Star Force: Intransigent (SF100) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  With a thought through his mental interface he gave the attack order and the entire V’kit’no’sat fleet moved as one down into low orbit over Terrax and began exchanging fire with the Star Force planetary defenses.

  2

  Kaalo waited inside the Voro’nam hangar bay in one of several Brat’mar gunships that contained their most elite Zen’zat, of which he was the strongest, but there were several Zen’zat from the other factions that were stronger than him and all of them were assembled here for the insertion to the planet below. The plan was for the Domjo to get them down to the surface below the majority of the anti-air defenses then release all the gunships from the hangar at minimum altitude…after which they would be on their own as the ship returned to orbit, assuming it made it that far. There was a good chance that it would be destroyed prior to that along with many more ships securing their entry.

  This mission relied entirely on the Zen’zat after the insertion and Kaalo knew that if they could get down inside the Human cities and travel through rather than over them, then there would be nothing that could stop them short of orbital bombardment. The fleet was going to make sure that didn’t happen for as long as they could, but they couldn’t hold position forever under the assault they were going to have to endure. The Humans had a great deal of planetary defenses in addition to their assembled fleet that continued to get larger with every passing day.

  He and the other Zen’zat had to get in and secure the planetary defense station, and in order to do that some of the weaker Zen’zat accompanying them were carrying breaching gear to override the locks on the various entrances. Finding one was going to be difficult if the entire structure was built over, but even if they had to blast their way to the exterior of the station they would and they’d brought sufficient munitions for that if needed, though nothing was going to cut into the thick Yeg’gor armor with the haste they required.

  That meant they had to hack their way in, and fortunately they had the two primary races in the V’kit’no’sat with them to supply the necessary codes to override whatever Star Force was using. Kaalo and the others would get inside even if only a few Zen’zat made it that far, and he knew that if either he or one of those stronger made it, they’d be enough to kill every Archon inside assuming Rio and the other elites hadn’t predicted this attack. If they were waiting in ambush it would take Kaalo plus support, but the other Brat’mar Zen’zat standing beside him and in the other waiting gunships would be enough…though he didn’t expect all of them to make it to ground.

  Whether he died in the short gunship flight or survived to make it inside the defense station it did not matter. Star Force wouldn’t stop all the Zen’zat, and those that did make it would take control of the battle station and use its weaponry to blast enough of the city overtop of them away to allow additional ships to land while securing the orbital tracks above them. If they could do that there was nothing Star Force could throw at them to dislodge their foothold…and then they could begin eating away at the vermin on this planet one city at a time as more reinforcements were summoned.

  It all depended on the fleet getting them to the surface and then the Zen’zat taking the defense station, but for now he and the other Zen’zat waited in silence inside the gunships, not knowing what was occurring until they got the order to depart. Until then they loyally and patiently sat on the benches shoulder to shoulder and still as statues.

  “There they go,” Roger said through his computerized mind meld with Sara, Ethan, and Rio. He’d been wondering how long it would take them to figure out that their shields weren’t going to fall to just the Mach’nel’s Tar’vem’jic. Powerful as it was, the recharge rate of the planetary generators were greater and the multi-layered shielding prevented spot punctures thanks to the scattering effect of the second layer.

  “Ignore the Mach’nel?” Sara asked, seeing the tactical situation along with the others, though their holograms were but bobble-head sized on the periphery of her command nexus.

  “Yes,” Roger said while sending out orders to the planetary gunners as well as his part of the combined fleet in orbit, though each chunk wasn’t in exactly the same location. “We have to destroy weapons, not ships, and we won’t get to them until the shields go down so ignore it completely. Make the rest of the battle look convincing but keep the Ultimas intact.”

  “Copy that,” Ethan agreed as the V’kit’no’sat ships raced down towards Antarctica and the trailblazers knew they were going to arrive first, but the bulk of the Sol defense fleet was now in Earth orbit and would be there shortly…and if the Viks were busy shooting the planetary shield then they wouldn’t have weaponsfire to counter the incoming ships. If they shot the ships then the planetary shields would hold up longer. It was a paradox that the enemy had to deal with by hitting as fast and hard as possible, meaning this was going to escalate quickly.

  “Rio, backdoor.”

  “The surface isn’t evacuated yet.”

  “I know,” Roger said as his command ship accelerated and the view of Earth began to increase in size as they approached. “We don’t have a choice. Slug it out until then, but don’t lose your Ultimas.”

  “If we don’t use them, will they suspect a trap?”

  “They’re not trying to run this time, so don’t even bother pinning their ships in place. Just use them for fire support, but make sure they’re close enough to the Mach’nel to grab it when needed.”

  “I doubt they’ll make it that easy,” Sara complained as her icon on the battlemap began to get closer and closer to the other trailblazers’ and the single dot that was the full V’kit’no’sat fleet.

  “They need the Mach’nel’s other weapons, so they won’t pull it out. Grab a few ships so they can’t retreat to recharge shields if they try, but I think most are going to hold their ground and pound the planetary shields until they’re through.”

  “I agree,” Ethan added, pulling up a quick Mass Effect clip from the ship’s database of all things cool.

  “Our influence stopped the Rachni, but before that we held the line. Our influence stopped the Krogan, but before that we held the line. Our influence will stop Saren. In the battle today, we will hold the line!”

  “Yeah, I think that pretty much fits,” Sara echoed. “They ain’t moving for nothing.”

