Star Force: Consensus (SF43) Read online

  1

  August 15, 2467

  Rotunna System (Beta Region)

  Inner Zone

  Aaron-010 watched from the bridge of the WS113 Warship-class jumpship that he was commanding the 19th fleet from as the system-wide battlemap began to update as the ship finished its braking maneuver against the larger of two gravity wells that were the Rotunna System’s binary stars, one orange, one yellow. Aaron had brought the first of his three fleets in against the larger yellow star, using the differential function of the gravity drives to ignore the presence of the other so it wouldn’t push them off jumpline as they arrived, with his ship being 13th in line out of the 100 warships in the 19th fleet.

  The 22nd and 41st fleets also had 100 warships each, as every one of the mainline fleets was tasked to maintain. Their ground, aerial, and aquatics units traveled separately in cargo jumpships, which were trailing the warships. Each mech unit had 5 galaxies, each aerial unit 250 squadrons of 10, split between skeets and gunships. Commandos numbered 100,000 and were comprised of a mix of Regulars, Knights, and Archons, while aquatics operated on a minimalistic fleet lineup, given that their larger ships were hard to transport between planetoids.

  The 19th fleet/army had been assigned to Sol along with many others, of which Aaron had taken three full units. They’d been partially packed up prior to his departure order being given, so that they could respond to any incursion within Star Force’s home system, while other units had been dedicated to certain planetoids. The 19th had several mech and commando units on Mars that it had to retrieve, but given their extensive training they’d been able to recall all their puzzle pieces into their waiting jumpship transports within hours, then they’d set off for the 2+ month journey from Sol out to Rotunna to reinforce Randy’s smaller fleet that had gone to aid the first of the Star Force systems to be invaded by the Skarrons.

  Rotunna was the most distant Beta Region colony, and as such it was well away from the others, making supplying it difficult, but of all the systems scouted by Star Force in Beta Region it was by far the most valuable, which is what had prompted Randy to snatch it up sooner rather than later.

  The system contained 7 habitable planets and 2 habitable moons…which was exceedingly rare. Finding a single planetoid within a system that was habitable per your race’s biological requirements was quite a find, but to have 9 was nearly unheard of. Sol only had one, being Earth, so securing and colonizing Rotunna had been a priority for Randy, despite the fact that it was a considerable distance away from Iona, his regional headquarters.

  Rotunna was one of the newer colonization efforts, but it had been given more resources than the others, including an army of Kiritak and Star Force engineers to get to work setting up shop in the system, and they’d done a good job of it, with the first exports of foodstuffs coming out of the system within 3 years of their arrival.

  With Star Force’s presence in the system came the attention of other races, and like the other Kiritak colonies in Beta Region, Rotunna had become a way station for the nearby races as they passed through enroute to other locations. A trading market had been established in orbit with a decently-sized defense fleet stationed there to make sure that everyone was clear that the system belonged to Star Force and no one else was going to be able to stake out any territory for their own.

  That defense fleet had been steadily growing over the years, but the Skarrons had come with too many ships and overwhelmed them, though the actual number was still unknown given the fact that the relays had been cut. All information from Rotunna had ceased transmitting after that point, meaning Aaron didn’t know what the full situation would be when he arrived, but the smaller insystem relay satellites spaced around the system had not been destroyed…at least not all of them, and they linked in with his warships the moment they came out of their jump, updating them to the current positions of all Star Force assets.

  As Aaron watched, the map of what was supposed to be there tallied up losses of orbital stations by the dozens…but not all of the icons went out. In fact, there were two planets that appeared not to have been hit, in orbit at least, which Aaron found both reassuring and odd. As more information updated a preprogrammed message came through alerting all Star Force reinforcements to travel to Othalla, the 7th planet in the system, and one of the two that appeared to still be in Star Force hands.

  “Admiral, pass the word down the line. All incoming ships transition by groups to Othalla. Then take us in.”

