Star Force: Origin Series (17-20) Page 18

  “Makes me wish we’d equipped the mechs with flamers.”

  “True,” Jason said, referring to a weapon in the Battletech universe that was essentially an oversized flamethrower. That would have been extremely helpful in melting off key streets rather than having to push the snow around by foot or hand. “How many mechs do we have on the construction crew?”

  “The five of us,” Cora said. “The others are still needed to clear streets.”

  “Alright fellas,” Jason said, leading the way to the nearby plaza and kicking through one of the small experimental snow walls he’d built. “Let’s go build a snow fort.”

  With dozens of skeets circling over the southern lizard base making strafing runs on targets that had survived the orbital bombardment, the first of the arriving dropships set down in the kilometer-wide clearing that surrounded the base, offloading Ninja Monkey mechs with Morgan leading the way out of the hold in her own neo and wasting no time as she ran in towards the base across the grassy field. The lizards had done well to prune back the forest and smooth out the surrounding ground so no enemy could sneak up on them from the trees, but they’d also created an opportunity for Star Force to bring in their mechs, which had proven to dominate the lizards on the ground.

  Their superior aerial forces had been smashed by Paul’s warships, leaving only a few dozen fighters and two predators operational, though one of the gunships had a hole the size of Morgan’s mech in it. The skeets, loaded up with large belly missiles, had taken them down quickly upon arrival with Star Force gunships assisting in picking off the remaining fighters. With the air now secure, it was time to go in on the ground and secure what was left of the base, much as what was occurring up north.

  Morgan would have preferred to have gone in with the Archon teams and fought hand to hand, but they hadn’t arrived yet and she didn’t want to play second string in the assault so she opted for a mech that would allow her to do approximately the same thing, only on an exaggerated scale.

  Leaving the other mechs behind to catch up later, she sprinted her neo across the landing zone and up towards the line of smoking buildings, having to zigzag around several large craters created by rail gun slugs that had missed the target. In fact, the smooth clearing around the buildings had been potmarked so much that it appeared like a space shotgun had hit the lizard base, but there was enough clear ground in between the impact divots to give Morgan an easy approach, even if it wasn’t a straight line.

  She’d been reviewing reports from the northern assault from her mech as it sat in the dropship bay in orbit, and she knew that that base had a large number of defense turrets imbedded between the buildings. She hoped that a lot of them in this base would have been knocked out from the naval bombardment, but she knew some were bound to have survived, with those now becoming her priority targets.

  Morgan also knew of the threat from the little bomb-strapped lizards, but figured they wouldn’t pose much of a problem if she kept moving. Mechwarriors had a bad habit of standing still and shooting at things, but her Commando proficiency always urged her to stay in motion, which in this case would make it hard for the suicide squads to catch up to her feet where they’d have to be to take down a mech. Detonating any further away might knock her over, but it wouldn’t take her out of the fight.

  Morgan ducked into one of the radial streets when she got to the buildings but only made it a hundred meters or so before a pile of debris blocked her path. She backtracked and tried another street, but didn’t have any more luck. After the third try she resigned herself to digging through and climbing over the debris, getting past three blockages before scaling a much larger fourth where two tall buildings had come down on top of one another. Using aerial feeds coming from the skeets she knew there was a clear road just on the other side, so she took the time to climb the small mountain then hesitated when she reached the shaky top, having to reset her feet several times to keep from sliding down as pieces shifted under the mech’s weight.

  Morgan activated her comm on a private channel straight to Paul. “You sure made a mess of things down here,” she said, surveying the damage from her mount. It wasn’t the tallest in the ruins of the base, but it put her mech’s cameras up above most of it, letting her scan the graveyard of buildings, many of which were sending tall plumes of smoke straight up like marker icons thanks to the calm air conditions. “I had no idea the fleet could do this much damage.”

  “Naval is the backbone of warfare,” he reminded her. “Which is why it’s essential that we maintain our superiority in space, even if their tech is better than ours.”

  “Any more activity up there?”

  “No…I think we’ve stretched their naval assets to the breaking point. Until they get reinforced, anyway.”

  “Alright. Keep an eye out up there and we’ll do our thing down here. Just make sure they’re never able to do something like this to us.”

  “I’d promise you that if I could, but I don’t think we’ve seen their full arsenal yet.”

  “Neither do I,” Morgan said, twisting her mech around and climbing down the far side of the debris pile.

  10

  August 28, 2264

  Epsilon Eridani System

  Corneria

  Paul stepped out of the mantis at the captured northern lizard base in full acolyte armor onto the snow covered plaza, sinking his silver boots into a couple of inches of fresh precipitation. The rest of the accumulation stood all around him, making for the largest snow fort he’d ever seen. The outer wall was at least 400 meters long and probably another 250 wide, forming a giant rectangle inside the giant rectangle of the plaza that was more than twice the size of the fort.

  The wall itself was at least two stories high and roughly square. He could see several impressions made by the mech fingers that had sculpted and compacted the snow, but otherwise it had a smooth surface. Paul wondered what improvised tools Jason had made out of the debris to achieve that.

