Star Force: Headstrong (SF72)

  1

  August 29, 2840

  Mastodon System (Ninja Monkey territory)

  Kido

  Morgan stood on the edge of a small, churning pool of water looking up at the waterfall that stretched above it more than 100 meters as Ur’va’sel walked up beside her in his red/black Ninja Monkey combat armor. The Scionate stood as high as her shoulder with his head raised upwards to look at her with a scorch mark across where the left eye would be, save for the fact that the helmet, like Morgan’s, had no faceplate or eye slits. It was solid armor with an interior display screen fed by multiple microscopic cameras on the exterior, so the quadruped didn’t see the damage he’d taken earlier in the day, only the jungle around them.

  “What is it?” he asked her.

  “Just taking a moment to ponder the change in lizard tactics,” she said, still looking up at the waterfall that was throwing a fine spray of mist over her golden armor, though the helmet cam wouldn’t pick that up on contact and cloud her vision, “and to wonder why these battles seem more personal. I’ve helped take 93 worlds from the lizards, but these last few seem different.”

  “Because you can keep them?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe it’s because I’m responsible for them hereafter, whereas in the past I’d just move on to the next target. Still, I’m feeling a bit of sentimentality I hadn’t expected.”

  “Do you think the lizards feel likewise?”

  “No. I think they’re testing us again. We haven’t been using large forces to take these planets and they either sense a weakness or just don’t want to let us get away with victories that we didn’t earn.”

  “They are not going to take this world back,” the Scionate said firmly.

  “I think their aim is to deny it to us, or at least stall our advance. Whatever their motivation is, they keep sending more troops down.”

  “In that they are at least making us earn our keep.”

  “They’re wasting troops, Ur’va’sel. They may not care about losses, but they always lose them for a reason. I don’t see their angle here, but they’re up to something. I know it.”

  “What can they hope to gain? Even if we should be defeated the rest of Star Force will not let them keep this world.”

  “Technically it’s all on us, but they don’t know that…or do they? Damn, I’ve been blind. That is why they’re here.”

  “Explain please.”

  Morgan shuffled her feet, thinking things through in a flash.

  “There’s been a lingering question concerning their intelligence capabilities and whether or not they monitor ADZ activities. Do they even know our language? I know they’re too smart not to take advantage of opportunities, but we haven’t seen any evidence of it. We make so much public knowledge they can’t have missed it, and Ninja Monkey’s mandate isn’t a secret anymore. It’s hit the news networks, and I’ll be damned if they aren’t monitoring them somehow.”

  “So they know we are limited in number?”

  Morgan nodded. “I think they’re testing us in that regard. They want to see whether or not we really are on our own, and if we are…holy crap.”

  “What is it?”

  She turned to look at her top ranking Scionate within Clan Ninja Monkey. “I think the lizards are picking a fight with us, and intend to take back these worlds if they can. These troop insertions are probably just scouts, testing our reactions.”

  “What of the past years? We never saw this response in the other systems.”

  “It probably took time for them to notice, now they’re calling our bluff. We either fight them Clan to lizard, or break our mandate and get help.”

  “Why would they care?”

  “They know about our no-go line. I bet this is a taunt.”

  “How could they know that?”

  “Well, we haven’t publically said we’re not pushing any further coreward, but it’s pretty damn obvious which directions we’re expanding. This border is staying essentially the same while the Calavari and Bsidd Regions are mushrooming out. Either they came to that deduction based on the map or they deduced it through word of our mandate. If they know, or even suspect that we won’t push coreward, then I bet this is just the first stage of them getting bold…and that’s something we cannot have.”

  “Bold, as in major push?”

  “Possibly. Either way I think they’re going to contend this world and every other one we take going forward,” she said as a ping on the battlemap got her attention.

  “Another drop pod,” Ur’va’sel said, seeing the marker for a new lizard craft that was entering the atmosphere at roughly the same speed as a meteor and would deliver 100-200 troops instantaneously to whatever location they wanted, and with most of this planet not covered by Ninja Monkey anti-air defenses they were landing troops everywhere in small groups that were accomplishing a number of missions.

  Morgan had already busted up several firebases they were establishing in the jungle or digging underground. Nothing large, just ground work while other teams were hitting soft targets and even assaulting the two colonies she’d started to build on Kido. The 18 lizard colonies that had been located here were now toast, but the lizards had not let a day go by without them having boots on the ground in some location. They owned two more worlds in this system, with Morgan now owning three if you counted Kido. As was normal for her Clan, she was renaming every system and world she took, even though this world was not fully under her control yet.

  The other two insystem had been taken some 4 years ago, but she hadn’t been able to launch this attack until she’d built them up sufficiently to defend themselves. Her available troop numbers were low, for the Ninja Monkeys now possessed 9 different systems on the border and had to have troops in all of them for defensive placements. Even as she was getting in more and more recruits from a variety of races she was having to hold back her invasions until she pooled enough to make the next step forward. That more than anything probably confirmed to the lizards that she was operating alone here, and now it looked like they had decided to fight her directly rather than playing for time and letting Star Force have whatever systems it wanted without lizard reinforcements to contend with.

