Star Force: The Dinosaur War (Star Force Universe Book 45) Read online

  1

  March 28, 4894

  Vbora System (Oso’lon border colony)

  Chadara

  Niom was waiting onboard his Na’shor battleship as more Oso’lon vessels arrived at the rendezvous point nearest to Star Force territory. It was still going to take 28 long jumps to get to the warfront, utilizing one black hole route that the V’kit’no’sat had already secured, and better than two months to get there, but Niom’s fleet hadn’t left yet. Others had, many in fact, but Virokor’s campaign strategy didn’t involve bringing in everyone at once. The Hjar’at’s plan was a coy one, much more indirect than Niom was comfortable with, but even he agreed something had to change from past failures and Yaniel had deferred to Virokor’s leadership, giving up the prime command position that would have been Mak’to’ran’s had the Era’tran not elected to join the warden faction.

  Niom understood the significance of the Harthur and how Mak’to’ran didn’t want to waste time on Star Force when the V’kit’no’sat had their first real advantage over the Hadarak, but Niom agreed with Yaniel and the rest of the Oso’lon. Star Force was too dangerous and continuing to grow, and their ability to control the Uriti gave them an advantage that the V’kit’no’sat could not match, nor could the Harthur, for the Uriti would simply blast them apart with their long ranged weaponry that the Hadarak lacked.

  So with Mak’to’ran taking no part in the invasion, all aspects of it were left to the ‘crusaders.’ Niom didn’t care for that title, but it had spread throughout the Urrtren and, like it or not, it had stuck. It suggested desperation to him, and thus not a fitting description, but the agreement between races stated that if Star Force could not be conquered in what was going to be their final attempt, a truce would be brokered and a definitive border established…with the rogue faction being given domain over the Rim while the V’kit’no’sat focused their full power on the Hadarak.

  The Oso’lon couldn’t let that happen. If set free, Star Force would grow to become a rival in time. They were too hard to kill, too organized, too smart…and they’d seek vengeance eventually. Mak’to’ran seemed to think otherwise, and while he couldn’t call the leader of the V’kit’no’sat a coward, he felt he was being too timid. Others did as well, and this invasion campaign was going to be a test of his leadership. If the Oso’lon and others succeeded in what Mak’to’ran said would be a very costly and wasteful war, and they did so convincingly, Mak’to’ran’s rule would be revoked. That wasn’t official, but it was the general assessment of most crusaders. He was making the call that this would be devastating and the invading races would be so weakened it would jeopardize the Hadarak border…thus he and the Era’tran were not coming.

  On the flip side, if he was right, it would only strengthen his leadership and weaken Itaru further. Niom didn’t want to see that happen, for the V’kit’no’sat were not supposed to have a ruler. They were a consortium of equals, and many had only tolerated Mak’to’ran’s position due to the fact that he’d saved the empire from crumbling in what would have been a fatal civil war for the V’kit’no’sat.

  But Itaru wasn’t following him on this call, and they’d amicably come to the arrangement of wardens and crusaders. They were quietly splitting apart their economies now, as much as feasible, to send resources to either the Hadarak front or the Star Force front. Whoever prevailed would gain leadership in the aftermath when the empire was reunited against the Hadarak once again, though hopefully with Star Force forcibly annexed and obeying Itaru’s commands, not to mention helping to replace all the ships that were going to be lost with the labor of their industrious servant races.

  But even Niom knew this was not going to be a fast war, even in the most beneficial of outcomes, so Virokor’s piecemeal advance wasn’t too controversial. Niom just hated waiting in line while others got into the fight ahead of him.

  The reason he was waiting was because it was taking time to get Oso’lon ships from across the galaxy to the rendezvous point. Three other Oso’lon fleets had already left, under other commanders, and they contained most of their heavy Kafcha and Na’shor. Niom’s Na’shor was only one of 168 that he had scheduled for his fleet, of which 32 were still missing. The rest of his 5938 ship fleet was comprised of smaller vessels, but all Oso’lon. Virokor had decided that the V’kit’no’sat were not going to wage war with mixed fleets, but rather by race. The Oso’lon were assigned an invasion corridor, along with the other races, almost in a race to see who could get to the heart of Star Force territory first.

