Star Force: Veracious (SF48) Read online

  1

  February 27, 2534

  Retari System (Alpha Region)

  Atlantica

  Kyler woke the moment he heard the alarm, bolting out of bed and finding his shoes before running off through Manaan. He brushed his way past a few people in the hallway, none of who had heard the alarm for it was his private link to the command center and their way of summoning him in an instant when he was on a sleep cycle. Had it been less urgent they would have used a different tone and he’d have checked in on the comm, but the dragonzord flute call meant it was a top priority and that he needed to get his ass there as quickly as possible.

  When he turned out of the residential area and into the more crowded hallways within the underwater city he telepathically shouted out to everyone to make room, simultaneously giving them the location in the center of the hall where they should NOT be. It took a few seconds, but suddenly a path opened up and Kyler sprinted through, bumping into a handful of shoulders and even knocking one woman down who was so light that even a slight brush toppled her.

  He couldn’t wait to see who he hit, he just had to get through the city as fast as he could and after several minutes of reckless running through the crowds that more or less heeded his call to move aside, he entered the city’s command center and saw the gigantic hologram in the center depicting the orbital traffic with a large fleet of hostiles tagged.

  Kyler didn’t even pause to inquire what was going on, rather running across the command center and into the nexus.

  “Out,” he said, relieving the lower ranking Archon that was already on station, who graciously stepped aside and moved back out onto the main floor as Kyler touched the control sphere and mentally linked into the equipment and brought up a slew of status displays in addition to the main one that was already circling him in holo.

  A fleet of lizard cruisers was already engaging the orbital defenses, with three Sentinels chewing them up at range and a hoard of drones headed their way. Some of the enemy ships were making attack runs on the drones that had already gotten to them, but they weren’t closing on any of the Sentinels, making it impossible for the lizards to do any damage to them. Instead, they were just sitting out approximately 100 miles from the nearest one and shooting any Star Force orbital infrastructure near them, including one of the storage/repair yards that was giving them hell with its perimeter defenses.

  “This isn’t right,” Kyler whispered, keying for a few additional ship movements. “What are you guys up to?”

  Twenty two seconds later he got his answer as the lizard ship formation suddenly became the lead escorts for a gigantic assault pillar that decelerated directly behind them, with additional cruisers and battleships coming in in its wake to create a protective ring around it.

  “Shit,” Kyler said, retasking the Sentinels to exclusively target it. The assault pillar was one weapon that Star Force knew they possessed but had never encountered. It was by far the lizards’ largest vessel, measuring in at 93 kilometers and shaped like a huge needle, for at its thickest point it measured only 8.2 km wide. It was ungainly and far less maneuverable than even an invoker, but the two types of warships were killers none the less, and where the invoker came in for close-range fleet kills the assault pillar did the opposite and hit targets at range.

  But its range didn’t exceed that of the Sentinels, who started hitting it with multiple cleansing beams, including their heavy versions…but its shields held up against the incredibly powerful weapons long enough for it to swivel its nose about a few degrees and the escort fleet to break apart to give it a firing line as they actually positioned themselves around it to try and take some of the cleansing beam hits.

  With the closest Sentinel targeted the assault pillar spat out a single projectile towards it at amazing speed. Kyler watched its progress across the holo and the 100 mile gap in between until it smashed into the Sentinel’s shields…which also held.

  A side-mounted display of that Sentinel flashed with shield damage, and Kyler could see that it had lost more than 62% shield strength. Also, the detailed sensor analysis concluded that it had been a kinetic impact equivalent to a kamikaze corvette. Kyler could see the superheated metal spray off the intact shields like a slush-filled water balloon, glowing with radiant intensity that didn’t fade quickly. The pieces of the now shredded projectile hit several drone warships and a jumpship nearby, adding extra damage to the attack that Kyler quickly countered by creating a no-go zone around that particular Sentinel, with his fleet responding accordingly as another projectile was fired.

  It shot out of the assault pillar a moment before the cleansing beams got through the enemy shields and started tearing into the hull, but there they encountered dense hull armor, melting it off in globs but unable to get full penetration and slice the ship in half like Kyler hoped they could. A moment later the next projectile hit and breached the shields, with the partial splatter of superheated metal blowing right into the armor of the defense platform like a shotgun blast.

  Damage statistics flared up, and Kyler noticed that the impact had occurred in virtually the same place as the first, meaning the assault pillar was hurling rail gun slugs the size of warships at a 100 mile range and managing to hit an area the size of a football field. That was insanely precise, and was probably the source of the elongated design, with longer barrels leading to greater accuracy, so long as you could position them with enough delicacy.

  The third shot that came wasn’t another super-sized, super-fast slug. Instead the assault pillar began shooting out tiny ones at ‘slow’ speed, and Kyler’s gut sank even as he aligned his drones for a flanking attack against the escort fleet, using every second he had wisely as he watched the new projectiles eek their way across the holo like a dotted line extending out to touch the Sentinel.