  Further inside there were two mini forts that surrounded modular anti-air batteries that they’d brought in to offer some protection to the improvised airfield. More than a dozen skeets sat on the ground next to them, while still more were on patrol in the skies above. Stationed outside the wall where Paul couldn’t see them were patrolling mechs, audible as they walked by as there was little other noise in the base to compete with.

  “I don’t like that look on your face,” Paul said as Jason approached on foot from one of the small prefab structures assembled within the snow fort to act as a command center.

  The other Archon shook his head, equally helmeted with his face obscured, accepting his friend’s joke at face value. “You’ll share it in a few minutes,” he said as the pair walked over to a small hover truck and were driven out of the landing zone past two stationary mechs guarding the ‘gate’ to the snow fort.

  “Any recent activity?”

  “Not in three days, no.”

  “So what’s the big secret?”

  “There’s something we have to do that I don’t want to do,” Jason said with a tinge of controlled anger in his voice. “I don’t expect to find another solution, but I wanted you to have a crack at it anyway.”

  “A crack at what?”

  “You’ll see in a moment, it’s not far.”

  Paul resigned himself to be patient, though he definitely wasn’t liking Jason’s tone. Normally they didn’t have a communication problem, but whatever this was it was getting under his friend’s skin enough to cause him to clam up.

  The Star Force security officer drove them over to the upper southern sector of the base, passing by the remains of the defense tower and arriving at the loading dock of a conical building that ended five stories high with a blunted point.

  “Tip of the iceberg,” Jason commented as they walked inside the half melted door. “Most of the facility is underground, for the warmth or protection I’d guess.”

  The lizard buildings, it seemed, didn’t have any staircases. I
nstead they had lattice-like ladders in addition to cargo elevators. The pair of Archons took the ladders down two levels and walked across a short atrium before Jason pulled open a very thick door, letting out a wave of moisture and heat.

  “Have a look.”

  Paul frowned and walked inside, with Jason entering and closing the door behind him.

  The naval expert was dumbstruck for a moment, then began walking down the rows of sealed, clear containers hooked up to a myriad of equipment. There were thousands of pods stretched out across the huge bay, with a footprint that must have covered several of the surrounding buildings’ substructures.

  “A hatchery?” Paul asked.

  “Yes...and remember these?” Jason said, picking up and tossing him a small device identical to some of the artifacts recovered from the first lizard base Star Force had scrapped over a year ago.

  Paul caught it, remembering having sent the devices back to Sol when their local techs couldn’t identify what they were. To date no breakthroughs in that department had ever been reported. “What are they?”

  “Watch,” Jason said, plucking the device out of Paul’s hand and walking over to an empty pod. He inserted the device into a matching receptacle, which then pulled the object inside the clear container and sliced it open with a cutting laser. The outer, mechanical shell was pulled off and discarded, revealing a second, less robust mechanism inside.

  “We couldn’t figure out what it was because we never broke one apart,” Jason explained as the tiny device was lowered to the center of the container and pressed against a glob of clear gel, then quickly raised back up and shuffled into a small tube that sent it up into the machinery in the ceiling and over to the next empty container where it was lowered inside and the process was repeated.

  Jason walked over and hit a button on that pod, pausing the process. “I’m not sure, but I think those little hand crates contain genetic samples that they use to grow new troops on site.”

  Paul’s mind flashed back to the problem Jason had referenced. “How far along are they?”

  The trailblazer twitched his head to the left and lead Paul down to another section of the pod field to where small lizards were incubating in a much larger gel layer, each as long as the Archon’s forearm.

  “They’re growing fast. I’d guess there was a facility like this in the southern base before it got annihilated from the orbital bombardment, probably already turning out new crops of ground troops. This base is fairly new, and yet look at how far they’ve progressed. Now we know why they wanted surface footholds…and resources.”

  “They’re not raiding just to raid,” Paul said, following Jason’s logic, “they’re planting industrial seeds.”

  “Who needs supply lines when you can produce everything on site? We have to wait through an 8 week delay minimum for reinforcements and we’re limited by the size and number of jumpships we have available. Now suppose these guys are 6 months out from their homeworld…”

  “They still need replacement cruisers,” Paul pointed out, thinking fast and hard. “I doubt they’ve established a shipyard yet, so unless they are getting supplemental resupply via jumpship, attrition will work in our favor.”

  “Not my point, buddy.”

  Paul turned away from the gel-bathed lizard and looked into his friend’s faceplate. “What am I missing?”

  “The sensor stealthing.”

  Paul thought for a moment, then closed his eyes as the obvious finally hit him. “Damn.”

  Jason nodded. “As I see it, we can either turn tail and run or build as fast as we can, because sooner or later they’re going to bring their big guns out. If we really are on their frontier we might have enough time, decades even, but if they’re close by…”

  “…we’re screwed,” Paul finished. Jason’s logic track was painfully evident now. The lizards they were fighting were just the enemy’s expeditionary forces, probably meant to explore, patrol, and deal with new or rising threats on the frontier, with the ability to grow new troops and build up whatever forces were necessary to deal with the threats they found.