  The enemy’s local defenses in this region were heavy, given the fact that Star Force had not pushed into this region and the lizards had been able to build freely since they’d claimed them. They were definitely challenges to take, but Morgan’s gut instinct confirmed what her mind told her.

  This was an entirely new game, and without Star Force’s backing the lizards weren’t going to be playing shy anymore. Their claws were starting to come out now that they sensed an opportunity for victory, either in outright reclaiming some worlds or in at least making Star Force go back on its stated mandate for her Clan. That would be a symbolic victory rather than a material one, but if they were monitoring ADZ news broadcasts then they were probably aware of Star Force’s ‘no nonsense’ reputation and their credibility when it came to pronouncements and following them through.

  If they forced Star Force to backtrack on this one it’d be a black mark, suggesting that they’d underestimated the threat. It’d been so long since the lizards had had a victory against them that maybe that was enough of a reason for them to pursue, or maybe this was just for the sake of testing how Star Force would react. Either way, more of those drop pods were coming down from orbit as lizard cruisers dove into the upper atmosphere to release them before they could be intercepted. Morgan’s small fleet could hold its own, but blockade an entire planet it could not.

  “Crap, they’re coming down further away than we thought,” Morgan said, turning on her left leg and jumping into a run following the course of the small river. “W
e’ve got some running to do.”

  “We will keep pace,” Ur’va’sel said as he followed on her heels while sending out a comm to the other Scionate nearby to join them. Within a couple of minutes a group of 17 others had caught up and fell into a long, agile line following the trailblazer and having to work hard to keep up with her despite their quadruped speed advantage. The jungle was tricky to navigate, which forced them to redirect with about every third step, but Morgan blazed the trail and the Scionate followed her marks as they crossed country as fast as they could to get to the location of the recent drop pods.

  It took them almost half an hour to get further to the south, then Morgan began picking up mental signatures and guessed they were moving off from the pods so not to betray their locations. The jungle canopy was thick enough to hide them from all but the closest of scans and the lizards were making good use of it, with this group of six moving rapidly to who knew where.

  “Iv’ra’nom, Gha’stiv’kex…they’re yours,” she said, diverting to the left to chase a larger group ahead.

  “We will be back shortly,” Iv’ra’nom said as he and another Scionate towards the end of the line broke off from their trail and made their way towards the waypoint Morgan set down slightly ahead of where the lizards were moving. The Scionate didn’t have psionics to track them, but get them close and they’d be able to do the rest.

  Morgan kept their pace hard, forcing their way through bits of dense jungle and over hillsides rather than trying to circle around. She had no trouble jumping over the bits of terrain and fortunately the Scionate didn’t either, for they possessed a vertical jump higher than her own…though they did have four legs to accomplish it with.

  When the trailblazer cut over a short ravine she hopped up to the cliff edge and grabbed a branch, pulling herself the rest of the way up and onto her feet at the top while the Scionate just lunged the full height, clawing at the ground for traction and letting their momentum take them up and over the rim. Morgan got back into the lead after a moment, then led them the last kilometer up to a group of at least 100 lizards that were not moving, or rather not across terrain. They were active, but it looked like they were setting up another firebase in a fixed location, probably what the group of six were planning to work out of and extending their perimeter.

  The lizards had been using comm probes to set up short range sequences that could stretch across kilometers without being noticeable from range. Star Force couldn’t hack the signals because they were so low powered that they couldn’t get a receiver on them, plus it seemed they were mostly directional and broadcasting horizontally, meaning even the most sensitive equipment couldn’t pick them up from orbit.

  Those six might have been going to deploy those, but she’d have to wait for the report from the two she sent after them. One armored Scionate was enough to kill six lizards, but she didn’t want to get sloppy. And while she could easily have tracked down these groups solo, she’d been using the Scionate more and more as escorts simply due to the fact that they could keep up with her while running…not to mention that the lizards were now scattering rather than standing their ground and fighting, and having more people with her helped greatly in running them all down.

  If the lizards had an advantage they’d fight, or had nowhere to run to, but if they had a choice they’d flee and regroup with others. It was something new in this campaign, but then again everything here seemed new, like the lizards were working on another page in their playbook. Morgan wasn’t sure exactly what they were up to, but the more of them she took out of the picture the better, as always.

  And her team wasn’t the only one out roaming the jungle. She had hundreds of teams scattered across the planet doing the same, though she saved herself for the hottest spots, and this region had seen the most recent lizard drops, hence this was where she’d deployed herself and her Scionate team.

  When they were nearly on top of them Morgan telepathically gave the Scionate the order to fan out, with her slowing her speed but still remaining point. Just as she was about to use her psionics to subdue the outlying lizards she ran straight into an invisible wall and bounced off it. Three of the Scionate did as well before the others checked up and stopped short of the shield wall the lizards had deployed.

