Star Force: Equity (Star Force Universe Book 46) Read online

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  May 3, 4907

  Knillo System (Ziviri Region)

  Baskerno

  Jyra Hemman was hanging onto consciousness just enough to feel every painful jab in her back as the Bsidd carried her, and with more than 10 legs in use there were a lot of little bumps with each ‘step’ that was taken. She didn’t know if two large steps per Human or Calavari stride would have been worse, but right now the Arc Commando was being tortured as she was carried clear of the battlefield where Jyra had been hit by a strafing Kat’vo while fighting Zen’zat. The Dre’mo’don had hit her shieldless armor and punched straight through, burning away flesh and ribs but thankfully not going too deep.

  That said, she was barely keeping it together as her armor oozed out healing gel to combat the injury, but the exposed area was the size of her fist, leaving the center uncovered and hardening only due to the small addition made to Commando armor during the lull between V’kit’no’sat wars. Sadly it wasn’t a full blown regenerator. There just wasn’t enough room in the armor to put one without taking away additional shield generators or other systems, but they’d managed to miniaturize and incorporate a system that would trigger the body to seal off injuries faster than normal to avoid excessive blood loss.

  Without it he would already have passed out and died from lack of blood, though he wasn’t far from it now. Each step the Bsidd took cracked the scab over the wound, causing it to seep more blood before hardening again, stoked on by the limited regenerator technology built into the gel layer of the armor.

  Jyra wasn’t paying any attention to her battlemap, which was still functioning, and was just trying to make it through the next few seconds when the Bsidd finally put her down. The thud hurt worse when she touched the ground, but then her body stopped moving and she was so grateful for the lesser pain that a few tears finally made their way out of her eyes as Jyra’s body stopped clenching up in total survival mode.

  “Stay put, Arc Commando,” the Bsidd said in perfect English but with the telltale accent produced by differently structured vocal chords. “We are beyond the fighting, but there are others that need rescued. There will be a guard left to cover you. Just stay down and stay alive.”

  Before Jyra could say anything the Bsidd was gone, though she caught a glimpse of his 18 appendages and tall stature. He was a Beta-variant, meaning he was a veteran from long ago, for Star Force no longer reproduced Betas, but she was very grateful that this one had stuck around in the military for so many years. There were many of his kind left in the empire, but they were now the ‘old’ designs that had been deemed outdated and replace by the new trifecta. Aside from the queens that were hardly ever seen, there was a large bodied Bsidd warrior, a medium bodied tech, and a small bodied pilot…known as Tridas, Sordas, and Zendas.

  Most of the Bsidd stationed on Baskerno were Sordas, helping to rebuild/alter Ziviri infrastructure to Star Force standards. There were a few military units assigned to security, but most of the planet was the responsibility of Clan Saiyan, which Jyra was part of. They were here to both defend the planet and keep the Ziviri in line, but there weren’t enough of them to stop the V’kit’no’sat and there weren’t any reinforcements nearby to assist them.

  The Ziviri Region was separate from the bulk of Star Force territory, with a gap between it and the rest of the empire connected by a handful of systems. Not one planet in the region was well defended, for they hadn’t had time to build them up, and the shield generators that had protected this dry planet all the way around were overwhelmed by the 349 Kat’vo ships that had arrived two months ago and immediately began bombarding the planet.

  The Kvash had tried to hold them off, but they only had 18 ships. They’d added their firepower to the limited planetary defenses when the time came, then fled when they were targeted, hoping to draw the V’kit’no’sat into range of additional weapons, but they just couldn’t do enough damage. They’d lost 5 of their ships, and right now the other 13 were elsewhere in the system, staying alive and making nuisances of themselves whenever an opportunity arose.

  The Kat’vo seemed to be ignoring them and focusing on the surface invasion. They didn’t have many troops to deploy, but this was a minor planet in a minor system and everyone else was fighting for the more important worlds, leaving this planet to a much smaller battle for possession.

  Jyra had hoped the V’kit’no’sat wouldn’t bother with the Ziviri, given how far away from the main battlefront this region was, but in recent years the V’kit’no’sat had begun hitting everywhere around the perimeter of Star Force territory. They were even coming in from the Rim and hitting the lightly defended Frontier Region, though roaming Star Force fleets were hammering those convoys hard as they made the long trek around to get into position, but there were so many V’kit’no’sat fleets and races involved that Star Force was being overwhelmed. Where they were fighting they were holding their own, but there were so many invasion fleets that some were getting in free hits, such as here.

  It wasn’t completely free, but the ground forces had been in retreat the entire time. Jyra had known it was a matter of buying time and hoping someone would get to them with help eventually. That was the plan for the entire war. Planets were meant to do damage, stall, and wait for the trailblazers and their big, Uriti-centered fleets to arrive and kick the V’kit’no’sat out. Trouble was, they were all in Star Force territory, not this small annex beyond the normal border, and the Kat’vo had apparently been assigned the Ziviri Region as their exclusive invasion zone, for they hadn’t shown up anywhere else.

