Star Force: Counterstrike (SF18) Read online

  “I’m fine,” Lily responded a moment later, “just knocked over.”

  “What happened?” Jasmine demanded.

  “Shot one and he went boom,” the mechwarrior said, scrunching her mech’s legs up underneath its body and twisting about, trying to right herself. The raven had been knocked backwards and to the right by the blast, half pinning it between several trees.

  “Wiggle free quick,” Aaron suggested, his light lachar picking off more lizards as his mech stood 40 meters behind on the ‘trail.’

  Before he could say or do anything else several green globs of plasma ripped through the forest and into the side of her downed mech.

  2

  The trees took half the plasma blasts while others were clean misses, but several got through and blew out armor on the nose cone of the downed raven as Lily struggled to get the mech upright.

  Aaron responded instantly, pushing past her through the trees and making his mech the priority target. He fired back in the direction the plasma was coming from with his lachar, but only hit a tree trunk for his trouble. Gritting his teeth he held fire until his raven pushed to the edge of the nearest crater, only to be stopped by several toppled trees. His line of fire opened up, however, and he could see the intact kirby that had been firing on their position.

  Or mostly intact. It had half a tree puncturing its far side, only partially visible from his position, but the ship was operational enough to return fire and send several plasma blasts his way, chewing up small divots in his thick battle armor.

  He responded with a short range missile salvo, streaking six missiles into the plump hull and taking it out of the fight, then tilted his torso down ever so slightly and began sniping lizards moving around the tree-strewn debris field in his flood lights.

  “Target down,” he reported over Jasmine’s comm. “Fleet made a mess in here. I can cover the Scorpions’ landing, but there’s no way we can maneuver across the blast craters. Maybe a neo could, but you’d have to be stepping over logs constantly.”

  “Provide what cover you can then pull back,” Jasmine said, seeing Lily’s marker begin to move again. “Lily, status?”

  “Took a few hits, armor only. I’m good to go.”

  “Come back out and help us secure the perimeter. If the Scorpions can flush them out I want to be in position to cut them down as they leave the trees, but just far enough out that they can’t flee backwards.”

  To her right she saw Darren begin walking his mech away to begin patrolling in the manner she’d just described. Jasmine turned her madcat around and walked the other way, getting some space in between them, then reversed course and began to follow her fellow Archon from a distance with the rifleman dropping in behind her. Together they began walking a long line separating the bit of forest from the one north of it, then turning around at the end and heading back the other way. Darren walked his mech right past hers, with only a few meters of separation and his flood lights illuminating her mech momentarily as the sun finally dipped below the horizon.

  The display panels inside her cockpit automatically diminished the glare, but a moment later it was gone and she was left following the neo’s footprints out to the terminus point. There she walked the mech around in a tight circle and began tracking backwards, passing the rifleman and later on Lily’s raven as the mechs carved out a line in the snow, daring the lizards to cross.

  They dared, at first, with the mechs easily cutting them down as soon as they were spotted. It was possible that some made it past undetected, but unlikely. The snow slowed their usually quick movements even more than it did the mechs, and it was more than a 3 kilometer gap from this section of forest to the next. Several times Jasmine had to run off her line to intercept lizards that had gotten past the mechs’ footprints, but with the range of her weaponry and superior speed it wasn’t really a fair fight for the lizards.

  The crossing attempts soon stopped, Jasmine thought, because the others had begun to see the inherent difficulties in crossing. If she were in their position she’d have backtracked and flanked the mechs, but that would have taken time and prevented the assault forces from reaching their targets before daybreak…but then again they could always wait around for the next nightfall. Hopefully they weren’t cagy enough to start thinking like that.

  Jasmine’s star stayed on patrol for the next 3 hours before a replacement star arrived to take their position. After 8 hours in the cockpit the Archon was ready to be relieved, regardless of how many lizards might be lurking around. Accelerating up to their full speed the 5 mechs traced the reinforcement’s tracks back across the snow-covered plains, zigzagging around the forested sections and headed back to base, eventually coming up on the small turret line that circled the Kerensky colony like the pearls on a necklace.