  But the Uriti were a wild card here, and they, unlike planets, could move. Virokor’s orders were to NOT fight them, or they’d lose so many ships in the combat that they could end up losing the war. They had to destroy Star Force’s industrial base first, then take the Uriti last when the Star Force support fleets could be thinned and the Uriti isolated. Only then could they kill them, and trying to do so in mixed combat against Star Force drone fleets and the Uriti at the same time was suicide.

  Unless they overwhelmed them…but Virokor had stated flatly that was not to be attempted. Any commander that did so would be executed, and Niom wasn’t going to disobey that order. If Virokor wanted to play this cautious and preserve as much of the crusader fleet as possible, then so be it. In the long run it didn’t matter how long this took, so long as it got done right this time.

  Niom had spent a lot of time down on one of the three planets in the system, but he was waiting for the rest of his ships onboard his flagship now, impatient to get going. A month and a half later when the rest of them finally arrived, he set out ahead of other Oso’lon fleets still forming up and towards the warfront where little information was making its way back across the desolate regions separating the V’kit’no’sat and Star Force borders. Urrtren tendrils that had been snaked out towards the front to keep the rest of the empire informed had already been taken down, how exactly was a little dubious, but word had reached him that Star Force had attacked and destroyed them and no more construction projects were going to be enacted until the front lines could be hardened enough to protect them.

  Because of that Niom was on the command deck for each jump, slightly concerned about ambushes enroute, but he had scout ships out in advance days ahead leaving information packets and transmitters like bread crumbs on multiple routes, letting him choose when he arrived which way to go and making the transition through the mass of stars less predictable. Each fleet was moving on different courses for the same reason, making running into an ambush extremely unlikely.

  Yet that’s exactly what Niom ran into after the 17th jump. His Na’shor began picking up the warnings only two minutes before arrival from the ships ahead in the convoy that were transmitting back up the jumpline. The signals were weaker the farther away you got, leaving only a short heads up that there were Star Force warships waiting at the jumppoint.

  Niom didn’t have to give any orders, the automatic protocols for such things were well established and set to activate immediately, given how little time there was to react. Niom could override or alter them if needed, but as he looked at the tidbits of information coming in and how the approaching convoy was going to spread slightly wider and decelerate harder, he saw nothing to change…then when his ship hit the brakes and began the deceleration slide coming into the system there was a glitch. Not much of one, but for a moment the ship’s gravity drives lost their push against the star then regained it…but that threw off their arrival point and brought them in closer to the star than expected.

  It took a few seconds for the messed up sensor images to straighten themselves out, then he saw it. Th
e debris field of damaged or destroyed ships that were drifting in closer to the star along with the rest of the convoy, for they couldn’t come to a dead stop without having ships behind them slamming into their aft. And that stream of ships was gauntleted by Star Force drone swarms that were firing nonstop into the kill zone across more than 30,000 miles…but they weren’t moving in to engage their middle and close range weapons.

  In fact the central zone of that conduit seemed to be safe from their weaponry and only when ships veered off were they engaged…but then he saw it, sitting in near the star far away and throwing energy up the center of the conduit around the jumpline.

  It was a Seinac Lancer, and their drift speed was taking them right towards it…and then the horror hit him when his ship’s engines suddenly went out, bracketed in IDF fields, leaving his Na’shor drifting towards the monster weapon.

  But those drones couldn’t be transmitting IDF fields across such a long distance. They suffered from the same range deficiencies that the Harthur did. That meant there had to be…

  Then he saw one, when another Oso’lon ship rammed it. There were stealthed objects inside the corridor outlined by the drones. The Domjo had its shields pierced and a chunk of its hull went missing, but Niom saw the ship maneuver, meaning the IDF in that area had disappeared.

