, and given that strength of the cleansing beam technology, that’s exactly what the Excalibur’s gunners had been trying for.

The remaining cruisers were already fleeing, or trying to. Some were caught up in IDF tug of wars with corvettes pinning them in place while the command ship blasted them apart, but most of the 320 ship defensive fleet around the lizard colony on Ollsonat had already been destroyed. Paul had brought the Excalibur in first, leaving his handful of Warship-class jumpships out in high orbit around the planet until he wanted them, knowing they’d make for too easy of targets in the beginning stages of the slugging match that was going to take place, and he wanted the command ship to take the full brunt of the lizard defensive effort.

As he’d learned months ago, the lizards’ standard fleet of cruisers was wholly unable to take on the might of his command ship, even when supported by lizard battleships. He had expected their new ship to be hard to kill, but its efficiency against the lizards surprised him. They literally couldn’t touch it without devoting insane numbers of ships…so long as the helmsman kept the giant donut moving around orbit to avoid lizard kamikaze jump attempts from below. Those they had tried early on, but Paul had seen them coming and kept the ship moving out of alignment, making it very difficult for them to set up a ramming trajectory at jump speed.

They’d then proceeded to try ramming collisions at slower speeds that did not require jump alignment. Those couldn’t be avoided, most of the time, but proactive weaponsfire took out most of the ships appearing to be setting up at enough distance to try for a ram…and those that just did so at the spur of the moment at close range couldn’t generate enough kinetic momentum to punch through the impressive array of shields the command ship could throw up.

The ship not only had multiple shields, but each shield had multiple matrix options, meaning it could tailor its defense against the weaponsfire hitting it. There were six stations on the bridge dedicated to shield control, meaning that while the rest of the warship battled the lizard fleets, those officers would be adjusting the defensive barriers to create strong points, alter the matrixes, cannibalize energy from intact matrixes and shunt it over to others, spot flood weak points with incoming energy while denying it to others, etc.

That gave the new Command Ship design far more defensive options than any other vessel in the Star Force fleet. Being a 15 mile wide mass gave one plenty of volume to put ‘extra’ tech into, and Paul and Jason hadn’t skimped on anything. In particular, the shield matrix that was designed specifically to defend against plasma weapons was proving to be the lizards’ bane, for virtually all their weaponry relied upon it, and thanks to Star Force having access to old lizard blueprints and tech, they knew the intricacies of the lizard plasma weapons, from which they’d developed a shield setting specifically to combat them.

Switching from one matrix to another took a lot of time, for it was essentially having to create an entirely new shield without going through the full recharge process. Typically a mass of energy was held within the shield emitters, ready to be deployed into the matrix rather than having to charge them from the power core directly. That was how ships could ‘raise shields’ in a split second, because that energy was already stored up and at least partially transformed into the necessary type for their shield matrixes to utilize.

Some matrixes used similar energies, so they could be morphed from one to another without total loss, reducing the time between transfers, but battling the lizards only didn’t require a switch, so to date that feature hadn’t been battle tested. The physical-only shield had been tested, when the lizards decided to ram the ship at close range. Given a heads up, the shield officers had deployed one of the multiple shields in the direction the ship was coming from instead of putting it around the entire ship.

Doing so gave them the opportunity to layer the shield, essentially taking the pieces from the entire hull and stacking them up like dominoes over the approach area of the kamikaze. That ship then ran into each of them in sequence, with each hit and breach slowing it until it hit the actual hull…which had only happened twice, leaving two beauty marks on the blue ship, scraping off the paint and showing the grey beneath with little real damage, given the thickness of the exterior plates.

That wouldn’t be enough to stop a jumping ship, but it could reduce the damage greatly if they could set up the matrixes in time. It was a tactic the V’kit’no’sat used, though with other tech that was currently beyond Star Force, but the principle was sound. Liam had dubbed it the ‘pillow effect,’ whereas the energy equivalent Paul had tagged as ‘reflect’ after the Final Fantasy power that sent magical attacks back onto the sender.

In this case there was a shield matrix that attempted to do the same thing, bouncing it off rather than cancelling it out. They’d gotten it to work on lasers, but anything more powerful was overloading the matrix and causing it to breach, which when it did it went down completely, like shattering a mirror. None the less, Paul and Jason had included it in the shield options. Other than turning the ship into a giant carnival mirror, which was cool, it wasn’t of much use as yet, but you never knew when an odd situation would arise, so better to have it in the mix than not.

The shield package the Command Ship carried had been enough to thwart the lizards on several occasions as Paul probed their third line of border systems, prompting the trailblazer to reassess their harassment missions. With the updates coming in from the Skarron front, the progress with the Calavari, arming of the Hycre and Protovic with Star Force tech, and the other ongoing projects the trailblazers, as a group, were conducting, Paul was relieved to be able to rely on them to take care of the laundry list of items while he focused on only those in the far end of Alpha Region.

He’d agreed with Jason’s assessments about the ‘run for the rim’ option floating around, being that they had to hold their ground and move to the rim simultaneously, preserving the option to fake their death if it came down to a V’kit’no’sat return by setting up separate ‘kingdoms’ within Star Force territory and expanding out to others. Paul doubted they could fool the V’kit’no’sat that easily, but it was worth a shot. The galaxy was vast, and hiding was definitely an option…their only option, really, impressed upon him and the others now that they had a glimmer of where their true enemy was, deeper into the core and currently oblivious to their whereabouts.

The dragon had fled to the rim, and it alone could have destroyed Star Force’s entire fleet. Paul wondered if that had changed by now, though he doubted it. Still, he would really like to see the tactical specs on the dragon’s armor and how much damage it could actually dish out…and take. Kara’s had been pretty well mapped by this point and he had his guesses as to what the dragon’s version could do, though the naval ramming capability mentioned in the reports from Daka still gave him waking nightmares. Star Force had no sensor data on that, but firsthand accounts by the Canderians in the system made clear that the Nestafar were sitting ducks, and he doubted Star Force shields and armor would fare much different.

So when the time came Star Force would run, but right now they couldn’t go far, and therein lay the problem. They needed the systems they currently possessed to grow stronger, which meant standing their ground and fighting off the enemies gathering around them. First the lizards, then the Nestafar, and now the Skarrons, which appeared far greater than anything they’d come across at this point, though Paul had a sneaking suspicion that the lizards were the more dangerous, based off the combat reports from Beta Region. The Skarrons’ territory might be huge, but the lizards were cunning, and that was an attribute that should never be underestimated.

Which was why he’d half expected the lizards to throw up some new attack against the Excalibur as he invaded this system, but they hadn’t. It had been standard tactics with a few hasty attempts at creativity, but nothing that worked. He and Jason had created a monster of a ship, second only to the Kvash starbases, each of which was more than 50 miles wide. They varied in size and shape, as each one was unique, making them more like small moons than ships or stations.

But as far as warships went, nothing else bested the Command Ship…that Paul knew of. Both the Hycre and the Bsidd had larger jumpships, but they didn’t carry the armament that the Excalibur did, and now that Paul had a big bad ship to work with, he was appreciating the unique combat applications that it afforded.

He agreed with the others that Star Force needed to establish a firm territory block and defend it as their enemies closed in on them rather than trying to defeat those enemies. Star Force was playing for time as it continued to unlock, or more accurately, understand the knowledge in the pyramid, so winning the war was more about surviving than hitting back, even as the lizards’ territory grew by leaps and bounds.

Even if they garnered the full power of the pyramid Star Force, as some of the others had wisely pointed out, would never be able to utilize it in killing the Skarrons or forcing them to submit, for it would bring them too close to the V’kit’no’sat. Even if they managed to do the same with the lizards, which was ambitious enough, word could and would travel about what they had done, and Paul was leery even that might filter back to the V’kit’no’sat when certain pieces of tech were mentioned, or what the Humans looked like, or more importantly, the psionics they wielded.

Hell, that information might already be spreading back their way. There was no way to avoid it, meaning that Earth was going to be compromised sooner or later…the big question was when. It was all about time, and the trailblazers had to give Davis’s people as much as they could. If they succeeded in protecting Star Force from all its enemies and keeping it dark to the V’kit’no’sat long enough, then Paul was confident that they would be able to engage and withdrawal from their nemesis, no matter what advancements they’d made over the past 100 millennia.

He entertained no serious notions of ever defeating them, but right now if they came back it wouldn’t even be a fight. The V’kit’no’sat could own them with a single ship, and they wouldn’t even be able to take down its shields. No, the victory they were striving for was survival, and to do that they needed the full power of the pyramid. That would at least put them in the same league as the V’kit’no’sat, and if they were even slightly on par with them, Paul knew that he and the other trailblazers could make up some of the gap through sheer determination and cunning, despite the V’kit’no’sat’s reputation for the same.

At his core Paul knew they had to be better, and that they would be better in time, if the technology evened out. The idea of someone out-training the trailblazers was ridiculous, even with all the breaks they took to work on other projects or go into combat. Someone might match or exceed them for a day, a week, a month…maybe even a year. But no one was going to beat them over the centuries, and eventually millennia for one simple reason.

They craved advancement, and even if there wasn’t a super strong enemy out there that they were racing to catch up with, they’d still work their asses off just for the fun of it. They lived for challenge, and that was the core of their being. While that facet might not be unique to Humans, nor a race in particular, Paul knew the V’kit’no’sat were lazy in comparison. Not in the conventional sense, but the more information he read coming out of the pyramid the more he understood that they didn’t operate out of a need or quest for challenge, but out of ego.

The two were often overlapping, with the V’kit’no’sat responding to a need or a threat with equal zeal as  he and the other Archons, but it was in the quiet times, the peaceful times, that their drive would wane. They were too good to abandon their training or actually get lazy, but they wouldn’t push as hard in those times whereas Paul would, and he knew the other trailblazers and a lot of the other Archons would as well.

That was where they could gain ground on the individuals who’d had thousands of years’ head start on them, though it was still going to take forever to catch up to individuals like Ironnsey and their dinosaur counterparts, but the fact that they had a window, that it was actually possible, was all they needed. Given enough time they would get there.

Time, it was all about time, so Star Force’s strategy had to play towards that, even if it meant restraining themselves from going out and kicking the bad guys’ asses as much as they’d like. They had to turtle up and play the waiting game, which at his core Paul didn’t like, but when viewing the big picture it made sense, and as long as he kept that in mind there was no internal conflict. They were playing to win, and this was the game plan they needed to pursue.

But from experience with the lizards he knew that holding a strict boundary was suicidal. They operated off a creep mentality, and holding a line with them meant a constant push and pull between the two. Hold your ground and they’d push harder and harder until you moved an inch, then that would be the new boundary until they got you to move again, and again, and again.

No, in order to hold the lizard engagement line Paul had to make gains against them, and the Excalibur was his solution to the problem, for the time being, as he was launching their first assault against a lizard system with the intent of taking it away from them and making it their own. Doing so would push the lizard lines back a touch, providing more distance from the Ninkari that Canderous was still guarding in the ‘open.’

It would also send the message that they weren’t marks for the lizards to eventually take down. That often was an invitation, when someone only defended instead of counterattacking, to greater invasion because it gave the impression of weakness. That was something he’d learned playing StarCraft long ago, and ironically it held true in real warfare.

So in order to keep his piece of Star Force territory locked down, he had to expand it. Not a lot, just a touch here and there to keep the lizards at bay. It seemed counterintuitive, but give the lizards a fixed point to work on and sooner or later they’d figure out a way to beat it. Paul had to dictate the course of the conflict at least part of the time, otherwise they’d swarm over his worlds and make his defensive effort twice as difficult.

The attacker got the choice of time, place, and numbers…the defender had to work with what they had, and more often than not it wasn’t an advantageous arrangement, else the attacker wouldn’t have been launching the assault in the first place.

So here Paul was, kicking the crap out of a sizeable lizard fleet and ‘holding’ his border against the lizards by expanding it. In the past Ollsonat had been hit twice by Sara and once by Greg, each time doing major damage to the lizard infrastructure from orbital bombardment, but the lizards always rebuilt, and would keep rebuilding until you either eradicated them or gave up and abandoned the effort…in which case they’d win by default.

Today was different, and as the last few lizard ships that hadn’t been able to flee were destroyed by the Excalibur’s weapons and the drones surrounding them reformed into patrol groups to scour the debris and eventually move to orbital bombardment locations, Paul nodded satisfactorily and looked to Captain Evinson.

“How’s the weather?”

“Adequate. The cleansing beams should hit ground with 85% cohesion at minimum.”

“Good. Move us into position and prepare to disengage the landing core. I want it touching down nearby while we’re still assaulting the target to minimize their army response times. I expect them to flee the city when we start hitting them anyway, and the less that get away the less we’ll have to track down and kill later.”

“Should we wait for the drones?”

“No. Let them handle the auxiliary targets after they confirm orbit is clear. We’ll take the primary ourself.”

Evinson nodded and began implementing Paul’s orders as the trailblazer began to slowly pace around the bridge, eventually seeing the holographic status display update as the Command Ship began to retract the armor segments around its core in a slow ripple, revealing the true nature of the giant donut.

Paul suppressed a smile, imagining an image of Homer Simpson giving him an approving ‘thumbs up’ on the design.

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Table of Contents

1 August 15, 2467 Rotunna System (Beta Region) Inner Zone

2

3 August 17, 2467Rotunna System (Beta Region)Ida

4 September 12, 2467Rotunna System (Beta Region)Ida

5 September 27, 2467Prolio SystemHTC

6 November 3, 2467Zanor

7 November 18, 2467Lonigan System (Epsilon Region)Outreach

8 December 25, 2467Hammer System (Core Region)Ironhold

9 March 22, 2468Epsilon Eridani SystemBabylon 1 Station

10 July 8, 2468Trantiss

1

May 2, 2470

Pagalis System

Varasiss (Calavari Capitol)

Kamalat sat at a gunnery station onboard the Calavari cruiser firing his plasma cannon at the sea of Cajdital ships nearby, picking a spot his bridge weapons officer tagged for his battery to hit and firing large golden plasma orbs into the enemy’s yellow/tan hulls as fast as the weapon would cycle. He couldn’t see what was happening elsewhere, nor how his own ship was faring…only his narrow view from the gunnery station, but he could tell that the Cajdital fleet wasn’t returning fire on the other Calavari ships nearby.

The ship he was firing on was throwing plasma ahead of it, nearly hitting the other Cajdital cruisers stacked in together so tight he felt like he was looking at a school of fish in a green river…a river that led to the Kvash starbase guarding the Calavari planet. Though Kamalat couldn’t see it, none of the Cajdital ships were shooting at the other Kvash vessels, nor the Calavari, or the Hycre, or the Bsidd, or the Scionate, or the Nabboni, or any of the other Alliance races with ships present to defend the system.

The Cajdital were ignoring them all and heading straight for the massive starbase and hammering it with the combined plasma from over 2,000 cruisers as more were continuing to enter planetary orbit and flood towards the massive warship/station. The rest of the Alliance fleet, like Kamalat’s cruiser, were getting free shots on the Cajdital and tearing them up, with his cannon finally finding hull after the shields went down. The enemy ship moved off somewhat as it outpaced the Calavari vessel, but his plasma hit the target multiple times, ripping into the hull plates along with other batteries, but his ship was the only one firing on that enemy vessel, for there were so many in play that the other Allied ships all had their own chosen targets with plenty to spare.

More and more cruisers kept coming in, all of which headed for the starbase and continued to pound on its shields, with many not even making it within firing range before being destroyed. Those that did were taken down by the Kvash’s own impressive array of weapons, with their plasma streamers literally melting through the Cajdital cruisers and taking them out remarkably fast…but still they wouldn’t flee or target any other vessel. They just kept pounding the starbase until its shields eventually went down after some 800 Cajdital ships were turned into rubble.

Neither Kamalat nor the rest of the system defenders could see it, but once the starbase’s shields were down special Cajdital cruisers began jumping in from the mass of contacts manifesting around the system’s central stars. The cruisers were identical to the others on the exterior, but they’d been refitted internally specifically for this invasion and the targeting of the starbase, which had such a high mass that even as its external weapon systems were being targeted and eliminated the ship itself was in little danger of being destroyed.

The huge ship would survive to the end of the battle, and if it didn’t escape it’d have to be picked to death by the Cajdital, whose plasma cannons were pathetic compared to the size of their target. They knew that going into the engagement, but thousands of pathetic weapons could add up to sufficient power…enough at least to take the shields down.

Kamalat saw explosions ripping across the starbase’s hull, but from the distance he was at they were tiny distortions compared to the huge mass that filled most of his screen whenever the Calavari cruiser had its right flank towards the allied ship/station. As he continued to fire on the ships designated by the weapons officer he noticed larger explosions beginning to hit the starbase, enough to wonder what was going on, for they were larger than the Calavari ships, though in comparison they were still small against the starbase’s silhouette.

He would never know what happened, but some of the Cajdital ships, the ones specially modified, were ramming the Kvash starbase loaded up with explosives. The physical impact alone was usually enough to damage, if not penetrate the hull, then the detonation would rip apart the interior, exposing it to the continual weaponsfire as it blasted out more sections of armored hull with it like a flower petal opening up.

Still the massive ship didn’t die, for only the outer layers were affected with the approaches to the hangars being blocked by other Kvash ships, making the Cajdital take the hard way in…and so they did. Over the hours that followed the Cajdital pounded the starbase with thousands of cruisers, regular and modified, literally throwing them away against the Alliance fleet in order to do damage to the behemoth.

When they’d finally crippled the starbase, with large chunks of it detaching from internal explosions, the few Cajdital ships remaining suddenly withdrew. Kamalat hit several on the way out without his weapons officer’s permission, deciding to take advantage of the fact that there were so many of them in his area and just firing into the swarm until they’d passed.

Seeming content with the damage they’d done, the Cajdital disappeared from planetary orbit, making microjumps away, either to the other planets or back to the stars where the fleet of Cajdital jumpships was still arriving and unloading more ships, now blind to the Calavari since they’d hunted down and destroyed the nearby sensor stations.

What was left was a growing blob of vessels as seen from their more distant sensors coming in along a single jumpline. As Varasiss was the only inhabited planet in the system the Alliance fleet waited there, protecting the orbital installations and hanging close to the missile platforms littering low orbit and making for a significant deterrent to attack. It was the largest fleet in Calavari space, not even counting all the non-Calavari ships, which outnumbered the locals 8 to 1. The original defense fleet had been much larger, but over time those ships had been moved out to other battlefields, lessening the capitol’s defenses in order to supplement others.

Now that there was little left but the capitol in the central region that had once been the heart of Calavari territory. Their warships had been returning to the one strongpoint they had left in the tattered remains of their once massive empire, adding to its defense as well as taking refuge along with the Alliance fleet, given that Calavari naval power was severely outclassed against the Cajdital.

Their weaponry was still effective, which Kamalat was putting to good use. After the starbase was destroyed there were several hours of inactivity during which the alliance fleet redeployed, with his cruiser moving out to a position around the third of six moons, four of which were habitable. The Calavari had significantly colonized two of them, with smaller installations on the other four. All provided jump points, and as such they could reposition their ships in short order to elsewhere in planetary orbit to reinforce various positions in the blink of an eye…as well as denying the moons to the enemy.

