Star Force: Kaalo (SF99) (Star Force Origin Series)

  1

  March 4, 3602

  Solar System

  Neptune

  The subdivision of the V’kit’no’sat fleet led by the Serni’jar broke away from the other races, taking their 296 ships out beyond the main planet to the gas giants in higher stellar orbits, picking the cold blue one with a fair amount of orbital constructs but it was the pair of sizeable shipyards in low planetary orbit that drew their attention. With only four of their defense stations to defend them and a small fleet of the rogue Zen’zat ships, Mak’to’ran had sent Nikken to both take them out and draw system defense fleets away from other targets.

  That said, Nikken didn’t like what he saw. A direct attack would cost him some ships and they’d already lost plenty since entering this system without even assaulting a protected world yet. It was questionable whether or not the V’kit’no’sat fleet could destroy this system if they kept taking losses, for the strength of the planetary shields had not yet been tested, and he did not want to contribute to their losses here.

  The quadruped strode back and forth on the command deck of his Na’shor, sizing up the defense fleet and nearby ships moving to reinforce the shipyards…as well as the partially completed vessels in the slips. Many were larger than the ships they’d been fighting, but without a complete record of the enemy fleet classes it was impossible to determine their function. He wanted to send troops onboard to pull computer records and other information, but with the resistance being put up so far he wasn’t going to risk it. There were many shipyards, some of alarming size, spread out across this star system, but this pair were going to be eliminated quickly and efficiently…the question was how to do that aside from a straightforward attack.

  Using the data from the battle in stellar orbit, Nikken calculated how many hits from those defense stations his ships could take and set up an assault circuit with a point starting beyond their range, then when he was satisfied, the Serni’jar and Octo’mar fleets began running in towards them at high speed, but only a few ships at a time stretched out into a long line.

  Nikken didn’t go first, but rather back in the 19th wave so he could monitor the damage on both sides and make adjustments prior to his personal attack. He’d ordered the defense stations and the Zen’zat ships ignored as much as possible and all firepower to be directed on the shields protecting the outer shipyard of the pair. Taking fire from the defense stations and the Zen’zat fleet, his leading ships punched through and unloaded only a handful of shots as they flashed by at high speed, suffering more shield damage on the far side as they accelerated hard to get out of weapons range.

  Nikken didn’t get information back from them until they came out of their tiny microjumps, but none of them had their shields go down…which was good, and if the trend held they’d be able to continue battering the shipyard with impunity until they breached the weak shield covering its spindly mass.

  But the Zen’zat defenders quickly caught on to their disadvantage, and by the time Nikken’s ship made its strafing run it had enemy ships accelerating to keep pace with it, exchanging fire as they flew in and out of proximity, but when the microjump ended he saw that the Star Force ships were still with his…but they hadn’t followed all of his ships, only certain groups that they now outnumbered.

  Clever of them, but he wasn’t going to let them bait him into a slugging match. He ordered his ships to continue fleeing to a new rendezvous point, but the ‘Star Force’ ships continued to pursue. Calling them Zen’zat vessels wasn’t fair, after all, for no true Zen’zat had built these primitive craft.

  They weren’t V’kit’no’sat technology or design, but it was going to take a while for Nikken to start thinking of their opponents as something other than their own…which was why he didn’t expect one of his smaller Ti’mat to suddenly drop out of formation as Star Force made a strafing run against the four ships in his group. He expected them to come in close and open fire, but none of them did on this attack run. Instead they came up so close they nearly rammed the Ti’mat, then suddenly they fell back dragging the Serni’jar ship with them.

  By the time he realized what was happening and turned his own ships around, more Star Force ships were intercepting the Ti’mat pinned within an engine crippling field and hammering its shields. Like a swarm of rodents they surrounded it and did not relent even when his Na’shor and 9 other ships arrived, with his group combining with another attack wave. They fell on the tiny Star Force ships and began savaging them, but the Ti’mat inside had hull breaches before the rescue battle had even begun and Nikken couldn’t draw their fire away from it.

  The Star Force fleet group eventually scattered and ran, now outnumbered, but having destroyed the Ti’mat. Its hull was still mostly there, but with huge holes in it, few operational systems, and drifting on its previous course with no engine power even without the Star Force crippling ships holding it in check. Nikken had destroyed several of them as they fled, but he hadn’t gotten them all and the tradeoff had definitely not been worth it.

  Angry at having been bled so stupidly, he began clumping his formation up more as he continued to pound the shipyard’s shields until they eventually failed. When they did, each subsequent pass destroyed part of the giant station, but eventually another Ti’mat went with it. The Star Force fleet assaulted one again as they passed, weakening its shields but not penetrating them as they focused their full firepower on the single vessel during the brief flyby. Like before, some of them accelerated and tried to match pace, but the four defense stations also targeted the single Ti’mat whose shields were already diminished…

  Suddenly it dropped from the group just as they were beginning to make their microjumps, with Nikken ordering a sudden abort. He wasn’t going to leave a ship behind to get picked apart, so he decided to weather the Ardents from the stations as his ships surrounded the damaged one, taking hits for it as he called in all his far flung ship groups for a direct attack on the Sentinels.