  The first one hit renewed shields and splattered, with it taking the third to bring them back down again. The fourth got hit by a well-aimed mauler blast and melted into fragments before it hit the hull, but by the time the fifth got within 100 meters of impact a bright flash occurred way back at the assault pillar and Kyler watched a chain of erratic energy arcs work its way up the line, jumping from one projectile to the other and extending out across the gap with ominous intent, not making it to the Sentinel until the 28th projectile impacted.

  When it did the colored lightning that the invoker was so famous for slammed into the Sentinel with explosive results. The hull armor vaporized and the flickering crackle of energy dug into the gigantic defense platform even as its cleansing beams continued to reach out and cut into the enemy vessel, along with its two sister stations in close orbit. Kyler wished the others were within range to assist but they weren’t, spaced around orbit as they were in small clusters like this that had overlapping firing ranges.

  Two of the cleansing beams on the Sentinel cut out, with the internal arrangements quickly altering to bring one of them back online with a power reroute, but the other weapon had been hit in the backflow of energy and damaged. That reduced the Sentinel down to 9 large and 1 extra large cleansing beam, with the energy being reallocated to those in order to increase firing rates.

  The pale white beams continued to streak out across the 100 mile gap and tear into the enemy ship, with smaller skirmishes happening around the perimeter as Star Force drones tried to get at the gigantic vessel and the swarm of enemy cruisers moving out far enough to engagement them and provide cover. Soon another one of those beams cut out as the never ending flow of rainbow lightning continued to claw into the side of the Sentinel until one of the other two stations got a lucky hit inside the ‘barrel’ and knocked out an emitter pylon…with the lightning suddenly shutting down.

  The last bit of it trave
led through the relay, then only the small projectiles were hitting the charred hole in the Sentinel that now reached halfway through the massive defense platform. The projectiles coming in were doing more damage, small as it was, then the last two were actually hit before they could get to their target as a much faster large projectile came up from behind and knocked them aside before slamming into the hole.

  Kyler watched as several more were fired and slammed into the Sentinel, which he already had rotating around to try and take the damaged region out of the firing line. With the shields now non-existent and unable to redeploy over the wounded area, intact shields on the back half slowly rotated around and took one of the hits…then fell on the next, buying some small amount of time, though with a new projectile coming in every 2.4 seconds there wasn’t much of a breather to be had, with the station getting hammered and Kyler trying to maneuver it out of the way on its internal drives.

  It moved slowly, but succeeded in throwing off the aim of the assault pillar a handful of times for clear misses as the trailblazer assumed priority control from its previous pilots and maneuvered it over towards the nearest other Sentinel which was also repositioning towards it. Kyler got it within 20 miles before he lost all gravity drive control, with the station now beginning to list with each additional hit.

  The other Sentinel continued to gain speed and crossed the gap as quickly as it could without overshooting and deposited itself in front of the now critically wounded platform, taking the incoming hits on its shields and then suffering through the hull damage as it and its intact twin continued to unload on the assault pillar. That exchange lasted several more minutes before the huge weapon ceased firing and reversed course, making a jump ‘backwards’ without spinning about, and getting away from the cleansing beams.

  The lizard battleships went with it, then the cruisers followed shortly thereafter with the whole mass of them making staggered jumps out as the two Sentinels refocused their attacks on the ‘tiny’ vessels and killed more than 2 dozen of them before the enemy could fully retreat.

  Kyler stayed in the command nexus, repositioning all manner of ships from drones to jumpships in preparation for another attack while he monitored the sensor stations spread across the system, trying to get a feel for where the enemy fleet was going and where they were going to hit them next…but to his surprise they reappeared near to the star, with the escorts loading back up onto jumpships that had somehow escaped detection upon arrival…either that or someone had decided to let him sleep in.

  He reviewed the telemetry replay and saw that it was a combination of the two. The enemy jumpships had arrived from an odd jumpline, coming in where their sensor stations had the weakest coverage…something they probably knew from earlier scouting runs/attacks. That had delayed their detection a bit, but when they repositioned around the star for the jump to Atlantica Star Force should have had enough time to get better set up.

  But the lizards didn’t have to position far, for they didn’t take a direct line to Atlantica…instead they made a jump to another planet that sat on almost the identical line that they arrived into the system on. That allowed them to reposition their forward elements quickly, literally allowing their cruisers to make the microjump as soon as they unloaded, then from there they made two more ping ponging jumps that required little repositioning and had allowed them to get into planetary orbit far faster than normal, with the sensor lag covering their arrival by a handful of minutes.

  After that there had apparently been a delay in calling him, for the enemy cruisers had been clustering in orbit around Atlantica for several minutes prior to the first salvo being fired and well outside of Sentinel firing range. They’d then moved in en mass, hitting a few stations but not really appearing to want to do much damage. After they got far enough inside range and were taking egregious hits from the weapon platforms the assault pillar had come in behind them…and that told Kyler that this whole attack had been designed to get at one of the Sentinels.

