Star Force: Shiva (SF98) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  “I’ll see that we don’t need to,” Vectir said, cutting the link after the last word so he could get to work immediately and not waste any of the precious seconds they had left, for while there were no vulnerable stations in Earth orbit anymore, even the strongest seda couldn’t hold out against the incoming fleet, so anything above the shields of any of the planets in the system had a big fat target on it, though the Arch Duke knew that Rio and Ethan would keep the V’kit’no’sat’s focus elsewhere, and as afraid of their impending arrival as he was, a part of him was also eager to see how the trailblazers and the empire they’d all been working to build these past centuries could fare against their unbeatable progenitors.

  2

  April 28, 3602

  Solar System

  Inner Zone

  Rio had been spending most of his time on the bridge of the command ship he’d claimed from the 19th fleet and parked off the jumpline close enough to avoid lag penalties, but when the alert finally sounded it caught him in the bathroom. Cursing, he rushed out half a minute later then ran through the short distance back to the bridge and across to the command nexus before the first V’kit’no’sat ship arrived thanks to the preemptive scanning pulses they’d been sending out. They didn’t provide much in the way of a reflective bounce, but it was enough to give you a heads up that a ship was incoming.

  When Rio linked in he was able to confirm that the Slip’n’slide pylons were powering up as planned, extending their IDF fields across where the V’kit’no’sat were expected to be making the end of their deceleration run based on information from the Mastodon System and others along the way, including the data from Schwartz that had arrived not so long ago. It was a guess, but the area covered by the Slip’n’slide stretched thousands of kilometers and he had put it outside their expected jumppoint, so the odds of them stopping prior to it were slim given the speeds they had been traveling when leaving Schwartz. Its star was larger than Sol, so he guessed they’d be braking like hell when they got here.

  In mind’s eye and on the holographic display stretched before him, Rio saw the cylinder-shaped zone along a chunk of the jumpline light up, indicating the IDF field there was gaining strength. If enough power wasn’t applied to it the incoming speeds and masses of the ships would overload the field, for the gravity from the star still pulled on mass inside of it. The field simply redistributed that pull evenly across the entire field…which was why one couldn’t sit above a star and ‘float’ with an IDF. You’d be pulled down inside like normal, except you wouldn’t feel the gravity effect.

  And neither would the V’kit’no’sat’s gravity drives once they hit the aptly named Slip’n’slide. A piece of very expensive technology with almost no use at all that the trailblazers had built and warehoused for a rainy day. Rio had gotten the confirmation message back from Schwartz indicating that they had shut down all traffic coming out of their system through that jumpline so no one else would come through and get caught in the trap, and now that there were ships detected to be incoming everyone knew who it had to be.

  But they were a good 3 hours earlier than expected based off guestimates of jump speed from Schwartz, with the inaccuracies due to the fact that once the outgoing ships passed beyond the speed of the sensor pings following them no further data could be ascertained as to their acceleration duration or intensity. Had Rio known it would have been now he would have been here waiting, but his inopportune bathroom break didn’t catch him out of position, for the first V’kit’no’sat ship blur didn’t appear on the battlemap for a good 20 seconds after he arrived.

  It was decelerating so hard that the stellar radiation being thrown off it was glowing with frequency compression, making the tiny specks of light far more dangerous than gamma radiation. In fact that level of radiation had to be classified on an entirely different scale, but the general term was ‘Sonazized Radiation.’ The V’kit’no’sat name for it was ‘Gamjonet’ and the amount coming off the first ship in was constantly changing in frequency as the impacts with the stellar radiation slowed down, but when it hit the Slip’n’slide they pegged out, indicating that the IDF was accomplishing its task and insulating the gravity drives from the resistance they needed to operate.

  It what felt like a blink of an eye the ship was through and back into normal gravity effect but it couldn’t slow in time to hit whatever its desired jumppoint had been, blowing by it and heading in towards the star. The ships coming in right behind it suffered the same fate, but none of them were aligned side by side. Rather they were in a single file line very closely spaced but with a little sideways variation to avoid possible collisions…standard V’kit’no’sat interstellar jump formation…and that was putting less stress on the IDF than clusters of ships would have.

