Star Force: Foothold (SF25) Read online

“Challenge accepted,” the trailblazer said, returning the map to the full regional view and beginning to highlight dots with various color tags.

  2

  January 17, 2402

  Arkes System

  4th planet

  Dozens of blue plasma orbs hit the topside of the lizard cruiser as it fired back helplessly, trying to run from the Star Force fleet but unable to outstrip the faster corvettes that had gotten ahead of it and were keeping it from jumping. Eight of them had it in their sights and were pummeling its shields with plasma as they rotated position, blocking for one another as their own shields began to fail. Attrition overcame the lizards’ shields first and soon the blue plasma was impacting the hull, blasting apart the docked kirbies and ripping open the bulbous compartments dotting the otherwise flat ship.

  “Cruiser eliminated,” one of the Ares’s bridge crew reported a few minutes later.

  Sam nodded, but otherwise didn’t respond as he watched the orbital bombardment of the solitary lizard base on the surface of the planet begin in earnest. Hundreds of rail gun slugs were falling against its shields while the rest of the remotely controlled fleet dispatched from the Warship-class jumpship spread out in low orbit in standby mode. Only one lizard ship had been detected in the system, though with the limited sensor detection range of their expeditionary craft there was no guarantee they didn’t have more lurking elsewhere.

  If they did they were probably on the run by now, because as soon as the fleet had arrived and deployed the lizard cruiser had engaged the first few ships to detach, then realizing it was horribly outmatched had attempted to flee back down into the atmosphere where most Star Force ships notoriously couldn’t follow. The corvettes had gotten to and swarm-killed it first, with the remaining debris now turning into fireballs as it began to impact the thick air cushion around the planet.

  That cushion wasn’t thick enough to deflect the orbital guns, however. The metallic projectiles were punching through it without much effort and hammering the base shields…though Sam’s eyes were tracking the perimeter, trying to see if the lizards were evacuating over ground.

  It took a while for them to move, but move they did. Fighters, predators, kirbies, and ground vehicles all began exiting the perimeter of the shield just before it fell, taking their chances and trying to make a run for the edge of the bombardment zone, hoping they didn’t get tagged by the metallic rain. A few of the unlucky ones got hit by slugs that missed the base, but the majority of vehicles and ships successfully scattered before the energy barrier went down and the lizard buildings began to shatter under the repetitive kinetic impact.

  “Prep the dropships,” Sam ordered as he all but leapt out of his chair. “You have the bridge.”

  “Aye, sir,” the naval Captain in charge of the Ares confirmed as the Archon headed for one of the jumpship’s small cargo bays. There he boarded a shuttle and took it on a short hop over to a massive gargantuan freighter in which the ground assault team was being prepping. After setting the shuttle down in a small auxiliary bay he jogged through the decks and over to the main force that was assembling inside of ten Dragon-class dropships.

  “Didn’t expect you to tag along?” a voice said in Sam’s earpiece as he ran over to a stationary mech standing along the back wall while several others were walking up and into the open dragons.

  “The bridge got boring.”

  “Usually is,” Amir-577 said as he paused his shadowcat and looked back as the trailblazer climbed up into his personal neo that was painted in full orange with a fake blue ‘belt’ around the middle, wrists, and equally blue ‘boots’ along with a large white crest on the back that contained the Star Force emblem. “When’s the last time you took Goku out for a spin?”

  “Years,” Sam said as he sealed the hatch and began to strap himself into the extravagant control harness, “but the techs say it’s in perfect condition.”

  “What are we hunting?”

  “Scattered runaways. Looks like you’ll have more work to do than the others,” he said, referencing the faster mech that Amir was piloting. The shadowcat had a pair of elbow-less gun arms coming off the sides of a low, squarish body that sat atop a pivot point that doubled as a waist over the ‘pelvis’ of the mech that connected to the legs. The Star Force version of the Battletech knockoff had two knee joints on the backward canted legs that allowed the middle portion to lay level to the ground and allow the lower part that connected to the foot to reach out further, offering long strides and enormous push potential once accelerated up into a full run, along with enhanced balance options for covering rough terrain. It was what was classed as a ‘medium’ mech, but it had almost as much speed as a raven while carrying considerably more armor and weaponry.