  The battle lasted longer than he wanted, but the outcome was never in doubt. All four defense stations fell and the remains of the defense fleet fled as they were quickly outgunned, leaving both the damaged shipyard and the untouched one at their mercy…though at the cost of 18 of his ships. More were damaged and still operational to various degrees, but the crews on the destroyed ones would at least be partially recoverable. Nikken ordered rescue teams sent immediately and enough perimeter skirmishers to keep the Star Force ships back from any assassination runs they might attempt.

  Simultaneously he sent a handful of ships to finish destroying the exposed shipyard, which they could now do patiently without the defense stations waiting nearby to shoot them. Both the Serni’jar and their Octo’mar allies, whom they often paired with on joint missions, methodically took apart the station piece by piece, utterly destroying it in a venting of their rage, but Nikken had them carefully take down and disable the shields on the second shipyard sometime later, then surround it with a defensive screen while he sent boarding parties onboard.

  He might not have come out of this with his full ship count, but he was going to get some intel he hadn’t expected to retrieve. It wouldn’t be worth the loss of his ships, but it would be something to help mitigate that loss…and he hoped that Star Force would come back within firing range in an attempt to stop him so he could destroy more of their pathetic small ships.

  Nikken’s costly victory was expanded upon as his fleet sought out and destroyed all unprotected orbitals in the region around the gas giant that weren’t under the protective umbrella of a defense station. He’d hoped to draw out the Star Force fleet but they didn’t respond at all, just
letting him destroy their infrastructure that, like the shipyards, appeared to have already been evacuated…unlike a larger station in orbit around one of the closer gas giants that the Brat’mar were assaulting. They’d gotten inside to discover a large number of the rogue Zen’zat still remaining, and according to previous reports they were capturing as many as they were killing and beginning to get some answers as to what was going on here.

  But then things took another turn for the worse when Star Force staged a counter attack with ships of an unfamiliar kind coming up from somewhere far below the star to reinforce them. The V’kit’no’sat didn’t know who owned them, but they were much larger and heavily shielded, giving the small ships some badly needed mass and allowing them to take back naval control of their synthetic landscape in orbit, though in appearance only. Brat’mar, I’rar’et and Kar’ka troops were still inside and in control, but Star Force had begun shipping in a massive amount of their own troops and initial reports indicated that they were using both aerial craft and large mechanized vehicles and battle suits that were having some effect.

  Whenever it was told that a Brat’mar died in ground combat it gave Nikken chills for they fought the least recklessly, and the combination of their firepower and defenses meant it had to have taken something particularly nasty to take them down. As it was, his splinter group was being called to that battle location along with four other fleet segments in order to regain naval superiority against the alarming number of Star Force ships gathering there.

  Other fleet segments were being reassigned to punish the enemy’s arrogance in different locations, but as Nikken recalled his various ships from around planetary orbit he got word from the vessels in the center of the system that Star Force reinforcements had begun to arrive, complicating matters further.

  “There they are,” Roger-009 said from the bridge nexus onboard his command ship as he came out of his high deceleration jump and began getting battlemap data of the V’kit’no’sat fleet that had spread across the system, but with a chunk still remaining in stellar orbit tearing apart a lot of Sentinels with an Ethan-commanded fleet nearby…and the Slip’in’slide deployed above them.

  As the data began to pour in Roger reviewed it quickly with his Sav-enhanced mind and the neural interlink, seeing the initial battle replayed while also monitoring current movements to make sure the 1000 jumpships in the 112th fleet that he’d brought with him in full weren’t disturbed at their jumppoint. He’d followed the jumppoint recommendations flowing out over short range communications and was glad to see that there were no nearby threats nor any moving towards him.

  During that time he also received a message from Ethan, including a set of coordinates that he wanted him to rendezvous at.

  “Glad you finally got your ass here, buddy. If you haven’t noticed by now they’ve got a Mach’nel that is causing us a lot of headaches and their ships are a bit stronger than during the Rit’ko’sor rebellion. No major improvements seen yet and with the fleet they brought we’re going to kick their ass, but if we don’t do something about that Mach’nel they’re going to make a mess of our tidy system.”

  “Don’t trip over the debris on the way in, we’ve already had one dustup, and Rio is in a bind out at Titan. They got onboard the Ribbon and we’re taking it back to finish with the evacuation. Right now the Mach’nel is picking off Sentinels and I can’t do a damn thing about it aside from trying to trim off some of their support ships, so if you have any bright ideas get your ass over here and take command. And even if you don’t, get over here. I need all the help I can get. These bastards are trying every trick in the book to break our battlemap grid and I’m having to bleed drones to accomplish anything against them.”

  The recorded message finished with a position highlighted near Ethan’s current location, and with a thought he assigned command of the jumppoint to another ship with orders to remain on station until everyone had arrived then follow him over to Ethan…but right now he needed to get within realtime comm range and have a chat with his peer.