  “Aye,” Admiral Nellis confirmed the order, then set about organizing his fleet into deployments. In a few minutes time the WS113 made a microjump out to the planet in question, then linked up by direct comms to the small defense fleet already in orbit.

  “Wakey, wakey, anybody home?” Aaron said over a private channel to the ship tagged with Randy’s command icon.

  There was a considerable delay, then an image of an Archon appeared, though it wasn’t Randy.

  “Apologies, Aaron, but Randy is currently off on a mission,” Kraven-602 said with a loose smile on his face. “Though I do hope you’ll stick around anyway. It’s very lonely out here nowadays,” the Archon said dryly.

  Aaron nodded, understanding what he meant. “Where is he?”

  “Pulling a ground op on Ida. We’ve managed to neutralize most of the Skarron warships…or at least scare them off for the time being, but they’re pressing their ground campaigns and we’re having hell dealing with their walkers. The only saving grace is we’ve maintained air superiority and they’re having to land the things far out from our colonies, but once they get in close they’re killing everything in sight. We’ve lost more Kiritak than I can count, with even more fleeing to the wilderness when their habitats are destroyed. We’re evacuating as many as we can, but the Skarron fleet is intercepting our transports whenever possible and we’re having to play games just to get them into position, both in orbit and in air.”

  “How many ships have the Skarrons got left?”

  “That we know of, 32 warships of varying sizes. Randy kicked the crap out of their original fleet once he arrived. Might want to watch a replay, he really took them to school over the course of three weeks. Othalla wasn’t the Skarrons original target, and I think they didn’t know we’d colonized multiple planet’s beforehand, because they seemed unwilling to put down anywhere but Ida at first. That was the first planet we colonized, so their information appears to have been out of date.”

  “They’ve got smaller incursions on three other planets, but Ida is the real war zone and we’re getting our asses kicked. I hope you’ve brought some toys, because when their walkers get inside city limits we can’t kill them from orbit.”

  “I’ve got 3 full mainline fleets with me,” Aaron said, bringing a smile to the other Archon’s face. “What exactly is Randy up to?”

  “Um, well, he’s trying to take down some of their smaller walkers.”

  Aaron’s eyes narrowed. “How?”

  “Remember Star Wars, the Empire Strikes Back?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Aaron said loudly, part dismay, part jealousy. “Has he got any yet?”

  “Reports say two Type-4s.”

  Aaron shook his head as if to clear it. “He always was a reckless mother fucker. What’s the standing orders? We got a recall order as soon as we arrived in system.”

  “The Skarron fleet has gone dark. They’re learning from us and vice versa. He didn’t want anyone to get ambushed on the way in, though we weren’t concerned about a fleet of your size.”

  “Any objections to my getting to work?”

  “Please do. We’ve been stuck in guard position so long we’re going stir crazy, so if you don’t mind, replace our ships here
and let us get in on the action.”

  “You’ve earned that much,” Aaron said, gesturing to the Fleet Admiral who began setting up the transfer orders so Othalla orbit wouldn’t be left unguarded. “As soon as the rest of the 19th gets here we’ll move on Ida. Have your ships ready to jump.”

  “We will be,” Kraven said, eager for some payback.

  A little green blur of motion sprinted through the jungle, concealed beneath the thick green canopy as it raced to catch up with a Type-4 Skarron walker that was breaking trail for three Type-5s. The spider-legged mechanical tick was dragging its belly low and knock or bending trees over that the shorter biped walkers were then stomping down as they made their way towards a small, independent bioharvest facility that was located in the middle of Ida’s globe-spanning jungle. No access roads or clearings were available around it, with the only way in or out being by air transport.

  Star Force had skeets in the area keeping enemy transports at bay, so the Skarrons were making the long hike in to the facility by foot, and cutting out their own crude pathways through the jungle on the way. From higher altitude you could see the Skarron roads crisscrossing the planet and expanding out like a thin spider web, with this tendril reaching out into previously untouched territory.

