Star Force: Ringworld (SF80) Read online

  “Ditto,” Paul said as he conversed with his campaign leaders in a private planning chamber onboard the Excalibur as their assault fleet was parked around the now empty planet of Rennpret, one that had been cleansed of lizards less than three years ago and sat just on the good side of the boundary line between the empty occupation zone and lizard territory. “First priority goes to the star guards though, and I suggest we take them without tackling any of the battlestations first off.”

  “They have some in position,” Jack noted.

  Paul zoomed the map in with a few telepathic inputs to the control node buried within the holoprojector, then pointed a finger at the dots that represented the string of lizard battlestations in orbit around the pair of stars. “Not where they should be. They’re too far out. We can jump in behind them and force a fight in closer to the stars. If the lizards choose to fall back to them we just sit and blockade the system. My bet is they’ll fight it out.”

  “Given the amount of trade going through this system, I’m inclined to agree,” Megan added. “A stalemate works in our advantage.”

  “Until they call for reinforcements and spam us out of existence.”

  Paul shook his head in the negative. “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right…if they can get them into the system. Group their convoys as close together as they like, it’ll still take days to get the amount of ships they need into the system and if we’re smart we can sit on the known jumplines and poach a lot of them on the way in. Unless they take some detours, we know where they will be coming from.”

  “You’re right,” Megan agreed. “The fight is going to be over stellar orbit. If we can take and hold it, it’s downhill for the lizards after that.”

  “If we don’t lose too many ships doing it,” Jack pointed out. “We’re not going to get any reinforcements so we’ve got to nail this first time out.”

  “We’ve got this, barring any surprises,” Paul said, rubbing his smooth chin as his eyes were on the detailed map that he zoomed back out again to get a better perspective of everything in the crowded system.

  “The battlestations don’t count?”

  “We’ve known they were there for some time, we just didn’t know they’d grown.”

  “What if they’re mobile?” Jack asked.

  Paul raised an eyebrow. “Then that’s an additional wrinkle.”

  “We need an active scan,” Megan insisted.

  “I know, but we’ll tip our hand if we do.”

  “This isn’t exactly going to be subtle.”

  “Like Jack said, we only get one shot at this and we need as many clean, easy kills as we can get. Letting them reinforce before we get there is a bad idea.”

  “If they do then we just switch targets.”

  “Or…” Jack added. “We sent a scout to pull an active scan in a system that’s not our target. Where do we have confirmation of existing battlestations?”

  Paul’s mind altered the hologram again, pulling out to a regional view of the entire lizard core with half a dozen systems being highlighted, all of which were around the edge of the rough sphere. The last time they’d pulled a scouting mission to their homeworld had been before the battlestations had been implemented.

  “We could, but we’d have to delay…and I don’t like the idea of letting them know we’re sniffing around. If our scouts have been successful in keeping quiet, I’d rather blindside them entirely.”

  “Unless we’re the ones that get blindsided.”

  Paul raised a finger in the air. “Let’s assume they’re mobile. How are they going to use them?”

  “Blockers,” Megan guessed.

  “Distractions for our heavy hitters,” Jack added. “We pay them attention or they unload on us. Either way it keeps their cruiser swarms alive for longer.”

  “Kamikaze?”

  Megan bit her lip. “Depends how mobile they are.”

  “Not for a kill,” Jack said, tilting his head to the side as he thought with the glow of the hologram reflecting off his face in the mostly dark room, “but they can bump us aside. Maneuver us around as they like or just break up our formations. If used properly, and if those things are even remotely mobile, they’re going to complicate things.”

  “Starting to wish we’d brought a few Sentinels with us.”

  Paul shook his head. “No, we need to stay mobile. We can avoid these battlestations unless the cruiser swarms fall back to them for protection. That’s not their normal procedure and we can slowly snipe them from range if they do, so I think they’d be more of a bait into a trap than a real nuisance. They’re prepped for a slugging war, but that’s not what we’re going to give them. This is a numbers game, so we’re going to whittle them down as quick as we can without making ourselves too vulnerable…and like Megan said, if they pull back to defensive positions we starve their shipyards out, so they have to fight.”

  “So their best bet is to get us to do something stupid and bite off more than we can chew,” Jack said, zooming the map back in on stellar orbit. “Which we’re not going to do, so that leaves them with giving us more than we can handle. To do that they have to go on the offensive. You think they’ll pull the fleets guarding the shipyards away to overwhelm us early on?”

  “I’ll make sure they regret that decision if they do,” Megan said icily.

  “In which case we’ll just bounce around the system and not fully engage,” Paul added. “We’ve got the engine power they don’t, and we’re going to use it effectively. That means more taking advantage of opportunities than a straight up fight, but it can be done.”

  “Reminds me of one of those awful naval challenges when we were cadets,” Jack mentioned.

  Megan laughed. “You mean before or after we taught them how to train us?”

  “After. They threw something at us that even they didn’t know how to tackle and let us figure it out. We wrote the book for everyone else coming through, and I think that’s what you want us to do now?”

