Star Force: Commando (SF40) Read online

  Rio got there first and pumped two blue streaks into the closest one, realizing after the fact that one would have been enough to take it down. They were wearing clothing, not armor, and the plasma burned deep into their small bodies, knocking them out of commission rather easily.

  The others peppered him with plasma as he ducked behind cover, then Dravic came out the other side and hit them from behind, killing two before he ducked out of sight behind a broken wall segment.

  Rio came back out and shot another, then charged forward, accepting several shots to his shields as he closed range and got inside the small crater and kicked one of the aliens back into another pair, bowling them down from the melee as he pumped out plasma shots to the others still standing, with Dravic joining him a moment later.

  Rio’s shields went down and he took three plasma hits to his armor before the aliens were all killed. He inspected the damage, finding the melty spots being superficial only. Their plasma pistols didn’t carry a lot of damage…unless you were caught outside your armor, in which case they’d be plenty lethal.

  Dravic raised a warning finger after putting an extra shot into one of the bodies that he felt wasn’t completely out of the fight yet.

  “Patience,” he counseled. “Don’t let your shields be taken down unless absolutely necessary. You don’t know how long you’ll have to make do with that set of armor before you can get a replacement, and even though those are small marks, they add up over time.”

  “Noted,” Rio said, realizing his mistake.

  “Come on. If there are more pockets it’ll be run and gun. Let the snipers eat them up.”

  “Go,” Rio agreed, dropping in behind the commando as they made their way up the east side, coming across several individuals and killing about half of them. The others either fled or chased after them, and Rio could hear the occasional lachar blast behind him as the aliens crossed into the base’s firing lines.

  He didn’t look back to see if they were hit or not, for that wasn’t his role here and it would slow him down. They were meant to flush them out, which meant eyes forward at all times.

  The pair hit another pocket on the north side, this one larger than the last, and it seemed that the aliens were slowly gathering around the base, possibly to assault it, or maybe just being attracted to the action. If they were out here to exterminate surviving Protovic, then maybe they didn’t have an overall plan, in which case it was good that they were getting to them first and forcing the issue.

  Plus, the more of them they killed, the more Protovic might survive.

  Rio got more than a dozen kills by the time they finished their long zigzaggy circle around the base, coming back up to the south entrance and entering the same way they had come out…through a small slit in the doors, but this time the shields remained partially down, or rather ‘up.’ They were deployed over top of the base, but didn’t extend all the way to the ground, ending just above the wall so the snipers could continue taking out targets of opportunity.

  “Hold up,” Dravic said once they were inside, proceeding to walk around Rio inspecting his armor. “Not too bad. Do you have full shield strength? One of the gashes is close to an emitter.”

  Rio checked his HUD. “I’m reading full power, and all emitters are green.”

  Dravic nodded. “Get to the maintenance building and have a tech put some patches on those holes while we’ve got the chance. And other than being a little bold, you did well keeping up. This was your first live firefight?”

  “Yeah it was,” Rio admitted.

  “Live and learn, commando,” he said, punching the center of Rio’s chest with the side of his fist, which bounced off the active shield matrix.

  “One thing,” Rio asked as the other started to walk away. “What do we call those things?”

  “They’re called Aronsic.”

  “No nickname?”

  “This is the first time Star Force has engaged them. You have a suggestion?”

  “Well, they kind of remind me of Lord of the Rings.”

  Dravic stared at him for a moment. “Hobbits?”

  “Yeah…that’s what I was thinking, anyway.”

  “Makes sense. No guarantee it’ll stick though,” he said, getting on his comm. “How many more Hobbits have we got roaming around?”

  “Several,” one of the wall guards answered on the communal comm that Rio and the others could listen in to. “It looks like they’ve been spread out across or beneath the debris and are starting to converge on the base. No telling how many are out there…and I like the name, by the way.”

  “Rio’s idea. If they start accumulating too much, let me know and we’ll make another shakeout run.”

  “Copy.”

  Dravic pointed at Rio, then at a particular building. “Get going. I want you ready for the next go around.”

  Rio smiled inside his helmet, then jogged off towards the maintenance building.

  16 kilometers to the northwest Kip watched a mech engagement ongoing via the Tassadar’s bridge hologram in delay as some of the jumpships in orbit around Eshwan transmitted the battlemap data across the system to the trailblazer’s flagship as it was stationed in a null orbit far from any planet or moon, waiting for a target to ambush as other warships were poking around the system trying to find the Skarron fleet. He watched as the Metal Gear neos, madcats, and thors fought with three plump, six-legged walkers, seeing that the enemy truly wasn’t going down very fast at all.