  The little blur of Archon ranger armor was alone, having been deposited via skeet some kilometers back and left to approach on foot. Irregular as his path was, he was making better time than the walkers, though at a cost of considerable strength, for he’d been running for the past half hour and putting most of his effort into making the catch. He wasn’t low on ambrosia yet, but at the speed he was moving it wouldn’t be much longer until he felt the first effects of his body’s saturated supply diminishing.

  But Randy wasn’t concerned about that, for he had already made the catch. That was the hardest part, for he needed to get to the walkers when they had their shields down, and he could only do that when they were far from the combat.

  The trailblazer paced the last of the three Type-5s, matching its speed but running some 120 meters to the west on the same heading as he got a ‘feel’ for the situation with his Pefbar, extending it out into a spotlight-like pylon that reached through the trees and touched the walker that his eyes couldn’t see. It was stomping what was left of the vegetation that the first three had yet to knock down, leaving a mess of timber in its wake that would be difficult for Randy to maintain even half speed running over.

  “Ok,” the Archon said to himself, off comm, “we’ll try a different approach this time.”

  Accelerating up into another continuous sprint…or at least that’s what it felt like with the constant adjustments he had to keep making for trees and debris, Randy pushed his way up to the second Type-5 and turned hard right, crossing the safety gap between him and the Skarrons in a handful of seconds, finally stopping short and jumping up into an intact tree that had been spared from the walkers’ passing.

  The trailblazer climbed fast, then walked out on a thick branch halfway up the tree that got him an approach to clean air and waited for the third biped walker to come up. It had two very thick legs that supported a short torso with a large golf ball-like sphere top that contained the pimple pattern of plasma cannons across its surface, much like the larger Skarron walkers had. The thing had no arms, making it look like a fat Lego man, and it walked about the same. Apparently the quadruped species wasn’t all that keen on biped movement, which raised the question why they had built biped machines in the first place.

  Randy had only a few seconds to wait, then he took his chance and ran a few steps along the length of the branch, pushing through smaller sprouts and crunching his way towards the end where he jumped with all his strength and flew out into the clean air and fell down into the broken tree mess below. He landed 15 meters shy of the walker, but managed to get a good left foot plant against an angled tree trunk and caught himself before he could slide down further into the mess of branches. Using that point of grip he ran up the broken trunk two steps and jumped to another one nearby.

  Two more short hops and he leapt up against the side of the walker’s left leg…where he stuck onto the side, thanks to the boxing glove-like add-ons to his armor. He wore no pack, no weapons rack, nothing at all aside from his basic ranger armor with the thick grip gloves attached over top his normal armored digits.

  Randy hung in place for a split second pulling a Garfield, then disengaged the right gripping device and one armed himself higher up on the leg. Reattaching it he released the other and climbed, with little help from his legs, up above the mess of jungle debris washing by him and threatening to peel him off. Once he got to the knee joint he was free of most of that concern, and focused on getting past the moving parts, which required some delicate timing and one armed hanging swings to get to the upper leg.

  Randy was glad no one had shot him as he’d gotten to the walker, meaning that hopefully they hadn’t seen him and wouldn’t see him in this close, but there were no guarantees. Two days ago when he’d tried this he’d been spotted and took half a cannon blast to his shields before he’d dropped off like a dead flea. He’d hit the ground hard, then ran off in his melty armor with a kink in his left arm where the material had resolidified and interfered with the normally smooth movement of the elbow joint.

  But that was the chance he had to take to get in this close, and even now that he was clinging to the side of the Type-5 he wasn’t safe, for if the walker turned on its shields he’d been pinned in place as if an invisible wall manifested itself with the Archon inside it. His own shields would keep it from being a hard lock, but if a body part was bigger on the inside then there was no way it could fit through the hole in the Skarron shield and he’d be truly stuck, but he’d learned that the Skarron shields weren’t directly on their armor, but rode several inches above it, meaning that most of his body would hopefully be inside the perimeter, though even if a hand was outside it’d get burnt off by enemy plasma…which was why up until this point he’d only tried taking down single walkers that couldn’t shoot him if he got pinned in place.