Kamalat didn’t know what the plan was, he was just a gunner, but he got a good view of the green moon of Radamal beneath him as he waited for the next attack, forgoing a shift change so he could stay on station longer. He stuck it out long enough for his body to start urging him to get some sleep, then when he was just about to call it quits and let the relief gunner take his position Cajdital ships began jumping into the moon’s orbit.

This time they shot back, and a pitched battle broke out in orbit between the Calavari fleet, supplemented by two Kvash cruisers on station with them, and another wave of Cajdital cruisers. Kamalat’s ship was so busy dealing with the enemy around them that its bridge crew failed to notice the much larger ship that entered elsewhere in planetary orbit a few minutes later.

The Cajdital ship was massive, and unlike the yellow/tan hulls of the cruisers the invoker was colored dark black, so much so that it was almost lost against the star field aside from the pinpricks of light that it blocked out, forming an ominous silhouette with long, gangly arms that dove straight toward the densest portion of the Alliance fleet…thousands of warships with the large Kvash battleships as centerpieces.

No Cajdital cruisers or other ships accompanied it. They were jumping into the moons and engaging in battle there, sweeping the defenders away or at least keeping them busy as their monstrous chess piece jumped into the planet’s orbit and eased directly into the Alliance lines, eliciting multi-colored energy ripples from its numerous pylons. The energy seemed to defy shape and more or less arced from one point to another on the arms, but pushing out like a solar prominence in large loops.

Those loops moved, but not in any tactical fashion, seeming to have a mind of their own as they extended out around the ship more than tripling its spherical radius. The Alliance ships that had closed within range were hit by the energy arcs, with the smaller hulls virtually vaporizing on contact.

The larger ships interfered with the energy flows, creating distortions and gaps when they were hit and subsequently destroyed by the lightning storm of discharges that resulted from whenever an object hit the field, including Alliance missiles fired at the invoker. Some got through to hit the shielded hull, but those that ran into the energy likewise sent little lightning discharges out looking for something to touch. Some hit other missiles, some hit ships, but most arced off to pieces of debris, further pulverizing them in a massive display of destruction.

The invoker kept moving, albeit slowly, pushing further into the Alliance fleet as their combined firepower fell on it…or at least as much as the Alliance could mount without firing into their own ships. The oblong fleet deployment bent around the ‘impact’ point, encircling the invoker even as it was chewing through their ships by the dozens per second. More and more firepower was poured into it and eventually some of it began to get through the invoker’s shields. That didn’t last long, for after only a light amount of hull damage the invoker reversed course, clearing the debris field it had created, and jumped away from the planet.

The Alliance fleet was left in shambles, but still with a considerable amount of ships remaining. Those ships, however, were soon met with Cajdital cruisers jumping in to engage them, having come from the moons they’d already cleared/secured. Like several water faucets they poured ships into the growing engagement that formed up into organized packs hunting specific targets, all the while the Alliance fleet was in such disarray it nearly became a free-for-all defensive effort.

Kamalat’s cruiser survived long enough to see the arrival of the first Cajdital battleships, which pounded the elongated Calavari warship until its shields went down, then it and several Cajdital cruisers tore apart the outer hull, taking his plasma cannon turret offline. When that happened his screen blanked and he knew his days were over, with him considering how many minutes, if not seconds, he had before the section of the ship that he was in either exploded or decompressed.

He sat in his control chair, squeezing the gunnery controls in anticipation and summoning up a wave of anger at both the Cajdital and their treasonous allies in place of the courage that seemed to escape him. Muffled pops, hisses, and bangs were audible as parts of the ship were hit, but the air didn’t rush out of his compartment, and for what seemed like an eternity he waited for the end to come.

Then suddenly a torrent of wind cut through the open doorway behind him and hit Kamalat with a blast of heated air so hot that it singed his skin where his uniform didn’t cover it. He flinched, but while the air thinned a moment later it didn’t completely disappear. With a roar partly of rage and partly of fear, he leapt out of his chair and turned to face the doorway, intending to die on his feet.

The hot air continued to pelt his skin, then all of a sudden it stopped with one massive screech and the power went out. Suddenly he was floating free of the floor, no longer with any artificial gravity to hold him in place. He grabbed the back of his chair with his lower right hand and steadied himself, but no further explosions followed.

Kamalat waited in his gunnery chamber for quite a while, floating in darkness before he finally became curious as to why the attack had stopped. Maybe the Cajdital had left the ship for dead, in which case there was a very slight chance that he might live another hour. He contemplated staying put and waiting or venturing forth, and decided that if he was going to die today that death was going to have to come and get him, he wasn’t going to sit and wait for it.

Remembering the layout of the hallway beyond the door he pushed off and grabbed the entryway with all four hands, bracketing himself in place as he looked for any trace of light. He thought there was just a tiny haze down to his left when he suddenly heard a voice in the otherwise silent ship.

“Hello? Is anyone out there?”

“Yes,” another voice answered, and Kamalat pushed off gently in the direction of the sounds. He floated through blackness, keeping his four hands and two feet spread wide to act as bumpers, but it was eventually another hand that stopped him, planted on his chest.

“Easy there,” a voice said, though he couldn’t see the speaker…nor anything else for that matter. “Head the other way.”

“What’s to head to?” Kamalat asked as he spun about with the help of the hand and a nearby wall, though he was still floating about.

“Aft section. I’ve got a comm link to people back there. Move it. That goes for everyone!”

With a shove Kamalat was sent floating down the hallway until he brushed up against a wall and steadied his tumble, then he ran into the back of another person, but that actually helped to right himself with another source of leverage. Feeling around in the dark for the bulkheads and the Calavari in front of him, Kamalat and the others assembling behind made their way through corridors they couldn’t see, being led by whom he didn’t know, but gradually a bit of light filtered in, not enough to see by, but enough to start casting some slight shadows.

It was enough to show him the fuzzy silhouette of the Calavari in front of him as they turned to the left and entered another passage. A few more intersections up and the light became heavier, allowing Kamalat to see where he was going, dim as it was. The line of Calavari was much larger than he’d thought, meaning more had survived…but why was the ship still intact? And were the Cajdital going to come back and finish them or leave them for dead?

He got the answer to his question a few minutes later when he crossed into a powered zone, with his feet returning to the floor with the artificial gravity. From there he and the survivors from the forward sections were moved about in quick order, then shuffled to an armory where they donned their shield harnesses and weapons, plus whatever equipment packs they had available.

Before Kamalat got up the courage to ask what was going on, for everyone around him was stone-faced with either fear or shock, both of which he was also feeling, he was led to a hull breach that shown as a wicked slash through a wall in a storage compartment, on the outside of which was daylight…not stars.

To his dismay the others were jumping out the gash, though a few hesitated as they came up to it, but as soon as they got a look they proceeded to jump out, disappearing to the left. When Kamalat got up to the edge he also hesitated, not wanting to jump out into vacuum, then he saw a tilted forest landscape ahead of him…and he suddenly realized they had crash landed on the moon.

He saw a descending rope attached just inside the gash and grabbed hold of it, stepping outside…with the gravity immediately pulling him to the left. He twisted his legs around and got them below him, then four-armed it down the rope until he got to the very distant bottom and landed on a mound of dirt that had been plowed out upon impact.

Kamalat stepped aside and looked back up at the part of the cruiser that was sticking up out of the ground at a high angle. The screech he heard must have been the crash landing, but the inertial dampeners had held up so he didn’t feel the impact. The front of the cruiser was buried, and probably flattened, but everything not in the compacted forward sections would have been protected from the extreme deceleration, making Kamalat glad that his station had been midway between the fore and aft, allowing him to survive.

His personal quarters were in the forward section, meaning that if he had swapped out his watch with a replacement he’d probably be dead by now.

“Hey, snap out of it. We’ve got supplies to sort and unload,” another Calavari said, coming up and lightly punching a fist into his chest. “You want to wait around for the Cajdital to come clean up?”

“No. What do you need of me?”

The other Calavari pointed to a small stack of crates that was being added to from a lower breach point that looked to be just above the dirt line.

“Inside there is the cargo bay. Get in there and salvage what you can, but watch out for surprises. No telling what power conduits are live or not.”

“On it,” Kamalat confirmed, trodding over the hot soil with his heavy footsteps making two inch imprints all the way up to the edge, where the ground turned from soil to a glassy, gnarled substance that was no doubt a result of the intense friction of impact.

“Catch,” a voice said as a crate floated his way.

Kamalat stepped inside to catch it, immediately feeling the gravity vanish, but he kept a hand outside the boundary of the still active IDF to center him. Where it was being projected from he wasn’t sure, but wherever it was that part of the ship still had power, otherwise everything would have been dumped forward rather than floating around…though he did see some jagged pieces of debris poking out from the forward wall, apparently having been driven through on impact.

“Got it,” Kamalat said, grabbing hold of the supply crate with two arms while using his other two to leverage him and the foodstuff container outside and back into gravity. The transition was clunky, but he stayed on his feet and held the container against his chest as he carried it over and added it to the growing stash, then headed back to the torqued open doors of the cargo bay, happy to be alive and with other survivors, though how long that would last was anyone’s guess, but for the moment at least the Cajdital had more important things to do than inspect the debris of crashed ships when there was still a large Alliance fleet left in orbit for them to engage.

2

May 7, 2470

Pagalis System

Inner Zone

With the Alliance fleet still in control of Varasiss orbit, though having been reduced in size by three fourths, the Cajdital had abandoned the mass attacks and resorted to smaller tactical assaults focusing on a select group of ships, eliminating them, then pulling back out with whatever ships they had left. Most of those assaults were cruiser groups led by a battleship or two, and the Hycre figured that the Cajdital were setting up for another attack with their invoker. To combat this, the Alliance had spread out their fleet across orbit, which made the Cajdital attacks even more effective at eliminating specific ships.

With that fact in mind and expecting the big attack to come eventually, spread out or not, the Hycre chose to hit first, having located the invoker in a shallow orbit around the huge orange star in the binary pair where the stellar winds nearly hid it from sensors. Farther up was the Cajdital fleet, still receiving a steady flow of warships into the system via jumpship, with well over a thousand of the carriers parked in a slightly higher orbit.

It was those carriers that the Hycre jumped on, despite the huge Cajdital fleet of warships nearby. Their binary drives added to their already higher agility, allowing the Hycre to make strafing runs on the jumpships, blowing by with 15-25 destroyers/cruisers and puncturing the shields on one with a single pass. Another group would follow through and take advantage of the temporary weakness even as the swarm of Cajdital cruisers moved in to try and block their path.

Of all the fleets that had been hard hit by the invoker, the Hycre had lost the least ships. Most had pulled back to their outer weapons range when the attack began, expecting the furthest portions of the energy field to be the weakest…and then pulling back outside it when their expectations fell short and they lost ships they’d expected to be safe.

After that they made short runs into gaps in the field, firing off their high yield plasma weapons and then ducking back out, hoping to survive any incidental hits, for it seemed that the energy arcs were at least partially targeted rather than completely random after a few moments of study. Normally some plasma would deflect off the Hycre shield matrixes, but unfortunately the invoker’s energy didn’t work the same way, though it did skip a bit across the shield perimeter, impacting on multiple spots before breaching through and hitting the hull.

The Alliance races that didn’t have energy shields had no protection at all aside from their armor, which the energy arcs were very good at melting/vaporizing.

The Hycre ships quickly learned how much invoker energy they could take…which wasn’t much, but it allowed them to make quick attack runs in that initial assault that had hurt its shields badly, while most of the firepower from the rest of the Alliance fleet didn’t make it through in the case of missiles, with the plasma being reduced to spit as they tried to stay out of range save for those ships brave/reckless enough to charge forward.

Both tactics had left the other fleets decimated, with the Kvash being the best to withstand the invoker attacks…though their slower speed had been disadvantageous. They were used to being the immobile power that others would play against, but with their starbase being taken out of the fight they had quickly been taken out of their element, and that shift in the tactical situation had cost them a significant number of ships before they’d adjusted and started to pull back.

Fortunately the invoker had started to take damage and retreated before it could pursue them, but still the Kvash had lost a high number of ships, leaving the Hycre with the defacto command of the crumbling defenses, which had already seen a few of the smaller races’ ships abandoning the effort and jumping away.

The Hycre knew if the invoker came back in the fleet would scatter, as they should, but that would leave the Cajdital with possession of a piece of planetary orbit, opening up a ground invasion of the planet. Plus, the fewer ships the Alliance could pull together, the less chance there was of taking the invoker down, which was why the Hycre had decided to take the fight to them, and were doing so in spectacular fashion.

The Cajdital jumpships, heavily armed as they were, were sitting ducks against the Hycre’s fleet, with many of them beginning to scatter and turning a once orderly formation into navigational chaos. The Hycre used that to their advantage, maneuvering through the gaps where the Cajdital cruisers couldn’t follow with as much ease. Like schools of deadly sharks the Hycre moved around and through the mass of Cajdital ships, but only hit the jumpships, forgoing the easy targets the cruisers made.

Thinking ahead past this invasion, the Hycre knew the less jumpships the enemy had the less ships and troops they could move around in future years, meaning that even if they couldn’t hold the Calavari homeworld they’d be slowing down other invasions by taking these sitting jumpships down while they were clustered together and vulnerable.

The mass of cruisers, battleships, and even a few dreadnaughts that the Cajdital were holding back moved to defend their jumpships as the big behemoths ran for wherever they could get openings, but the Hycre had come in from numerous angles, blocking the jumplines to the surrounding planets and making the Cajdital move laterally, giving them extra time to poach their targets given the Hycre destroyers’ greater speed.

As that ruckus was underway another group of Hycre ships was waiting on the jumpline they’d determined the Cajdital were arriving by and hitting new jumpships as they came in against the other star. Simultaneously a group of much larger Hycre ships…cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships…jumped from one star to the other and began circling around its orange mass at low altitude enroute for the position where they knew the invoker to be hiding.

Given the Hycre’s natural habitats within gas giants and their navy’s ability to fly into and through the massive atmospheres that they contained, the Hycre dipped lower into the star’s orbit and pushed through the thin, hot gasses there, weathering the damage to their shields until they came up on the invoker from below and made an initial strafing run against it at considerable speed intended to deliver their plasma at nearly pointblank range so that it wouldn’t be disrupted by the stellar winds.

The Cajdital saw them coming and began rising in altitude, but not before the Hycre got to them. The energy cascades didn’t manifest, which the Hycre had been hoping would be the case. The Cajdital would have to move clear of the star’s highly charged, thin upper atmosphere to use their primary weapon, and the Hycre were going to hurt them as much as possible before that.

The invoker’s shields had already been up and weakened by the sustained effort to ward off the star’s continual light damage, meaning that when the Hycre hit them they had less shields to punch through than normal. As soon as this and the fact that the ship wasn’t powering up its primary weapon became evident, the Hycre aborted their strafing runs and moved up in between the invoker’s arms and blasted away at the ship as it desperately tried to climb out from the star without creating too much turbulence.

Given the choice of getting blindsided by the Hycre or jumping too far in, the invoker’s crew decided to go with the later and made a very light microjump away from the star on no particular jumpline. The friction of the very thin stellar atmosphere popped what was left of their shields and sandblasted the massive ship’s hull, tearing through the outer layers of armor and damaging some of the emitters on the arms.

The Hycre followed easily, though it took them a moment to get back within firing range. When they did the primary weapon lit up and the invoker was once again encircled with cackles of multi-colored energy as it continued to run, though laterally this time, trying to get to a jumpline where it could escape.

Meanwhile the Cajdital fleet trying to defend the jumpships split in two, with half running back the other way to try and get to the invoker. Over the minutes between that happening or the invoker getting to a decent jumpline, the Hycre ships braved the energy field and continued to attack the invoker with short strafing runs led by the largest of their ships.

The Hycre battleships would punch a hole in the energy arcs, taking the brunt of the storm while the others would follow them through taking less hits than otherwise, but after the first pass was made the Hycre discovered that some of the emitters had been damaged, leaving a few holes in the invoker’s ever fluctuating energy field.

The Hycre moved instantly to exploit the weakness and flew very difficult navigational routes to keep their ships tucked up inside those holes and directly over the hull of the invoker as it altered its trajectory and speed regularly, trying to shake its pursuit. They managed to break through the armor and get at the Cajdital ship’s interior, eventually sheering off one of the emitter arms and creating a much larger gap in the field around where it had been.

The Hycre packed ships inside that gap, but the Cajdital finally got to a useable jumpline and bumped their way free, ramming four of the cruisers at low speed and taking additional damage from the collisions as the energy arcs disappeared and the massive black ship disappeared in a blur.

The Hycre went after it, sending some of their ships out on the same jumpline while the others laid down tractor beams onto their own damaged ships and pulled them away on slow jumps after extending their IDF fields to cover the energy tethers, else the surge of acceleration would have torn them apart. They managed to do so just before the swarm of Cajdital ships caught up to them, and the enemy knew better than to try and pursue, given the Hycre’s better navigational capability.

The fleet attacking the Cajdital jumpships didn’t stay around long either after the other ships came into play. While the enemy couldn’t stay with them, give them enough numbers and all they had to do was blanket the approaches with plasma and the Cajdital would rack up enough hits on the Hycre ships to take them down.

Still, they persisted a bit longer, expertly navigating through the hoard and hitting a few dozen cruisers for good measure before pulling out, taking shield and armor damage with them, but without losing a single ship.

They left 86 damaged Cajdital jumpships behind, some of which were so torn up they were near to snapping in half. That number was small compared to how many were present in the system, with more still arriving with fresh warships and troops, but anywhere else that would have been a massive catastrophe and the Hycre knew it. Plus, two of the 86 had been the Cajdital’s largest jumpship models, capable of ferrying around their battleships and dreadnaughts, if not upwards of 1000 cruisers.

One of those massive jumpships, along with several ‘small’ ones were falling into the star, having been trying to escape in that direction when their gravity drives were hit, with the Cajdital fleet of warships swarming around them and trying to physically push the larger craft into a stable orbit, but in the case of the big jumpship the math wasn’t in their favor, and soon the Cajdital figured that out as well, for a plethora of smaller craft began abandoning it in a hurry as it began to kiss the star’s upper atmosphere.

The Cajdital’s plan of rendezvousing close in to the star to help mask long range sensors was now coming back to bite them, spectacularly so, as the mammoth jumpship began to burn in a huge plume of atmosphere it kicked up on the way down, then it fragmented as it hit a lower layer within the star, with each piece breaking up and further disintegrating as it sank lower and lower into the star.

Once again the Hycre’s naval mastery had stuck it to the Cajdital, but they had so many ships in the system they could overcome the losses and continued to do so, immediately jumping the bulk of their fleet out, intent on assaulting Varasiss while the Hycre were absent.

They left behind a significant force to guard the damaged jumpships, but the rest of the huge Cajdital ships were dispersed throughout the system, making it impossible for the Hycre to locate and exploit any clustering of vessels. That said, the Hycre also saw this as an advantage, for their ships were good at hunting others down, and the larger the ships the easier it was to track and intercept them…which was one reason why the Cajdital had chosen to press the attack now, forcing the Hycre to make a decision.

