Star Force: Leonidas (SF96) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  The mechwarrior went old school and began strapping herself into the manual controls for the mech just in case the neural link went down in battle. Such things were rare with all the redundancies, but she didn’t want to be in a pitched battle only to have to sit and take fire while strapping into the manual controls if the neural interface died, so she was doing it now and getting movement matching arm and leg flaps secured to her body along with the foot pads and finger controls that always felt better against bare flesh.

  When she was strapped in to her liking she triggered the restraining field that would have held her body in an upright standing position if she hadn’t had the manual equipment deployed, but she still wanted herself in what the mech pilots referred to as ‘statue’ mode so her limbs didn’t flop around while her mind was mostly disconnected from them, for when she fully engaged the piloting program her senses were 95% replaced with those of the mech, with her mind essentially being transplanted into the new mechanical body.

  She saw through its sensors, felt its movements and restrictions, and knew the power charge and ammo levels of every piece of equipment as if it were different parts of her body. Light pain stimuluses would even register damage to the mech, but nothing so extreme that it would distract her. Just a little prickling here and there to get her attention and such levels had been programmed into her profile long ago so whatever mech she hopped into would identify her and reconfigure itself to her settings based off a neural scan or a seldom used physical pin attached to her uniform should she find herself in a mech that wasn’t part of her unit and didn’t have her settings preloaded.

  That pin would also act as a data recorder linked in with the mech’s own systems. Should her steed be destroyed she could carry information of how that defeat had occurred with her assuming she lived through the ordeal, but it would work just as well from the bin as it would on her body, and if she needed to evacuate the mech her clothing wasn’t going to offer much protection. Better to be a little more efficient with the manual controls if they were needed, but the stripping down was also a fad that seemed to increase one’s connection to their machine. It was mostly psychological mind games, but there was just enough truth in it that the practice hadn’t disappeared with the advent of the neural interface technology.

  The Archons had had the ability to mentally control their mechs long before the Regulars did, but now they were on par and the specialists like Sarah were back to having an advantage. She’d never make the mistake of underestimating an Archon, but they had so many different duties and skills to train for that they’d never be as good as a mechwarrior that spent all their time focusing on their specific skillset. The Archons knew this too, which was why most of Clan Scorpion’s mechwarriors were Regulars and the Archons that fought alongside them had to be damn good just in order to keep up.

  The leadership of the Clan was still Archons that could do everything better than Sarah. Cora-005 had founded the Clan and basically wrote the book on mech warfare, and the trailblazer’s skills were far beyond hers…and when you were dealing with mechs that usually meant little variations and subtleties in combat, for most of their damage potential came from the raw machines themselves. It was up to a good mechwarrior to get more out of their machines and avoid simple, straight throw downs of weapons against one another…and that’s exactly what she couldn’t afford today as they started their first attack on the Mendz.

  When her mind connected to the Nova Cat she was also linked into the battlemap so that she didn’t just see it, but could feel all the units around her. Not just those in the mechbay, but all across the base and even those units already in the field assaulting two nearby cities. They were a few hours ahead of her and trying to draw out whatever Mendz strategy might be in play, with her and the others not yet released into combat studying the battlemap data live as they got their first good look at the Tabers here.

  Most matched the mechs that the Mendz had been using on other worlds but they also had a few new varieties…all heavies that contained a decent amount of firepower. The Tabers had armor, shields, and a decent movement package but where woefully inferior to the Clan Scorpion mechs, especially in firepower. The Tabers were armed with plasma weapons, particle slugs, and some better than average missiles. Those would be the most dangerous threat to Sarah and her Clansmen today, and from the look of it the Mendz weren’t holding back their ammunition.

  “Damn they’re getting lit up,” Zander Ironwood said from the Madcat-class mech that was walking out of its berth beside her as Sarah stepped out herself and turned to the right to follow him and the other three members of her support star. “They can’t even get close to the cities without their shields going down.”

  “They don’t have an infinite supply of missiles,” she pointed out. “We just have to weather the storm until we get a break.”

  “There won’t be one,” their star leader, Michael Tanison countered. “They have factories across this planet pumping out more round the clock. If they stall us long enough they win, so don’t expect a let up. We’re going to have to punch our way in.”

  “We’ll take damage,” Zander objected as the five mechs walked outside into the daylight of the base as other mech bays were also releasing 5-group ‘stars’ of mechs to meet up with Ryan-93888, who would be leading the assault on a third nearby city currently choked with aerial fighters that would make any hot drops difficult, thus they were going to march overland to get there and dare the fighters to come within their anti-air range.

  “That’s what they’re going to try and force,” Tanison agreed. “We have to make it less than they want but avoid a standoff.”

  “And how do we do that?” Swittni asked, the lone Urik’kadel along with the four Humans in their star.

  “I have some ideas, but it’s Ryan’s call.”

