Star Force: Fracture (Star Force Universe Book 47) Read online

  1

  April 19, 4914

  Renscor System (Rim Region)

  Hasvor

  Mark-084 was not happy. He’d been on the planet with his Clan Gunstar troops for three weeks in response to an I’rar’et invasion, and while his mechs were doing fairly well against the Zen’zat assault vehicles, he could not maintain air superiority even while having orbital supremacy over half the planet.

  His Clan was known for having the best aerial pilots in Star Force, but the I’rar’et were making them look like novices as they lost skeets like they were Grunts from Halo. That’s not the way Star Force fought, and even using drone skeets in many cases this was not acceptable. He couldn’t send his fighters anywhere beyond a city where he had the benefit of anti-air fire support…and when he’d tried his aerial forces had been swarmed to such a level that the I’rar’et left with few casualties while he barely had any squadrons return.

  The I’rar’et had larger numbers, but that wasn’t the crux of it. They were damn good, and this branch of their race was one of the better ones. They didn’t have different sub regions within their territory like the Oso’lon did, but the I’rar’et were broken down by bloodlines and the Daer segment of their military was completely made up of one that boasted the second best I’rar’et combat wing.

  Mark wasn’t even facing their best of the best, and everywhere he didn’t have close to an even fight his fighters were getting wasted…and the I’rar’et knew it. They weren’t making any planned assaults without coming in with a decent numerical advantage, which allowed few opportunities for Mark to catch them in a mismatch. He had to play defense, holding the cities while the I’rar’et probed around the edges until the Zen’zat arrived and made their over-ground push. As soon as the ground pounders got even a small wedge of anti-air defenses down, the I’rar’et would pour in and take the hits needed to capture the city.

  There were trails of dead I’rar’et across the planet, attesting to how much damage Star Force was doing, but Mark wasn’t here to play defense. He was assigned roaming duty to hit the hardest fights and turn them around, but he couldn’t do that here. The skill advantage his Clan usually had over the V’kit’no’sat aerial races was gone. The Daer were their equal, then add in numerical advantage and Clan Gunstar was getting its ass kicked along with the mix of H’kar and Kiritak troops that were in even worse condition before Gunstar had arrived.

  Mark had brought a sizeable naval fleet that, along with the survivors of the H’kar, had took back control of the half of the planet that still had standing Star Force cities. There were also smaller populations on the two other inhabited planets in the system. The I’rar’et had not bothered to hit them yet, putting all their effort into the assault on the main world, knowing that when it fell the other two would be far less challenging.

  Elsewhere on the planet there were also engagements going on, and Mark had gotten some naval drones down to the planet’s surface and they were making it nearly impossible for the I’rar’et and Zen’zat to gain any ground there, but he had none over this city. There was too large of an enemy fleet still active in the system, and if he brought down more ships they’d engage his fleet in space. Yet if he didn’t bring down the drones, then the ground troops would be taking a lot more cities.

  Add in the fact that he couldn’t bombard them from orbit, for they had mobile shield generators on the surface. He could smoke those if he was able to bring even a tenth of his 59 jumpships to bare, but the enemy fleet wasn’t allowing it. When he’d tried before the I’rar’et had engaged and lost, but bought enough time for the ground troops to move into their target city. At that point only some very limited bombardment was possible without hitting friendlies.

  And because of that fight he could only hold control of part of orbit. He didn’t have enough ships left to spread them out, for they’d get hit by what the I’rar’et had left. And the enemy’s main base on the surface had a shield generator strong enough to deflect the bombardment of his entire current fleet. Thankfully it wasn’t mobile, but they had two Ardent anti-orbital guns protected beneath hit, so there was a portion of orbit on the far side that his ships couldn’t go without getting shot.

  Paul had said that naval beat everything, and he was right…if you had a big enough fleet. Mark didn’t here, and even when he sent a few naval drones down to the surface he was at risk of losing them to the I’rar’et, for a good number of them were equipped with shield penetrators. Not the ones that took down an entire shield by sapping its strength more than conventional weapons would, but rather these destabilized the shields at the point of contact briefly, much like a Jumat blast did, and if the I’rar’et focused their attacks in groups they could punch through a tiny piece of the drone’s shield and hit a weapon’s battery beneath.

  So Mark had quite a few drones being plucked of weapons while they hovered in the sky over various cities, then he’d have to bring them back up to orbit and onboard his jumpships for repair. He was losing so many spare parts he was relying on the cities that were still in Star Force possession to make replacement weapons…and then he had to have those shipped up to orbit without getting ambushed by the V’kit’no’sat so he could keep repairing his drones.

  It was hard for the ground troops to take down warships, even those as small as the drones, but deny them their weapons and there wasn’t a lot they could do, especially against the tiny infantry of the Zen’zat and flying I’rar’et given how spread out they were. That said, Mark had used a few to scrape the surface and plow over Zen’zat assault vehicles, but the V’kit’no’sat were getting very inventive at finding ways to circumvent the Star Force naval playbook, and with the skill of the I’rar’et in aerial combat, Mark had little in the way of true advantages to work with.