  The avian race wasn’t the strongest amongst the V’kit’no’sat, and in fact they were almost bottom of the barrel within that empire, but when judged against anyone else in the galaxy the Kat’vo were a dominant and powerful race, made only more so with the addition of the Zen’zat that could conduct a conventional ground war with the Kat’vo providing the aerial support.

  Jyra stretched out her legs, immediately regretting the movement as her wound cracked open again, but the adjustment allowed her to lay flat on the ground with her helmeted face looking up at the sky…which at the moment was a piece of Ziviri architecture. It wasn’t a new one made with Star Force design influence, but rather something that existed prior to the Star Force war of conquest.

  The Arc Commando finally toggled her battlemap, thankful for the ability to do so mentally without any more physical movement as the gel layer in Jyra’s armor continued to seep out and numb the area, but it still wasn’t getting more than halfway to the center, for too much had been lost already and the armor was designed to not drain it all out one spot, holding more in others for when those parts took penetrating damage.

  On her battlemap she checked the local area first, seeing several dozen Star Force icons nearby in what was a half destroyed building that rose some 8 stories tall. An entire wall was missing, and Jyra realized this was a small village that had been evacuated during the Star Force invasion and never repaired. It was a ghost town some 29 miles from where she’d been injured…and Jyra had no idea she’d been carried that far.

  Apparently others had been as well, with nearly all of them being Clan Saiyan mechwarriors. They’d probably been pulled out of dead mechs, but how were they being picked up if the V’kit’no’sat were steadily pushing forward?

  Jyra expanded the battlemap out further, then realized that there was no more fighting. The Star Force line had completely collapsed and the V’kit’no’sat were pushing forward so fast they were gaining ground with next to no resistance as they headed for the remaining strongholds that Star Force still possessed.

  “Ouch,” she heard
a voice say beside her, then the image of a female Human appeared between her head and the dark ceiling. “Did you get shot by a mech?”

  “Kat’vo,” Jyra said as she tapped on the Arc Commando’s helmet, indicating that she needed to release it. She did, mentally triggering the mechanism and hearing a pop…then the female mechwarrior pulled it off and set it down beside Jyra as some sort of soft padding was set underneath her head. “Caught me with my shields down.”

  “That must be one of their new belly cannons. They chipped the hell out of my mech before a siege tank finished me off. Are you numb yet?”

  “Not…even close,” she grimaced.

  “Then this is going to hurt. Hang on,” she said, with Jyra feeling her wound being probed. The pain shot through her head and she went groggy until a cool sensation began to eat into the pain. Her vision returned sometime later, with a hand swinging back and forth over her face.

  “Still here,” she mumbled.

  “Good. I’ve got a healing patch on you. Hold still and let it work. No one is nearby, so I think we’re safe for a while.”

  “What happened?”

  “You don’t know?” she asked with a sneer. “The Ziviri turned on us. They started throwing themselves against our mechs and the Zen’zat overran us. They just handed them the planet.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t know if it was planned or just spite, but there’s word that the Star Force-friendly Ziviri were being killed too. Any that stood with us were targeted, and there wasn’t enough to stop the collapse. The Bsidd pulled me out when the V’kit’no’sat were gaining so much ground they just ignored my broken mech. Same with some of the others here.”

  “Supplies?”

  “We pulled in a hidden cache. Now I know why we’re required to hide them even on little worlds like this one. That’s where your healing patch came from. The Archons think of everything.”

  “Do we have any of them left?”

  “Not here. You’re the best we’ve got…and you look like shit.”

  “That good?” she said groggily, but that bit of humor took what little bravery she had left.

  “I’ve got you covered here, so feel free to pass out and let the patch do its work. We’re in survival mode now. We can’t fight the Viks and the Ziviri at the same time. This planet is lost. So heal up while we can. Once the last battleforts fall they’ll be back to pick off the rest of us. We have to be ghosts by then.”

  “Thanks,” Jyra said, closing her eyes as the pain numbing effect continued to gobble up her wound in mind’s eye and the massive fatigue underriding it began to assert itself. The Arc Commando’s mind began to slip into distortion and she let herself go, glad to be free of the pain as she finally passed out.

  “Come on, come on!” Jyra heard a tiny voice shouting along with a tapping on her forehead.

  She blinked several times, trying to figure out where she was and having the pain in her back suddenly remind her of what had happened as the tiny armored suit covering her face moved down and stood on her chest as she tilted her head up.

  “We’re pulling out,” the Irondel mechwarrior said. “The Zen’zat are coming for us.”

  “Shit,” Jyra said, sitting up and half dumping the 8 inch tall ‘chipmunk’ off her chest as her back sent a shot of pain into her, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as before. The healing patch was probably numbing most of it up, meaning she had no idea how damaged she still was, but moving was going to do a lot less harm than getting shot again.

  The Arc Commando found her helmet lying beside her and put it on, suddenly realizing that the battlemap around her was clear and everyone else was already gone.

  “Where is everyone else?” she asked, rolling over onto her knees gently and finding that her back was holding together just enough to allow her to stand. She took it slow, but she finally got all the way up onto her feet as the Irondel grabbed and held up as best it could her assault rifle that had been lying on the ground beside her.