  Rio watched with considerable surprise as the first ship slid into the outer layer of the star, disappearing momentarily on sensors before pulling back out rapidly with its shields taking heavy damage. Those behind it suffered similar fates, though not all fell all the way into the photosphere. Rio hadn’t expected them to go that far in, figuring the V’kit’no’sat navigational systems would have recovered better, but if they had been pressing their drives hard to get here with all available speed then they wouldn’t have much wiggle room to work with.

  More streaks came in, resolving into ships just before braking hard to avoid hitting the star. On sensors they were quickly marked as Brat’mar, and with an eerie creepiness Rio knew why they hadn’t taken as much of a dive. The pyramid database was as accurate as a fortune teller, for while all V’kit’no’sat ship types were based on the same basic components and strengths there were some variations beyond the shape, and the Brat’mar were of a nature to build redundancy into their ships…which in this case meant slightly bigger gravity drives, typically only 3% over the rest of the V’kit’no’sat ships, but that same slight superiority was present in armor, shields, sensors, and any other system that contributed to their survivability. Weaponry was slightly scaled down to compensate, with the Brat’mar ships massing the same as the other Dak’bri battlecruisers, but typically lasting longer in battle due to their internal reinforcements.

  The 18 mile wide discs looked like something out of the Independence Day movie, but Rio knew these could do far more damage…then suddenly another contact slammed into one of the Brat’mar ships, knocking both into the star and scattering debris with them that glowed as it burned up like fireworks heading into the giant wall of plasma.

  More and more V’kit’no’sat ships came in quickly, sliding in close to or entering the star, but once they got themselves straightened out they began gaining altitude just as they were seeing the gauntlet of 853 Sentinel-class defense stations positioned around the bottom end of the jumpline.

  With Ethan holding position further back, Rio kept his fleet of deployed drones with him and out of the fireworks as he mentally tagged targets for the Sentinels and his army of remote pilots worked through a touch of lag as they manned the various weapon systems and began shooting the first V’kit’no’sat ships to emerge from the star with huge Ardent beam weapons that made the more compact Bra’hem weapons shy away in shame. Star Force used the latter on their warships, but with the Sentinels ranging in size from 60 to 120 miles long, they had a lot more internal space to hold the machinery for the big guns…and to date, the Ardent beams were the most destructive ranged weapon Star Force had created out of the pyramid database.

  And from the first few impacts against weakened shields from their brush with the star, Rio saw that the V’kit’no’sat ships hadn’t advanced to an untouchable level…for when six Ardent beams hit an Era’tran Domjo they punched through and hit the 12 mile long tuning fork on the central stud, putting a nasty gash into its hull armor that was quickly expanded upon by another hit before the ship accelerated too fast for the big beams to track.

  Rio followed it and every other ship in his mind as the V’kit’no’sat regrouped so fast he had to grudgingly admit they deserved th
eir reputation, but some of the ships going into the star weren’t coming back out and those that did were showing weakened or even sometimes fully deplenished shields…with Rio tagging those ships as primary targets, hoping to damage or eliminate them before the mass of ships arriving could stack up.

  But the V’kit’no’sat didn’t wait. Whether it was strategy or rage, the first few ships coming out headed for the nearest Sentinel and engaged it at medium range, lighting up its massive shields with all manner of weaponsfire as the Sentinel’s own medium ranged weaponry came into play…and it wasn’t using Dre’modon’s anymore, save for point defense. Star Force, so long as it had ample hull space, had upgraded its primary brawling weapons to Tamec’o cannons.

  It was ironic, that some of the ships now engaging it were also sporting the same weaponry, though based off of the initial stats his army of analysts were providing as quickly as possible, theirs were some 1200% more effective pound for pound, though the Sentinels had bigger guns that reduced that deficit considerably…plus they had more of them without having to worry about carrying crews. Every bit of the Sentinel was a remote weapons platform and hardened as much as Star Force could get them, with this one being 83 years old and upgraded as recently as 12 years ago.