  “Not much terrain to work with,” Sarah pointed out as the two madcats, her nova cat, and two starbursts ran in a single file line across the prefab deck plates until they passed out through one of four gates and onto the soft brown/green soil of the Mendz capitol planet. The little plants squishing beneath her mech’s feet were only inches tall and covering most of the area around the base, with very little in the way of hills or other line of sight blockers between them and their distant target…meaning they’d be out in the open for the Mendz to strike at will.

  “That’s why we make our own,” Tanison said as he led his star out behind a huge Donatello-class walker that already had a head start on them.

  “Geez,” Sarah said, seeing the six-legged behemoth had been heavily retrofitted. “It doesn’t have any weapons left.”

  “Those extra shield generators are going to cover the lead thrust while we snipe support, so we’re just going to ride in the back for now.”

  “Copy that,” Swittni confirmed, bringing his Starbright-class mech around on Sarah’s left and forming the traditional ‘2 ahead of 3’ double line that their star typically traveled in when terrain wasn’t an issue. All around them other mechs were walking or running into place and forming up with their units. A lot of them were Neo-class frontline mechs designed with less weaponry but by far more agility. They fought like giant infantry, punching and kicking as much as shooting, while the traditional ‘stiff’ mechs like Sarah’s star was using carried the bigger guns.

  What followed was several hours of walking, during part of which Sarah disconnected and let the autopilot keep her on route while she stretched out and grabbed some water. Mech cockpits weren’t huge, but they did double as tiny living compartments given how much time a person could spend in one in the field. After all, having to send a mech back to base so you could relieve yourself wasn’t viable on extended distance missions like this.

  Sarah made sure to keep appraised of the situation when she took her break, then was back with her mind resuming control of the toe-running mech when the Tabers showed up on her visuals. She’d been monitoring them via the battlemap and other people’s points of view, but now
hers was full of tiny little figures on the horizon…and they were numbering in the tens of thousands.

  When the mech army that Sarah was part of got within missile range the Tabers generated a cloud of wash above them as it looked like every one of them fired at the same time. There were so many missiles in play she couldn’t even guess at the number herself, but the mech’s onboard computer/sensors could count so she knew exactly how many of them were coming into the sky and her specific region…and the fact that it was a constantly changing figure as the Tabers launched more than one salvo.

  Sarah got a waypoint change and she sprinted her mech for a few steps to the right as her star got closer together with each other and the other 17 stars alongside them. Coupled with another 6 quadruped Porcupine-class walkers, the 96 mechs held as close together as they could around the refitted heavy walker with it shrinking its shield radius slightly before the first of the missile waves hit.

  Primitive as the Mendz tech was, it wasn’t that primitive and the impacts on the umbrella-like shield over her gave her a wave of goosebumps that pushed through her mech senses and took prominence for a moment. She could see the shield level readings from the donatello drop considerably, and even with Star Force’s impressive recharge rate the protective barrier was getting chewed down alarmingly fast as sometimes over a thousand missiles hit within a second.

  Sarah didn’t receive the order, but apparently Ryan realized the same thing as part of the still walking formation broke and made way for the porcupines to head to the edge of the donatello’s shields. They all kept moving forward, she knew, to help make them harder to hit and the dirt hurricane behind, and to a lesser extent in front of them testified to the lack of accuracy involved. Spoofing gear was preventing easy lock-ons, so it was probably the result of the Taber pilots having to manually aim and fire their missiles to predetermined locations, given the arcs they were flying through…and a moving target was always harder to anticipate and hit.

  But even with the numerous misses it was clear that they weren’t going to be able to hide under here long enough to get to the enemy. They could be firing back even now with their long range weapons but Ryan hadn’t given the attack order yet. Why they didn’t snipe down a few mechs and eliminate some missiles coming at them was curious, but she did know the reason the porcupines were moving out to the edges of the formation.

  When they got there they walked underneath the gap between ground and overhead shield and began firing their anti-air weaponry up into the missile swarm, but not without cost. Several missiles hit them at first, deflecting off their own much weaker shields, but then the area directly above each porcupine became a torrent of tiny energy blasts that shredded everything coming in at them. Eventually that torrent rose up higher and higher until more than a third of the incoming missiles were going down before they could land on target.

  Sarah checked the stats and saw the estimated time to shield failure extend greatly. If they pushed the donatello to its limit then they could get within medium weapons range…but no. The stupid Mendz began falling back in groups, with some remaining to continue firing and others turning around to run a kilometer back and form another line. They fired again while the front line retreated, thinking to extend the barrage before the Clan mechs could get too close.

  “Are you serious?” someone in another star asked, laughing.

  “They just gave us our window, people,” Ryan said, addressing everyone in his attack group. “When I give the order, break by stars and poke hard. The donatello will be holding a creeping position and provide cover for cycling mechs. Don’t get greedy or hesitant. We have to eat up a lot of these guys here and now before they learn from their mistakes, but there’s no way we’re taking all of them down today. Get what you can and fall back when needed.”

  “And if they fall back inside the city?” another Archon on the other side of the donatello from Sarah asked.