  “Find the IDF emitters and destroy them. They are sensor stealthed,” he ordered aloud while sending the commands through the telepathic inputs at the same time. “Shift shields forward, 90%,” he said, seeing a few Oso’lon ships spread out along the jumpline arrive on the other side of the drones, with portions of the enemy craft peeling off to pursue, but most of his ships were entering inside the kill zone, unable to brake enough to avoid it or swing wide…with several ships colliding with drones as they tried to do so, taking out both vessels given the high speeds involved and a net loss for the V’kit’no’sat, for the Star Force drones were far smaller.

  What had happened to his scout ships? How had Star Force amassed an ambush of this size without one of them having reported back? The IDF mine field had to take an enormous amount of time to set up, or had Star Force developed some new technology to extend the range of IDFs?

  Niom had no answers. What he had was a lot of ships sitting helpless as the Seinac Lancer tore into them and a number of others that had found gaps in the field and were moving to the flanks to engage the drones. The more ships he had coming in the better odds he would have, but they had to get these damn IDF mines swept away…except they couldn’t see them.

  “Reset dispersion on all applicable weapons to detection mode. Fire in all directions, including at our own ships. No blind spots. Find those mines!”

  Both his Na’shor and the other ships nearby that still had comms complied, shutting down their weapons that they were currently using, in some cases, to shoot drones on the flanks. That left them more helpless, but some 18 seconds later they began firing again and blanketing huge swaths of space with low levels of energy. Not enough to damage them, but hopefully enough to cause a blip on the sensors.

  Niom watched as his Na’shor continued to drift in closer to the star and the grinder that was eating up his ships as no new signals were detected. Not a single one.

  “Pulse fire,” he ordered desperately. The weapons ceased firing again, having to reset, then instead of blanket fields they began to send out stronger spurts in specific directions. They were strategic, working through the overall field, and hopefully…

  There. He saw a small blip show up, far from his ship, but another Na’shor was within range and reactivated one of its Ardents, firing on the area and missing. Without the active sensors it was guess work, but with another pulse passing over the same area and helping to fix the position, another 4 shots finally landed one that tore off a chunk of the stealth shielding and made it visible to conventional sensors.

  Niom saw that IDF mine blown to bits shortly thereafter, with an area on his revised tactical board showing a gap in the IDF field…but one where no ships were, yet, but one was coming in that direction.

  With a thought he opened a comm to that ship, ordering it to hold inside that empty area and keep away from the Seinac Lancer and try to moor any nearby ships to help slow their speed, and as more mines were found and eliminated he reiterated the same to other ships as more and more of the convoy continued to come into the jumpline in a wide stagger, with about half of the ships now veering wide enough to avoid the ambush entirely, but he could also see more Star Force ships beyond the ambush point, and they were chasing the escaping ships en mass. He figured some of his ships would survive, but many wouldn’t until he got enough into the system to group up and begin taking down targets in tandem.

  Right now everything was spread, and the first burst from the Seinac Lancer hit his ship. It wasn’t as powerful as a Tar’vem’jic, thankfully, but it fired continuously and at far greater range. It was pulling energy from the star akin to a stellar mining platform, and launching it in a gel-like state that kept it from fanning out like an Ardent beam would at great range. That made it hard to hit distant targets, but if you did the packets of energy would hit at full force.

  And a 38 mile long and 8 mile wide Na’shor, unable to move, wasn’t too hard a target to hit at extreme range. Fortunately the diamond-shaped ships had entered point on, for they normally flew flat side forward. Traveling at interstellar speeds meant even collision with sand-sized particles was dangerous, so with the almost needle-shaped Oso’lon hulls being put on end, the surface area diminished greatly and that was the only reason why most of the Seinac Lancer pulses were missing wide, but the golden energy was still coming like a fire house. Increased and decreasing in volume, but it was being shot out continuous as the beam wavered back and forth trying to sweep across the Oso’lon ship at more than one million miles.