Over 2,000 cruisers, 50+ battleships, and 6 dreadnaughts surged their way back towards Varasiss in a stream, holding off high above the planet until their numbers pooled, then they dove towards low orbit, heading towards the nearest cluster of Alliance ships which was pathetically small in comparison, given how spread out they’d become in case the invoker came back.

The Hycre ships still in orbit, few as they were given they’d devoted nearly everything they had to the stellar assault, issued orders to the rest of the Alliance fleet, and regardless of what the other races thought about their arrogant presumption, they complied with the ‘suggestion’ and moved off on specified courses that the Hycre had not deigned to explain.

That explanation was given in the arrival of handfuls of Hycre destroyers, frigates, and corvettes that had been sitting in ambush positions across the system coming back on specific jumplines and intercepting the Cajdital with calculated precision that was typical Hycre. The other Hycre smaller ships were still bouncing around the system chasing errant jumpships and making a few kills, though most were playing a wounding game, eliciting damage where they could until their little stings could eventually get through, which in the case of a jumpship was more about mass than shield strength, with their gravity drives buried deep within the hull.

Seeing the Cajdital counterattack a lot of those ships had to be recalled, but enough were left to keep the enemy jumpships busy, and with the Alliance’s coordination with the Hycre the massive battle the Cajdital was looking for didn’t arise. Rather, it was broken down into smaller engagements that favored the Hycre ships when backed up by other Alliance vessels.

The enemy wasn’t stupid, and they saw this immediately. Instead of trying to abort the attack they pursued it and fought the Alliance on their own terms, all the while calling for some of their jumpships to return. They picked their jumplines carefully, and as the fighting entered its 3rd hour across low to high orbit, a group of 16 jumpships plus escorts arrived in an empty region above the low orbit defense grid of Calavari battle stations.

Before the Alliance could get enough ships back over to intercept them, the Cajdital launched a wave of cruisers that blew past the battle stations, taking numerous hits as they went, mostly from missile impacts. A few ships were lost, but the cruisers were clumped together so tightly the Calavari stations couldn’t down them quick enough, letting some 88% through to the atmosphere…where they were met by swarms of Valeries that exploited the damage the stations had made in their shields and hulls.

They followed the cruisers all the way to ground, losing many of the fighters in the process, but even more once their descent slowed and their anti-air plasma shards became more effective at range with the air no longer blowing them apart as soon as they left their batteries.

The Valeries were forced to withdrawal and watch the cruisers land, staking out four different locations on the second largest southern continent, whereupon the cargo cruisers began disgorging huge numbers of hover tanks and infantry protected by the cruisers’ guns that held back both the Calavari air and tanks. They were used to getting their asses handed to them on the ground by the Nestafar, but the Cajdital didn’t have walkers and in that regard they were even…both had tanks, both had infantry, both had aircraft…and the Calavari liked the matchup, but not the Cajdital cruisers’ ability to influence the ground campaign.

And as they always did, the Cajdital began burrowing and building within their cruiser ring, with a portable shield generator going up within the day, covering all the cruisers in the ring with a much stronger shield that also protected the surface structures being assembled, giving the Cajdital their first footholds on the Calavari capitol.

3

May 9, 2470

Pagalis System

Outer Zone

The invoker made another microjump, braking against a significantly-sized planet on the outskirts of the system…and right into a group of Hycre warships waiting for it. They were waiting just to the side of the jumpline and ended up within 40 kilometers of the massive Cajdital ship, guessing with incredible accuracy where it would end up. The smaller Hycre ships, who didn’t show up on sensors as soon due to their limited cross-sections and which were pointed straight onto the jumpline to further decrease the sensor image and give the Cajdital less warning to alter their braking point, accelerated quickly and got into firing range before the invoker could spin up its primary weapon.

Smaller Cajdital plasma cannons fired back, but they were few in number, capable of defending against a handful of ships, but it was readily apparent that the invoker had been designed for one purpose and one purpose only. It was a tool designed to be used in concert with a fleet of warships, but as it was fleeing from point to point within the system it had no escorts, and the Hycre had been nipping at it for two days, with the largest damage having been done when it tried to get back to the pair of stars to make a jump out of the system.

The Hycre had been waiting in ambush and pounded it to the point that its hull armor was punctured and a serious internal wound became visible as the ship vented both atmosphere and debris out the small hole…but due to the invoker’s huge size even that amount of damage was trivial, and it had microjumped back away from the stars, hoping to bounce around to one of dozens of jumplines that would bring it back into the primary gravity wells where the Hycre weren’t waiting.

But nearly every jump it made saw at least a few Hycre ships that usually got in a good salvo or two. By now the invoker had limited shields, unable to secure enough time to recharge them, and the one time they’d tried to make a slow jump to buy them time the Hycre jumped ahead and were waiting for them with even more numbers than it faced now.

The whale-like ships pounded its hull at close range, then pulled back as its primary weapon finally came online. The invoker began repositioning over to another jumpline, but the Hycre still had an opening to hit, given that the energy fields were missing around the severed pylon.

The weakened shields gave way before it could jump out and the Hycre racked up some more small-scale hull damage, hitting both armor and exposed interior components before the invoker accelerated away towards a planet on the far side of the system. The longer jump took additional time, and when it arrived there was already a battle going on between the Hycre and the Cajdital who’d placed cruisers at that location.

Those cruisers were having their ass handed to them, but the Hycre couldn’t ignore them completely and only got a few light hits in against the invoker as the Cajdital warships hounded them. It jumped out again without taking any further hull damage, enroute to another location that the Cajdital was positioning support ships.

When it arrived at a large moon of the 6th planet, the invoker ran smack into a larger Hycre fleet in the final moments of tearing apart the cruisers that had been put there to support it. A Hycre battleship was amongst the group, and it immediately surged out towards the invoker that had its braking point at a slightly higher altitude.

The invoker tried to run around to the nearest jumpline, not wanting to reverse course and go back to the ships waiting for it where it had just been, and began to spin up its primary weapon, but it wasn’t fast enough. The Hycre battleship got up close over the weak spot and blasted away at another pylon, getting through the shields just as the energy field began to manifest. That made the blind spot even bigger, and the invoker tried to spin around to catch the battleship in the intact portion of the field, but the Hycre ship moved with it as other ships also came in and added their firepower.

Two more pylons were disabled, though not destroyed, before the invoker made the jump away from the moon, heading over to the planet in the blink of an eye. The Hycre followed, but the maneuver gave the invoker a little bit of a head start. It took more damage enroute to the jumpline it wanted, then emerged back at system’s center, coming out against the smaller of the two stars were a large Cajdital fleet was waiting.

It was battling the Hycre as the faster Alliance ships zipped in and out of their lines, but when the invoker arrived the fleet immediately surrounded it in escort formation as it headed for an interstellar jumpline that would get it out of the system. As they did they lost numerous ships, for the Hycre coming at them from multiple directions ate up their perimeter ships rather than trying to bust through and assault the invoker directly. With a blind spot in its offensive capability the Hycre knew they now owned it, and were more than happy to take the advantage offered them and eliminate more of the Cajdital ships, even if they didn’t get the invoker.

Which they didn’t. It successfully moved through stellar orbit until it got to its jumpline, then vanished in a blur of motion after the Cajdital support ships moved out of the way after plowing a road through the Hycre waiting to block them.

When the invoker jumped it was immediately damaged, having run into a mine field the Hycre had hastily set up further out from the star along the jumpline. The ‘mines’ were kinetic, meaning they were just chunks of dense mass deposited in a location where the invoker would jump through. The mines were tiny compared to the size of the invoker, but they cut into it like a hot knife through butter, breaking apart as they hit the hull and turning into a narrow cloud of shrapnel at each location, punching through the entire length of the ship and blasting out the far side, with their debris dragging behind the ship on its outward trajectory with high speed, effectively clearing the jumpline after an hour or so due to the erratic drift of the residue.

The invoker lost several gravity drives, which eventually killed it a few days later when it wasn’t able to decelerate as quickly as needed, resulting it in hitting the destination star. The Hycre didn’t know of their kill, for they had no ships in the far system to note the impact, but when the mine-layers went back to recover their mines they only recovered 78% of them, so they knew they’d done damage to the ship killer.

The rest of the Cajdital fleet that had been covering for the invoker got chewed up by the Hycre until they started to mass together, at which point the Hycre spread out and fled, preferring to hunt smaller groupings of the Cajdital around the system or waiting for them to come back to Varasiss and ambush them there when they had other Alliance ships to assist.

Eventually that’s where the Alliance and Cajdital fleets ended up, with a more standard battle ensuing. The enemy kept sending cruiser formations down to the surface of the planet, which the Hycre and others would try and intercept, often with success. As the Calavari army attempted futilely to assault their encampments, going up against the grounded cruisers’ firepower, the Hycre dispatched several smaller ships to assist them, but aside from damaging a few ships they couldn’t get past the clustered Cajdital defenses.

The Hycre eventually responded by sending down more ships, which is what the Cajdital wanted. With a significant number of their warships on the ground the main orbital assault resumed, with the targets being the remaining Kvash battleships, of which there were 9 left…out of an original 26. They were spaced around orbit in clusters of three, along with most of the rest of the Alliance fleet, though there were some smaller groups from other races dotting the wide spaces in between so they could get better runs against Cajdital cruisers going to ground.

The enemy hit all three groups simultaneously, with a dreadnaught leading each attack alongside a handful of battleship escorts and a mass of cruisers. Each dreadnaught was three times the length of the battleships and equally rounded and elongated, but with a vertical fin coming out the top and bottom that ran from bow to stern, making them reminiscent of the flat cruisers and equipped with a handful of supersized plasma cannons.

The rest of their hulls were coated in cruiser-size cannons and anti-air plasma units, making them more than a formidable match for a Kvash battleship. Three, on the other hand, was more than a dreadnaught could take alone, which was where the rest of the Cajdital fleet was going to come into play…but once again the Kvash found themselves on the small side of the engagement, putting them outside their comfort zone.

But not far out. The three battleships formed into a vertical triangle, giving each a clear view of the dreadnaught minus the ships in between. Most were Cajdital cruisers, but there were also a handful of Hycre destroyers leaping out to the front to zip around and through the enemy lines, hoping to disrupt their formation and cause some damage before the two fleets slammed into one another. Spaced around the trio of battleships were the Kvash’s ‘smaller’ vessels. Battlecruisers, cruisers, and destroyers aligned into a halo around the three, waiting for the Cajdital to come to them, with a mass of Kitot warships lined up in between the gaps.

They were one of the Alliance’s junior races, brought in by the Kvash and well accustomed to doing battle alongside their benefactor, not just against the Cajdital, but against a number of other threats over the history of their relationship, given that Kitot territory overlapped with the much larger Kvash domain. Individually they were older, much older, with the average lifespan upwards of 500 years, but physically they were small, coming up to a Human’s waist and appearing like a ‘tripod’ on their three legs…which the Star Force pilots had come to nickname them on Daka.

Their ships were small as well, each being frigate class. Normally that wouldn’t be of much help to the Kvash with heavy fighting, but the unique design of the Kitot warships provided them with far more punch than their size suggested. They had one weapon and one weapon only, housed within the forward column of the tri-finned design that mimicked their body structure. That weapon was plasma based, but unlike a streamer which discharged a continuous narrow beam, the Kitot cannons produced and held the plasma inside a forward cavity, growing the contained plasma orb to insane size before finally releasing it when and where they chose.

As the Cajdital ships approached the Alliance fleet and began engaging the forward elements belonging to the other races, little glowing orbs of pink popped up like Christmas lights encircling the Kvash warships, with each of those lights growing brighter by the moment as they increased their charge. Then, when the forward Cajdital cruisers began taking hits by the Kvash plasma streamers that tore through their shields in a matter of seconds, the Kitot ships began to move, forming into little schools of fish that swam after individuals ships that moved past the Kvash, either intact or damaged.

They fell in behind them and launched their pink plasma orbs, each of which hit with a wider cross-section than even the largest plasma streamer on the Kvash battleships, or any other plasma weapon within the Alliance fleet aside from the starbases. The weapons had a slow recharge cycle, but by having 10-15 ships per group, they were able to hit the ship they were trailing with several quick shots that downed the cruiser without trouble.

Once the task was done the Kitot swarm turned around, snaking their way back up in next to the Kvash ships where they waited for their next target, either picking one themselves or going after ships the Kvash tagged for them. Conventional wisdom held that when attacking the Kvash you had to go after their biggest ship first, else they’d wear down your fleet, diminishing your weapon count, and making it harder to take down the biggest one later.

With that tactic in mind, the Kitot were literally daring the Cajdital to shoot at them instead. A gifting of shield tech gave the little ships more durability than most, but they wouldn’t stand up against a lot of firepower…but if they were attacked, then they were taking the hits for the Kvash, which would mean their bigger ships would persist longer in the battle, which was bad news for the Cajdital.

If the enemy didn’t target the Kitot, they’d essentially get free shots in that would assist with the Kvash’s weapons fire, exploiting shield breaches or weakening others as an extension of the Kvash fleet when needed. More often than not the Kvash ships would hit a passing Cajdital cruiser, taking down its shields but failing to kill it, then they’d send the Kitot to finish it off, often with the support of the Fanset, another Kvash invitee to the Alliance, but one that they had a looser relationship with.

The Fanset fleet was lined up behind the Kvash, given their ships were largely inferior to the rest. What they had going for them was mass…they were all fat blobs halfway to being a sphere with strategic/random protrusions over their hulls, and not all of their ships had similar designs. They, along with six other races, in addition to the Hycre, were deployed behind and around the Kvash, letting them take the brunt of the attack.

The Kvash had indicated that they wanted it that way, with the understanding that the others would move forward and engage when called for or when they saw an opportunity to strike without getting themselves mauled by the larger Cajdital ships…which headed straight for the Kvash behind a wave of cruisers.

The dreadnaught targeted the lower Kvash battleship, pouring its forward cannonfire squarely into the forward lobe of the tri-sphere ship, smothering the shields with huge green plasma orbs as maroon streamers replied from all three battleships. Smaller cannons on the dreadnaught that were in range also opened fire, though most didn’t have firing lines given the angle or the mass of other ships flanking them.

The Cajdital battleships also targeted the same Kvash battleship, which quickly became overwhelmed with plasma, prompting it to rotate to bring another sphere into the firing line as the Kvash signaled for the other races’ fleets to begin assaulting the flanks of the enemy.

They responded by flying around the outskirts of the Kvash fleet and angling in on strafing runs, small ships and large, against the battleships and whatever cruisers got in their way. Many of them moved slowly, but they didn’t stick around to slug it out with the Cajdital, forming several rivers of ships that constantly kept moving, all the while the Kvash remained as still as the rocks they looked like.

The Fanset were the only ones that didn’t move, for the Kvash were keeping them in reserve. As it was plenty of cruisers were coming their way as they strafed the battleships, which the Fanset were engaging if they moved through the gap between the fleets, in the middle of which the Kitot were chasing down many. It wasn’t until the Cajdital dreadnaught lost its forward shields and saw that it wasn’t going to be able to take down the battleship that it dipped underneath the Kvash formation and accelerated ahead, trying to get away from the battle as the enemy cruisers continued to fly and shoot in a frenzied storm, now targeting the smaller Alliance ships.

The Kvash battleships continued to pour plasma streamers into the top of the dreadnaught as it passed underneath, then two of the Kvash cruisers dropped down to pace it, exchanging close range fire with its side batteries. That was when the Kvash commanders tagged the Fanset with hitting the dreadnaught as it accelerated away closer to the planet as it curved through a wide arc setting up for a jump.

Using their fat hulls to surround the dreadnaught, the Fanset hit it with everything they had as the Kitot swarms were sent after it as well. The Kvash battleships and most of their support ships took on the rest of the Cajdital fleet, which was still largely intact, leaving the hunt to their two subordinate races now that they’d wounded the big ship.

It was a fair fight, with the Fanset and Kitot taking heavy losses, but their combined firepower shredded the dreadnaught’s exterior hull, knocking out most of its weaponry before it resorted to lightly ramming three Fanset ships out of the way to make an escape jump, with the rest of the Cajdital fleet retreating soon thereafter.

The other two Alliance fleets didn’t fare so well, with one losing a battleship and the other losing two, though that Cajdital assault group was virtually destroyed in the effort. The other two groups had different races in support, for each faction within the Alliance didn’t like splitting up their fleets, leaving the Kitot and Fanset bolstering only the one group of Kvash ships, which had made the difference in this engagement by giving the Kvash more combat assets to work with, whereas the other races were more or less random factors in the otherwise controlled and scripted battle.

The Hycre poached many ships in the engagement, including the dreadnaught some hours later when they ran it down and delivered a fatal blow to its gravity drives, pinning it in place in orbit around the 12th planet in the system. After that it was just a matter of time before they killed it, though they got many cruisers to die defending it beforehand, essentially using the monster ship as a lure to peel off ships from other deployments into smaller, manageable numbers.

The other two dreadnaughts suffered damage as well, with one being destroyed and the other coming off lightly. It retreated along with the other ships, but failing to have taken out more of the Kvash ships the Cajdital transitioned to a more coy strategy, given that their long stream of jumpships entering the system had come to an end. There would be more reinforcements coming in the months ahead, but their initial assault group was now fully assembled, with there being too few ships to rely on the swarming tactic. Had they eliminated the Kvash battleships it would have been another story, but six still remained, and that was more than the Cajdital could easily handle.

With troops already on the ground and the ability to land more under protest, the Cajdital switched from an orbital assault plan to a ground assist strategy, with cruisers running cargo ships to ground and clustering around their shield generators when the Hycre came knocking. Had their warships not been in play, the Cajdital would have sent their ships en mass into the atmosphere to attack Calavari ground targets, but they knew that was suicide, so they decided to play the waiting game, defending their footholds as needed while they constructed bases that would eventually grow to the point where they could start producing troops and ships of their own.

When that happened, they would be all but impossible to remove from the surface.

4

July 2, 2470

Pagalis System

Radamal

Kamalat ran through the trees, a rifle in both sets of hands, following three of his fellow Calavari as they retreated ahead of a thong of Cajdital infantry whom they’d just ambushed. He ducked under one low branch then pushed his way through a dense set of bushes until he came out onto the creek bank and ran across the mostly dry stone wash, hearing the smaller Cajdital foot strikes closing in behind him.

His shields flared with a plasma hit on his back as he got to the water, but they held up, protecting his otherwise vulnerable skin. The shield harness he wore blocked energy only, not physical objects, and fortunately the plasma counted as both, but he knew it wouldn’t last against more than a few hits without time for its capacitor to recharge, so he dug down into his well of energy and forced his tired legs to move a bit faster.

Before he got to the opposing brush line a hail of golden plasma streaks sailed around him and the others, coming from concealed snipers. Though he couldn’t see it, more than a dozen Cajdital went down behind him as they exited the vegetation cover, with more coming out by the second as they ran into the second part of the ambush.

Kamalat burst through the green leaves and back into the forest, turning a quick right and zigzagging his way around to an opening in the Calavari line that had decent cover, then he knelt down and brought both rifles up into firing position. With the leaves covering most of his body and his eyesight, he relied on the holographic tracking icon that floated above the top of each barrel as he set the power level to low and began firing off a hail of golden lances.