  Jason was also right in suggesting that meant the lizard homeworld was probably far away, but put up enough of a fight and they’d raise their status to the point that might, and probably would, draw a much stronger reaction from their civilization…like sending out their real army and navy to fight the Humans in a conventional war. The defense fighters they’d been employing, detectable by sensors, were probably part of their mainline forces and had been attached to the expeditionary role as base defenders, which suggested that there were probably many more ‘detectable’ lizard units in use elsewhere in their territory that they hadn’t come up against yet.

  Including larger and more powerful warships, if what they were dealing with now were truly just skirmishers.

  Jason nodded his agreement. “In the short term, however, what are we going to do with them?” he said, pointing at the infant lizards in the pods.

  Paul glanced around at several of the developing aliens. “Best guess on time to maturation?”

  “We need to analyze the equipment, but my gut says damn short. If this was a long term strategy, say 10 years worth, they wouldn’t be so aggressive. They’re spending ground troops like they’re easily replaceable, so my money’s on a year, max.”

  “Genetic memory or quick learners?”

  “Could be either, but if we hadn’t taken this base I’d expect these guys to be armed and in the field trying to tear us into pieces in no time.”

  “That doesn’t leave us much choice.”

  “I know,” Jason said regretfully. “I was hoping you’d have another idea.”

  Paul considered for a moment. “Without a way to communicate with them…unless these guys are going to be blank slates, letting them grow up is just going to create more enemies. We need to let some go through the cycle so we can assess their actual capabilities, but I’m not comfortable letting them develop just so we can shoot them later.”

  “If the blank slate theory holds,” Jason asked, “what are the odds of teaching them English?”

  “If they’re maturation cycle really is as short as we’re assuming, I’d say slim. Have you seen anything on base that resembles a training center?”

  Jason shook his head. “And if they’re not going to be training these younglings…”

  “…then they’ve got to be born with the needed knowledge.”

  “Genetic language?”

  “An interesting possibility, but we don’t have enough data to be sure of anything right now.”

  Jason looked over at one of the tiny lizards. “Mercy is the luxury of the dominant?”

  Paul sighed and took off his helmet, with Jason doing likewise.

  “That’s an odd smell,” Paul noted, tempted to put his helmet back on immediately.

  “Can we take the chance?”

  “We can if we want to,” Paul said, looking his friend in the eye. “Maybe these guys won’t be our enemies by default, but if they’re operating off of genetic knowledge I bet they’ll try to kill us the same way the prisoners did. Best case scenario is we let a few mature and, if they are hostile, keep them in a containment facility and see if we can learn to communicate with them.”

  “That hasn’t worked so far,” Jason reminded him, referencing the suicides.

  “It’s a challenge worth pursuing…but right now we’ve got a war to fight and can’t waste time babysitting our enemy. Maybe in the future we’ll give it a shot, but right now let’s take this at face value. These younglings are being grown, here, now, on our planet, to be thrown against us in battle after battle until they kill us all.”

  Jason nodded, Paul’s words matching his own thoughts. “Explosives or plasma?”

  “Plasma, sooner rather than later. Only use Archons, some of the others might get the wrong impression. Keep the equipment intact as much as possible. We’ve also got to consider the possibility that they come back to…” Paul cut
off as his helmet started making noise. He slid it back on his head and toggled his forearm controls. “Repeat please, I didn’t get all that.”

  “Orbital sensors have picked up an approaching ship, high velocity headed towards atmosphere. It is not one of ours.”

  Paul frowned. Lizard ships weren’t detectable on sensors unless they were damaged…or unless this wasn’t one of their expeditionary force vessels.

  “Where’s it heading?”

  “We can’t tell, it’s arcing its trajectory. It may be going for an orbital insertion, but it’s definitely coming in hot.”

  “Alert all bases and have them get skeets in the air, loaded with shipbusters…and give me position updates as they come in. It’s going to be a while before I get back to a nexus.”

  “Trouble?” Jason asked after Paul finished. He’d left his exterior mic on, so Jason was able to hear his half of the conservation.

  “Incoming ship, on sensors, not one of ours.”

  “Coming here?”

  “Don’t know yet, it’s still in space.”

  “Get going,” Jason prompted.

  Paul shook his head. “It’ll be hours before I can get back. I’ll help you finish up here first. Go grab some guys and extra ammo,” he said, pulling his plasma rifle off his back and looking for a release switch on the nearest pod.

  The mystery ship didn’t stick around long. After settling into a brief orbit and launching an object down to the surface it left as quickly as it had arrived, moving so fast that none of the Star Force warships could have intercepted it had they tried. The meteor-like object fell to ground 37 kilometers outside the main Star Force colony, blasting an impact crater into the forest that was hard to miss. After skeet reconnaissance confirmed a single object in the crater a ground team was organized and deployed to investigate the nature of the projectile.

  Initial reports indicated a large sphere with ablative plating, the contents of which were uncertain. Close range scans indicated a mechanism underneath the partially charred plating, and after carefully removing the excess material the survey team discovered a latch that opened up what appeared to be a container.