  Right now he was not in the sky, but in a remote pod along with his other pilots inside a city some 340 miles away from the current engagement. One advantage of being a defender meant you had infrastructure on the planet to use, which included the battlemap system that allowed him to remote fly a skeet from a point of relative safety. The lag time was so low it was better this way, but had he been assaulting the V’kit’no’sat stronghold on the other side of the planet he would have to be there in person, for bouncing the signals up to his fleet and back down again around the planet would punch the lag just a little too high.

  He could manage it if needed, but it took the edge off and opened up more jamming possibilities that naval combat didn’t have to worry about, for their comm systems were so much larger. Right now though, fighting around a Star Force city, he didn’t need to worry about jamming and was currently engaged with a flock of I’rar’et as he flew not one, but 10 skeets at once. Some of his other pilots were flying more than one, but he knew not to push it too far, because the movements required were a lot more complicated than the slow combat in space, and he needed to do a lot of adjusting to the I’rar’et’s movements, and these were definitely not rookies he was going up against.

  Mark wanted to strafe the Zen’zat skirmish tanks, but the I’rar’et were having nothing of it and kept blocking his approach with three times as many flyers as he had, and the same was true elsewhere as the city rim defenses kept poking at them. Most times they hit they didn’t deliver a fatal blow, for the armor on these I’rar’et was damn good and they weren’t getting close enough for the city gunners to pinpoint target points on their bodies even with the computer enhanced tracking.

  That meant when hit, one could fly off and survive while others took their place…all the while the Zen’zat heavy cannons were moving closer and closer to the city underneath the protection
of a mobile shield generator that was not only blocking easy shots from orbit, but from the rim defenses as well. They were pouring heavy firepower into it, and whenever Mark had a chance he had his squadron add a few shots. The damage was insignificant, but every bit helped in the long run.

  Though he wasn’t paying heavy attention to them, his mechs were out and about, fighting their way towards those heavy cannons and the shield perimeter. If they got there they could punch their way through with proximity disruptors…but they required physical contact to destabilize a shield of that size and strength. It was only covering an area of a little more than a square mile, but because it didn’t have to defend the ground it could double up the power up top and make it twice as strong as its naval counterparts who had to defend both directions.

  More than that, the shield generator was all shield and no living quarters, no weapons, and no hangar bays. Pound for pound it was stronger than a warship, but this was a small one. The larger ones were miles back and holding position as staging points. If Mark could even get a couple of heavy drones down here he could ram this one and take it out…but he could see the V’kit’no’sat ships hovering just above the atmosphere on the horizon, ready and willing to move into blocking position should he try to bring down his fleet from their high orbit position.

  He could probably win that fight, but the naval losses would hurt for later. Mark felt they could hold this city without them, but it was going to be a hard fight with a lot of aerial and mech losses…yet those could be replaced much more easily than naval drones.

  That said, he wasn’t going to play the V’kit’no’sat’s game entirely, so he ordered two drones to accelerate down towards the planet at a rush, almost making microjumps to do it, and that sudden move caught the V’kit’no’sat off guard. Their warships didn’t move fast enough, and the drones got down into firing position…still well above the atmosphere…and put several shots into the smaller mobile shield generator before they quickly fled as several Ti’mat were hot on their heels. Those vessels got shot by long range weapons on a few Star Force drones that had drifted down lower from the fleet, as well as anti-orbital fire from a few cities.

  One of the Ti’mat got caught in the cross fire and lost shields…along with a chunk of its hull before it was able to pull out. When the V’kit’no’sat saw the rest of the Star Force fleet was holding position they decided not to get involved, meaning the short skirmish was over almost before it began.

  But Mark had got several heavy shots into the mobile shield generator, and according to his sensor readings it was almost half depleted.

  That wasn’t much considering how little heavy firepower he had to work with as more and more rim defense cannons went down, but the Zen’zat assault vehicles sparring with the mechs were diminishing in number rather fast while Mark and his pilots kept up their dance in the sky and the aerial forces distracted each other away from the groundpounders for the most part.

  The trailblazer hadn’t lost a skeet in his squadron yet, but that was because he was playing it safe. I’rar’et flew by a combination of their armor and wings…and the latter got tired. The longer this furball lasted the more lethargic their movements would get, whereas his skeets didn’t tire out, and he was willing to put his mental stamina up against their physical strength any day. Problem was the city was losing defenses rapidly, and he doubted the I’rar’et would tire enough before they had punched a sizeable foothold in the defense line.

  He kept trying to bait them closer to the anti-air weaponry in the city, but aside from a few brief chases the enemy was holding to their battle plan closely. If he could just get them to break their formation, even a crack, his pilots could start to get some decent strafing runs in on the Zen’zat, but so far the enemy was providing a solid wall of aerial resistance and that wasn’t likely to end until they were right outside the city walls…

  Kli’ja was not flying with the rest of the Daer, rather he was back in the nearby staging area monitoring and directing his troops as needed from a perch within one of the Zen’zat command vehicles. The recent strike by the Star Force naval drones had been concerning, but now he saw it was just a temporary ploy, perhaps an attempt to get his warships in range of the surface guns, but aside from the damage to one Ti’mat there was little consequence, though that was a small victory for the Humans.