  The two nearest defense outposts let the mechs pass through their floodlights without incident and in towards the concrete barricade ringing the sea of prefab buildings situated around the tall defense tower the rose up from the middle of the base. Jasmine’s madcat led the star around to the left until they came to a wall gate. Slowing to a half speed walk, she brought her mech through the narrow gap and onto the specialized concrete streets designed to hold up to the heavy weight of constant mech traffic.

  Jasmine walked her mech through the rows of prefab buildings toward the interior of the base where the permanent structures were being built, one of which was a half completed mech bay/factory. She turned left off the main road and walked down a wide courtyard ringing the bay and into one of the prongs on what looked like a giant comb. The tall bay doors were already open, and very slowly she entered the inner courtyard around which was situated 14 mech slots, 4 per side of the square chamber, with two missing in the center of the side she was in walking through.

  Jasmine swung her madcat to the left and into the slot next to the door, spinning about in place so she faced out from the wall, then shuffling the mech’s feet to slide back a bit into alignment between the maintenance catwalks teetering on either side. Once she powered down those gantries extended out and morphed to the mech’s position, allowing techs access to all points on the towering machine while she exited through the underside of the main body, climbing down an extendable ladder from the inside of the cockpit.

  When her feet hit the floor she reached her arms back and stretched out her body, glad to be free of the cockpit and the overextended patrol. Above her reloading teams were already opening up the ear-like missile boxes on her mech to replenish the ammunition she’d used as others opened up maintenance hatches at various points on the armored body to check and replenish various fluids and parts, as well as top off the metallic hydrogen fuel reserves that fed the mech’s ample power core, giving it a longevity on the battlefield that no other craft could match.

  Jasmine stayed at the mech’s feet as the rest of her star marched in, wanting to see the damage done to the two ravens. The lizards’ plasma was strong, but the kirbies’ cannons were small, nothing compared to the two huge guns on her madcat, but without shields every hit the mechs took incurred some damage. Cora had told them it was going to be quite some time before the mechs could wield effective shields even over specific portions of their torsos, and until then they were just going to have to outpilot the opposition.

  Jasmine didn’t mind that, especially considering that Star Force shields weren’t that strong anyway. They absorbed a shot or two for the skeets, but after that they were pretty much useless. She’d much prefer to have Herculium armor between herself and the enemy’s weapons, but she did admit that having a replenishable defense on the battlefield during long engagements would be a decided advantage.

  When Aaron’s mech walked in she could see several hits on the torso, but none of them were deeper than a couple inches. The ravens had half a meter of battle armor over their nose cones, so the damage the kirby had done was little more than a nasty scratch, though the white camo paint job would have to be touched up considerably. With so much lizard acti
vity in the area she doubted the techs would scrap the armor plates the raven now wore in favor of new ones. Rather, they’d probably apply a lesser strength, moldable patch to the wounded sections and paint over it, readying the mech to go back out into the field in a matter of hours.

  Lily’s mech was a mess, however. Like Aaron’s there were scrape marks in the paint from the trees they’d pushed through, but her raven looked like it’d been put inside a blender and sent for a few spins. More than half the paint on her mech was gone, ground off down to the deep gray color of the Herculium armor with multiple gashes in the nose cone, flanking plates, and ever a few nick marks on the legs. None of the damage was critical, or even significant, but visually the mech was thoroughly chewed up.

  The rifleman and neo were already inside and settling into their berthing slots when the ravens came in, so Jasmine walked along the perimeter over to the neo and waited for Darren to climb down. His mech was a wholly different design, with the cockpit located in the vertical chest whereas her madcat had a horizontal body. A boarding gantry lowered into place behind the mech where the cockpit opened from, allowing the Archon to step out on the second story level rather than having to repel down to the floor on the flexible ladder that mech contained.