  It wasn’t the first lizard attack against one, but it was the first to succeed. All across this region of the ADZ border Sentinels were going up and adding extra toughness to the front, as well as those systems further in so the enemy couldn’t just bypass the defenses and hit ‘soft’ targets inside the ADZ. That said, those closest to the lizards were in the most jeopardy and had been reinforced heavily with fleets and new colonies nearby, creating a web of reinforcement potential and an ever growing thorn in the lizards’ side as they pushed their territory forward, with it now seeming to wrap itself around the ADZ as the Alliance defenses held firm and the surrounding systems did not.

  There were no Protovic or Hycre here. It was all Star Force, with a few other races deciding to chip in and help out on this part of the border so long as they had Sentinels overhead. The addition of the extra fleets backing them up was useful, but that still left the bulk of the defensive effort to Star Force in those systems.

  The Irondel were the most helpful, with most of the others just placing a few assets this far out for pride’s sake. The Reen had recently offered to help in exchange for a significant chunk of territory amounting to half a planet, with more requests starting to make their way out to Kyler, who now held primary responsibility for this line of defense now that Paul had moved on to other assignments. The aquatics specialist had elected to stay on Atlantica and organize the warfront from here rather than moving to Namek, given that this entire world had pretty much become his home and he’d been responsible for every structure and ship built here.

  And it was also closer to the lizard lines than Namek was, especially given the expansions that had been made since their first days out here. Namek was almost an interior world now, with many formerly lizard systems now in Star Force possession and undergoing heavy construction, protected by both Star Force and Hycre fleets, the latter of which had become rovers, moving about to attack or defend where needed, leaving the lizards guessing as to where they were and in what numbers.

  Kyler knew that some of those worlds only had a single Sentinel set up, with more coming down the pipe from Earth, and even if the lizards wanted to avoid the Hycre fleets, hitting Atlantica wasn’t exactly an easy feat. The fleet Kyler had here was more than capable of handling the escort fleet the lizards had brought with the assault pillar, and even with it there was no way they were going to take down all three Sentinels, though Kyler was pretty sure they could have gotten at least one more if they’d truly wanted to.

  A lot of the planet’s drone defense fleet had been spaced out around orbit, unable to get to the enemy fast enough to do anything…which Kyler felt had been their plan as he ran back through the battle records again. They knew the position of the Sentinels, the planetary alignment, and the approximate location of the defense fleets…and not from any recon on this trip. They’d come here through a backdoor jumpline in order to set up the rapid arrival at Atlantica, which would avoid the bulk of the defense fleet for a short period of time and give them an isolated run against the Sentinels…and Sentinels as in plural. If they’d wanted to hit just one they could have picked another system, but three was the minimum number in the defense clusters here, of which had at least 50 miles of separation between each station.

  That looked like nothing on the replays that Kyler was watching, for each of the Sentinels was 16 miles long and the lizard assault pillar, while 100 miles away, measured more than half that distance in length, making the battle look like a close up brawl from a distant observer, underscoring just how gigantic the chess pieces were that either side was fielding, with the cruisers and drones looking like lethargic insect swarms moving about around them.

  Kyler ran through the sensor records of all monitoring stations within the system, making sure the lizards hadn’t deposited any ships on planet, then had his command crew do a headcount to ensure that all the enemy ships had left and they hadn’t dropped off a few out of sight…which they had. Kyler sent out several hundred drones and a handful of warships af
ter them, which resulted in 3 kills and 4 escapes, though those escapes were slow affairs, with the cruisers having to make jumps on their own, meaning a very long trip between stars without a jumpship.

  Those ships Kyler was sure were simply an afterthought, trying to gain some extra intel and not the focus of the attack. The Sentinels were Star Force’s major defensive piece in the ADZ puzzle, and a major deterrent to any race that wanted to attack them. Star Force had held the lizards at bay in this region for so long because they had been persistent and the lizards had been focused in other areas. Now that wasn’t so much the case, but the increased defenses were still holding them back.

  Now, it seemed, their enemy was ready to flex some more muscle, here and on the Calavari border which had its own Sentinels set up and was warding off some light lizard attacks…probes, Kyler knew, sizing them up for the hammer blow to come.

  This wasn’t it. Not by far. The fact that they’d left the system as quickly as they arrived said one thing and one thing only…they needed to test the strength of a Sentinel cluster, and this attack had been designed exactly to do that. They didn’t want to lose the assault pillar, but they had succeeded in trashing one Sentinel and damaging another, and based off the battle data he was reviewing, Kyler guessed that the assault pillar would be back to full offensive capability with only a light refit. The barrel shot they’d scored had been fortuitous, and he expected the lizards to back off the range a bit more to decrease the odds of it happening again.

  Yes, Star Force had just driven off an assault pillar and its escort fleet, but the lizards had just proven to themselves that they could still hammer Star Force if they wanted to, and it wouldn’t require sacrificing hundreds of thousands of cruisers to get the job done. They’d wanted to test their big weapon and that test had been well executed and invaluable in determining what strength was necessary to make a serious attempt at breaching the ADZ defenses.