  That took only a matter of minutes when sufficient engine power was applied, dropping him out behind the Star Force position to help avoid a possible intercept that never came. Right now there was no fighting aside from the Mach’nel sniping a Sentinel from beyond its return fire range and methodically poking down its shields.

  “Why didn’t we build one of those?” Roger joked when Ethan’s hologram popped up in his nexus.

  “Rio didn’t want to tip our hand and I agreed. We’ve pulled in a couple of Shivas, but that’s it. Unless we can get the Mach’nel alone to hammer on it, any assault we make is going to be wasted.”

  “And unless you can disable its engines it can just run unless we get it cornered properly.”

  “You see the problem,” Ethan said sarcastically. “Any suggestions?”

  “Not yet. Why haven’t they touched Earth?”

  “They think we’re an illegal V’kit’no’sat project sponsored by one of the current races and they want to know which one. That’s why we think they boarded the Ribbon and are taking some prisoners. The others they’re killing on the spot. Some with Lachka.”

  Roger winced. “Pulled apart?”

  “The ones caught out of armor, yeah. It’s not pretty, but take a look just to get your ire up. We haven’t tried taking any prisoners yet, both because of that and the fact that we’re not sure how hard it will be.”

  “Save that for after we kick their ass,” Roger said firmly. “So long as they’re mobile and dangerous we can’t risk losing other people to pick up their scraps. How badly damaged is that Mach’nel?”

  “Not enough. Got a sunbath though.”

  “Saw that. Did they lose any weapons and repair them or did they just not take much damage?”

  “Unclear, but its combat capabilities don’t seem to be hindered other than some armor loss. By now its shields have fully recharged and they’ve got at least one damaged generator back online. It wouldn’t surprise me if they get the others up before too long.”

  “Still, the armor loss is a help and they can’t replace that out here,” Roger said as he continued to pull up past data while feeling out the current situation. “They’re going for the control ships. Why haven’t they got one yet?”

  “We’re not making it easy, but I sense some hesitation on their part too. When we run we win by buying time for the drones to fight, meaning it’s not a loss, and they seem to have trouble figuring out how hard to chase and when to head back and shoot up the drones.”

  “When they start using Domjo and smaller we’re going to have a problem. They can maneuver close enough to do damage even when we’re evading.”

  “They haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “Damn them. They just had to bring a Mach’nel. With a fleet this small I didn’t think they would have bothered.”

  “And we’re losing drones fast.”

  “There are more on the way, and it looks like you’ve got a decent killcount yourself. Mind if I see if I can add to it?”

  “I’ll happily take second seat. What do you need?”

  “The I’rar’et know how to fly and fight, so let’s ignore them and focus on the plodders with a more navigationally aggressive attack and see how they respond.”

  “Do you want to pull down another summon?”

  “Not yet. You’ve got enough here for me to comfortably work with, though I am going to break some of your toys in the process.”

  “Fine, so long as they’re not the big ones.”

  “Have they found the fireflies yet?”

  “The orbital stations submerged before they arrived, and we had the interceptors out of harm’s way long before that. No way of knowing how far their sensors have penetrated the star.”

  “When are they supposed to emerge?”

  “When they run out of shields.”

  “Too deep for a recall pulse?”

  “They’re as deep as they can go.”

 
; “Alright, we’ll use the interceptors. Get them sipping star while I play with the Vikies here, and reconfigure their shields for opaqueness over the capture area. No point in tipping our hand when they probably don’t know what we’ve got…or am I wrong in assuming they didn’t scout the system prior to arrival?”

  “I get the feeling they didn’t do any scouting. I was told the lizards are getting wiped out and they mind raided the information out of them. What they don’t know, the V’kit’no’sat probably don’t know. And I haven’t seen anything to contradict that theory. They came in here blind expecting to squash a bug.”

  “How have they been taking the disappointment?”

  “Well, but they’re still not registering how much trouble they’re in. They’ve got their big chess piece and are using it to probe a reaction from us, so they’re being cautious here and looking for answers on the Ribbon.”

  “Good. Then they’re not going to see this coming. I’d go after the Mach’nel if its shields weren’t up, but there’s no way they’re going to sit still long enough and they’ll just pick off our interdictors if we make them. You were right to try and reduce their number of support ships. We’ll stick with that and let them trade off our Sentinels. They’re worthless without a range advantage anyway.”

  “I was hoping you’d have some brilliant strategy to take out the Mach’nel and give us our range advantage back.”

  “Like you said, if they don’t leave it alone we can’t do squat against it without bleeding ourselves dry. We…” Roger stopped mid-sentence as he saw an update on the battlemap.

  “I see it,” Ethan confirmed as one of the fleet groups made up of the Hjar’at ships began moving out on a slow microjump far below the star and not on any useable jumpline. “They’re trying to backtrack the Shiva platform.”

  “243 ships? That’ll be fun to watch. I assume she’s prepped for uninvited guests?”

  “Got the confirmation signal back when I summoned the first cluster. Anything gets close to the wall it gets obliterated unless we use the stand down code.”