  If they’d decided to make a full naval fight out of it, Kli’ja would have gone all in. He could not allow Star Force naval superiority or they would pick his ground troops apart, even with the mobile shield generators. They were a relatively new technology added to the V’kit’no’sat arsenal, though the principles were ancient. The I’rar’et had never constructed them before because they always had naval superiority. Assaulting cities on a planet while the enemy held orbit used to be an unthinkable thing…but with the emergence of the Uriti that had changed and Virokor had demanded new options.

  Kli’ja didn’t disagree, but while their shield generators were almost omnipotent against the normal opposition within the galaxy, Star Force was using stolen V’kit’no’sat technology and that changed everything. They could break through the smaller shield generators quickly with a sustained naval bombardment, and he didn’t have any of the larger units. Given how big some Star Force fleets were, even those would be at risk, but in recent years the combat had spread out and smaller and smaller fleet engagements were being seen except where the Uriti went, making even these smaller models useful.

  Right now it was being very useful against the city defenses, for he had the shield down almost all the way to ground to block the fire from the city perimeter cannons that were being methodically picked apart from range by the Zen’zat vehicles inside the shield perimeter. They had longer weaponry and were firing through the mechs rather than at them while other vehicles beyond the shield were engaging and losing against them.

  The losses didn’t matter. The number of mechs and aerial craft taken down didn’t matter. All that mattered was punching a hole in the city walls…of which there were three…and getting the Zen’zat inside so they could take down the anti-air batteries directly. That was the path to victory, and once the I’rar’et could fly through the city buildings with impunity it would be all but over.

  But they weren’t there yet, and the Star Force flyers were giving his I’rar’et all they could handle. Neither side was winning out, though the enemy kept trying to draw his flyers over the city guns. That was a pathetic hope, for only a fool would fight over anti-air defenses, but it was the only real hope they had right now, for his Zen’zat were creeping their way forward and taking down turret after turret and the enemy mechs weren’t going to be enough to stop them before a breach occurred…

  Three hours later the situation had changed drastically. Mark was flying with only 3 of his 10 skeets, and he was piloting them around city buildings chasing, or being chased by, I’rar’et as they pummeled the city at pointblank range. The mechs had won their fight, killing all the Zen’zat vehicles, even their heavy cannons, but not before they’d gotten their infantry inside the city. Visible and cloaked Zen’zat had spread out and began sabotaging whatever they could find, eventually getting enough anti-air cannons down that the I’rar’et were able to move in at street level and assist them.

  Then they’d wave-pushed across the city at lightning speed, ignoring almost everything but the anti-air turrets, and now they were going back and hitting the rest with virtual impunity, for the mechs couldn’t target them well zipping in and out of buildings. Mark had kept most of them outside the city where they could get better firing lines into the sky, but the smaller ones he’d been forced to bring in and try to hunt down the Zen’zat where they could.

  There were so many here Mark couldn’t get a good count. Transports stacked with them had been underneath the shield and invisible, for the shield also acted as a sensor barrier. He hadn’t realized they were there until it went down, then they’d dispersed tens of thousands of them into the city with all m
anner of heavy weaponry, including satchel explosives…and the V’kit’no’sat version was far more powerful than the lizard’s Star Force had become intimately familiar with so long ago.

  Before the anti-orbital cannons went down, Mark had ordered four drones to the surface. The V’kit’no’sat had destroyed one before it could get to atmosphere, but the other three made it down, one without shields and some hull damage, before the V’kit’no’sat warships retreated back out of firing range as the heavy planetary shields blocked them from following the drones all the way down through the atmosphere.

  But the I’rar’et didn’t just let the drones come in. Huge flocks of them rose up from the city and attacked them head on, going first for the wounded one and plucking its weaponry away with ease…but Mark brought it down to just above the building tops, actually crushing some of them, to block the sky as he organized an evacuation route out to where some of the mechs were already gathering. The other two drones engaged the flyers, doing tremendous damage to them, but each I’rar’et was so small that it took time to thin their numbers.

  And not enough for Mark’s remaining pilots to take them all down. Eventually both drones wound up being shieldless, weaponless, and being chewed apart slowly as they could not fight back. When they reached that point Mark also brought them down, making impromptu roofs out of them as he evacuated what was left of the people in the city and pulled back all his remaining fighters to cover the convoy as it traveled over land to the next closet location with the drones staying directly above them.

  The mechs kept up their anti-air fire around the edges, and eventually the I’rar’et let them go as they took possession of the city that held a major planetary shield generator. Mark kept it operational the whole time so the V’kit’no’sat warships could not shoot the evacuation convoy, but he’d left behind enough explosives in it to make sure that the I’rar’et couldn’t repurpose it for their own uses.