  But at the same time they weren’t giving much return fire. Already an analysis of the battle data from every engagement was being processed by the command crews on the warships, with a weapon map and strength assessment for what they were tagging as a Type 4 walker showing on a side hologram. The ungainly thing had a fat rear end, almost like a giant tick, that was covered in small plasma ports…but with overlapping fire they were able to rack up considerable damage, and combined with the thick hull armor the Type 4 was taking three of their mechs to take down.

  But going down it was. There were two stars of Metal Gears, 10 mechs in all, taking on the three Skarron Type 4s, each of which stood twice as tall as the neos when it was laying on the ground, and rising higher when its legs engaged and lifted its bulk up. The front end was tapered, which Kip recognized as a way to get the lateral plasma ports, which he guessed were all fed by a single internal generator, to align into a narrow forward arc where they could aim and fire on the same target simultaneously, similar to the way Star Force’s original battleship design allowed, based off the Star Destroyer model.

  The Metal Gears recognized it too, because they were using their superior mobility to keep out of that arc and hit it from the flanks, chewing up a couple of spots on the armor in an attempt to eventually break all the way through. Missiles appeared to have greater effect on the armor, far more so than they should have versus the plasma cannons…which told him that these things had been designed to be resistant to plasma, which almost every race used in some fashion. It was the most common weapon, coming in many designs, so it was understandable that the Skarrons had predicated their defense against it.

  Trouble was, missiles weren’t that easy to come by, meaning engaging these things was going to eat up a lot of ammo unless they could find another way to do it. Unfortunately the mechs currently engaged didn’t have maulers. He guessed those would have more effect, but he was going to have to wait to see how that played out.

  Suddenly a projectile shot out from one of the Skarron walkers, followed by a tether that connected it to a madcat’s leg. Kip zoomed in on the hologram, seeing a claw grip wrapping around the mech leg just before the Skarron pulled and knocked the Metal Gear mech off balance. It tipped over and fell onto its port missile box, crunching in the side as the Type 4, unbelievably, reeled in the mech like it was a fish on the end of a line.

  Kip’s eyes went wide even as a Neo came in and shot the tether twice with both its arm-mounted plasma cannons, severing the connection and allowing the madcat to
start to get back up on its feet. The Neo walked over and used its hands to pry the claw off the leg, breaking one of tines in the process, with Kip still not believing that the Skarron walker had enough mass/torque to yank a madcat off its feet…meaning that that thing was far heavier and stronger than it looked.

  And it was the second smallest of the 5 types the enemy had in the field. His forces had been ordered to engage the smaller ones on the flanks of the enemy lines and leave the bigger ones for later, hopefully once he got back from hunting down the enemy fleet. He had to be present to do that, for tracking down and successfully engaging an enemy insystem when they didn’t want to be found was next to impossible. Paul and the other naval experts had been continually experimenting and upgrading their equipment to make such things easier, but Kip knew this was going to require a trailblazer’s touch…but so would the major ground combat, meaning he needed to be in two places at once.

  He typed out an order to send to the Metal Gears, indicating that they shouldn’t engage the enemy mechs with less than a star against each, and to wait to engage the Type 3s and larger until he returned. Right now the Protoss mechs weren’t even to their engagement points, for they were locking down various facilities in the line of the enemy advance and preparing to make a stand to delay the Skarrons and buy time for evacuation convoys moving the locals out.

  That put both Clans on opposite sides of the enemy, with the intention being to force them to split their forces. If they didn’t one Clan was going to have an opening to exploit, and right now it seemed the Skarrons were more eager to go after the Metal Gears, something that he needed to attend to right now.

  He zoomed out to the main battlemap and across to the Protoss landing zones, picking one that was already well established and ordering a series of raids forward into Skarron territory…but harassment only. Kip wanted to get their attention and take down a few of their walkers, but not get into a full-on engagement. Fortunately their ground troops were slow as hell, and would give the Clans the time they needed to maneuver the coming assaults into positions of their choosing.

  “Kip, we have contact,” the Tassadar’s Captain said, interrupting his ground campaign holo and sending it off to the side as a naval system map replaced it. “Five ships in low orbit around the 8th planet’s innermost moon.”

  “Have they detected our presence?”

  “If they have they aren’t moving yet.”

  Kip nodded, tagging several of his own warships on the map, wanting those to converge on the target along with the Tassadar at the same moment. “Let’s go say hi.”

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