He and the other Calavari mowed the Cajdital down with great satisfaction, with Kamalat wounding/killing at least half a dozen himself, though it was difficult to keep track of them all, for there was so much plasma fire exchanging and bodies dropping that it quickly became chaotic…then he heard yells from the opposite side of their line, Calavari yells, which told him something had gone wrong.

Kamalat only had a split second’s warning as he rotated both rifles around to the left enroute to pulling back and heading to assist where the trouble was when his holographic tracking markers picked up the Cajdital flankers’ body head, flashing quick targets across the tiny displays as he turned.

“On the left!” he yelled, pointing the barrels back to where he’d picked up the signatures and opening fire as quickly as his thick fingers could pump the triggers, eviscerating the greenery in between him and his targets.

In response a much larger storm of green plasma orbs came back, blasting into tree trunks and branches, setting them on fire or simply blowing them apart, with what plasma didn’t hit coming through hitting the Calavari line and Kamalat in the head. Fortunately his shield covered his face and held up to the hit, but he flinched so bad on impact that he tipped over backwards and fell to the ground with several more plasma orbs passing through the space where his body had just been.

Cajdital infantry then came into sight, and Kamalat aimed at them from the ground with no time to get up, simultaneously resetting his power levels to a low medium so that he could be sure to take them down with one hit each, then he fired off thicker lances at two of them simultaneously, using the advantage of four arms and superior rifle tech to cut down those enemies closest to him.

The thin chest armor the Cajdital wore didn’t fully stop the Calavari plasma, leaving each shot with enough plasma to cut deep into their flesh. As he’d come to expect after weeks of ground combat, the two dropped to the ground wounded or probably dead, leaving four more coming out of the greenery behind them. The Cajdital had let their other infantry get mowed down crossing the creek as a diversion, buying time for this group and probably one on the other side to flank them, and now they were about to get the payoff.

The Calavari next to Kamalat took several hits, with at least one of them penetrating his shields. He heard his scream as the green plasma burned into his leg, but he didn’t dare look back as he fired more and more shots off against the enemy infantry while he struggled to get back up on at least a knee. He didn’t want to get shot dead sitting on his ass.

Kamalat shot another one dead before two more plasma orbs hit his chest shields, weakening them to the breaching point, then as more Cajdital infantry worked their way out of the brush he saw a tiny blur of fur jump up from the ground and cling to one of their heads, whereupon the Urik’kadel fired a tiny wristbound pistol into the Cajdital’s skull when the short barrel made physical contact.

The Cajdital dropped to the ground, dead before it landed, with the little rabbit-like alien jumping off and heading for another as several dozen of them came out of the forest and ambushed the flankers.

“Move Calavari!” one of them yelled at Kamalat as he slowly got himself back up on his feet. “More are on their way. Follow us.”

Kamalat glanced down the line, seeing that most of his fellow soldiers were dead, with two firing at something off to the right as they retreated towards him. Taking their cue he turned and backpedaled in the direction of the Urik’kadel, shooting at Cajdital targets out of sight with his rifle’s sensors while glancing back over his shoulder to make sure he didn’t trip over anything, get ambushed, or lose sight of their diminutive allies…who were quickly outpacing him as they jumped a few more enemy infantry that were popping through from the creek bed.

Eventually he just turned and ran, hoping the faster Cajdital wouldn’t catch him, and followed the Urik’kadel through the woods on a nonlinear path…with Kamalat not having a clue where he was by the time they finally stopped in a crater-like hollow. The little aliens crept up to the top edges to stand watch while Kamalat and a few other Calavari took cover in the center, with their heads just below the height of the surrounding ridges.

“Where are we?” one of the other Calavari asked.

“Northeast of the mining site,” one of the Urik’kadel said, running up between the huge aliens. “We can follow trail back to base once we make sure Cajdital are not coming.”

“What trail?” Kamalat asked. The base they’d been operating out of had been built underground in a clearing that had four roads leading out of it, with the intent being to deny the Nestafar the use of their walkers in assaulting it and making them come down inside with infantry and protomechs, while the Calavari’s own tanks would fit through the entrances, giving them the vehicular advantage for once. But as far as he knew, other than the roads, there were no trails leading to the base.

“Scent trail we leave. It’s how we know to get here.”

“Thank you,” one of the five Calavari said, kicking a stone half buried in the dirt and dislodging it enough to pop it up two meters into the air. “How did they beat us this time?”

“I don’t know,” Kamalat said, equally angry. The ambush should have worked. How the Cajdital had gotten across the creek and flanked them without being seen didn’t make any sense.

“Enemy transports,” the Urik’kadel said, pointing at the sky. “They fly behind and drop troops.”

“Where did they come from?”

“Mining base, far side. We saw from trees.”

“They must have gone pretty far out of their way to get around us,” Kamalat said in disgust. “Why didn’t you signal us with comms?”

“They no work near base.”

The Calavari beside Kamalat checked his, finding it marginally operational.

“Damn it. They’ve got a jamming field set up. That means they were waiting for us to strike.”

“Why?” Kamalat asked.

“Because we’ve been hitting too many of their precious convoys, that’s why,” he said, stomping on the ground so hard the little Urik’kadel visibly bounced. “They need resources to feed their invasion of Varasiss and we’ve been disrupting their output, so they set a trap.”

“By letting us set a trap for them?”

“They’re devious bastards, I’ll give them that,” the Calavari said, looking down at the Urik’kadel. “Did anyone else make it out? Have your scouts seen anyone else?”

The little rabbit-like creature twitched and looked to the perimeter around the hollow, conversing in its native language for a few seconds before staring back up at the high Calavari head above it.

“No one. Just you here.”

Kamalat took a knee, angry and depressed. “That was a fourth of our troops.”

“So long as one of us remains we’re gonna make these bastards pay, I promise you,” the elder Calavari said, dragging Kamalat to his feet by his left upper elbow. “We need to get moving…if it’s clear?” he asked, glancing down.

“No pursuit. Trail is open,” the Urik’kadel said, moving off to the edge. “Calavari follow.”

“Go ahead,” he said, bumping Kamalat as he passed. The Calavari naval officer fell into step behind the mechanic, with the other three doing likewise as they walked up and out of the hollow and off through the forest on a random path following their little guides, alert for more Cajdital ambushes.

None would arise by the time they got back to base, whereupon a subsurface structure lifted up to expose an entrance cupola towards the edge of the grassy clearing, but not so near as to give the enemy cover in the tree line. There were a mass of weapons turrets currently hidden below ground that could pop up and give covering fire if needed, thus the entrances had to have a clear radius around them, though Kamalat and the others certainly didn’t feel like running across the open any more than the Urik’kadel did.

The little ones went first, racing across the grass with their bodies being mostly obscured by it, and attaining speeds the Calavari couldn’t match. They got to the entrance and hopped down into the stairwell long before Kamalat and the others arrived. When the five of them had entered, barely two steps inside, the whole assembly began to lower down, closing off the entrance and leaving only a thick chunk of armor on top surrounded by dirt for the enemy to shoot at if they so chose.

The base had been attacked twice already. Once by air and once by ground, but both times the Calavari defenses held and the Cajdital seemed unwilling to lose another cruiser, with the remains of the dead one sitting upended in the forest several kilometers off where it eventually fell. The base defense turrets had been designed to shoot and kill Nestafar walkers, meaning they had to be very potent weapons, which proved sufficient to penetrate the shields and armor on a Cajdital cruiser in short order, though they had lost three turrets in the process.

That victory had kept the base in Alliance hands, with them gathering every survivor they could find to them…which was extremely few, given the lack of population on the moon. Kamalat and his crew had been the biggest fine, with most of the workers in the nearby facilities having been evacuated to the base before the first Cajdital arrived.

The Calavari had then been divided into 5 teams, each of which had enough troops to conduct round the clock operations, with the base commander insisting on such. He and the others knew there would be no escape for them, for the moon’s orbit was fully under Cajdital control. The Alliance still held Varasiss orbit, more or less, and the base was in constant contact with them, but they weren’t in a position to assist any of the moons, for the Cajdital had taken over them all and begun harvesting their on-hand resources immediately to set up bases.

Those bases had started their own mining efforts recently, with at least some of the produce being shipped off the moon and sent down to Varasiss…meaning that the moons were the industrial base that the Cajdital were going to use to feed their invasion, even if the Calavari troops on the capitol managed to contain the enemy’s footholds and not allow them to expand to the point where they could harvest their own resources, either from salvage or directly from the planet’s crust.

The Alliance had determined this and informed Kamalat’s base that they needed to do as much as they could to disrupt the Cajdital’s efforts there, and to their credit the Hycre had been assaulting the moon’s orbit and on occasion strafing surface targets, but they’d been unable to drive the Cajdital off, leaving it to Kamalat’s ragtag band of conscripts to fight a guerilla war against their enemy’s resource gathering operations, most of whom were not infantry trained.

The Urik’kadel had come to the moon the same way Kamalat had, having been onboard a carrier when it crashed on the planetoid. The pilots it’d been servicing had mostly been killed in the battle, but a few had made it to ground in their miniature Valeries, ironically giving the base more Alliance pilots than Calavari, which was a mark of shame to the piloting specialists, but at this point any bit of military hardware and personnel was of extreme value, and they were grateful for the tiny pilots…especially given their high skill level.

The carrier they’d been based on was Calavari, and a few of its crew also survived the crash, having been brought back to the base after the Cajdital strafed the survivors. Fortunately that hadn’t happened to Kamalat’s cruiser, but then again the carrier was a greater threat, and even crumpled on the surface it still could have had useable aircraft…which it had.

The Urik’kadel had been on the Calavari carrier because their own starships were pathetically primitive, and even though it had been the Kvash that had brought them into the Alliance, they and the Calavari had quickly become close friends, given the innate piloting skill that both races seemed to possess. For that reason the Urik’kadel had offered to help defend the Calavari capitol, though in truth they didn’t belong here, for some of their own worlds were being overrun by the Cajdital, and those conflicts were little more than organized slaughters.

Kamalat knew this because he was naval, and the Urik’kadel lived on naval carriers. Perhaps they were better off here than getting destroyed on their own worlds, but it seemed that it wasn’t going to matter anyway. Here or there they were going to die at Cajdital hands, and if Varasiss did fall, then the Calavari empire was doomed as well. Things already looked bleak, but if they could hold the capitol then some hope remained…and if they were going to do that, Kamalat and the others on the moon needed to give their troops fighting over there as much assistance as possible, meaning hampering the Cajdital here in whatever way they could.

To that end, as soon as Kamalat arrived at the base he was put back into the field on another mission, and would continue to do so round the clock with adequate breaks for sleep and food, but little else. Time was the object of the game here, for they knew they couldn’t beat the Cajdital. They were too many and had naval air support, which aside from over their base they couldn’t hope to touch.

No, their objective was to slow the Cajdital down and steal from them as many resources as they could, whether by destruction or relocation. Every pallet of ingots they took away from them here was one that wouldn’t be delivered down to Varasiss, so even though their own fate seemed sealed, all of the Calavari worked diligently to do what they could for their brothers down on the planet below.

5

February 23, 2471

Pagalis System

Varasiss

The Hycre cruiser, recently arrived insystem, glided across the Calavari landscape of tulip-shaped buildings capped off by an invisible defense shield enroute to the Cajdital  encampment some 132 kilometers away. A ring of destruction surrounded it, marking the location of intense naval bombardment from the grounded enemy cruisers that now sat underneath their own defense shield, shooting at any Calavari ground troops stupid enough to assault them…and many had tried before abandoning the effort short of a new idea arising.

Likewise the Cajdital stayed bunkered underneath their own defenses, burrowing and building as the Calavari likewise dug tunnels toward them, creating an underground war zone where the tunnels met up that favored the Calavari up until the Cajdital began producing mauler variants. Their forearm blades and thicker build allowed them to get up close and go hand to hand with the larger aliens, cutting through their energy shields as if they weren’t even there and causing a considerable amount of wounds where their plasma wouldn’t penetrate.

The Calavari countered this with more conventional body armor, which the Cajdital then countered with det packs in the low numbered battlefield that kept the high population of the planet out of the fight and reduced the conflict down to numbers the Cajdital could handle. While they would gladly take any advances the tunneling could provide, for the enemy it was yet another delaying tactic as they brought down more transports through the aerial blockade and supplemented the troops they were now growing on the surface with additional materials, foodstuffs, and armaments.

The Hycre couldn’t get through their cruiser stacks, with more than 100 in each of the now 7 foothold locations, all of which were close enough to one another that they could disrupt the Alliance’s aircraft, making them zigzag their way through the area to avoid the growing number of wisps on patrol that were no longer allowing the Valeries to fly free around the defense shield, not that they were going to penetrate it with aircraft weapons anyway.

The bases were close enough that the wisps could easily come to the aid of the others after a short delay, with the Calavari and Urik’kadel working to thin those numbers, but the Cajdital kept producing and importing more to replace their losses, enough to create a lingering standoff that favored the enemy.

The Hycre cruiser was about to break that standoff, flying through atmosphere towards a rendezvous spot with six destroyers already on station outside the effective plasma range of the Cajdital cruisers…which was significantly reduced in atmosphere compared to the vacuum of space. The Hycre cruiser, however, was a recent model, fresh out of the shipyard and yet to see any combat. It appeared to have the same hull specifications as the others of its class…save for one tiny spot on the front that held a different, large weapon battery.

The destroyers spread out when it arrived and moved into holding hovers more than a kilometer out from it, ready to intercept the hornets’ nest they were about to poke. The warships were 78 kilometers away from the closest Cajdital base and well outside of weapons range of the plasma that the enemy relied upon.

They were also outside of Hycre plasma range, but thanks to the gift from their Star Force allies, this cruiser had a weapon that could far exceed that range.

With its nose pointed towards the base, the Hycre cruiser spat out a perfectly straight white cleansing beam that passed underneath the elevated shield arc and slammed straight into the tower producing it. That tower also had a secondary shield wrapped around it, but the cleansing beam sucked power out of it quickly, then shut off. The capacitor inside the cruiser quickly refilled, then the Hycre warship fired again, hitting the weakened shields and punching through into the armored exterior.

By the time it fired a third shot the cruisers underneath the shield were already beginning to lift off, with the Hycre beam drifting sideways and slicing through the tower. Several dozen meters later, but still well shy from reaching the exterior, something vital within the tower was hit and the protective cap over the base disappeared in the blink of an eye just before the beam abated.

The next shot went for one of the cruisers charging out of the base towards the Hycre ship, puncturing its shields in short order, but not causing enough damage to destroy it with a single shot. The recharge rate on the weapon was significant enough that the single weapon wasn’t going to do much against the dozens of cruisers heading their way, with even more coming out from the other bases as backup.

But they weren’t sending all of them, for they correctly presumed that they needed to keep units in place to protect the infrastructure they’d been building. From several positions within the Calavari cities a mass of Valeries took to the air as more Hycre ships in orbit suddenly dropped down and headed for the now exposed base.

When that happened virtually every cruiser on the ground began to lift off and stack the airspace between the target and the incoming Hycre ships while wisps poured out to defend against the incoming fighters…which while ill-suited for going against warships of the size and number of the Cajdital cruisers, were quite capable of razing building and ground troops.

The upgraded Hycre cruiser got off another shot before its escort destroyers took off, their targets chosen, and zipped out to flanking attack lines while the cruiser gained some altitude as the Calavari anti-air defenses peppered the underside of the Cajdital cruisers. The Hycre ship was obviously their primary target, but it was also much larger than the destroyers and more than capable of defending itself, but to do so effectively it had to start moving.

After it rose up a few kilometers it accelerated forward and opened up with its formidable array of plasma cannons, hammering the Cajdital ship it had already hit with the cleansing beam. It took fire from several ships, then let the first one go as it accelerated through the Cajdital formation in a wide turn to the north and accelerated heavily as it pulled for more altitude, stretching out the enemy formation as its escort destroyers flicked about hitting the cruisers and running before they could respond with sufficient firepower to take down their shields.

As they were doing that the Hycre cruiser flipped over and dove, heading straight into the ships that were pursuing it and picking one at a time to unload on before it passed them, no longer using the power hog cleansing beam, but instead relying on its plasma cannons and the two maulers, with one located on each side of the ship but with a rotating arc that allowed them to just barely combine fire into a forward targeting sync, giving it a heavy strafing ability on a single pass…though it had to get very close to get the maximum potency out of the weapons.

In conjunction the 7 Hycre ships held their own against more than 40 Cajdital cruisers while several dozen Hycre ships, mostly destroyers and smaller, engaged the other enemy vessels as they attempted to pass through their lines and hit the base. So desperate they were to make good on the opening that they hit the Cajdital head on, with ships on both sides going down, but a few ships slipped through and tore up surface targets in strafing runs that immediately caught the enemy’s attention, with the attacker either fleeing quickly or staying to pound the target long enough that it got itself killed.

One of the Hycre corvettes that suffered that fate managed to fall towards the base, intend on using its death as a weapon until two of the Cajdital cruisers dipped underneath it and used their flat tops to redirect the ship’s fall into the burnt out ring around the base, though they were both dragged down with it into a gigantic, debris-spewing crash.

The Cajdital cruisers dropping elsewhere landed on the Calavari city buildings, most of which had been evacuated months ago around the invasion zone, but the Calavari ground troops didn’t have that luxury and had to hope that the naval battle occurring in atmosphere directly over their heads didn’t drop down on top of them…with not all of the army units being fortunate enough to avoid the fallout.

In the fighter engagement the Valeries eventually won out, leaving their reduced swarm free to hit the base and help the Hycre against the cruisers, picking at them and reducing shield strength or hitting exposed hull that their allies had already peeled the shields off of.

Eventually the Cajdital forfeited the base and sent all their available ships after the cleansing beam-equipped cruiser, which seeing its newfound popularity tipped its pointy nose up and accelerated hard into orbit, pulling the enemy behind it but at a speed they couldn’t match. Eventually it rendezvoused with the Alliance fleet in orbit, safe behind their guns and forcing the Cajdital to wave off and return to the surface, nestling into their other six intact bases while the Calavari army moved in and tore the exposed enemy base apart.

Seeing the vulnerability in their defenses, the Cajdital fleet in high orbit ran more cruisers down to the surface and expanded their defense lines around the other bases, putting cruiser clusters down outside the defense shields to keep the Hycre ships from trying the same cleansing beam attack again without an immediate counterattack.

The previous stalemate resumed, but the Calavari now had access to new Cajdital tunnels and poured troops down them, pressing the underground war and taking several new locations before that too deadlocked again, with both sides analyzing the new reality of the battlefield with the Hycre’s ability to hit the Cajdital from range with impunity.

And that was only one ship, with many more to come to the system in the days ahead.

Unfortunately the same was true for the Cajdital, with numerous cruisers arriving insystem on a regular basis.

Over the following months the hit and miss naval war in orbit continued with the Hycre reinforcements beginning to take their toll on the Cajdital cruisers. Combining the Human weapons with the Hycre’s speed, agility, and naval strategy was a winning combination, with small packs of the enhanced ships poaching a cruiser often with a single pass, hitting it with several cleansing beams from range, breaching its shields and armor and disabling it, then coming in close to hit it with plasma and finally maulers. They’d fly off, leaving it severely damaged and move onto the next one, forcing the Cajdital to operate in larger deployments for fear of isolated groups being hunted down.