  An armored paw poked at Morgan’s helmet as her Pefbar returned quicker than her vision.

  “Archon, are you alright?”

  “What…what the hell?” she asked, sitting up and feeling a bit dizzy as she looked ahead and saw the tiny fluctuations in her Pefbar as to where the energy shield was. Just past it she could see the lizards squirming about, for they’d been alerted to their presence and were hastily going somewhere further away from the shield wall…which she expected was around the entire perimeter, but there was no way to know for sure.

  “An energy shield,” the Scionate said, looking down at her helmet as she sat on the ground for a moment before she attempted to stand. Not seeing that coming had knocked the wind out of her, but she was getting her balance again quickly.

  “How quaint,” she said, looking around for an emitter nearby but seeing nothing in her Pefbar to telekinetically wrench. Instead she summoned up a wave of goosebumps and pooled her concussive energy around her body. “Follow the perimeter and see if you can find a gap. I’m going after them.”

  The Scionate immediately left her and scattered in both directions while she walked forward and stepped into the shield with her Jumat disrupting it enough to let her pass through. Unfortunately she couldn’t transmit the energy around the Scionate or she would have brought them with her, and trying to knock the shield down for a heartbeat to let one of them jump through would have taken too much time. As soon as she was on the other side she ran ahead, tracking the nearest lizard minds through the thick foliage to try and find out where they were going.

  She had her answer some forty seconds later when the lizards suddenly went vertical, dropping down into what had to be underground unless there was a deep ravine that she wasn’t seeing. When she got to their approximate descent point she found a sealed hatch that was buried in the dirt and covered with overhanging leaves, almost impossible to find. Apparently the lizards had been here for some time, long enough anyways to have dug out subsurface bunkers by hand.

  “You guys find a way in yet?”

  “Negative. The arc is vast and we are still searching the perimeter.”

  “The twerps have infrastructure in place, subsurface. Keep looking for a way in, but if you find none break up into teams of 2 and patrol the perimeter. Hunt down any lizards that make their way out. I’m going down and cleaning out whatever mess they’ve made. I’ll contact you when I’m done or find a way to shut the shield down.”

  With that Morgan telekinetically latched onto the flimsy hatch and pulled it off its hinges, then hopped into the opening and fell straight down into the crude lizard labyrinth.

  7 hours later Morgan stepped off a dropship onto the hangar deck of her command ship in orbit. It was the only one in the Ninja Monkey fleet and was her mobile base of operations wherever she went while most of her troops were stationed in the pair of surface colonies and a few firebases that had been set up nearer to the lizard drop regions. She could have slept there, but she needed to squeeze in at least a short workout before heading back out again and the colonies didn’t have a full sanctum, in that there was no elite section to it.

  Her command ship did, but first thing she did when she got back was shower and eat, then on her way to bed for what would be a six hour stint she sat down at her terminal and ran through the system status reports. They detailed everything that was happening in Mastodon and included some lizard ship movements elsewhere, but none had come in to reinforce this planet, for she owned orbit and none could stay long enough to stake out a foothold. They’d run troops down into drop position, or maybe send some cargo down, but that was all they could do…and they’d been spamming that tactic ever since they’d figured out they could get away with i
t.

  Had Morgan more drones that wouldn’t be possible, but she could only build so fast. Her other captured worlds were doing well to start snowballing their industry, but it would take a lot of time to build up the necessary material and, while they were certainly winning here, the losses of equipment that they were suffering in Mastodon were eating into whatever reinforcements she was getting.

  Fully conquering this system was going to take several more years at least, and the other ones she was eyeing going forward were getting more heavily fortified as time went by. The lizards knew she was coming for them eventually, and since they seemed to think it would only be the Ninja Monkeys attacking they were putting more resources into beefing them up than other systems…which was going to make this a very long, arduous campaign.

  Part of Morgan didn’t like that, seeing that the lizards had found a way to use their coreward border against them, but another part of her appreciated the challenge. It was her Clan against the lizards and they weren’t going to play defense against her. They might be getting their asses kicked elsewhere and trying to minimize the losses while they gained more and more systems on other fronts, but here they were making a play at it and calling Star Force out.

  Morgan would meet them head on and fight this, with her Clan essentially engaged in an even fight while Star Force rolled over systems towards the rim and the lizards were expanding quickly coreward. It was an odd little microcosm in the war, but it seemed fitting none the less. She wanted her Clan to be on the front lines getting battle experience, and it seemed the lizards were going to oblige and give her all the fight she could handle…and maybe more if these drops and new tactics were just the scouting probe for a larger, more typical swarm rush to come.

  Only time would tell, but this was her fight and her border to lock down…and with every day that went by she secured her holdings tighter as well. No matter what happened, both sides were amping up their defenses and setting up their strategy for the long term, with this looking like a major brawl in its infancy.