  “The lizards are used to standard Star Force tactics,” Paul said with a nod. “Those battlestations are designed to interfere with how we normally fight large fleet operations. But we’re not going to fight large scale this time, not tactically anyway. We can do that, they can’t, so we’re going rebel alliance on this. Hit them where you can and pull out, don’t get goaded into a slugging match.”

  “Until we hit the big stuff later,” Megan amended.

  “Right. Our priority target is the cruiser swarms. Take them out and the big guns are easy to snipe down from range. If the battlestations are mobile that’ll delay the process, but this is all workable so long as we don’t lose our heads. We’re the stronger fleet here, but we can’t fight like it. We have to fight like we’re weaker and can’t handle big engagements.”

  “One problem,” Megan noted. “If we do it this way, and it takes a lot of time, will we draw enough reinforcements here or will Liam and Roger get dumped on?”

  “Good question. I don’t know, but we will have a head start on them. Hopefully the call for reinforcements will go out before they can analyze our tactics.”

  “How many transmitters do they have?” Jack asked, bringing up the target system again.

  “They’re out of reach,” Paul said as 8 positions spread over three planets were highlighted. The lizard interstellar communications tech had gotten better over time, but it was still line of sight and made use of surface facilities rather than spacebound transmitters…which meant the rotation of each planet brought the transmitters in and out of alignment with their target systems periodically.

  “I agree,” Megan said. “We’d have to take out all of them and we’d lose far too many ships punching through their planetary defense networks. That’s not our job here anyways.”

  “A comm blackout would rally more reinforcements.”

  Paul altered the hologram again, bringing up the known range of their transmitters and seeing how many nearby systems they could get a message out
to. “Damn.”

  “18,” Jack said after counting.

  “How many jammers do we have?” Megan asked.

  “13.”

  “Too many systems packed together,” Paul said, noting the density of the lizard core where they’d colonized virtually everywhere they could, including planets that elsewhere they’d typically skip over.

  “How much delay could we give them?”

  “Some, but we don’t want to tip our hand to those right away. We need to completely black out a system, and right now there are too many relays in play. We gotta knock some out first.”

  “Alright,” Jack agreed, “saving those for later. So they’re going to know they’re getting hit. How bad can they hurt us if they wanted to?”

  “They could theoretically send reinforcements through dozens of different jumplines so we couldn’t poach them all. The real wildcard is how many ships do we have left. If they’ve hurt our numbers initially then their reinforcements could smother us even if we knocked down half of all that came in before they could leave their jumpships.”

  “It all comes down to that first fight,” Megan said, looking at her two peers.

  “That it does,” Paul agreed, returning her look.

  “It’s curious,” Jack said, changing subjects. “Where are their chess pieces?”

  “Probably sent to somewhere they’ll be more effective,” Megan answered. “Skarron territory I’d assume. They know cruisers are their only effective way of battling us.”

  “Only known way,” Jack amended. “I think they’re trying out these battlestations for number 2.”

  “And a few other things,” Paul said, zooming into planetary orbit around Tess, which was a shortened version of the only known moniker for the planet, which was a long winded lizard name of Tesstraveskinamentenr. No one else had ever known this system, at least within recorded history, so there was no original name to go by and most lizard identifiers were unnecessarily long…though to be fair, they renamed every world they took and that amounted to a huge list of names, not all of which could be short.

  “What are those?” Jack asked as he looked at several large space stations situated away from the shipyard ring but obscured within the orbital traffic and auxiliary facilities.

  “I think they’re storage sheds that might be holding a surprise or two for us.”

  “They’re definitely big enough,” Megan commented as she got a scaling from the map. “Big enough to hold an invoker.”

  Paul shook his head. “There are extendable slips for those on the rings, and there’s no reason to shut one up here. They’ve got something else inside, maybe cargo, or maybe something they don’t want anyone else to see.”

  “How many of them are there?”

  Paul had already gone through this data an hour earlier, but he’d never counted. Using the map functions he quickly tallied up all the facilities around the planets, then discovered a few more out in null space. “289.”

  “Nuts,” Megan said, her face scrunching up.

  “Like I said,” Paul emphasized. “We’ve got this barring surprises.”

  “They’re not defended well,” Jack added.

  “Could mean they’re not a priority, or that could just be them hiding them in plain sight. Only one way to find out at this point.”

  “Yeah, go in there and crack one open. Permission to add that to my to-do list?” Megan asked.

  “If you have an opportunity go for it,” Paul obliged. “Just don’t waste resources if they don’t feel like letting you.”

  “I’ll be discrete,” she promised with a smile. Her section of the battle plan called for her to keep the lizard defenders spread out across the system by potentially hitting valuable targets if they all mushroomed into low stellar orbit. To accomplish that she’d be commanding legions of mages who would then be commanding their own task groups. This was a huge operation, and one that Paul hadn’t wanted to carry out himself. Likewise, Liam and Roger also had a few other trailblazers with them to assist with the massive coordination necessary to free up the naval specialists to guide the overall battle flow and adapt faster than the lizards could.