That gave the Hycre the run of the system, with the enemy holding several key positions. One was near the star where the primary Cajdital incoming jumpline was located. They could not afford to have the Hycre poaching there, so they spammed the immediate area with ships to discourage that practice, but in order to keep the jumpline clear of potential collisions they couldn’t camp out on the exact spot, leaving some room for adventurous Hycre captains to shoot their ships in and ambush the incoming single enemy vessels, given that they couldn’t jump in clusters.

The moons of Varasiss were where the rest of the Cajdital fleet was located, despite heavy Hycre efforts to thin the fleet there, but as many ships as they killed, more arrived to replace them, but the more Hycre vessels that arrived the more they could kill, meaning the Cajdital had a numbers race on their hands.

The incursions on the planet were thoroughly bottled up, both ways initially, but as more cleansing beam-equipped ships arrived the Cajdital could not defended against all angles with sufficient numbers and the Alliance gradually whittled down their shield generators, then their defending cruisers, before finally eradicating their bases.

It was a significant victory against an enemy that had proved extremely intractable, and as word spread through the surrounding star systems more Alliance reinforcements began to arrive from other races, some of which had no presence in the system to begin with. What they all wanted was a safe zone, and at the moment Varasiss was the closest thing to it. If the Cajdital could be stopped here, then it was possible to push them back elsewhere, giving them a sliver of hope of defending their own worlds…but if this strongpoint failed, it was assumed by many that nothing would be able to stop the enemy.

Then, as if in some cruel joke, a fleet larger than what hit the planet initially arrived in the form of jumpships carrying nothing but thousands of cruisers. They assembled and waited around the star until their full fleet had arrived, then jumped to Varasiss en mass and blew straight through the Alliance fleet, with most of the allied warships running in the face of the armada.

As soon as orbit was secure, the cruisers headed to ground…all the cruisers, and began assaulting the city shields, battle forts, air fields, and every other valuable position on the planet, after the destruction of which they leisurely began establishing hundreds of surface bases as their cruisers roamed the planet, eradicating the half trillion Calavari population through close range aerial bombardment.

Kamalat and the other survivors on Radamal knew what was happening on Varasiss initially, then contact with the planet was cut off, leaving them temporarily safe in their underground base without a purpose to continue fighting for. They knew there could be no surrender, and they had no starships to escape on, with the Alliance fleet having quickly disappeared. Where the Calavari civilian ships had ended up no one knew, but if they were still insystem it was likely they had been destroyed…and if they had left the system then they were just as useless to them.

So Kamalat and the others waited for the end to come, but for months nothing happened. When they stopped hitting Cajdital supply convoys the enemy seemed to forget about them, with many of the Calavari wishing the enemy would just get around to killing them already if it was fated to happen.

Kamalat didn’t wholly disagree, but knew he’d rather be alive than not, and for the moment they had enough supplies to continue their futile resistance. He could only image the carnage occurring down on Varasiss, with even the less graphic nightmares chilling him to the bone. Varasiss was the home of all Calavari, whether they had been born there or not, and it held the wisest, most skilled of their race. With it falling Kamalat felt like a part of him deep inside was dying ahead of his body, putting him into the same zombie-like stupor that the rest of the base population was suffering from.

The Urik’kadel were the only exception, either not knowing or understanding what was happening. They continued to head out to the forest on scouting missions, unwilling or unable to understand the Calavari’s sudden reluctance to fight the enemy. They found it uncharacteristic of their gigantic race, who were always ready and eager to fight, and proceeded to do what they thought was their duty, spying on the enemy and trying to figure some way out of their predicament.

If Kamalat had time to think about it he would have granted that the little aliens were right, but once the base alarm went off he didn’t have time to think. If the Cajdital were finally attacking he and the others were going to take as many of them with them as they could. That sentiment ended the zombification, with a fatalistic anger swelling through the base as they were called to battle stations.

When Kamalat got on station in the armory he found a very different energy present…one of hope which quickly spread to him and those around him when they were informed that the Cajdital were assaulting the base to try and prevent them from being evacuated. The Alliance hadn’t abandoned them, and once he had his weapons and shield harness on he ran towards the surface exits, coming up through a stairway and into the open where numerous hidden turrets had sprung up and were firing on enemy infantry trying to advance across the grassy plain…with the sight of several Cajdital tanks sitting burnt out from plasma fire that was even now coming down from a trio of Scionate ships hovering over the base.

A fourth had landed and was spilling out the armored cats that were forming a loose gauntlet path from the base entrance to the ship for the Calavari to evacuate through. Kamalat moved halfway up the line then stepped off to the left, taking a knee and sighting through his rifle as others nearby were also doing, helping to aid their allies that were taking the fight out to the nearest Cajdital in person, jumping up on them in their yellow armor and firing plasma blasts directly into their torsos as they ran with incredible speed from point to point, eventually circling back to the parallel defensive lines that the Calavari survivors were pouring out of.

Eventually the defense turrets fell silent as their gunners abandoned them to form the last of the evacuee line. Kamalat and the other rifle infantry waited till they ran past, then they in turn formed the last of the line and ran up into the ship with the armored Scionate infantry following them in, with the last two jumping up and into the cargo ship as it began to lift off.

The three warships pounded the single Cajdital cruiser that had moved over to intercept them, with several more already enroute from orbit and one from another surface site. They didn’t have long to organize the evacuation, but the fact that there were few survivors was a blessing and the four ships raced up into orbit with the Cajdital fleet moving to cut them off…but the ships that got too close were intercepted by a pair of Hycre destroyers that were covering the Scionate exit.

Others did the same thing at various points around the moon, with some 28 Scionate ships in all finishing up their flash evacuation and taking cover behind a handful of Hycre ships that only now raced down into low orbit ahead of a sudden microjump by one of their jumpships. Its weaponry, also upgraded with cleansing beams and maulers, discouraged the scattered Cajdital cruisers from further pursuit after gunning two down while the Scionate starships boarded the giant transport.

They were followed in the three massive holds by the Hycre warships, and once they were all onboard the intimidating vessel jumped out of the moons orbit, carrying with it a scattering of survivors...the last of which they would be able to recover from the system after several months of similar efforts. Not for lack of trying or enemy resistance being too great, but for the simple reason being that there were no more Calavari left alive to rescue within the system.

6

March 21, 2473

Numar System (Calavari Territory)

Sashneo

Kamalat walked off the Scionate cargo ship that he’d spent the past week onboard, tasting planetary air and sucking in its refreshingly unique feel as he joined millions of other Calavari survivors in one of their remaining ‘safe’ systems, though their number were diminishing quickly with both the Cajdital and Nestafar picking off their worlds in alarming number, and rumor had it several smaller races were also taking the opportunity to take what they could from the withering Calavari empire…races that normally would have been squashed under their imperial foot.

But things were not what they once were, and the Calavari had gone from being a dominant race to a group of scattered worlds with most of their populations turning into either refugees or corpses as their enemies continued to hunt them down. Sashneo may have been secure at the time, but no one assumed it would stay that way for long.

It was a moderately developed world, dry air, low topography, and the thick atmosphere that the Calavari pilots liked, giving them plenty of engagement room above the surface and keeping the warships in orbit further away. Cities dotted the planet, but they hadn’t consumed it, with more wild regions than infrastructure. Its normal population was a tranquil 200 million, but it had swelled to nearly a billion as they took in refugees, last Kamalat knew, but what he didn’t know was how many people had been pulled out of Varasiss to swell those numbers.

As soon as he and the others got off the Scionate transport they were met and escorted into a makeshift processing center that looked to be of relatively new construction…and not of Calavari origin. He could have sworn it was an Irondel design, but on the inside there were only Calavari present.

“Kamalat?!” he heard someone shout off to his left as he stood in line with the other survivors. He turned his large head and raised a hand in greeting when he saw a familiar face.

“Nemaba! What are you doing here?” he said as the other Calavari walked over to him in a uniform that denoted him as part of the staff. “I thought you fighting on the Nestafar front?”

“Was,” Nemaba said, pulling him out of line and over to a corner of the crowded room where they could get a little privacy. “We took two planets from them before my ship was destroyed, then I got shuffled back to the Chattis System, which fell a month after I arrived. I made it out, and have been bouncing around from one place to another until I landed here. Now at least we have a stable platform to work out of.”

Kamalat frowned. “What’s different here?”

“What’s different?” his Calavari broodmate said incredulously. “Did you miss the fleet in orbit?”

“I was on a Scionate ship,” he explained.

“Then you really don’t know?”

“Know what?” Kamalat insisted.

“This is a gathering world. Transports from many Alliance races are bringing survivors and evacuees here and to the others the Hycre have set up. Most of the people coming through here are shipped out within a couple of months back to the Sanctuary Zone, which is where you’ll be headed unless you want to stay on here and help me and the others organize the mess of people coming through. The Calavari are easy enough to work with, but some of the other races are downright obstinate.”

“Brother, I’ve been stuck in a base on Radamal forever. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Nemaba shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed. A lot of people are coming in knowing less than you. I thought the fleet would have been kept informed. The Kvash withdrew their support after the capitol fell and are pulling all their ships out of our territory to reinforce their own worlds under assault. The Kitot, Fanset, and Seenqua have gone with them.”

Kamalat’s fists clenched up in anger, as did his teeth, but he quickly released the tension, knowing that meant the Cajdital were going to overrun their worlds much quicker without the Kvash’s superior naval forces. “I suppose that was inevitable.”

“The Bsidd have also officially withdrawn their support, not that they had much here to begin with. The Hycre have stepped in and assumed control of this half of the Alliance, and are pretty much calling the shots now. The Cajdital are hitting them hard, but so far they still haven’t lost a system. They’ve got worlds inside Kvash and Bsidd space, with that being the only link left. Otherwise the Alliance has split and races are running to cover their own asses and most likely pick the circumstances they’d prefer to die under.”

“Your tone suggests that’s not the case here. If we couldn’t stop the Cajdital with the Kvash, how can we do it without them?”

“There’s a plan. I don’t like it myself, but the more I’m here the more I’m beginning to think it has a chance of working.”

“What plan?”

“The Hycre are establishing a Sanctuary Zone that we’re evacuating refugees into. The Scionate are actually relocating their entire population, crazy as that is, but then again maybe they’re the smart ones. Wish we’d thought of doing that with Varasiss.”

Kamalat poked his friend in the chest, hard, to make him focus. “There were too many people, and holding the planet was our last chance to save our empire. We had no other choice.”

“Easy, brother. I meant no offense.”

Kamalat gestured with his hand to forget it. “Where is this place you speak of?”

“Beyond the war zone, at the moment. It’s a region centered on Star Force territory. They’re holding a line against the Cajdital on the farthest end, and the Hycre seem to think they will continue to do so. So do their Calavari conscripts that I’ve talked with. There are a few on planet if you’re fortunate enough to run into one.”

“Fortunate?” Kamalat said with disgust.

“I thought the same at first, but if you talk to one you will quickly find yourself in the wrong. The rumors are not true. They have not submitted. They are not servants.”

“Is that where we are being sent?”

Nemaba cringed. “Yes, it is. They have a world in the Sanctuary Zone known as ‘HTC’ that has been given exclusively to us. There is where the others have trained, then returned here to do battle.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this…” Kamalat said, turning around and looking at the line of Calavari behind him as they were being processed through an identification checkpoint, then escorted off to who knows where. “I can’t believe you’re a part of it either,” he whispered angrily.

Nemaba spun him around and held his upper and lower shoulders firm. “You know me, brother. You know I would not lie to you. The Star Force Calavari are our future, and if you take a look at the ships in orbit you’ll see a handful that belong to them. Warships that are far superior to what we’ve had to work with. You of all people should understand the significance of that.”

“I will not serve a Human.”

“There are no Humans onboard those ships. Only Calavari. I do not fully understand their relationship with the Humans, but they told me they are treated as brothers, not servants, though ultimately the Humans are in command.”

“A soft leash is still bondage.”

“If they trust us enough to give us ships and technology without so much as a single observer onboard, is that truly bondage?”

“I do not like this, Nemaba. I do not like this at all.”

“As I said, neither did I at first. You’ll be stationed here for a while with no Human connection. Look around, see what’s happening. Find the truth. The Hycre have always dealt with us fairly, and they are fully behind this plan. They know we’d never willingly become slaves, yet they are devoting a vast amount of ships and resources to pull our people out of the war zone. Consider the logic in that, my friend, and I will talk with you later. At the moment I have duties here.”

Kamalat put a hand on his upper left arm. “No promises. But it is good to see you alive and well, brother.”

“Come with me,” Nemaba said, passing Kamalat through another exit in the long check-in barrier that currently had 5 stations operational that the lines were feeding into. He logged his information in personally and sent him off to a temporary billet, with instructions on where to go and not go, and giving him a pass card for greater autonomy than the rest of the refugees were afforded.

On the other side of the processing center Kamalat passed through a checkpoint that let him out into the city, or rather the rail line that led into the nearby city, around which numerous extraneous facilities had been and were being built. Once he got inside the realm of the more permanent denizens he was shocked to see that 1 out of every 3 people on the streets was an alien.

There were Urik’kadel, Scionate, Gnar, Irondel, Nammet, Gardeen, Lemickas, and even a scattering of the flying Hammids. All were moving about as if they belonged there, rather than having been guests on the Calavari planet. That felt most odd of all, right down to the fact that the rest of the Calavari acted as if they belong there as well.

And not only on the streets, but in the air. Transports were coming and going from the spaceports built around the city, with nearly all of them being non-Calavari. The Calavari transports were heading to the city interior, where he assumed they were setting down at their own spaceport, but the airspace was literally crawling with outsiders, making him wonder just what the hell was really going on here.

Kamalat sought to find out, venturing into and out of a variety of Calavari establishments and getting the locals’ take on what was happening. In fact he spent the next 13 hours doing so, feeling the need to find the truth as his friend had insisted, and in doing so found himself very confused.

The Hycre were in fact the glue holding together this part of the Alliance, and their vast fleet of jumpships were moving around the starships of other races, most notably their transports, and shuffling around people and resources at a frantic pace to try and stay ahead of the Cajdital advance. Sashneo was one of some 12 worlds that came up in his conversations on which the Hycre were doing the same thing, 9 of which were Calavari worlds, with the others belonging to the Gardeen, Gnar, and Reen, the last of which wasn’t even officially part of the Alliance.

All the worlds in question were being used to evacuate Calavari out of their dwindling territory along with evacuees from other races suffering a similar fate…all of which were then being transferred off to other locations that eventually led, as he was told repeated times, to Star Force territory where the war had yet to arrive.

That didn’t quite mesh with what Nemaba had told him about the Humans already fighting the Cajdital, but if they were holding their own, as impossible as that sounded, then the region past that contentious line would truly have been a ‘safe’ zone…but for how long, he wondered.

For so many races to work together under the Hycre’s leadership was quite a feat, and he didn’t see the logic of the Hycre putting all this effort into a futile gambit. More likely, he expected them to pull back their support like the Kvash did and defend only their own worlds, especially since the Cajdital couldn’t seem to get at them inside the atmosphere of their native gas giants.

If they were dedicated to this endeavor, then it meant they thought it had a good chance…or at least a decent chance of working. But did they really think they could stop the Cajdital advance after so many repeated attempts and failures, the most recent being Varasiss, or were they expecting to keep running year after year trying to stay ahead of the war zone?

It wasn’t until he ran into one of the nefarious Star Force Calavari did he get some answers…which started with a double left uppercut that sent him spinning to the ground when Kamalat insulted the Humans and their ‘ownership’ of the Calavari. A few punches later and the two of them were deep into a discussion about what was really going on, with the convert insistent on making Kamalat understand, given his military rank and knowing the need to bolster their naval forces as much as possible.

At first Kamalat was defiant, but several more ‘attitude adjustments’ finally got him listening. He told him that while everyone thought the Hycre were behind this mass exodus that it was really the Humans leading it. They had a small fleet, he was told, but one with technology, training, and tactics to put the rest of the Alliance to shame…and they were sharing virtually all of it with the Calavari in order to rebuild them into a force that would be capable of fighting and winning against the Cajdital. He was told that the Humans had adopted them into their brood rather than making them allies, and had done so with one other race called the Kiritas that he wasn’t familiar with.

Together, they were going to beat the Cajdital, and the other Calavari almost convinced him on the spot with the conviction in his voice and the confidence he bore, both of which were a welcome change to the depression swirling through the rest of his race. But there was a catch, he said. The Humans were small, not just in physical size but in numbers and worlds. They didn’t have enough to beat the Cajdital on their own, not yet anyway. They needed time to grow, resources to build with, and as many skilled individuals as they could get to teach their ways to, and in turn to learn from.

He said that the Calavari’s pilots had taught the Humans much, and that the Valeries that they now flew were hybrids, combining the knowledge and tech of both into the new fighters, though the Humans still preferred their skeet designs…but it was rumored that those too had been augmented with Calavari tech. Kamalat’s race wasn’t just being taken in as refugees, they were contributing to a mutual goal, and as much as Star Force was giving them, they were also giving back.

He told him that in time the Calavari refugees would outnumber the Humans within Star Force…if they could get to them all, which the Hycre were adamant about making happen. They were joining with the Humans, who wanted them as strong as possible, rather than fearing them and restricting their access to resources, tech, and knowledge. Given time the Calavari would reassert themselves as a major power equal in prestige to the Humans, and both would be considered Star Force.

Then he went on to tell him that the Calavari on HTC, the training world, were well away from the Cajdital and the Nestafar, but that the Calavari that had already proven themselves there and joined Star Force were staking out territory on the edge of what had been their original territory. They had made Drema their foothold and were gradually expanding out from it, forming one edge of the Sanctuary Zone and ready to defend it against the Cajdital and the Nestafar, the latter of which had already attacked and been defeated several times.

That changed things for Kamalat, because it meant they weren’t running away. They might be losing most of Calavari territory, but they were going to hold onto at least a small part of it. It might be part of the Sanctuary Zone defenses, but it was home to the Calavari, and the fact that Star Force had seen fit to protect it rather than pull their forces back to their own territory told him there was more to the truth than the rumors, for like the Hycre, defending Drema wasn’t in the Humans’ best interest.

If they were using the Calavari as conscripts they’d have them defending Human worlds…and that wasn’t the case. Once Kamalat accepted that, he had more questions…many more, and spent the next few hours getting some of them answered before heading back to his tiny billet and trying to sleep, but finding he couldn’t. Too many thoughts were running through his mind, and by the time his friend came to find him the next day he was sit sitting on his bunk staring at the wall.

“Ah, I know that look. Eyes opened, eh?”

Kamalat twisted his neck and top shoulder so he could look up at Nemaba.

“Tell me everything you know.”

7

March 27, 2473

Llone System

Scion (Scionate homeworld)

“Hurry,” Om’ra insisted as the quadruped sprinted down a narrow street towards the spaceport with Dre’for half a head behind her on the right. “They will on the transports within moments.”

“Don’t wait on me,” Dre’for lectured. “I’ll get there when I can.”

Without another word Om’ra sped up, moving in her armor far faster than Dre’for could have managed on his best day. Normally she was too polite to show her superior speed, but with the evacuation of their people complicated by a surprise attack by Mershak raiders, formality wasn’t given as much credence.