  Sam’s neo, on the other hand, stood well taller in its humanoid-form and matched the Archon’s movements in the cockpit to the mechanical movements of the mech…whereas the shadowcat’s movements were computer controlled.

  Amir laughed as Sam’s mech staggered in its first few steps, making his movements look as rusty as the mech must have felt. “Simulators just aren’t the same, are they?”

  “No, it’s not that,” Sam complained, fidgeting with the controls. “Whoever parked it here has the settings all messed up.”

  “Sure,” Amir teased, spinning the shadowcat’s torso all the way around before heading over to his assigned dropship.

  Sam grit his teeth as he reconfigured the system to his liking, freeing up the movements so they exactly matched those in the cockpit, whereas the person who’d moved it had been restricting movement into a partially computer-controlled gait, prompted by the pilot’s movements rather than being controlled by them.

  As soon as he got them reset Goku’s posture straightened and he kicked the legs around for good measure, feeling the agility come back and going through a few shadow boxing punches before he jogged over to another dropship and gently walked inside and positioned the mech on the outside row, facing the doors that closed in front of him. Behind stood several other mechs, all with pilots onboard and no restraints whatsoever. So long as the dropship’s inertial dampening field was active the flight down would be smooth and steady, as if they weren’t even moving…if it failed for some reason, then the mechs would become like bumper cars knocking into one another, but Sam couldn’t recall a time that had happened, given that the IDF technology was old school for Star Force and extremely reliable.

  Sam waited patiently as the dropships took off and flew through the 16 jumpships that comprised Sam’s fleet. The freighter they were leaving had only recently detached from one of them, while half of the others were warship-class and sitting back out of the fight. Altogether he had far more firepower and resources necessary to deal with a single lizard base, along with plenty of mechwarriors to send down to finish off the survivors, but he wanted to go down in person even if his presence wasn’t required. Sam never liked playing Admiral, sitting back and ordering others into battle while he waited and watched, and since this side mission was his to carry out as he pleased, personally taking the fight to the enemy was a no-brainer.

  He waited patiently through the landing then got the heads up from the pilot just before the doors began to grind open. “Hostiles present to the north, range 3 kilometers.”

  “Copy that,” Sam acknowledged as he saw his first glimpse of the planet in stunning green through the crack in the doors. They widened to reveal a very shallow lake covering a sea of moss-like plant life that made the water look like a giant, perfectly flat green carpet.

  “Amir, call it out,” he said as he punched his neo out of the dropship hull at a run with the others following behind at a slower rate. Above them a pair of dragons hovered 400 meters off the ground opening their bay doors…out of which shot single skeets, each coming off specially designed racks that allowed the dropships to deliver them down to the planet’s surface for fast release.

  The first few circled around, patrolling the immediate area to protect the dr
opships, then when the squadrons were out they shot off to the east in pursuit of a predator that was milling around the sea, constantly moving so as to confuse the orbital guns without really going anywhere…for the lizards had nowhere to go on the planet. Their only base lay far to the south on the horizon, marked by a thin tendril of smoke rising up from the debris.

  Sam almost felt sorry for them, but the lizards never submitted to capture so the only options were to kill them or leave them to starve to death. Aggressive bastards they may be, but the trailblazer would never wish even an enemy to that fate, so in some ways he figured he was doing them a favor. Regardless, they had to clear this planet of all lizard presence and their race’s past actions were still burned into his mind, especially the images from a planet called Urutuk provided to Star Force by the Hycre. There the lizards had sparred no one, and had even taken to eating the defenseless natives as part of their conquest.

