Star Force: Penance (SF49) Read online

  They were set up for a slugging match, which Paul denied them. Using the binary drives that his fleet had he chose when and where to strike, pulling back when he wanted with the enemy unable to match the curved trajectories down towards the planet, with Paul sending the drones into the upper atmosphere and underneath the Scionate on more than one occasion to target some of the bigger ships with pointblank mauler strikes. Already the Scionate had lost a battleship to those tactics and they weren’t adapting well, allowing Paul to strike and kill the bigger ships that were out of position.

  Meanwhile he had the smaller drones harassing the Scionate attack groups, outmaneuvering them and nipping away at their shields until one or more would get wounded, then swarming and eliminating it before retreating and repeating the process again and again. The remote pilots in the system were proving quite adept, despite their lack of combat…which Paul could see via icons describing each one’s current level and combat history at a glance, with most of them having decent training scores but little real experience.

  Training was everything, and Star Force was putting that point to the Scionate in a very destructive way as their dominate fleet was getting chewed up and reduced in size while successfully screening for the ground transports. Paul didn’t like killing so many of their supposed allies, but this was a fight of their choosing, and should they turn around and run he’d let them go…but so long as they were attacking one of his worlds and potentially going to kill his people on the ground he couldn’t afford to cut them any slack on the naval front.

  Which was why, when their formation split a crack in response to yet more probing action around the perimeter of their main fleet, he sent in the most advanced drones he had. Most of the ones in action were equipped with the standard plasma/mauler/rail gun trio of weapons, with the heavy cruisers carrying small cleansing beams. A few of the drones were missile boats, while a handful were special varieties, custom configured by the local commander into what he’d wanted on deployment.

  But one warship in orbit, the one Paul had arrived on, came equipped with their most recent tech upgrades. Those ships he’d kept back, hovering behind the others and waiting for the proper moment to send them in…with his eye on the flagship of the Scionate fleet, a huge Dreadnaught-class warship that was nearly the size of a jumpship. It was sitting dead center in their formation, with the incoming transports flying within a few kilometers of it as they moved down into the atmosphere, insuring that no one was going to follow them from above.

  The dreadnaught was covered with plasma cannons, nothing special in their design but in sufficient numbers that they would eat apart any drones that got close to them, meaning Paul couldn’t send in the mauler-equipped ones without suffering huge losses. That would be a mistake, for the dreadnaught was so massive that it was going to take a lot of pounding. The next best option would be to hit it with cleansing beams from the heavy cruisers at range, but the Scionate fleet was spread out enough to keep those attacks down to a handful, with very little hull damage being inflicted on the massive ship.

  That said, Paul had already weakened its shields prior to the formation split occurring. When the moment of opportunity arrived he sent a single mental command to the remote pilots while assuming direct control over one of the cruisers. His perspective in the nexus shifted to the view from that individual drone as he flew it, maintaining control over the main weapon while leaving two remote pilots to handle the other weapons and another two for shields and anti-air, for the Scionate were spitting missiles out like crazy trying to hit and kill the resilient Star Force drones.

  Paul executed a short jump towards the planet, something the Scionate couldn’t do off the local gravity well, and pulled an atmospheric slide/bounce to redirect underneath the enemy fleet, coming up the ‘safe’ conduit the transports were going down with several dozen Scionate ships dropping into the atmosphere to stay below them and block any run against their boxed-up ground troops.

  Paul ran his cruiser in between those ships and the main fleet at high speed, avoiding most of their plasma fire before hard breaking directly underneath the hourglass-shaped dreadnaught as a wave of yellow plasma came pouring down on his ship while the other advanced drones followed him in. Mauler blasts shot out immediately, pounding what was left of the dreadnaught’s shields and penetrating the local areas, doing massive hull damage on the surface but failing to penetrate very deep.