Four fifths of the planet’s population had already left, along with a significant portion of Scion’s defense fleet, though the cheetah-like race hadn’t been stupid enough to leave it under-defended. They had the 8th largest navy in the Alliance and was one of the few that hadn’t seen much combat, save for in the one system they’d lost to the Cajdital. They’d held it long enough to evacuate their people, rather than devoting the resources necessary to rid the pair of planets of the enemy surface bases the Cajdital had set up and were expanding.

Unlike most other races the Scionate didn’t build large cities that spanned continents, rather they preferred a more open landscape dotted with settlements. That kept their planetary populations low, but that gave their society a more relaxed feel than the claustrophobic megacities that the Calavari and others built, though none were worse than the Bsidd, who they had contact with on their upper border.

The Kvash weren’t much better, whom they also shared a border with, and the three big races were suffering for it when it came to evacuations, being forced to leave many behind to die…and that was something the Scionate were not going to do, thus the foreplanning and ongoing evacuation of their capitol before the Cajdital arrived.

But the scaly creatures weren’t the Scionate’s only enemy, and one that had been their personal bane and continual nuisance had decided to drop in to say goodbye, having launched several raids down onto the planet, bypassing their defense fleet in orbit, and causing what trouble they could. Dre’for didn’t know what they were here for, precisely, but whenever they had encountered them before they were as much interested in looting resources as they were in killing his people. If they only waited a while longer they’d have a planet of technology left to plunder, so why they were coming now he didn’t understand.

By the time Dre’for made it to the spaceport Om’ra was already lifting off in her Scionate-modified Valerie, and he saw two other pilots arriving as well into the half-full hangar that sat underneath a solid shield that blocked out the sun and rain, but allowed the wind to come underneath as well as the fighters, that on the ground sat in open-ceilinged berths.

Dre’for leapt up onto the short staircase near to his personal fighter and hopped across a short gap into the open cockpit, settling down onto the belly pad and sliding his four paws onto control pads as he bit into the primary control bar and began rotating it around in his mouth, powering up the fighter and closing the cockpit.

The pointy aircraft lifted up on anti-grav and drifted above the short walls bracketing it, then Dre’for slid the fighter to the east, rising up over a circular retaining wall and climbing into the gap between it and the high roof. From there he accelerated out and into the open air, seeing the distant weaponsfire on the outskirts of the city, coming from both the ground and the sky.

Less than a minute later he was within range of the enemy aircraft, finding a knot of them overtop their battle tanks with a few Scionate icons intermixed as they hunted them down. He picked one of the enemy’s cubical fighters and raced after it, tagging it with plasma after a few quick maneuvers that the raider couldn’t match.

It dropped from the air, then pulled a tight curve and continued to fly with extensive armor damage…but no anti-grav hinderment. Dre’for cursed himself for falling for the ploy and raced after it, coming across another that cut across his path in pursuit of Om’ra, who had another two on her tail.

Dre’for broke off and followed them, using the distraction to take down one before she looped around in a corkscrew that the enemy fighters couldn’t match and tagged another, then he left her alone with the last one as he tipped the Valerie’s nose towards the ground and made an attack run against one of the battle tanks blasting into the city’s exterior defense turrets.

A belly-mounted plasma cannon built up a thick orb as he held the trigger between his teeth, then released it squarely into the top of the giant tank when he released pressure and turned away from his collision course, skimming the grasslands and nearly running into another tank that was already smoking from plasma damage.

He didn’t bother to turn back on the one he’d shot, or even look to see how much damage he’d done. Dre’for knew time was important and that he and the other few pilots on station had to take down the fighters as quickly as possible, then they’d be free to harass the tanks, whose normal ground opposition was no longer present in this region, already having been evacuated to the Scionate jumpships and their massive Hycre cousins waiting in orbit.

The Mershak fighters were fast, but only in straight lines, and they carried no shields, only heavy armor, which likewise diminished their maneuvering capabilities. They had strong plasma cannons, but the agility and firepower of the Valeries clearly made them the dominant fighters, allowing them to eventually take down all of the enemy, but not before the tanks reached the city’s edge and unleashed their ground troops.

Given time the Valeries took out the tanks without losing any of their own despite an anti-air turret that all of them carried, but after that Dre’for and the others couldn’t do much but fly over the buildings and streets and hope to catch one of the Mershak infantry out in the open. That happened occasionally, but not nearly enough, leaving the raiders with an essentially empty city to disappear into, with only a handful of their own infantry in place to try and protect the last of the evacuees coming out on a road heading towards another city where the evacuation transports were landing.

The vehicles carrying them had been kept safe from the tanks, but they weren’t all loaded yet, meaning there were people walking freely through the streets towards the vehicle loading points that the Mershak could hit, and too few infantry to do anything but guard the vehicles. Realizing that Dre’for sent his fighter to ground, or rather to a thick rooftop where he set it down and leapt out of the cockpit, sliding down to the edge of the roof and falling off the edge.

He landed on all fours with his battle armor moving up along his neck to cover his head, leaving him fully protected as he sprinted off towards the last known position of the evacuees that had yet to reach the vehicles, intending to do some ambushing of his own where his Valerie wouldn’t reach.

Several hours later, when the last of the city’s non-military personnel had been evacuated and the other Valeries had left to fight the Mershak at other settlements, Dre’for returned to the rooftop where he had parked his Valerie and was relieved to find it exactly as he’d left it. He climbed back in using some clawholds on the exterior and lifted up into the sky just as the last of the personnel transports were assembling for ‘last call.’

He commed in and reported that he was airborne and they needn’t be looking for him, then he hovered in a slow spiral over the vehicles until they finally pulled out of the assembly area and floated their way clear of the city in a small, single file convoy. Dre’for flew over top of them, providing a single fighter escort all the way across the grassy plain for some 83 kilometers until they came to a slightly larger city where their starship transports were grounding to pick up evacuees and equipment coming in overland from multiple other locations.

The Mershak weren’t stupid enough to attack here, choosing instead to pick on the weaker settlements and those that were nearly empty. Once Dre’for’s convoy was safely to the departure site he flew off looking for somewhere else he could help out, but finding no activity within a 500 kilometer radius.

That was reported, anyway, so he took up an impromptu patrol around the departure city and the surrounding cities, watching over incoming convoys and looking for ambushes, eventually finding one in progress as a Mershak tank jumped a group of vehicles as it came out of a narrow valley just ahead of them and blocked the road, firing on the first vehicles as the others spread out. Those with wheels turned about and headed back on the road they’d been driving along, while those with anti-grav charted their own course and swung wide to get around the tank before heading back to the road and resuming their course…assuming they didn’t get hit in the process.

Two did and went down, with one digging into the grass and plowing up dirt while the other skidded across the stone-like road, spinning around until it eventually hit dirt, whereupon the edge caught and the whole vehicle flipped over twice, eventually landing upside down.

Dre’for dropped into a slow strafing run and lit up the tank on a quick pass to get its attention, dodging some late anti-air fire in the process. A quick check of his sensor board confirmed that he was the only starfighter or military asset in the area, meaning the tank was now his sole responsibility and if he got shot down the vehicles would be easy pickings, so he had to work quick, but not carelessly.

He circled around low to the ground then pulled up into a high arc that brought him back down on the tank like a scorpion sting, whereupon he delivered several small plasma orbs, followed up by the ‘bomb’ orb. It hit the tank and breached its shields, setting up future passes that allowed him to burn armor off its thick hull as it continued to fire at him with its anti-air cannon, but otherwise kept its attention on the vehicles, which it was just as fast as, if not faster.

Their scattering meant it had choices to make, and it took off after a pair of hovering vehicles, taking them down but not lingering for the kill, intending to disable as many as it could then come back for them later. The wheeled vehicles it went after last, knowing where they would be, given that they were reluctant to try and drive through the grasslands on their small tires.

The tank disabled one of the wheeled vehicles, then rammed into it as it passed by, knocking both askew but damaging the Scionate personnel transport heavily. It put two plasma shots into its side as it moved on, then focused its fire ahead down the road, slowly closing distance on the next one as Dre’for came back around on a very low angle and hit the tank in the flank with another bomb orb.

He got hit by the anti-air fire this time, with his shields sparkling as the tiny plasma needles ran into it like a buzz saw. The Scionate fighter passed the tank with some shield strength remaining, then agitated, Dre’for pulled a skid loop that he’d seen the Humans do multiple times at Daka in their own craft, bringing the nose of his fighter around and keeping it on target throughout the turn, firing as fast as he could the entire time.

He kept the plasma landing on approximately the same spot, one that he’d damaged earlier, and was gratified when he saw a puff of smoke rise up as he finally got through the armor and hit something on the interior of the tank. Another wash of plasma needles forced him to move off, but the tank continued to pursue and fire upon the next closest wheeled transport, hitting it in the rear with plasma ‘spit’ and eventually blowing out the rear wheels with consecutive hits.

The vehicle slowed but didn’t stop, dragging itself on and keeping away from the tank as long as possible. Dre’for knew he had an opening and needed to take it before the tank got the transport, but his shields were almost gone so he had a choice to make…risk a hull hit or play it safe and lose another transport, with the people inside possibly surviving the hit?

With only one tank in play he didn’t need his Valerie to survive the encounter, he just needed to take out the tank, so he circled once then darted in towards the wound on the enemy vehicle and lightly strafed it, drawing an immediate response, given that the Mershak knew which direction he’d be coming from. It fired at his fighter with every weapon it possessed, which ironically bought the transport more time, so he made another light strafing run and nibbled away at the wound, increasing the smoke pyre coming from it.

He kept patiently wearing it down until it finally returned its attention to the transport ahead, catching up to within 400 meters of it, then Dre’for charged up another plasma bomb and ran it right down the tank’s throat, taking hits from the anti-air and anti-personnel turrets on the tank, but managing to avoid the anti-vehicle ones…which would have downed him rather fast.

When he passed it by his control board lit up with damage indicators, but he was still flight worthy, swerving upwards through a wide turn to disrupt following fire, then turning around to see the tank motoring on…but dragging its left side on the ground. Dre’for set up another couple light passes, needling the spot with plasma fire as his shields recharged slowly, then he went in and landed the killing blow, nearly getting himself blown apart in the process as an anti-vehicle plasma blast clipped his Valerie’s right side, melting off a bit of the fighter and giving him a smoke trail of his own.

The tank kept firing, for it wasn’t completely dead, but it no longer hovered over the ground, thoroughly stuck in place as its anti-grav no longer functioned. Dre’for flew off, watching the evacuation vehicles gain distance and eventually get outside the tank’s firing range, then he escorted the wheeled versions out back to an intersection and through a long detour of the spider web-like roads. Eventually empty transports came out and picked up the survivors from the ones the tank had disabled, with most of the passengers having survived.

The equipment was mostly left behind, though a few key pieces were recovered. Dre’for watched over the hasty efforts, keeping an eye on the distant tank in case it came back to life and began moving, but it stayed put and Dre’for paid it no further mind after the last of the Scionate vehicles reached the city. The Mershak could pick their tank up later or leave it to rot for all he cared. They were leaving, and as much as he wanted to kill the thing, the mission was to get his people safely off the planet.

“Valerie, what’s your status?”

“Damaged, but operational,” Dre’for answered the comm.

“Are you spaceworthy?”

A quick glance at the control board confirmed otherwise. “Negative.”

“Then this is your ride out. Rendezvous onboard the outgoing transport. We’ll see you at the colony site.”

“Take care,” Dre’for said in thanks, looking across the skies of his homeworld one last time before heading towards the large cargo ship just now rising up from the spaceport. One of its hangar bay doors remained open and he flew towards it, easily matching the big ship’s course and speed, and ducking inside before it gained any appreciable upward momentum.

Once inside the hull the ship’s artificial gravity took over and he gently landed his damaged ship in the berth indicated by the hangar controller. The area was designed for small dropships, with three open slots out of nine, each of which was big enough to hold multiple Valeries, allowing him plenty of room to set down, after which a pair of techs ran out to meet him.

“Do what you can with the ship,” Dre’for said as he jumped down to the deck. “It still has life in it.”

“It won’t be scrapped,” the tech promised.

Dre’for nodded and walked off, retracting his helmet onto the rest of his body armor as he looked out the closing hangar doors at the sliver of planet still visible…a planet now occupied by only a scattering of Scionate that would be following him and the cargo ship out within a few days. Their sensitive technology had been destroyed or taken with them, but everything else had been left as it was, open to looters and nomads until the Cajdital arrived…assuming they would. He didn’t know if they’d still want the planet if no one was on it, for their previous assaults seemed to have been more about killing than acquiring worlds.

Regardless, Scion was no longer his world. Sad as he was about that, they were abandoning it in order to survive, so with the regret came determination and a wisp of hope. He didn’t know what the Alliance could do against the Cajdital, but by getting out ahead of the invasion path they were buying themselves more time to find a way to beat them…if such a thing existed. Dre’for wasn’t sure it did, but where there was life there was hope, and if his people were to be destroyed it wasn’t going to be today, nor any day in the near future. Abandoning their worlds was buying them time, and they were going to make the most of what they had.

8

May 1, 2473

Numar System (Calavari Territory)

Sashneo

Dre’for walked through one of the warrens set up on the Calavari planet specifically for the Scionate, feeling claustrophobic but otherwise at home. The facilities had been constructed by Scionate engineers using local materials, giving the layout of the area a traditional architecture, but due to the limited land space available to them they’d had to build the temporary structures clustered together, causing Dre’for to feel like he was bumping into people every other step he took.

He was being held over on the transitional world along with a great number of his people, and various others, waiting for transport into the Sanctuary Zone. The initial evacuation of the Scionate worlds had been complicated enough, and was still ongoing on some planets, but there was no way their limited ships could have taken them on a direct route to the promised planets…at least not in time to evacuate them all before the Cajdital got to them. They’d opted for a shorter evacuation to the transition worlds the Hycre had organized, leaving most of the Scionate stranded in transit.

But between the generosity of the Alliance and the Scionate’s preparedness they were well taken care of here, and what inconveniences they had to put up with were minor in the grand scheme of things. For every person he bumped into was a victory snatched from the claws of the Cajdital, so Dre’for reminded himself every time he had to walk off his directional line to avoid hitting another Scionate as they passed one another.

He was one of the few wearing armor, for unlike the others he was permitted to leave their warrens given his place in the combined defense force protecting the planet. His Valerie, now fully refurbished, was situated in a combined Alliance hangar that he was headed to now, and he and the other military members had made a point of wearing their body armor when amongst aliens, never knowing when a bad situation might arise. While allies they might be against the Cajdital, not all of them got along with each other quite as well as that moniker suggested.

When Dre’for got to the entrance/exit he passed by their own guards without incident and joined the even more crowded public streets with all manner of aliens about. Most were civil enough, but many smelled more foul than he liked, putting him in a disgruntled manner all the way to his destination.

Once he got to the spaceport and was permitted entrance, the crowded streets disappeared and a much more normal environment resumed, with the open air and lack of people running every which way prompting him to stop and stretch out his front legs, then back in a typical cat-like show of flexibility. He shook his head twice, resetting his demeanor before he headed for the pilot-only areas of the spaceport.

Though still a mix of aliens, these smelled right…at least as much as he’d gotten accustomed to them smelling on Daka. Those smelled like pilots, and now so did these, putting him more at ease as he headed for his Valerie with a Calavari tech giving him the rundown on the maintenance completed before he climbed inside and lifted off.

He flew high up from the spaceport then leveled out once he was above the tallest building and drifted in place, waiting for two more Scionate Valeries to join him a few minutes later. Once together they flew off, crossing over the vast warrens devoted to multiple races until they got to the boundaries of the city where additional construction was taking place…then they were off across the grasslands that reminded him of those on their homeworld, though more brown.

They traveled over 100 kilometers before meeting up with a much larger group of Valeries, most of whom belonged to the Calavari, though there were a few tiny versions piloted by the Urik’kadel. Dre’for knew from his time on Daka how skilled their pilots were, so he didn’t take it as offense when the Calavari had brought them into the patrol maneuvers without informing him.

“We bring three,” he said, tagging the lead Valerie for the direct comm.

“Good morning, Scionate,” Nangon greeted them. “We have air patrol for the next two hours. Would you like to spar or circulate?”

“I’ll take the circulation, but my wingmen would like to spar.”

“Granted,” the Calavari said, shunting a navigational path to Dre’for’s computer.

As the course came up he pulled off from the other two Scionate pilots and began a wide, ugly circular path around the region they were tasked with ‘defending.’ What they were really doing was keeping some fighters in the air at all times so they’d be available for instantaneous response to any attack, rather than having to rouse pilots from their beds or wherever they were, get them to the hangar, their fighters prepped, and then into the air.

All of that was valuable time the enemy could use to its own advantage, with Calavari philosophy being to keep a small number of fighters in the air at all times to act as a response unit and to buy time for the rest of their pilots to get into the air when the moment came. That said, sitting in a cockpit doing nothing for several hours a day, every day, got to be tedious, so while some of them kept to a patrol route, the others would engage in dogfights with simulated weapons, honing their edge and keeping them from succumbing to boredom.

Dre’for had only arrived a few days ago, but he’d sparred with the other pilots every day since, prompting him to take the boring patrol today so others could mix it up…that, and he didn’t want to be the first to go against the Urik’kadel. His wingmen would be good experiments, given that they’d never flown against the little pilots before, then he’d take what he learned from their imminent defeat and adjust for when he did get another chance to go up against them.

He could have monitored the brawl while on patrol, but he felt that would be a distraction and kept his attention on his duty…not that he felt the planet was going to come under attack today, but just out of a sense of professionality. With his course set into an auto-pilot function, he released the controls and went along for the slow ride with his eyes scanning the regions below and flipping back to the sensor hologram habitually, with any activity set to trigger a small tone once he left the dogfighting fighters behind.

Dre’for flew from city to city while a handful of other pilots did the same at other points on the circuit, marking the outer edges of their patrol zone while the training dogfights continued at its center. A few of the Calavari cities hadn’t been added to as of yet, but most had grown considerably with the short buildings of the Alliance warrens stretching out around them, but as he progressed through the course given to him he flew over one that was just beginning to get added to, literally only a few days old with the construction.

As he looked down on it his sensors beeped, drawing his attention to a ship descending from the upper atmosphere. Its plotted trajectory was bringing it down near him, so Dre’for went off the autopilot route and manually flew clear of the city, making a giant circle around it for good measure before continuing on.

Flying low to give himself a better view of the construction, he saw numerous Calavari workers along with a scattering of Humans. That wasn’t uncommon, for the smaller bipeds had been annexing the Calavari, so he’d been told, with many of their projects reaching out into their former territory. Even now they held a considerable fleet in orbit, centered around the largest warship he’d ever seen outside of the Kvash, underscoring how important this planet was to the evacuation efforts and their commitment to seeing them through.

The Hycre couldn’t come to ground, so it only made sense to see Humans filling in the gaps, with them popping up in small numbers across Alliance territory. Some had even come out to the Scionate, carried by a Hycre jumpship, to negotiate the terms of relocation until both races were satisfied. The Humans were donating a lot of prime colonization spots within their borders to the effort, something the Hycre were ill-suited to do, given their radically different physiology, almost making the Humans an equal partner in this effort, despite their tiny size.