  And it was getting hammered. Its shields held up admirably, but they were draining fast. It’s only saving grace was the overlapping fields of fire from the other Sentinels that were within Ardent range, and there were so many red beams hitting the V’kit’no’sat ships they looked like pin cushions. The first Sentinel won its showdown by a slim margin, knocking out the 4 attacking V’kit’no’sat ships with just a sliver of shield energy remaining, but not 10 seconds later as red Ardent were streaking everywhere to target ships coming back up from the star, numerous Var’ko energy strings struck and penetrated the Sentinel’s shields, digging deep into its thick armor and coming from several Na’shor heading towards it with flanking Ti’mat.

  The armor kept the beams from slicing it in half, but the pokes inside were not helpful as they targeted individual weapons rather than going for the guts of the station, plucking one offensive option after another until the Ti’mat swooped in and unloaded at almost pointblank range, duking it out with the Star Force Tamec’o, Dre’mo’dons, and even the anti-missile Ichods as they returned fire with their Uit streamers into the tiny cuts in the armor, burning through the thick plates while sending a stream of fire down between them that expanded like a grenade inside, wrecking everything beneath and spreading out laterally.

  Rio saw system after system go down, but Star Force had built the Sentinels with multiple redundancies themselves and they wouldn’t stop fighting even if half the station suddenly disappeared. Each section was individually powered and kept hammering the V’kit’no’sat ships, defiantly refusing to die as fast as they wanted and allowing the other Sentinels to continue hitting them with their Ardent until the first Star Force defense platform finally died.

  By that time the number of V’kit’no’sat ships in system had surpassed 1000 and Rio knew his turkey shoot was going to end quickly. Keeping an eye on the estimated abilities of the V’kit’no’sat weapons his analysts were shooting him while targeting ships, a huge blur shot through the Slip’n’side and punched into the star so hard there was a recoiling splash the size of a small solar flare…and he knew their Mach’nel had just arrived.

  But when it finally came back out Rio’s adrenaline surged up another notch, for the massive egg-shaped craft typical of the J’gar had no shields and the hull was glowing white/green with radiative damage from the star. It must have punched in farther than the others, for those shields were amongst the most difficult to penetrate within the entire V’kit’no’sat fleet, not just the tiny fragment of ships coming here.

  Suddenly every Sentinel within range redirected their Ardent beams and hit the Mach’nel as it came back up, targeting that glowing hull armor as it quickly cooled, returning to its normal green/black stone-like appearance but with obvious melted segments and small craters from the Ardent beams. The armor could soak up a lot of energy, but the Ardent were simply too intense and too large for it to shrug off and Rio could see they were doing decent damage to the hull, but not yet penetrating anywhere…and he hated being too far away to target individual systems, for sooner or later…

  Then it happened. A thin orange beam leapt out from the Mach’nel and hit a fully intact Sentinel that hadn’t come under attack yet. The shields held up for the first shot, but the second punched right through and burnt through half the armor plates. Subsequent beams firing with an alarmingly short cooldown tore huge chunks out of the Sentinel as its seemingly pathetic Ardent fired back and barely scratched the Mach’nel’s hull as more of its weaponry came into the fight and targeted closer Sentinels that were already under assault, leaving the Tar’vem’jic free to take on targets of its own choosing.

  Rio was watching the beam intensity numbers, seeing that across the board the V’kit’no’sat weapons were showing more power than during the Rit’ko’sor rebellion, but not with any huge advances and no new weaponry was being displayed. Their improvements ranged from 3% up to 42% on the Var’ko, and the big gun was running some 8% hotter than normal…but that meant these V’kit’non’sat were only slightly stronger than they’d been 102,000 years ago.

  And that meant it was time to go in.

  “Sic ‘em,” Rio told his remote gunners for the fleet of 63,000 drones stationed alongside his command ship, plus another 108,000 placed in four other locations nearby but out of weapons range. Using his Sav-enhanced mind he sent out approach lines and organized the attack in a matter of seconds while letting ship captains tend to the minor details.