  So with that threat in mind he climbed as fast as he could, transitioning up to the torso and around to the back side where the 2nd Type-5 couldn’t see or shoot him. Randy felt inside the machine for the mind of the pilot, finding it to be further up top than the center of the sphere, so he continued to climb up the ball with his body and feet hanging off as he had to maneuver up the underside.

  The grip gloves held firm though, as they’d been designed to do. Another useful bit of tech recovered from the pyramid database.

  Randy climbed up the curve and eventually got his legs back on the hull. He diverted his line of ascent twice to move around plasma cannon ports that were the size of a trash can, and eventually made his way three quarters up the curve until he was the closest to the Skarron pilot as he could get. He’d have liked to have attempted this from farther away, but his mind wasn’t nearly that powerful…at least not for the precision control that he was going to need.

  Setting the grip gloves to lock into position, Randy trusted the technology to hold him in place then disengaged his mind from the majority of his senses and let his psionics link him with the mind of the single Skarron pilot inside. What he found was violent, as the others had been, but more large in scope than powerful. Using his psionics he linked to the mind and asserted control over it. Pulling the override required a lot of skill and power, hence the need to get as close as possible, but thanks to the practice Randy already had he locked down the pilot and kept him away from his own bodily functions, essentially blacking him out while jumping inside the thing’s body.

  That was the creepy part…having four arms and four legs, no head, etc. Randy had to do it this way in order to get the precision movements he needed, else he could have just enslaved the Skarron’s mind and made it do what he wanted while allowing it to be partially conscious. Even now the thing struggled to wake up, but a consistent mental pressure kept it down and Ra
ndy used what was left of his psionic power to operate its limbs, see through its eyes, and interface with the pilot controls. The Type-5’s was a bit different from the Type-4s he’d messed with earlier, and it took him a few minutes to figure them out as the mech continued to walk forward under computer control, with Randy only having to make micro steering adjustments as he got situated.

  When all was said and done he activated the walker’s shields, pinning his body in place with part of his back and butt showing through the shield barrier, but the rest of him was underneath it. That didn’t matter, because he was hanging off the back and the other walkers were in front, and with all the trees around them it was going to be difficult for them to flank him.

  Ok, here goes, Randy thought as he activated the walker’s weapon systems, ignoring the anti-air cannon up top and focusing on the dozens of small plasma cannons on the walker’s surface. He linked them to group fire to track a single target, then powered up the primary plasma cannon that sat on the front side of the golf ball in the thing’s chest.

  Picking a spot in the back of the right knee of the duplicate walker ahead of him, Randy fired the primary cannon, then triggered the smaller ones to attack the same spot, pouring as much firepower as he could into the walker before it could realize what was happening and get its shields up.

  2

  The joint’s armor was lighter than the rest, but it didn’t give on the first hit. Rather it took three blasts from the main cannon and a torrent of the smaller white plasma blasts to melt through and get at the internal structure. The fourth blast hit shields, delaying the walker’s collapse, but Randy kept hammering the same spot as the Type-5 ahead of him tried to turn around, getting tripped up by the tree debris that was everywhere.

  Before it could swing around and bring its main cannon into play the anti-personnel cannons on the back side fired on Randy’s appropriated walker, splashing off his own shields as they traded fire. A few more direct hits from his main cannon and the shielding over the knee went down and Randy delivered the fatal blow, melting the inner mechanics from the heat of the plasma. The liquid slag cooled quickly, causing the joint to seize up. That stuck the walker in place, lest it fall over, and gave Randy a blocking silhouette against the other two walkers that were already turning around as they tried to figure out what the hell was going on.