  Sam knew better than to judge an individual by their race, but the lizards were working hard to rid him of that sentiment, so when he ran out onto the green lake he did so with a single purpose…that being to cleanse the planet of the scaly vermin.

  “Beta star, form on me,” Amir ordered as he walked his shadowcat out of the dragon behind two madcats. “Sam is venator. We have three tanks to kill, so keep it close. I don’t like 1 on 3 odds so let’s tag team these creeps and take them down quick.”

  “What type?” Chad-8322 asked.

  “Not sure yet,” Amir said as he started running forward at partial speed with the other 4 mechs in his star forming up behind him. The two closest ones went wide while the back pair staggered themselves so they could fire down the lanes between the other three mechs.

  “They’re running,” Sam said as he raced towards the threesome, having to focus to keep from tripping on the extra drag the meter-deep water provided…plus the fact that his mech’s feet were sinking into the mud underneath. Still, the neo was tearing forward and overcoming the terrain through sheer mechanical power.

  Amir looked down at the battlemap inside his mech’s cockpit at the three target icons that were moving off to the west…which meant they were headed for land, though that land was several hundreds of kilometers away and wouldn’t offer much cover, for the majority of the planet was flat. He looked around for other targets, wondering what exactly they were trying to achieve other than sticking it out and trying to take down a mech or fighter with them, as was their normal MO.

  “Oh crap,” Sam said over the comm, making Amir frown.

  “What?”

  An orbital scan was transferred over to Amir’s mech, on which Sam had tagged a particular location.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Look closer,” Sam prompted.

  Amir studied the green water closely but couldn’t spot any objects on the surface. He was about to ask again when his eyes finally went wide as he recognized the significance of the location.

  “What are they doing down there?”

  “Adapting,” Sam said coldly. “They know our MO now, and I’d bet you a thousand credits they’re building subsurface bases on all their worlds near us.”

  “To avoid the orbital bombardment?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That discoloration isn’t shielded by anything other than a little water. What’s the point, other than camouflage?”

  “I don’t know, but pull back. Naval is about to take a can opener to the thing,” the trailblazer said as he also turned his neo around and started heading east, where he saw a new smoke plume that was coming from the predator that the skeets were methodically chewing apart.

  “Big guns coming to play,” Amir announced to the others as he turned his mech through a wide arc with the rest of the mechs following his lead. “Let’s get as many klicks in between us and that place as we can,” he said, sending the same targeting data out to the other four mechs that were sharing the teamcomm.

  They didn’t get more than half a kilometer before the first of the rail gun rounds came smashing down, kicking up both debris and water in a spectacular show as metallic ordinance blanketed the area like a rain shower coming from a solitary cloud. Sam let it continue for several minutes before calling it to a halt, then had one of the skeets do a flyby with the telemetry being sent directly over to his mech, which he then shuffled over to all the other mech stars hunting lizards around the perimeter of the destroyed base.

  “Whoops,” he said, unexpectedly seeing the lake water flowing down into the myriad of holes in the top of the base and the craters in the mud. The latter filled up quickly, but the subterranean base kept sucking it up, meaning that anyone left alive underneath was now getting flooded…and that whatever commando teams he sent in later would have to go down underwater as well.

  “Can they breathe underwater?” Amir asked, seeing the same images.

  “I don’t think all of them can…but don’t quote me on that.”

  “Not much of a shield against the rail guns, huh?”

  Sam got a sinking feeling in his gut. “Depends how big it is underneath.”

  “Those tanks are heading our way,” Amir pointed out. “Two shades and a copper. Guess they think they’ve got nothing left to live for.”

  Sam frowned, with his gut creeping inwards even more. “Let’s take them out now.”

  “Will do,” Amir said, turning his shadowcat to face the enemy and slowly walking up into a run. “Form on me and accelerate up to maximum speed,” he said, knowing that the madcat would be the slowest in the group.