  That said, a swath of plasma cannons got hit and slagged, reducing the amount of return fire and prompting the dreadnaught to spin about to get a better firing angle on those ships beneath as the rest of their fleet repositioned as well, coming down on the sneak attacking drones.

  Paul had planned for that was well, signaling a predetermined attack run up top while he aimed the primary weapon on the cruiser and fired a translucent shield column up at the dreadnaught. It hit the hull and crunched a few battle plates, almost like the ship had physically punched the other, but the damage was superficial and a moment later the emitter on the cruiser released the Ta’lin’yi energy that crackled like a fireworks display down the length of the containment shield, sucking energy out of it enroute to the dreadnaught and unleashing against the hull.

  The white/gold prickles that looked like a billion tiny fairies gorging themselves on pixie dust blew through the hull armor like it wasn’t even there and blasted like a torch into the dreadnaught’s interior, exploding everything they touched on contact. The Ta’lin’yi was so destructive, in fact, that Star Force had lost several prototype weapons from backfire, requiring the most advanced shields built to date to hold and channel the weaponsfire to target…which they now had thanks to the arc elements, with those shields also temporarily protecting these drones from the dreadnaught’s plasma fire.

  Paul kept the continuous Ta’lin’yi, which they simply referred to as a ‘Talon Torch,’ or just ‘Torch,’ firing nonstop so that he could eat well into the interior of the dreadnaught while the other cruisers and destroyers fired theirs off in short bursts, targeting key points on the hull that the maulers opened up. Trick of it was, the Ta’lin’yi lost most of its effectiveness against shields, making it about 3 times effective as plasma and useful in assaulting shielded ships, but it didn’t get its big bang until it hit physical matter…which was why the shield disrupting nature of the maulers was so critical, allowing them to punch at least small holes it the protective barrier to deliver the torch lances through.

  Paul kept his attack up until the drone’s shields eventually went down and the main weapon was hit and destroyed, but he didn’t retreat, instead pulling in closer to the dreadnaught and letting the maulers eat away at surface targets, thinning the plasma cannons that were hitting his other ships until a coordinated salvo from the other Scionate ships eventually killed the cruiser and his display reverted back to ‘Admiral’ view…where he saw the rest of the new drones finishing the work he’d started and tearing the big ship apart via deep core damage.

  The dreadnaught itself was too big to blow apart, at least not all at once, but huge conduits of damage were being poked into it along with the exterior looking like a person that had been burnt so bad they’d lost all their skin. As the big ship began to list the surviving drones turned their weaponry on the surrounding ships, with Paul instructing the pilots to fight it out to the last functioning weapon. He didn’t want to lose them, but he would gladly spend them in exchange for the damage they were doing…plus the disruption they were creating in the rest of the Scionate fleet that he began exploiting with the conventional drones.

  The debris from the destroyed ships on both sides fell into the atmosphere, given that they were hovering on anti-grav rather that actually sitting in orbit…or rather a lazy orbit so the Scionate could remain overtop their ground troops at all times. That was a mistake as huge chunks of ships fell down into the atmosphere, partially burning up from the friction but also reigning down meteors on the Scionate’s own troops…most of which were deflected by the transpor
ts’ shields, but some were coming down as far off as the neighboring cities, making the Star Force personnel there having to shoot them out of the sky in the case of small ones and run away when larger ones hit, with the advanced comm system and battlemap they shared proving invaluable as the meteor strikes were calculated and warning areas were flashed as no-go zones, allowing the mechs and fighters in the area time to maneuver out of the way.

  The same wasn’t true of the Scionate, who lost several hundred troops to the meteor strikes…but then came the dreadnaught hulk, unable to maintain its orbit, and now guided down to the surface with a few Star Force drones equipped with IDF tugging it on a more preferable course directly down onto a cluster of transports.