  Around them in the bay were four other mechs, plus two partially constructed ones. Unlike other Star Force military equipment that was fabricated in factories then shipped out to the users who performed the standard maintenance and repair, the mechs parts were created in factories but the actual construction of the walking machines was handled locally. That was a necessity, given that the repair crews had to get used to taking the giant machines apart and putting them back together when a leg, arm, or launcher suffered irreparable damage.

  They also needed to be able to swap out weapons where applicable. Both arms on the madcat were modular, and while this one had plasma cannons she could have one or both replaced with lachars, extra missile boxes, electrolasers, or a set of seldom used auxiliary weapons. Jasmine preferred the plasma cannons, given that they provided the best damage potential in medium to short range engagements, in her opinion. The other two mechwarriors that shared her mech weren’t Archons so they didn’t get a say in the loadouts, having to make due with her preferences during their patrols.

  “No scratches?” Jasmine commented as Darren came down from the upper deck via a wall ladder.

  “Those two made up for it,” he said, a bit miffed.

  Jasmine raised an eyebrow.

  “They didn’t shoot the gaps,” he explained in a low voice, walking with her towards the entrance into the main body of the mech bay that housed their living quarters, ammo supplies, etc underneath meters of heavy armor plating. Mech bays were among the most hardened of Star Force surface facilities, making the entire structure one big fortress…and one big pain in the ass to build.

  Jasmine frowned for a second, trying to understand what his pithy comment meant, then her eyes went wide. “They tried to push through the trees?”

  “That’s what it looked like to me. Recon showed several potential paths in if you went out of your way, but I think they just pushed their way in.”

  “You mean Lily,” she corrected him.

  “Aaron too, but mostly Lily.”

  “I’ll take care of it later,” she promised as the other three mechwarriors made their way towards them. She and Darren didn’t wait up, but headed off into the living areas and back to their quarters. Later that night Jasmine had a long talk with the two junior mechwarriors about the dangers of trees and walking machines, then hit the sack for what was only going to be 6 hours of sleep before they were due to be back on duty again.

  Those 6 hours turned into 4 as a base-wide alarm woke her up early, sending a jolt of adrenaline through her system. Such an alarm was only used in worst case scenarios, meaning that the base itself must have been under attack.

  She tore the blanket off her bare legs and ran over to her closet, yanking out a fresh uniform while resisting the urge to run straight down over to the mechs. While it didn’t matter what she wore in the cockpit, if she had to bail out into the snowy landscape in her underwear she’d be in a world of hurt.

  Jasmine dressed as quickly as she could, putting on her jacket and gloves in the hallway outside as she ran down to her assigned mech bay. When she got there all but two of the mechs were gone, and those were already in the process of walking out.

  “Damn it,” she said, sprinting back into the complex and down to the next closest bay. She had to go down three to find an available mech, having a choice between a raven and a neo.

  “What’s going on?” she asked the nearby techs as she ran up to the ladder leading to the second story entry point on the humanoid mech.

  “Star Claws are being overrun!” one of them yelled back as she darted across the catwalk and into the open cockpit hatch. “They need every mech we can get into the…”

  She didn’t hear his last words, shutting the cockpit hatch behind her and started pulling off her clothes. Once her jacket, gloves, and right shoe were in a bin at the base of the floor she flicked her hand up and hit a button on the wall of the tiny compartment, then undid her other shoe and tossed it in next to the other as a large armor plate slid over the cockpit door, protecting her from any rear-mounted attack.

  The inside of the cockpit went dark, save for dozens of small indicator lights. Jasmine finished undressing back down to her underwear and secured the lid on her clothing, glad that she had it available but half kicking herself for taking the time to get dressed in the first place. Had she been able to grab her madcat she could have just sat down in the pilot’s couch and took off, but the humanoid mechs required a much different control system…one that Jasmine had always operated better half nude.