The Hycre were the glue to the reformed Alliance, now that the Kvash and Bsidd had gone their own ways. While they still shared intelligence across what was left of the relay network, it was clear that they weren’t going to be helping anyone in or on the opposite side of Calavari space. They’d communicated as much to the Scionate, who were on their side of the new dividing line, asking for their allegiance, but without any promise of assistance for Scionate territory when it was hit by the Cajdital.

The Hycre plan had seemed far more sensible…especially given that they had a plan whereas the Kvash didn’t, other than turtle up and defend themselves on a smaller perimeter than what the Alliance had been attempting to do. Dre’for knew that was only a delaying tactic, which could also be said of the relocation efforts, but those at least would buy decades, if not centuries…whereas the Kvash’s plan might last them years, with them eventually getting overrun anyway.

Dre’for had been surprised when he’d been informed that they’d be moving to Human space with the assistance of the Hycre fleet, but right now it seemed the only sane option, for both the Scionate and many others in the Cajdital’s immediate path.

As the descending starship closed range Dre’for casually glanced at the identification tag, then did a double take. He was nearly through his loop around the city and about to head back onto his patrol route, but veered off for a pass by of the average-sized transport, seeing for a fact what his sensor board told him.

It was a Dvapp ship. Dre’for had never seen one before, outside of pictures, for their territory was at the farthest end of Alliance space, opposite that of the Humans, and only marginally connected to the Bsidd. Originally they had rebuffed an Alliance invitation, citing that the Cajdital were not a threat to them given the distances involved, but a number of years ago that had changed and they came in as an ally of the Bsidd, though they never had much contact with any of the other Alliance races. With the Bsidd cutting ties to the Calavari, what the hell were they doing here?

As the transport came over the city Dre’for saw it divert to the construction site and double checked his heading to make sure he wasn’t going to run into anything, for he had a hard time taking his eyes off of it. Unlike all other Alliance vessels, the Dvapp starships were not built of metal or rock, they were constructed of crystal, all of which glowed from within, much like Bsidd technology did. This transport shown ruby red, as well as picking up reflections from the sunlight, making it stand out brightly against the cityscape and making for one grand entrance.

The ship was compact, with a number of short, thick pylons jutting out here and there, but overall it was elongated fore and aft with sharp corners and edges and not so much as a single curve in the entire design. It came to a hover over the Calavari and Humans, prompting Dre’for to come in closer for a look at what it was offloading.

He flew so close that he virtually brought the Valerie to a standstill, but it was worth it, for the underside compartments opened up and out dropped globs of rounded crystal that fell to the ground and, rather than shattering, smooshed like thick liquid, then pulled back up into globs and moved their way across the ground.

Dre’for was amazed that such a life form could exist. The Dvapp were completely amorphous, and even as he watched he saw several of them heighten and form arms, legs, and a head, mimicking the Calavari and Humans in a very crude manner as several of the Alliance construction crews came forward to meet them. Other Dvapp extended themselves into long tendrils that snaked back up to the ship’s underside, creating slide ramps when four or more of them worked together, down through which ‘hard’ crystal containers followed.

The Dvapp themselves were crystal, though only on a microscopic level. They had redundant everything, allowing themselves to lose massive amounts of their body to damage and still keep fighting…or so the rumors went. The Alliance had gotten a large amount of information about them when they’d joined, but still there were many questions left lingering.

But above the splendor of it all was the undeniable fact that the Dvapp were the largest Alliance race after the big four, with their power ranking matching, though being somewhat questionable given their lack of combat with the Cajdital or others by which to evaluate them. They exclusively used beam weapons, no particles or plasma, which also left their combat capability questionable, especially if they were seeking refuge with the rest of the Alliance races this far away from their own territory.

The Scionate had come far to get here, but that distance paled in comparison to what the Dvapp had to travel, making Dre’for wonder if something else wasn’t in the works, because their presence here made no sense whatsoever. He did know that this ship was a transport rather than a warship by its color, for their warships glowed green, and it was said they had no jumpships. Had the Hycre carried them here? Dvapp territory was well beyond what he knew the Hycre border to be.

Dre’for watched the unloading begin, then forced himself to return to his patrol route with many questions running through his mind. Had he stayed a bit longer he would have gotten another eyeful, learning about it from others after his patrol had ended, though he and the others were banned from visiting that particular Calavari city, given that the Dvapp preferred some amount of autonomy, much as the other races did with their own warrens.

“Greetings allies,” one of the Dvapp said as it took a bipedal form in front of Vanessa Locke and her Calavari engineering partner Sanmat, whose height it matched exactly.

“Hello,” she answered back in the trade language, though her own voice seemed pathetically flat compared to the almost electronic voice of the Dvapp, which was laced with an overlapping echo. “You’ve arrived earlier than we expected. The transit terminal isn’t completed yet, but we do have the growth components you requested on hand.”

“We’ve marked the boundaries,” Sanmat continued in his deeper voice, “with the low wall you see there,” he said, pointing. “Can you build around that?”

“We can,” the Dvapp answered. “It matches the schematics given to us in orbit. If you will allow us access to the cargo you agreed to provide we can begin immediately.”

Vanessa turned around and motioned with a flick of her wrist to someone behind her, then some 20 seconds later a hovertruck floated out of the construction site with large vats of liquid and boxes of solid compounds, most of which was powderized carbon…all of which were in pure form.

More hovertrucks followed, eventually forming into a long cargo convoy that the Calavari workers unloaded onto the dirt and allowed the Dvapp to do with as they pleased…which involved them setting up a large tarp over the mostly level ground, around the edges of which a retainment ring was formed a meter and a half high, making it look like a football field-sized kiddy pool that sparkled bluish/white.

With that in place, and many others being set up at specific points underneath the hovering cargo ship, the vats of liquid were drained while additional gel-like liquid was deposited directly from above, extruding out of vents in the underside of the ship’s hull. A few of the Dvapp ‘walked’ out into the shallow pool and deposited a large, sharp crystal shard at a precise place, then backed away as it began to pulse with an inner white light.

The Dvapp oozed their way over the edges of the pool as more gel and liquid continued to flow in, threatening to spill out as it nearly reached the top, but when the solid components were added and eventually drifted into the shard near the center of the irregularly shaped pool, the object suddenly shrieked and began to rise up out of the liquid on anti-grav.

Except it wasn’t anti-grav. The crystal was growing at a rate of several inches per second and draining the liquid/gel/powder mix around it, creating a shallow crater in the fluid that drew the rest back towards the center and kept it from spilling over the rim. Slowly, but fast enough for the eyes to easily register, a Dvapp structure rose up, expanding in all directions while the city denizens got to withstand the nearly constant whistle/shriek of the flash growth.

Vanessa and Sanmat watched with wide eyes over the next 12 minutes as the Dvapp crew continued to pump resources into the pool up until there was only a narrow ring left around the exterior, with the building finishing its construction a meter from the retainment wall and soaking up nearly every drop of liquid within it.

“Damn,” she whispered, looking up at the 5-6 story high structure. “Talk about your fast builds.”

“What?” Sanmat asked, not taking his eyes off the building.

“Nothing. Just engineer envy. We’re going to need to bring their cargo in faster.”

“Agreed. I did not realize they, or anyone, could build this fast. I am thoroughly impressed.”

“I’m curious to how strong it is,” Vanessa said, touching her earpiece. “Bring up the rest in continuous convoys. We’ll have additional offloading spots marked by the time you get here…yes, bring it all up. There’s no need for a delayed schedule. It seems the Dvapp can grow their structures as fast as we can deliver the raw materials…no I’m not joking. I’ll fill you in later. And send someone with a camera, I want to document this for later analysis.”

9

August 11, 2473

Numar System (Calavari Territory)

Sashneo

Ik’re drew considerable attention as it walked through the Calavari city streets, glistening with reflected sunlight as its sand-like white body tissue shifted with every bipedal step, a courtesy to the other Alliance races, for normally it would have traveled through other configurations. The Dvapp was headed for the center of the city, far past its own warrens, and was the first to do so of its own race, causing quite a stir in the other denizens.

Ik’re ignored their attention. As an ambassador/diplomat it had dealt with other races before, though never as many as were present here. Most around it now were Calavari, but there were others scattered among them, causing it more apprehension than normal, for most mono-forms found the Dvapp disturbing, and even though these were their supposed allies, old habits were hard to break.

But Ik’re had enough poise to ignore them and continue on its way with large, plodding steps most similar to the Calavari whose form it was mimicking, save for having only two arms. Those arms had no hands, nor the feet toes or the face features. Its body was configured into appendages that pressed flat against the ground below and hung uselessly at its sides for balance. The bipedal form seemed to calm some of the apprehension in others, given it was familiar to them, but Ik’re was still vastly alien and carried with it a group of onlookers all the way up to the ambassadorial building.

Inside the reception was muted, as the street travelers didn’t follow it in. The Dvapp was met by Calavari receptionists and directed to the appropriate chamber in which it met the Calavari ambassador assigned to them on this planet.

“Hello Vorshak,” it said coming into the room and seeing the Calavari standing with his back to it as he looked at some type of hologram mounted on the wall. The Dvapp stood perfectly still just inside the door as it shut, leaving the two of them alone.

The Calavari turned around slowly. “You spoke of an important matter in your message. What is it? And please relax, there is no need to hold that form for me.”

“Thank you,” Ik’re said, melting in place and forming a thick pool of material on the floor that quickly pulled back together into a rounded pillar similar to a Jell-O mold. “What I have to say is also for the Hycre. Can you initiate communications?”

“I already have,” the Calavari said, touching a button on the chair he stood beside and enlarging the hologram on the wall to real size, with the floating gas bag materializing to his left.

SPEAK AMBASSADOR

“Many of the Alliance races have made inquiries as to why we requested permission to establish an outpost on this transitional world. To all we have told that we wished to create a diplomatic link to the other races in the Alliance beyond the Bsidd and to extend that link to the new territories you are retreating into when the time comes. This is true, but it is not the full truth. I offer it to you now.”

“Proceed,” Vorshak urged, crossing both sets of arms over his chest.

“It is with great shame that I reveal this information to you, and I would ask that you keep it a secret, for knowledge of it endangers the Dvapp, but we no longer have any choice but to ask the Alliance for assistance. All are suffering from the Cajdital invasion, but we more than any other. They have found a weakness in our technology and are exploiting it to ravage our fleets and annihilate our worlds. We have no defense against their new weapon. I am here to ask that we be allowed to join in the relocation, in whatever numbers we can muster, but above that we ask if either of your races can devise a technological solution to our vulnerability. Our scientists cannot.”

WHAT VULNERABILITY DO YOU SPEAK OF?

“The Cajdital have developed a chemical that causes a chain reaction within our building materials. The reaction dissolves the structure while creating more of the chemical in the process. The Cajdital deliver it to our ships via physical impact once our shields are down, and even a single drop will consume an entire starship given enough time. But far worse is that fact that they are now using the chemical on our worlds, delivering it to the surface with little loss to their own fleet. The chemical devours and spreads across the entire world if we cannot starve it out by destroying our own infrastructure ahead of the reaction.”

Vorshak glanced at the Hycre, then unlocked his arms and pounded his right fists into his left palms. “Then that is why you have ventured this far out. Have you not asked the Bsidd for aid?”

“When they discovered our weakness their aid to us ended. They said they will not waste resources defending those that are already dead. Likewise the Kvash have refused our pleas for assistance.”

DID EITHER ANALYZE THIS CHEMICAL?

“No.”

“Did you bring some of it with you?”

“No. It is too risky to bring onboard our ships. We have not been able to analyze it, for it affects our tools as well. All our technology is built around the same crystalline structure. We have nothing aside from energy shields to repulse it…and our own bodies. We contracted another race who was unaffected by the chemical to study it. We brought their data with us.”

Ik’re’s body moved internally, and soon a small Calavari data module extruded from inside, held aloft by a white tendril. “We beg your assistance, and failing that, sanctuary far from our enemy, whom we cannot combat with this vulnerability. If compensation is required, we are willing to negotiate.”

11 months later…

Leif-069 jumped over a moving bar on Balboa Lane before sliding under an identical one a half second later. From there he pivoted on one knee up into a jump over yet another, rolling out of the leap into a somersault and avoiding contact with the object. He landed in the finish area at the end of the lane, triggering the clock to stop and the challenge to end.

The trailblazer glanced at the time, satisfied with that run when he noticed a message beacon blinking on the control panel on the wall. Had it been something urgent the Admiral would have interrupted him via the room’s comm…but then again, if it wasn’t important it would have waited until he’d left the sanctum onboard the gigantic Command Ship.

He walked over and pressed the button, pulling up a text message indicating that the Hycre wanted to talk to him. That usually meant something worthy of paying attention to, for unlike some of the other races within the system, the Hycre weren’t ones for chit chat.

“Are they still available?” he asked once he got an open comm to the bridge.

“Standing by,” Admiral Bennington confirmed.

Leif pressed a few buttons on the wall-mounted panel. “Route it down here, private line.”

A moment later a hologram appeared around Leif, from which he stepped back a couple of meters but still within the receiver’s limits, leaving him staring at the reduced image of a Hycre from a distance of a few inches.

“You wanted to speak to me?”

WE HAVE A PROPOSITION FOR YOU TO CONSIDER.

Leif frowned lightly. “Concerning what?”

THE DVAPP.

“Proceed,” Leif said, not having a clue what this was about. The Dvapp mainly kept to themselves, with little interest in the other races, though more of them were coming into the system by the week on isolated ships.

THE CAJDITAL HAVE DEVELOPED A WEAPON THAT HAS LEFT THE DVAPP UNABLE TO DEFEND THEMSELVES. IT IS UNIQUE AND NO THREAT TO US, BUT IT HAS LEFT THE DVAPP COMPLETELY INCAPABLE OF COMBAT.

“Go on,” Leif prompted.

THEY HAVE CREATED A CHEMICAL THAT DEVOURS THE CRYSTALINE STRUCTURE OF THEIR TECHNOLOGY ON CONTACT. THE PROCESS LEAVES A RESIDUE THAT INCLUDES MORE OF THE CHEMICAL. IN THIS WAY A SINGLE DROP DELIVERED TO THE HULL OF THEIR SHIPS CAN EXPAND AND CONSUME THE ENTIRE STRUCTURE. THE SAME IS TRUE OF THEIR SURFACE INFRASTRUCTURE. SEVERAL PLANETS HAVE BEEN DESTROYED BY CAJDITAL CRUISERS DROPPING SMALL PACKETS OF THE WEAPON AND RETREATING.

“Devious as always,” Leif said, now understanding why the Dvapp had come out all this way.

WE HAVE DEVELOPED A CHEMICAL THAT NEUTRALIZES THE CAJDITAL’S WEAPON ON CONTACT. IT WILL BE USED TO COAT THE HULLS OF THE DVAPP WARSHIPS, BUT AT PRESENT THEY ARE UNABLE TO REPLICATE THE SUBSTANCE. WE HAVE AGREED TO PROVIDE THEM WITH AS MUCH OF THE CHEMICAL AS WE CAN MAKE, BUT IT IS NOT A SOLUTION. MERELY A DELAYING MECHANISM.

“But still valuable. Are you wanting us to assist with its production?”

NO. WE CANNOT PRODUCE ENOUGH OF THE CHEMICAL TO PROTECT THEIR INFRASTRUCTURE. WE WILL CONTINUE TO SEARCH FOR A MEANS TO OVERCOME THEIR WEAKNESS, BUT GIVEN THE RATE OF THE CAJDITAL’S ADVANCE THROUGH THEIR TERRITORY WE DO NOT HAVE MUCH TIME. ONCE A WORLD IS INFECTED WITH THE ENEMY’S WEAPON IT IS DIFFICULT TO STOP THE SPREAD OF DESTRUCTION. THE CAJDITAL KNOW THIS AND ARE SENDING RAIDING PARTIES OUT TO MANY DVAPP WORLDS THAT THEY DO NOT HAVE THE MILITARY ASSETS TO CONQUER. THEY ARE INFECTING THEM AND LETTING THE CHEMICAL REACTION TAKE ITS COURSE, LEAVING ALL STRUCTURES DESTROYED WITHOUT THEM FIRING A SINGLE PLASMA CANNON.

“Does the chemical kill the Dvapp?”

FORTUNATELY IT DOES NOT. IT DOES CONSUME ALL OF THEIR TECHNOLOGY.

“If you can provide us a sample I’ll have our techs see if we can come up with a solution.”

THAT IS A SMALL REQUEST WE MAKE OF YOU. WE HAVE A LARGE ONE.

Leif raised an eyebrow. “What is the large one?”

YOUR WAR AGAINST THE SKARRONS. WE BELIEVE THE DVAPP WOULD BE WILLING TO AID YOU IN EXCHANGE FOR PLANETS AWAY FROM THE CAJDITAL. THE DVAPP HAVE LONG RANGE WEAPONRY SUPERIOR TO OUR OWN PRIOR TO YOUR GIFT OF THE CLEANSING BEAM TECHNOLOGY. THEY ALSO HAVE A POPULATION AND FLEET FAR LARGER THAN YOUR OWN. IT IS NEXT TO USELESS AGAINST THE CAJDITAL. WE BELIEVE IT WOULD BE OF GREAT VALUE AGAINST THE SKARRONS.

Leif crossed his arms over his chest as he thought. “I thought you didn’t consider the Skarrons to be that great of a threat?”

WE RECOGNIZE THE SERIOUSNESS OF THE THREAT. WE DISAGREE ON THE SIZE OF THEIR TERRITORY. IF THE DVAPP CANNOT ASSIST US AGAINST THE CAJDITAL, THEY CAN FIGHT THE SKARRONS AND FREE UP MORE OF YOUR FLEET FOR THAT PURPOSE. WE BELIEVE THEY WOULD BE WILLING TO ACCEPT THESE TERMS. THEY ARE LOSING TERRITORY QUICKLY AND HAVE NO VIABLE OPTIONS.

“But are they trustworthy?”

YOU WILL HAVE THE CAJDITAL CHEMICAL. TRUSTWORTHY OR NOT, THEY CANNOT BETRAY YOU. STAR FORCE IS NEEDED TO BATTLE THE CAJDITAL. WE SEEK TO INSURE YOU ARE NOT DESTROYED BY THE SKARRONS. THE DVAPP WISH SANCTUARY AWAY FROM THE CAJDITAL. THEIR TECHNOLOGY WILL BE EFFECTIVE AGAINST THE SKARRONS. THEY CAN FIGHT THE CAJDITAL INDIRECTLY BY PROTECTING STAR FORCE AND THE PROTOVIC FROM ANOTHER ENEMY. THIS IS OUR LOGIC AND OUR PROPOSITION.

“In theory there is potential in this,” Leif agreed. “How much of their civilization is transplantable? It’s taking everything the Scionate have got, plus your jumpships to move them out, and they’re considerably smaller than the Dvapp according to the Alliance data sheets.”

THEY WILL LOSE MANY. THIS IS UNAVOIDABLE. WE WILL SEND JUMPSHIPS TO AID THEIR EVACUATION. THEIR NUMBERS WILL BE SIGNIFICANT, BUT GIVEN THE DISTANCES INVOLVED WE MUST ACT QUICKLY TO BEGIN THE PROCESS. THEIR WARFLEET CAN TRAVEL INDEPENDENT OF THEIR POPULATION AND IS LARGELY INTACT AT PRESENT. THAT WILL NOT REMAIN TRUE FOR LONG.