  One managed to lift off and fly away, but even it got caught in the impact concussion wave and knocked into the ground, skidding in the dirt before righting itself and gaining altitude again, but once it came up out of the dust cloud and looked back down on the area with its sensors there was nothing but sheer destruction in its wake. 19 transports were now gone, along with thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks, with the airborne tsunami pushing all the way up to the nearest city’s shields and bouncing off them like a gentle wave, tugging at the mechs waiting outside for the ground troops to arrive…but they never did.

  Those Scionate around the impact point that survived redirected and abandoned the attack, now in too few numbers, not to mention utter shock, to mount an assault. They redeployed towards another of the multiple landing zones, abandoning their target city to support the assault on another…with the herding drones staying down in the atmosphere and targeting a few of the transports before the Scionate warships caught up to them and had a brief fight over the surface. Three enemy warships fell, then the drones pulled back damaged towards the nearest city, firing as they fled.

  The Scionate warships, now 8 in number, followed them, killing one before they got near the city and dropping it to the ground where it dug out a long furrow, but avoided hitting any ground troops.

  Another kilometer closer and a tiny white beam struck out from the nearest city, slicing into the Scionate shields and penetrating them a moment later as the defense turret cleansing beam began providing cover for the drones. The Scionate pressed the attack a few moments longer, enough to lose one of their ships to a well-aimed slice from the third cutting beam shot as it hit the ship’s gravity drive…then the others pulled off as fast as possible, getting outside the preferred firing range of the small caliber CB and allowing the surviving drones to get some distance and redeploy back up to orbit.

  Paul didn’t try to drop ships down into the ground campaign again, needing all he had for the naval fight. As it was he was having to pull back to more hit and run attacks, for he was losing too many drones compared to how many ships the Scionate had…and not just the ones involved in the attack, but the numbers he knew they had on their six worlds insystem, and if he let his planetary defense fleet get thinned too much he’d be at a disadvantage, no matter what their technological edge was.

  Without any more deep thrusts into the enemy fleet the transports continued to flow down the ‘safe’ zone to the planet, landing well away from the dreadnaught wreck and deploying more and more troops to the assault lines heading out to the nearby cities. Paul brought up side displays in the nexus of the first ones to engage, seeing that the city defense CBs were angling down to hit a few tanks at range, but once the troops got within a certain radius the angle wouldn’t work, leaving it to the mechs and perimeter defense turrets to fight them off, with the Archons, Knights, and other commandos waiting to dual it out in the city streets and knowing not to venture out into what was going to become a massive kill zone.

  Manually tinkering with the raiding drones, Paul continued to rack up kills along the perimeter, exploiting minor and a few major tactical miscues on the part of the Scionate, essentially playing ADC and running in to hit and pulling back out before shield strength went down, doing the enemy damage while taking none yourself…other than power loss. It was amazing how much he and the trailblazers had learned from playing video games. They literally were a form of training, and League of Legends had been one that he’d cut his teeth on as a youngling.

  It was a winning strategy, given a long duration, and Paul continued it while the Scionate landed the last of their transports…but even then they didn’t abandon their orbital position, with Paul suspecting that they knew of and feared Star Force’s orbital bombardment capability. Pull their fleet back from the skies overhead and Paul could use his drones to pummel their landing zones with rail gun slugs, or even reposition the Sentinel in orbit and attack the surface with cleansing beams.

  That would be risky, because it would expose the orbital infrastructure it was currently defending, but either way he could rack up considerable damage to the Scionate ground troops while they were clustered together on the surface. Once they moved into the cities it would be another matter, assuming their transports didn’t stay on the ground. If they did the defense fleet would have to stay in orbit and protect their flank, in which case Paul was going to continue to nibble it to death.

  The Scionate could bring in more ships, and probably would, but the tactical situation would be the same until they started hitting Star Force positions in orbit or coming out after the drones in swarm tactics. Paul would make them pay a heavy price if they did that, but knew he couldn’t afford to lose the drones he had left. If the Scionate forced his hand he’d have to wait for the reinforcements that he’d already called for, which would be days away even after the relay network delivered the message to the neighboring systems.