  The beam left his ship shortly thereafter, with Niom realizing it hadn’t been shooting specifically at the Na’shor, but at group of ships much closer in. The gunner had probably tried to wing his ship while transiting between targets, meaning that his flagship wasn’t the focus yet…and he’d already lost 28% of his shields.

  Another mine nearby was discovered and destroyed, but the gap created wasn’t close enough…until a smaller Dak’bri further ahead in its own little zone of engine capability shot a mooring beam out at extreme range and pushed for all it was worth against his flagship, giving it some drift momentum to the right that might just cause it to cross into the field.

  Niom watched as his Na’shor passed by the Dak’bri at the closest point, then the mooring beam was out of range and his ship was left drifting again, but on a path that was going to be close. He kept an eye on the carnage occurring ahead and the ships fighting in the clear with the drone swarms as the Na’shor briefly crossed the edge of the zone and his engines pushed hard to negated the drift…but not completely succeeding as it only got a few seconds of grip. It slowed the drift further into the system, but didn’t stop it completely.

  He saw two more ships move past him, for they were drifting faster than his, and one of them used a mooring beam to push his ship further away, adding momentum to itself, but they were trying to save the flagship and Niom at all costs as the Seinac lancer swept another swath nearby that veered into his ship two more brief times, taking the shields down under 50% as it blasted apart ships much closer to the star.

  Then he saw it. A group of Oso’lon ships that had gotten free and were flanking the drone conduit. They weren’t engaging, nor were they going after the Lancer, for it was too heavily guarded at the base of the conduit, but the 17 Oso’lon ships turned and accelerated up the conduit from below, at what was relatively slow speed, and the drones attacked them heavily until they passed into the mine field, hitting one by accident, but the 17 ships were now drifting the opposite direction and pushing with mooring beams against any other Oso’lon ship they could get close enough to, slowing themselves and redirecting the others.

  That was dangerous as hell, a
nd not long after the maneuver started to pay off he saw a collision. It wasn’t a full one, and the mooring beams helped avoid the worst of it, but two Domjo hit and tore out the hulls of one another as they were going in opposite directions. Parts of the ships flew off in all directions, but the rest that remained were still functional…save their existing gravity drives couldn’t find much gravity to push on.

  Behind him the situation was getting better as more mines were found and destroyed, but the first section of the convoy was in horrible condition. If Niom had been at the front of the line he would have been dead already, but when the field suddenly went down along the edges near the Lancer he saw the drone walls collapse inwards. The Lancer itself fired a few more times then shut down, with Niom seeing its flower petal-like design begin to collapse into transport mode, but what was coming was in some ways worse. For with the conduit now being free to maneuver in, along the edges at least, the wave of drones was moving into firing range on the trapped ships.

  Niom watched behind him as his fleet began to get a hold on the upper jumpline point, now with very few mines messing with it and the smaller field further out in the system having been knocked out as well, meaning the hard braking was now in effect and no reinforcements were coming this far in against their will. With every few seconds that passed more ships were coming into the system and his fleet was building, but he was still losing a lot, at a rapid pace, as the conduit walls shrunk with Star Force deactivating the mines when and where they wanted.

  Before long that wave of drones got to Niom’s flagship, then the slugging match began in earnest.

  2

  March 29, 4894

  Reenshamat System

  Entry jumppoint

  Niom had spent more than half a day inside his personal armor, breathing recycled air as he survived within the wreck that had been his flagship along with 18 other Oso’lon survivors and some 328 Zen’zat. The rest of his crew were dead, either from the fight or the collision with another wrecked ship that had occurred 2 hours ago. It was a Star Force one, cut in half but with enough mass to smash what had been the refuge of those wounded. With the last habitable compartment on his Na’shor destroyed, those caught without armor were killed in the vacuum of space and a few others were crushed to death before that by the collision.