  The cockpit was an elongated sphere, stretched out vertically with a mechanical apparatus hanging between floor and ceiling, attached to both with leg and arm room to spare around the perimeter. Jasmine put her naked right foot into the shoe-like straps and fastened the various pieces tightly to her body, cursing the time she was wasting. The Archon worked her way up her ankle, calve, knee, and thigh before bending down and doing the same on her left leg.

  She pulled on a slim back brace over her bra straps and fastened it tightly against her abdomen, then adjusted the chest straps to lace around her breasts, noting that based on the current configuration the last pilot had been male. Yet another delay when she needed to be out in the field fighting whatever the lizards were throwing at the Star Claws.

  With legs and torso snugged into the floating apparatus…neither of her feet were actually touching the floor but rather suspended above it…she worked her way down her left arm starting at the intricate shoulder plates, then to her elbow and her wrist. She attached the tiny finger holds around each link in her digits last, 15 total including her thumb’s base joint. She repeated the process on her right arm then pulled a specialized headband/faceplate on that gave her comm options and navigational input, including all visuals recorded by exterior cameras hidden within the mech’s armored crevices.

  “Qui, power up, aff,” she said, utilizing her vocal controls, given that her hands were going to be unavailable for pressing buttons. ‘Qui’ was intended to get the computer’s attention, while ‘aff’ was meant to end the verbal interface so that conversations in the heat of battle wouldn’t accidentally trigger functions when she was talking to someone over the comm.

  At her command her faceplate, which was completely opaque, lit up with exterior monitors, giving her forward and lateral views intermixed by the computer and displayed as if she was actually the mech itself, with everything scaled down to match. Her viewpoint was centered on the mech’s stubby and immobile head, though hers was left free in the apparatus so she could look left, right, up, or down with the faceplate adjusting the camera view accordingly.

  When the power came on the apparatus moved slowly, bringing Jasmine’s body in line with the current position of t
he mech. She went limp and let it reset her, then tightened her muscles and pushed against the straps, causing the mech to move as she did.

  Taking a step forward, her bare foot in the cockpit felt the hard surface underneath as the mech’s foot stepped down on the bay floor…yet her foot was still in midair. The apparatus was not only accepting commands from her body’s movements, but feeding her tactile information and position data via stiffening the equipment at various points. To Jasmine it felt like she was touching the ground, just as she felt the sluggish movements of the mech’s heavy legs as hers fought the apparatus in a well-practiced tug of war that sent the mech walking out of its berth and towards the bay doors, arms swinging at the sides for counterbalance in lieu of computer-controlled movements.

  She flexed her hands, with the mech’s five digits doing likewise, getting a feel for the controls she hadn’t used in a long time as she passed through the bay doors and turned to the left, moving into a slight jog and quickly relearned the necessary movements as the main turret reaching up well over her head pounded out lachar blasts in the direction of the Star Claw base.

  3

  When Jasmine got outside the gate she ran around the south side of the wall and turned east, catching her first glimpse of the Star Claw base. It was 17 kilometers away to the east southeast, but fireworks of plasma were clearly visible in the predawn night sky, with just a hint of blueness on the far horizon. The Archon took off running, with the mech matching each stride and arm swing that she made in the cockpit. At first it was awkward and slow, with the snow bogging her movements down to a quick jog, but as the kilometers clicked off her cadence smoothed out and her groundspeed increased up past what her madcat would have been capable of running.

  The 17 kilometers to the Clan base actually were 21, given the zigzag around forested segments of the terrain, which periodically blocked her view of the base and the intense fighting going on. Having to concentrate her attention on her movements Jasmine wasn’t able to analyze what she was seeing, but she was fairly sure it was some sort of an air attack, otherwise the Clan Kerensky defense turret wouldn’t have had anything to fire at. She didn’t think it could hit a kirby 10+ miles away, so the lizards must have been attacking with something larger…and she desperately hoped it wasn’t a cruiser.