  “Well,” Jack added, “they’ve been preparing for this for so long I’d be disappointed if they didn’t try something new.”

  “We know the lizards better than anyone,” Paul said, looking at each of them in turn. “They’re not going to go down easy, and if I were them I’d have already evacuated most of the leadership to the Skarron zone.”

  “Leaving these systems to do what? Make us pay for taking them?”

  “That and to keep pumping out ships as fast as they can.”

  “The Voku are seeing a lot of convoys jumping the gap.”

  “Plus how many more they’re not picking up on,” Paul said with that ‘supreme intellect’ look he rarely flashed out except when in Admiral mode. “The rats are abandoning ship, but they’re too savvy to let all this go to waste. Even if they only get a fourth of the jumpships across to the Skarron zone those ships will make a huge difference over there and I’d bet they’re getting far more than that through.”

  “Making end runs high and low?” Megan asked.

  “I would.”

  “So you’re saying they’re going to be real touchy about us blockading the system?” Jack wondered.

  “They have to keep feeding the factories and sending out convoys, otherwise all this,” he said, pointing at the system map, “is a waste. They know we’ll destroy it all. I’d bet they’re playing big picture here, and there is no usefulness whatsoever in holding out if they lose the ability to export. They will just out of spite, but they need these shipyards operational for as long as possible.”

  “So you think they’re going to call our bluff and hit us with everything they’ve got to keep the spacelanes open?” Megan asked.

  Paul shook his head. “It all depends on what we bring to bear and how they choose to adapt, but make no mistake, they’re seeing this system and even their homeworld as expendable now. If they’re holding on to some sentimentality I’ll be extremely disappointed. That’s not the enemy we know.”

  “Yet you’re assuming they know we won’t go coreward after we finish out here?”

  “I think we’ve pretty much broadcast that. They might not know our reasons, but the line in the sand has been cut pretty cleanly by now. If I were them I wouldn’t depend on that, and I don’t think they are. Word is they’re spreading out farther and faster than normal, skipping over systems they’d normally take in order to get distance. They know we’re not pursuing them there now, but they’re going to get so large a footprint that we won’t be able to track them all down even if we do.”

  “They’re playing multiple contingencies?” Jack asked.

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Honestly, I would have hit the ADZ just as a massive middle finger to us.”

  “Unless you had some other path to victory in the works.”

  “Like what?” Megan asked.

  “Getting far away from us and rebuilding.”

  “Like the next galactic arm?”

  Paul nodded. “Exactly. The Skarron empire practically gave them a roadmap away from here and plowed the way of any real threats. They know what they have to do to beat them and that’s far better than facing us or pushing out into the unknown…which they’re doing anyway. I think they’re going for Skarron territory hardest because it’s their way to put distance between us and them. We’re not cherry picking like they are and cleaning out everything in our path. That slowness combined with their expansion will put them out of our reach, then they can find a quiet region to build up their forces again.”

  “Long term in the extreme,” Megan declared.

  “I learned long ago not to underestimate them,” Paul said with a smirk.

  “But?”

  “They’re still stupid.”

  Jack laughed. “To anyone else that would be a contradiction, but I fully understand what y
ou mean.”

  “Tactics war?” Megan guessed.

  “Experienced savvy units versus spamming weak, inexperienced ones. We may not be able to eradicate the lizards, but we are going to beat them so long as we don’t screw up…surprises or no. We can always pull back and adjust, so don’t get too locked in on any objectives.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Jack promised. “We’ve got our work cut out for us this time.”

  “Good thing we like challenges,” Megan responded, putting her fist into the hologram. “2 tough.”

  Jack followed suit. “2 smart.”

  Paul finished the knuckle triangle. “2 beat.”

  “Let’s get to it then,” Megan said as she withdrew her arm and headed for the door enroute to the hangar.

  “See you on the other side,” Jack said, heading back to his command ship as well.

  Paul let them go, shutting down the hologram and following them out a few steps behind. When he got through the door he glanced at the titan waiting for him off to the side in the hallway with her back leaned up against the wall.

  “Big kids all done?” she asked sarcastically.

  “That we are,” Paul answered as he looked at her new blue locks. “Nice hair.”

  “An homage,” Riona said as she fell into step with him. “We ready to kick ass?”

  “You got my back?”

  “Always.”

  “Then we’re ready. Most cruiser kills gets a box of donuts.”

  3

  June 19, 3098

  Menchet System (lizard core)

  Inner Zone

  Riona stood in an auxiliary command nexus onboard the Excalibur several decks above the bridge where Paul was stationed, but she could feel his presence within the ship’s battlemap systems even though his telepathic presence was mixed in with the rest of the crew. She could contact him that way if needed, but so long as both he and she were plugged into the system they might as well have been standing next to each other, for within the command and control systems that guided both the ship and the entire Star Force fleet they were easily visible to one another.