  “Trying to pull the Zen’zat off our trail. You can’t keep up with them, so we either fight or try to evade. So far it’s working,” he said as she grabbed the barrel of her rifle and lifted it up to the rack at the top of her back that was still intact and clipped it on. “But they’re getting closer and we have to put some more distance between us and their Pefbar or we’re toast.”

  “Why are you still here?”

  “Someone had to wake you, and you needed as many minutes as you could get.”

  “How long was I out?” she asked, wincing as she took an experimental step.

  “16 hours. I’m sorry it wasn’t longer.”

  “I can walk. You can navigate.”

  “Deal,” the mechwarrior said, dropping to all fours as he ran a couple of meters towards her then jumped on her leg. Using the grip pads in his armor he climbed all the way up her body until he got to her right shoulder, then he sat there and latched on with Jyra reconfiguring her shields to cover him.

  While the Irondel could cover decent distance on his own, it required constant running to match a Human’s walk and sprinting to equal even the slower running speeds, meaning Irondel couldn’t keep up with most of the other races, so they typically hitched rides in situations like this.

  “Head north,” he said, sending her a more precise heading via her battlemap as Jyra focused on just staying erect and not faceplanting. Her back was so damaged she didn’t have the muscle strength for many corrections and the powered setting in her armor was carrying most of her weight, and the Irondel’s, but she still had to minimize torso movement as much as possible and she was having to learn on the go what she could and could not do with several stumbles and near falls as she grit her teeth against the surges of pain every time she made a mistake.

  “Do we have a rendezvous point?” Jyra asked.

  “No. We’re just trying to stay away from the Zen’zat.”

  “Peachy. My supply pack got blasted.”

  “I know. The others will come back if they can.”

  “Thanks for sticking around.”

  “You can repay the debt by finding a way to walk faster. A hover tank is drifting our way.”

  “How far?” she asked, not able to take her eyes off her footing to look at her own battlemap for more than a fleeting glance, and even that was destabilizing her.

  “6 miles. They’re going to cross within 2 if they hold course. We’re out of direct line of sight, but this area is going to be exposed in about 20 seconds.”

  “How far do I need to get?”

  “That wall ahead.”

  “Damn it,” she said, doing the mental math and knowing she was going to come up short. “Hang on.”

  Jyra put a little hop into her step, feeling her back almost cut in two, but another shuffle step followed and within a few seconds she was slog jogging across the sandy ground. She was actually managing it ok until a trip root passed under her and she had to hop extra to clear the half buried piece of debris. When she did, that was too much for her back to take and she felt something snap. Her armor locked her torso in place, thanks to the emergency protocol she’d enacted when she’d managed to stand up. That left her pitching forward but not bending at the waist more than a partial curve, though it was enough to send her off balance towards a faceplant.

  Jyra responded by running hard, pumping her legs and putting as much forward momentum as she could to keep her torso in the air. It worked and she turned into a partially prone missile that got her to the nearby wall before her fall completed and both she and the Irondel went for a tumble with him disengaging and jumping off before he could be smashed by her tumbling body.

  “Stay down,” he warned. “We’re out of view.”

  Jyra didn’t respond. The pain was bad, but the healing patch was still fighting it and hiding a chunk of the damage that she’d just done from mind’s eyes, yet the Arc Commando knew it was serious.

  The Irondel continued to watch the battlemap, with a feed coming in from o
ne of the Kvash ships in orbit that allowed him to see the Zen’zat and not the other way around. Star Force armor was built to hide from most sensor scans, and right now the Kat’vo ships were not directly overhead. That meant the Zen’zat needed to spot them with their own equipment, and so long as these bulky Ziviri walls were between them and the sensors the extra mass would be enough to shield them.

  Jyra waited a long time on the ground in her ball of bent arms and legs just trying to hold still and not make the pain any worse before the mechwarrior appeared in her faceplate with a tiny hand pointing towards her with a ‘thumbs up’ gesture.

  “They missed us. I think they’re heading towards the nearest Ziviri town. The ones chasing the others are far to the west now.”

  “Good. Because I broke my back again. I don’t think I can walk.”

  “Can you crawl?”

  “Why?”

  “There are no Kat’vo patrols nearby, but if one happens over top of us we’re exposed.”

  “Let me know if one is coming, then I’ll try. Until then, I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Go camo then,” he suggested.

  Jyra grit her teeth and moved her right leg, twisting slightly as she began to unfurl from the ball she was in. The Arc Commando made it halfway before she felt something else give in her back, but oddly it seemed to improve the pain a bit, making her wonder if something hadn’t been dislocated. With that bit of relief she unfurled herself the rest of the way until she was lying face down on the sandy ground.

  “You need your armor breach away from the sky.”

  “Ugh,” she groaned, realizing he was right. With obvious difficulty the Human rotated around until she flopped on her back, then remained completely still. A few moments later her dull white armor changed color to mimic the dark brown/orange sand around her and shielding her from being detected by casual glances. Even her faceplate now appeared opaque, but that wasn’t going to be enough to fool a Pefbar scan, though the Zen’zat and Kat’vo had to get pretty close to pull one of those. “What’s your name?”