“Have you discussed this proposal with them?”

NOT AS OF YET. WE DID NOT WISH TO SUGGEST HOPE WHERE THERE MIGHT BE NONE IF YOU WERE NOT IN AGREEMENT.

Leif took in a deep breath, then let it out very slowly, thinking fast. “How much infrastructure support will they need?”

WE BELIEVE THEY WILL REQUIRE NONE. AVAILABLILTY OF BUILDING MATERIALS WILL DICTATE THEIR RATE OF CONSTRUCTION AND ENHANCEMENT WOULD BE PREFERRED. HOWEVER, WE BELIEVE YOU WILL BE ABLE TO ASSIGN THEM WORLDS AND ALLOW THEM TO COLONIZE THEM WITHOUT SUPPORT. THEIR FLEET SHOULD BE SUFFICIENT TO INSURE SECURITY. WHAT THEY REQUIRE IS DISTANCE FROM THE CAJDITAL.

“How fast are their ships compared to your jumpships?”

APPROXIMATELY 40%.

Leif wrinkled his nose. That was slow, considerably slower than Star Force’s jumpships, but far faster than their drone fleet was capable of jumping, which was why they still used jumpships.

“I’ll require an advance colonization team with a small defense fleet moved into position quickly to secure a foothold, then you can bring the rest along at whatever pace you choose. If all they need is territory, we can accommodate them. But make sure they understand the threat the Skarrons pose.”

HOW MANY WORLDS CAN YOU OFFER?

“How many do they need?”

WE ASK THAT YOU OFFER A MIMIMUM OF 10.

“I’ll have to do some map checking first before I can commit to a number. I also need to know what their habitability ranges are, and what level of desirability they want.”

WE BELIEVE THEY WILL TAKE ANY YOU OFFER. THEY ARE ALREADY FLEEING THEIR CURRENT TERRITORY AND COLONIZING WORLDS BEYOND OUR KNOWLEDGE. IF WE OFFER THEM SAFE HAVEN WE BELIEVE THEY WILL TAKE IT REGARDLESS OF TERMS.

“Give me an hour to consult our charts.”

WE WILL AWAIT YOUR RESPONSE.

The image of the shrunken Hycre disappeared and Leif deactivated the comm with a few telekinetic button presses as he jogged out of Balboa Lane, headed back to his quarters. When he got there he sat down at his personal terminal and brought up the master Star Force map and highlighted Beta Region. The current systems held he disregarded, for they weren’t going to share them with what amounted to strangers. Likewise he ignored the communal Alliance systems they were setting up, leaving some 98% remaining.

A few of those were inhabited by other races, some with space travel, some without, but most being single system entities. Beyond those there was a lot of unclaimed territory, with some of the systems being used as trade routes by the other races. He didn’t want to put the Dvapp down on any of those so he ruled them out, then began a search function on the available planetoids based on environmental conditions, which he double checked with the information the Alliance had on the Dvapp.

He got a list within half a second, then switched from data form to map form, with the available planets triggering their systems to glow red. He cut off the list with the top 100 and looked at what they had.

It was a shotgun spread, as he had expected, but within a few minutes he had a basic outline of a region near to Randy’s most coreward colony. Not so far out that it would leave the Dvapp exposed, but it would put them squarely on the line that the trailblazers had drawn as their furthest border. So far the Skarrons hadn’t hit another Star Force system, choosing to focus all their efforts on Protovic territory where both sides were going at it hard. If the Dvapp could slip into the region relatively unnoticed with a warfleet to cover their colonization efforts…this could work.

Leif pulled up a few of the planetoids in question and gave them a quick look over. Most were volcanic worlds with oceans present, places that Star Force could colonize but otherwise wouldn’t want to. That said, he pulled up a secondary map from his personal files and overlaid it on the primary, making sure none of the tagged worlds were included in the alternate networks the others were setting up.

One was, and Leif removed it from his list, which after a little more trimming left him with 22 viable candidates. He saved them and their data to a separate file, knowing that he’d have to get final checks from Randy, but even if a few of them weren’t available he could promise the Dvapp the 10 worlds the Hycre suggested and then some if they could get enough of their people there to colonize them.

With a quick glance over to make sure he hadn’t made any glaring oversights, Leif contacted the bridge and reinitiated communications with the Hycre directly from his quarters.

10

February 11, 2475

Numar System (Calavari Territory)

Sashneo

Dre’for flew his Valerie up to orbit over the Alliance world for the last time, rendezvousing with a Scionate cargo ship that had been converted into a carrier. Onboard he met up with a host of other pilots, all of which were moving on from the still growing world as more Scionate and other races’ refugees were coming in. His time guarding this world was done, and once he and a few others finished up loading the carrier it moved to a higher orbit and docked with a Scionate jumpship.

Another two days of waiting while other ships arrived followed, then the massive jumpship left the system on a 6 jump course enroute to Drema, after which it would follow the Human ‘conduit’ into their region and branch off to one of the Alliance worlds they were setting up there.

Dre’for’s carrier was eventually dropped off along with the other 21 ships in stellar orbit, then the jumpship left immediately to maximize time, leaving the Scionate ships to make microjumps of their own to reach the 2nd of three Alliance worlds in the Lkat system, where the Scionate had established a transitional base of their own.

When the carrier arrived in orbit it met several hundred other ships from 8 different races. There were few orbital facilities, all Human, and they likewise had a few warships of their own present patrolling the area. The rest of the ships belong to the Gardeen, Irondel, Yammot, Hammids, and three more races that Dre’for wasn’t familiar with. They weren’t part of the Alliance, but apparently they’d been given slots on a sanctuary world?

As he flew his Valerie down to the surface he saw the expansive Scionate cities under construction in their sector, with him heading to the largest one as he descended. The Scionate had been given sector 7, which occupied one of the four southern hemisphere quadrants. Their immediate neighbors were the Irondel, Hammids, and one of the races he didn’t know. That one had more infrastructure built up than any of the others, but still it only occupied a small amount of the land space allotted, given that the entire planet had no oceans, forests, or other native life. Just vast tracks of desert underneath a humid atmosphere.

Dre’for flew down through that humidity in the form of a thunderstorm enroute to the spaceport, with many more of the tiny, isolated weather patterns popping up across their territory. He’d been told that the weather would be active, but as he came down near the spaceport he found the wind to be negligible with the rain falling gently, as if bathing the relaxed cityscape beneath.

He ducked his Valerie underneath the spaceport canopy and landed in amongst a bay full of military craft, finding a berth reserved specifically for him. The quadruped opened the canopy on the fighter and sniffed the air, finding it as humid as the thunderstorms suggested.

“Welcome brother.”

Dre’for slid off the top of the Valerie and dropped to the floor next to the other pilot, one far younger than himself.

“Who are the other races on the planet? They are not part of the Alliance.”

“Star Force and the Protovic are engaged in a separate war against a powerful race known as the Skarrons. Their territory is far coreward of here, but when the Nestafar diminished under Calavari attacks they grew bold and attacked the Protovic and others in the region. Many of these races have sought sanctuary with Star Force as well.”

“I was told these worlds were to be shared by the Alliance, not others,” Dre’for said as he looked over the scattering of pilots and techs within the hangar, taking their measure in little more than a glance. He was amongst the most veteran of pilots, and knew the others of his race well enough that it didn’t take him long to ascertain their mettle.

“The other two in the system are, but there were slots left available on this world that the Alliance chose to use rather than expanding to another system.”

“More population under the same naval umbrella,” Dre’for surmised, rotating his shoulders around to stretch them…then his hips.

“Exactly.”

“I trust the same is not true of our allotted worlds?”

“I have no knowledge of that.”

Dre’for huffed. “No, you wouldn’t. My stay here will not be long. I leave with the colony expedition when it is fully assembled. Do you know where I will be billeted until then?”

The other Scionate bowed slightly. “I am your reception. If you wish I can take you there now? Or perhaps you would like something to eat first?”

“Show me to my billet, and I will find my way from there.”

“Follow,” the Scionate said, turning and walking lazily across the fighter bay.

Dre’for did so silently, and was led on a circuitous pathway through the Scionate city until they eventually arrived at the den where 13 sets of quarters were located, set around a small courtyard. His guide pawed the doorframe, opening the vertical door and allowing him access to the small, private chambers.

“You are dismissed,” Dre’for said graciously as he entered.

The other Scionate bowed and walked off, leaving him to acclimate himself.

Dre’for shut the door behind him, then began to peel off his armor now that he was safely within the confines of their own city. Unlike on Sashneo, this city fully belonged to them and there was no mixing of the races. Each zone on the planet was similar, belong to a single race who controlled immigration, commerce, and all other aspects. Other races might have allowed public access to their cities, but the Scionate did not, preferring to be left alone save for select visitors.

There had been some conditions to be given territory on this world, because ultimately it belonged to the Humans. They had a scattering of their own settlements here occupying a narrow strip of land that separated the eight sectors. Those settlements contained resource markets that the Scionate and others could trade with, securing goods and assistance with construction or tech issues as they built up their territories, if necessary. They were also open to the public, allowing the Scionate and others full access, making them the communal points on the otherwise divided planet.

There was a long list of rules governing conduct within those settlements, and a lesser list regarding what the Scionate and others could or could not do here. Normally the Scionate would have found that offensive, but their restrictions were inconsequential save for one, given that Scionate society already operated by the same.

That one was a decree that meat production was not allowed. The Scionate didn’t wholly rely upon it for their food supply, but they did maintain herds of animals to consume as a delicacy. Those herds were not permitted here, under threat of forcible confiscation and punishment. That rule also applied to the worlds the Humans were outright giving them, along with a handful of other conditions that the Scionate had negotiated. It had been rumored that the Humans had rescued several such food herds from the Cajdital, not for their own consumption, but to give them sanctuary.

Dre’for liked that they had offered such insult to their enemy, but otherwise didn’t care for the Human’s squeamishness. He respected their piloting and hand to hand skills, along with the way they’d stepped up on Daka during the Nestafar betrayal, though that had mostly been due to the fact that the Nestafar hadn’t seen fit to consider them a worthy enemy and had trashed the other race’s fighters first.

Never the less the Humans were scrappy fighters, but the idea that they would be dictating to the Scionate was laughable. Why Dre’for’s leaders had agreed to the Humans’ terms he didn’t know, but he was certainly going to miss the meat once their stockpiles ran out. Apparently the Humans didn’t mind them eating the meat, they just didn’t want them bringing their herds into their territory.

He supposed it was a small price to pay for getting away from the Cajdital, if only temporarily, but he didn’t like sacrificing part of Scionate culture in exchange for it. Hopefully this colony still had some meat reserves. If not he’d adjust, but after such a long trip out here he had a serious hankering for a slice of bernen.

After Dre’for shed his armor he walked around the three-tiered billet, finding all as expected to be, then he pawed the door open and set off to explore the surrounding area and get something to eat…meat or not.

“We’re getting deviation again,” Ryan Umberson said, watching the vid screen displays. “Just like last time.”

“Damn it,” Tennisonne swore, monitoring a different readout on the other side of the research lab in Avalon, one of 18 Atlantis-style oceanic surface cities on Earth where most of Star Force’s small scale research and development occurred…save for what had to transpire within the pyramid.

“Shutting down,” the third engineer in the chamber said, in charge of the reactor controls.

“No!” Tennisonne said sharply. “If the computer keeps chasing the rabbit we’re not going to get anywhere,” he said, glancing at the wall between him and Ryan in the triangular room and telekinetically pressing a button, with equipment folding out of a hidden compartment. “We’re going to try this manually.”

“How is that going to be any better than the computer?” Victoria asked.

“If I can stabilize it for even a few seconds longer we’ll be able to gather data to build a better program, at minimum. The current one we’ve got is crap,” the senior level 5 tech said as he walked over to the Ikrid interface and placed his hands on the sphere. “Ryan, link in. We’re going to have to double team this.”

“Right,” his fellow engineer said, opening up an identical interface on another wall, with the reactor standing middle of the room blocking their view of one another, though from his current position Ryan could see Victoria at her corner station.

“You sure about this?” she asked. “We’ve almost lost it. If you can’t do something in the next 20 seconds I’ll have to shut down.”

“Then we have our work cut out for us,” Tennisonne told his fellow level 5 engineers, though in truth they were still his junior. He was really a level 6, but thus far Star Force hadn’t bothered to create that distinction, and skilled as they were, some of the other level 5s were still hesitant to improvise on the fly…but then again he’d had far more experience doing that than they had coming up through the ranks. Tennisonne had been at the forefront from the very beginning, and never had anyone else’s lead to follow.

Ryan got his Ikrid interlink out of the wall and mentally connected with the reactor controls, simultaneously sensing/detecting Tennisonne’s presence and the functions he was asserting control over.

“I’m in.”

“Regulate flow, I’ve got the shielding,” Tennisonne said, claiming the toughest task for himself. The reactor behind him was constraining a series of very specific and active reactions between matter and energy, set up in a mousetrap like chain designed to create a specific product at the end, but the physics involved were so new that the computer had insufficient modeling to regulate it all, which was accomplished by a series of intricate energy shields, far more dense than anything employed in combat, and designed to accomplish specific tasks rather than block anything thrown their way.

Tennisonne saw in mind’s eye the settings they were currently running, as well as the computer modifications that had them fluttering like a flag in the wind as it tried to overcome the erratic nature of the third reaction. Try as it would, it couldn’t compensate for the fluctuating nature and continually took bigger and bigger swings at the shield adjustments trying to null it out…which in turn made things worse.

The senior engineer took direct control over that shield setting and forced smaller adjustments, with the containment security warnings rising towards dangerous levels as he did. Not dangerous as in blowing up the reactor, but in overcoming the containment fields and messing up the interior…which would require days if not weeks for a rebuild, considering that everything in the reactor he and his two peers had designed and built from scratch.

“Hurry,” Victoria prompted.

Tennisonne ignored her and used a series of shield walls to chop down segments of the growing reaction as Ryan feathered the amount of incoming particles and energy, reducing the reaction without smothering it entirely. That helped Tennisonne after the first few tries it took for Ryan to get synchronized with what the other engineer was doing, then the two of them gradually pulled back the reaction with both having to make constant mental adjustments.

“Halfway there,” Victoria noted, seeing the levels calming down.

“Confirm computer is recording.”

“Confirmed. Keep schooling it,” she prompted, checking the status on the other links in the reactor in case they somehow managed to get this one working. They all appeared nominal, but to date had never been tested, given that the first three stages were as far as they’d gotten.

Pushing aside all outside influence, Tennisonne focused his psionic abilities…a gift from Davis for his long service, and something that he’d devoted daily training time towards for just this sort of manipulation that normally only a computer could accomplish. The speed of the link allowed him to make adjustments far faster than his fingers otherwise would have allowed, though still not as fast as a computer was capable of. The difference was wisdom, for a computer could only do what it was programmed to do, and improvising was something that could never be programmed.

Inside the third stage of the reactor two exotic forms of energy that Star Force had only learned to produce a few decades ago were bombarding a slurry of molecules created in stage two. Those had to be kept at extreme heat and pressure, otherwise their unusual atomic configuration would dissipate. Those molecules were then spawning a precise number of andermob particles per cyclical spin, and in order to feed stage 4 a certain flow rate was required. At present the cycles were erratic, giving large surges of andermobs followed by mere trickles, none of which stage 4 could use.

Using the shields and flow rate, Tennisonne and Ryan compressed and relaxed the pressure in various regions of the slurry, adjusting the cyclical rate and trying to maintain a steady output into phase four. The tiny tier 2 subatomic particles had to occur in large amounts to feed the reactor, meaning that a large amount of the molecular slurry was required…which was what was causing the regulation problems. In test runs smaller amounts had been easier to control, which the computer regulation program had been designed to emulate, but given the larger numbers the slurry took on a different behavior, much akin to how a lake and an ocean differed in current patterns.

Tennisonne was having to learn those patterns and counter them, as well as to get a feel for the adjustments Ryan was making. He would have liked to have communicated with him telepathically so they could increase their efficiency, but his psionic skills were already being taxed by the interlink and he didn’t have enough processing power left over to shout a telepathic word, let alone coordinate in real time.

He could still speak though, given that that ability wasn’t psionic, nor were his ears, which Victoria kept annoying with constant updates. He could see the reaction as well, if not better than she could, so he didn’t know why she kept talking at him, other than just being bored with nothing else to do.

More on accident than anything, the pair of engineers managed to keep a stable reaction for a brief span of 4.2 seconds, their longest sustained period yet, which achieved the 3.04 seconds of continuous production necessary to activate stage 4.

“We’re through to four!” Victoria announced excitedly.

“Talk to us,” Tennisonne said, now wanting her input as he continued to chase a stable reaction in stage three.

“We have 79% transfer...stage 5 is activating. Wait, no…hold on,” she said, making an adjustment on her end. “Contained within 5. We’re at 68% capacity. We need more to get through in the next few minutes or we’re going to lose it.”

“Working on it,” Ryan said as he and Tennisonne tried to repeat their success. Again, through what seemed sheer accident rather than intent, the reaction stabilized for 3.8 seconds, sending another continuous burst into stage 4.

“That did it! Stage 5 has reached threshold, transferring to six. Massive loss…we’re only getting 31% through and…” she cut off suddenly.

“What?” Ryan demanded.

“Stage 7 complete.”

“Shut down,” Tennisonne prompted, holding the reaction in check until Victoria deactivated the entire assembly. When it went offline he disconnected from the Ikrid terminal, returning his normal senses to the forefront of his mind. He blinked away the disconcertedness and walked back over to his corner terminal and studied the results.

The reactor was reading .0003 milligrams of Erruvium, and according to the readings it was in a stable form. He’d worried about there being a transitional instability in the halo of neutrons surrounding the empty core of the atom being held together solely by corovon linkage, but the structure appeared to be holding, otherwise there would have been an instantaneous collapse into traditional C-type elements.

“Did we finally do it?” Ryan asked, looking at his own terminal with the other two engineers in each corner of the triangular room with the reactor and its precious contents between them.

Tennisonne cracked a smile, but it was safely inconspicuous from the other two. Most people considered manual override of computer control absolute folly, but he knew from experience…and a little Archon envy…that it was the preferred route to take in select situations.

“Welcome to the new age,” he said loudly and proudly, “of Arc Elements.”

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Table of Contents

- Star Force: Upgrades

- Star Force: Probe

- Star Force: Consensus

- 1 August 15, 2467 Rotunna System (Beta Region) Inner Zone

- 2

- 3 August 17, 2467Rotunna System (Beta Region)Ida

- 4 September 12, 2467Rotunna System (Beta Region)Ida

- 5 September 27, 2467Prolio SystemHTC

- 6 November 3, 2467Zanor

- 7 November 18, 2467Lonigan System (Epsilon Region)Outreach

- 8 December 25, 2467Hammer System (Core Region)Ironhold

- 9 March 22, 2468Epsilon Eridani SystemBabylon 1 Station

- 10 July 8, 2468Trantiss

- Star Force: Relocation