  Or so he wanted the Scionate to think. In reality he had a number of warships waiting on the edge of the system outside of sensor range that he could call in if badly needed. One other thing he’d learned from video games was that the enemy tailored their assault to the forces they thought you had, meaning if you held some back or hidden away from their view you could often turn the tables on them…and even if you didn’t, if you had a reputation for doing so you’d ward off a number of attacks just because of that uncertainty.

  Which was why Paul hadn’t called them in. He was going to fight this battle with what he had in orbit and wait to see what the Scionate decided to do, but right now all they seemed to care about was grounding their insane number of troops. Star Force colonies were far from unprepared for this type of assault, something the lizards had taught them the hard way, but troopwise the Scionate far outnumbered them, from infantry to tanks to fighters.

  It was about to start going down heavy, and Paul wanted to be out there with Kara and Morgan mixing it up hand to hand or at least in a mech, but he knew the ‘Admiral’ was needed here leading the naval front, and with the city he was currently in not appearing to come under direct attack anytime soon, that wasn’t likely to change.

  Combat, aside from when dealing with rookies, was a team affair, and today his role was clear…with him going to press every advantage he had to take out as many of the Scionate ships as he could. He didn’t like slaughtering their enemies, but in this case it had to be done. If they didn’t choose to retreat, well, he couldn’t do anything about that, so he set himself to the task at hand and kept his attention on orbit, with only an occasional glance at the status of the emerging ground battles, leaving them to Morgan to work her magic on.

  3

  When Morgan got to the mech bay half of the walking machines were already gone, transitioning to the landing field outside where they were boarding dropships to be taken over to the Scionate invasion zone. She tagged one of the remaining ones for herself, depossessing a lower ranking mechwarrior and claiming one of the neos. Once onboard and strapped into the control harness she followed the others out, assuming command of the cluster and its 100 mechs. Admat had 2 galaxies of mechs, which totaled 1000 units, but they were spread out through the various cities, meaning it was going to take time to redeploy them to where the fighting was going down.

&n
bsp; The heavy walkers were another matter, and not included in the ‘galaxy’ grouping, which had 5 clusters, each of which contained 20 stars, with a ‘star’ of mechs being a unit of 5 that worked together to take on/down targets. Already two Mk. 1 Hoths were moving outside to load up for transport, and Morgan knew the faster they got those into the field the more trouble the Scionate tanks were going to have. She didn’t know a lot about the enemy’s fighting tactics, but she’d studied what data files Star Force had, as well as the combat potential of their tanks, which essentially operated like the Canderian turtles…heavily armored hovering weapons platforms.

  But she knew they only operated with plasma weaponry, no missiles or beams, meaning that a Hoth at range would eat them up before they could even get within firing range of the big machines…which were now much faster over ground than their predecessors had been, not to mention they’d been upgraded with a cleansing beam, now that the techs had figured out a way to miniaturize it even further. That said, her neo was still going to be the fastest mech on the field, but as she walked it out of the enclosed mech bay she felt the movements to be extremely sluggish, forcing her to reset her mind to ‘mech’ mode rather than ‘commando.’

  She boarded a dragon along with a number of other mechs, then with fighter escorts they flew out to the edge of the battle zone, with the Scionate already having reached the target city’s edge. Battlemap data suggested they were going for at least 5 different cities, with Morgan opting to tackle the biggest assault she could find.

  The dropships landed in a wide grid, giving the mechs plenty of room to exit several kilometers away from the nearest troops, though there were already enemy Valeries overhead strafing the dropships as several squadrons of skeets tried to keep them at bay. As soon as a few anti-air equipped madcats took to the field and downed a handful of fighters the Valeries backed off, with the Star Force pilots taking the initiative and pursuing them, leaving Morgan’s cluster a moment to itself as she handed out combat assignments.