  Sam angled over to them as he also ran towards the incoming lizard vehicles, but he stayed well to the left and moved ahead of the others as the three vehicles approached them, not side by side, but in a line, as if…

  “Damn it!” Sam said over the team comm. “Hit them at range, they’re trying to blow through…”

  “Blow through to where?” Amir asked as he primed his four small plasma cannons, two in each arm. He also had a lachar in his center torso that he brought online and targeted the first vehicle…the copper, which was designed as an anti-infantry weapons platform. It and the others were all swooping across the water with airspace to spare underneath, and doing so at a speed that Sam now realized none of the mechs could match in this soggy terrain.

  “I think we only hit a door,” he said, pumping his arms furiously as he tried to run faster and get out ahead of the star of mechs. “Slow down…no, fight in reverse.”

  “Door…oh crap,” he said, walking his mech down to a stop as the others did likewise…then the others began walking theirs backwards, but Amir turned his completely around and moved into the rear of the formation. There he continued walking forwards, then spun his torso around so the top of his mech was facing backwards while the legs were moving forwards, something that the other models weren’t designed to do.

  Sam fired off the first plasma blast, missing short and blasting a column of steam up into the air in front of the vehicles. The copper sped through the vaporized water and came out the other side firing its low yield plasma shards at the neo, making a few inconsequential hits at range. The trailblazer walked the mech backwards, firing off several more shots but the sneaky lizards changed course and veered off to the east, pulling them further away from both him and the star.

  He tried to chase after them, but he didn’t have the speed…plus he was in the process of walking backwards and the delay in getting redirected proved too lengthy for any type of meaningful pursuit.

  The other mechs were similarly caught off guard, but not as bad. They began moving east as well, but it was clear that the lizards weren’t going to come close enough to give them easy shots. Plasma leapt between both sides at range while the madcat launched a salvo of missiles at the middle shade. Most of them landed on target, but several missed behind and landed in the water, obscuring the contact with hoards of steam that gave the others a brief amount of cover.

  When the mist cleared the shade was broken into pieces, but
the other two were gaining both speed and distance on the mechs. The madcat targeted the second shade and fired, but before its missiles reached the halfway point a large object rose up out of the water and shot them out of the sky in a flurry of anti-air. Beyond it another, wider object rose up from the lake and the two surviving vehicles shot across the landscape towards it.

  A plasma blast from Amir caught the copper on the nose, blowing out a section and spinning the vehicle around on its anti-grav pads. The shade swerved by it and darted straight into the elevated hangar as the shadowcat ate up the distance between itself and the enemy with its huge strides, but it was still too far away. Several more plasma shots missed high as the copper got turned around and followed the shade inside, then the hangar retracted back down beneath the thin layer of water, disappearing from view.

  “Son of a bitch,” Amir cursed as he slowed down to a walk with the anti-air pylon retracting as well. “Just when we think we have these guys beat…”

  “We’ve got them beat,” Sam assured him. “It’s just going to take a little digging to finish them off. Hold here until we get a better scan of the area. They may have anti-mech defenses and I’d rather not get close enough to trigger them.”

  “Roger that,” Amir said, turning around and rejoining the others as Sam’s neo did the same. Meanwhile the trailblazer sent out new orders for the skeets, now finished with the predator, to circle around for high elevation recon, as well as marking the location of the anti-air turret on the battlemap for them to avoid.

  “Sara, you’re right,” Sam said off comm. “They are adapting.”

  3

  February 29, 2402

  Nevarsor System

  Namek

  Paul stepped out of the dropship onto the dry dirt soil of the planet they’d recently named Namek as dozens more of the transports were coming down out of the sky and landing across the plain. The air was fresh and tart, with the gravity slightly below normal at 97%, and there was very little moisture in the air…but the world was habitable and soon would become home to Star Force’s first base in the distant region and establish their foothold from which they’d eventually begin spreading out and attacking the lizards from.