  “Then expect traps. If it comes to that we’ll regroup and probe accordingly, but these guys know they need to mass fire on us to be effective and they can’t do that with buildings in the way. Break order in 25,” he said, with a countdown immediately popping up on Sarah’s mental stats.

  “Here we go,” Tanison said over their star’s private channel. “Sarah, you have lead.”

  “On it,” she said, holding to their cruising formation until the countdown finally expired. When it did all the bipedal mechs took off running at maximum speed, looking like a bee hive had just got whacked and suddenly started stinging back at the guy with the big stick. In this case that meant the sea of Tabers ahead that were still firing missiles, but fewer of them now, offset with ranged projectiles launched from crude railguns.

  Sarah accelerated her nova cat and poked out ahead of her star while making sure not to run into other mechs as they all fanned out. She immediately fired the two cleansing beams in her big right arm in sequence, the first of which hit a Taber in its chest and punched all the way through the forward plate, but missed hitting anything vital as the machine continued to fire from a stationary position along with the others beside it.

  A hail of projectiles hit her mech, bouncing off its shields and draining them with each hit. There were so many Tabers in front of them that there was literally nowhere to go without taking fire, for they were lined up shoulder to shoulder and firing what looked like invisible ammunition until her nova cat peeked into plasma range and drew a green curtain of blasts as she swung her mech to the side and ran laterally, just getting kissed with the dying flames of the plasma as she returned fire with the four mauler cannons in her other arm.

  Her mech walked sideways while her top torso rotated to stay on target, pummeling two Tabers so badly that the armor was literally melting off and falling like water to the ground. She added in a sweep with both cleansing beams that hit some six mechs in total, then combined with the damage from the rest of her star the front line of 26 Tabers near their position all went down…only to have those behind them step up and begin firing in their place on the line that stretched to both sides further than Sarah could see, though there was a bit of a flanking curl starting to develop in it.

  Then the two madcats in her star launched their own missiles. At first it was a small salvo of individuals, meant to do damage if they hit but also to proc any anti-air defenses the Tabers might have. A few of them were taken down prior to impact, but the others punched through the Tabers’ shields like they were popping soap bubbles, then proceeded to eat away chunks of armor…but that was only the cover fire for the much fatter missiles that followed a split second later.

  They landed with a thud, not exploding, and dropped to the ground spread out in a predetermined pattern. Sarah recognized them as ‘birthday presents’ and saw that they were sitting some 6-14 rows back in the Taber line a moment before they detonated, sending additional munitions out laterally and obliterating everything around them in a radius of 230 meters. Additional concussion damage was racked up after that, and oh so quickly the precisely formed Mendz lines now had huge holes filled with debris in them for the Clan mechs to jump into.

  And Sarah did literally jump…following a nearby neo in and running her mech up near to pointblank range and knocking down four more Tabers with her maulers before hitting her jump jets and launching up and over their intact lines to land in one of those craters. She fired throughout the flight arc, then began running around evasively inside and daring the Mendz to shoot at her and not hit each other all the while distracting them away from the neos that were going to work hand to hand with the front liners.

  As it turned out they didn’t care, firing on her with the intent to destroy no matter how many of their own they hit. Her shields dropped below 50% quickly, but there was so much additional weaponsfire hitting friendly targets that it was worth it as she got closer to some of them to use as blockers, leaving them intact rather than shooting them down and opening up firing lines for three or more enemy mechs further out.

  Not
long after, the rest of her star joined her jumping in over the other Tabers and forming up into their star pattern in a rotating circle that kept them moving at all times and mowing down the enemy with so many weapon cycles that Sarah couldn’t guess at a count, but when all of their shields were getting perilously low her star leader signaled for a retreat and they fought their way back through what remained of the front lines where the neos were still busy at work building a debris field as the Mendz fired at her star in retreat.

  They also followed them past the neos, not being able to run as fast but clearly not wanting the weak mechs to get away. They made the mistake of getting the attention of the donatello by pushing too far out and it lowered a section of shield directly in front of them…with the Tabers running into it and bouncing backwards, falling to the ground where they had a hard time getting back up.

  Sarah’s star never gave them that chance. They momentarily halted their retreat and turned around to unleash hell on the fallen Tabers, then they moved out far behind the donatello and watched the fireworks as their shield counters slowly climbed back up. Once they all hit full they’d go back in and add to the carnage being unleashed for a few more rounds then it’d be a full retreat, for the distant flanks were filling up with the sight of approaching Tabers and they did not want to get caught in a crossfire from three directions.

  There’d be time to evaluate and keep score afterwards, but right now it was all about doing as much damage as they could while keeping their own mechs intact and so far Sarah’s nova cat didn’t have a scratch on her armor…but neither did the city that was their actual goal. Dying as they were, the Mendz were delaying its capture and there was a time limit to this invasion, odd as that sounded, but the enemy had given up their hostages so Star Force was going to honor the terms.