  Like a swarm of mosquitos, the Star Force drones accelerated hard heading in towards the star then braked soon after, pouring down in amongst the Sentinels but staying out of the jumpline itself as more V’kit’no’sat ships were flying through it off the Slip’n’slide. Rio’s command ship didn’t go in, nor did any other manned craft, but the controlling jumpships eased in closer as they remained in the back as spectators while the Sentinels continued to slug it out in a quickly escalating losing conflict…but they were doing damage and that was the point.

  Now the V’kit’no’sat were going to have so many targets to pick from that someone was going to be able to get free shots at them…and he knew they’d go for the Sentinels, because they had the most firepower. That meant his fleet was mostly free to attack with impunity, but as he saw the Mach’nel’s shields go back up in a momentary blip he knew that attacking it was pointless. The more Sentinels it took out the less incoming fire it’d take, for it wasn’t moving in close enough to engage its medium-range weapons on additional targets…which was fortunate, but a choice obviously made so it could recharge its shields. Right now it couldn’t, but take out some more of the incoming beams and its recharge rate would exceed them.

  At which point any firepower thrown at it would essentially be wasted.

  That was why Rio suddenly ordered all his ships to ignore it, but kept enough Sentinels poking its shields to delay its entering the battle at closer range. The others he redirected to sniping targets of opportunity as the drone swarm began to get within firing range. Their Dre’mo’don and other weapons were inferior to what the V’kit’no’sat wielded, and the ships themselves were so much smaller they seemed horribly outmatched, but Rio and the other trailblazers had been taught how to use swarm tactics by the lizards over multiple centuries, and combined with Star Force rotational tactics…for what little they were worth with this much weaponsfire to contend with…meant that this wasn’t a desperate rush to defend their defense platforms as the V’kit’no’sat probably thought. It was a coordinated and well planned offensive designed to pick off ships before their full fleet could get here.

  The carnage going down made the war against the Li’vorkrachnika look like a 7th grade basketball game compared to the varsity contest Rio and Sol found themselves engaged in�
�and winning.

  He lost more Sentinels and drones than the V’kit’no’sat lost ships, but they had no choice but to stay and fight until the rest of their fleet arrived. By the time it did there was debris everywhere, and just when Rio thought they might be arrogant enough to reform and fight it out here and now, the Mach’nel made a microjump out followed by the rest of their fleet in such a display of navigational coordination that they easily disengaged from the Star Force ships even as Rio pressed his advantage and damaged a few more as they fled.

  The V’kit’no’sat had just run from Star Force, and while that brought a smile to Rio’s face he knew this was only round 1, for they had pulled out to another position in stellar orbit and were holding there, reforming into a defensive formation that Rio recognized from the pyramid files. They wanted Star Force to chase them and fight it out away from the Sentinels…but Rio wasn’t going to fall for that and held his ships in place, hunting down what surviving V’kit’no’sat vessels there were and taking them out. In other situations he would have tried to recover survivors, but not today. He didn’t have the advantage and anyone he sent in to board those wrecks of ships could be killed by their crews, so he wasn’t going to bother with it…but he also wasn’t going to allow them to be recovered by their fleet or freeze to death, so he methodically destroyed all the remaining fragments of ships as his analysts took stock of the casualties.

  The V’kit’no’sat had entered the system with the foretold 10,488 ships, 371 of which had never left the star after entering it, and the remainder had been trimmed down to 7,922, including the big prize that was the Mach’nel, but it had taken moderate armor damage, which would save a lot of firepower down the road, but its shields would be regenerating to full strength soon enough, save for the report that it had lost a couple of generators. That would weaken its protective shell, but wouldn’t cause any gaps in the shields…and it was just a matter of time before the V’kit’no’sat made the necessary repairs, for the Mach’nel had enough internal facilities to build all new equipment if necessary, making the huge ships almost impossible to whittle down via attrition, let alone a direct assault.