  “Make sure they don’t and we can win this,” Roger insisted as the first weaponsfire started to register on the planetary shield in addition to the Tar’vem’jic that continued to fire on approach. Simultaneously hundreds of Ardent began streaking up from points around Antarctica as the V’kit’no’sat fleet slowed and maneuvered around into a line of attacking ships…primarily the larger ones with the Mach’nel at the center…and a line of defenders above them in a flattened half sphere to protect against the incoming Star Force ships.

  Roger saw several metallic rail gun slugs popping up from the surface through brief gaps in the shield that went streaking into the assaulting fleet, some of which were targeted and deflected prior to impact, but those that hit put huge dents in the shield energy of the targets, including one Na’shor that had already been weakened by concentrated Ardent beams. It punched straight through the remaining shields and planted a huge crater in the hull, though the 26 mile long battleship hardly felt the impact as its weaponry continued to pour down into the atmosphere, setting it aglow even before hitting the first of the shield layers with a combination of beams and orbs, though none of the ships were getting close enough to engage their short ranged weapons, which would have meant they had to get inside the atmosphere where their maneuvering options would be significantly limited.

  Suddenly the fleet disposition changed and some of the frontline ships started throwing up dampening shields that stopped the incoming rail gun slugs cold, but that meant power had to be diverted away from the regular shields, weakening their recharge rate and making the Ardent strikes even more effective as multiple breach points started to occur in the first planetary shield, allowing th
e Tar’vem’jic clear shots at the second layer…which broke on the first hit, though it scattered the beam so much it became a cone as it traveled down to the third.

  The hammering continued both ways as the Star Force fleet decelerated hard and got itself into a bit of alignment before engaging. Going in recklessly was to the V’kit’no’sat’s advantage, so the four trailblazers forced themselves to be patient a bit longer and got their drones into their favorite engagement formations before taking it to the defensive sphere over top the bombarding ships. Rio took the high road avoiding the first conflicts, cutting off their exiting jumpline and making the highest V’kit’no’sat ships turn around to attack them…all the while coordinating with ground-based weaponry so they didn’t get involved in friendly fire when an Ardent or railgun slug missed, or hit and passed through an enemy ship.

  Numerous Bra’hems also opened fire, having been the primary defense weapons for many decades and now taking a secondary role, but still effective in adding so much firepower to select V’kit’no’sat ships that they were destroyed within a minute of initial contact. They never wavered though, holding position and firing constantly up until their destruction as layer after layer of planetary shields were being stripped away until the first Tar’vem’jic blast shot through a gap in all of them and hit the shield generator beneath on the surface.

  The auxiliary shield covering the structure itself couldn’t stand up to that amount of raw energy, with the orange beam penetrating it on contact and vaporizing the huge tower along the internal spine, blowing out the rest of it in a donut of shrapnel that hit and destroying surrounding buildings…not to mention the damage done to the undercity as the beam penetrated even further. Fortunately the shield generator was the same one the Tar’vem’jic had been firing upon from higher up in orbit and the people in the area of assault had been evacuated, but that didn’t hold true for the weapons batteries and additional shield generators ringing it that were subsequently targeted.

  The planetary shields tried to regenerate, but their ability to do so was weakened with the loss of that single generator and the bombardment hadn’t diminished with the destruction of the first V’kit’no’sat ships, for whenever one was destroyed another from higher up would drop down and assume its position, giving them a nearly constant assault that was continuing to push through and keep the shield from regenerating what had been lost while other ships were targeting through the gaps and taking out key structures in a wave of destruction that began to snowball…with the coverage of the planetary shield pulling back as a result.

  Kaalo got word the same as all the other Zen’zat inside that their Domjo was deploying, but none of them moved. There was no point in doing so until they were on the ground, so all of them continued to sit and wait but the pilots shunted tactical data to them so they could start familiarizing themselves with the battle conditions on the surface that they were about to fly through.

  Kaalo was pleased to see so many defensive weapons being blasted into oblivion, but the exchange of fire between the fleet, the surface, and the defending fleet was far greater than he had anticipated. The V’kit’no’sat ships engaging in the bombardment were getting torn apart, but they had succeeded in punching a short-lived hole in the shields that they were holding open with additional bombardment while softening the approach area for the Zen’zat.

  It was costly, but as expected they were getting the job done as the Domjo moved out of its parking orbit between the two layers of ships and headed down towards the planet at the back of a formation of some 83 vessels that drew immediate fire from the planetary defenses. Kaalo saw a Lir’nen Na’shor get obliterated within half a minute as they came into the atmosphere and had to slow down, with so many surface batteries still remaining that its bulk was torn apart with alarming speed. The burning chunks from it floated up, relatively speaking, through the descending fleet as the drag tore at them as the rest of the ships powered down through the atmosphere as fast as possible…but the debris would rain down on either the planetary shield or through the gap and hit the surface soon enough.

  Even as they descended, the blocking ships targeted and took out many of the exposed defensive batteries, but there were so many adjacent to them and still protected underneath the planetary shields that the descent to the planet was a gauntlet that had to be endured rather than defeated, and as another Na’shor broke up ahead of them and the other ships had to fly evasively around its debris, Kaalo could sense the moment of their inevitable victory coming, for soon they’d be below the firing arcs of most of the planetary defense guns and they’d…

  “Time?” Jasmine-1188 asked, her voice calm but strained as she stood within the V’kit’no’sat pyramid at one of their Zen’zat control stations atop the Oso’lon platform on the command deck while another Archon was manning a Star Force add-on a few feet away. The pyramid systems and the Star Force battlemap had never been integrated into one another for security reasons, so Jasmine wasn’t able to monitor the progress of the evacuation of the bioharvest factory above them, but she could see the carnage occurring in orbit further to the west over the edge of Antarctica as the V’kit’no’sat began to punch through the planetary shield and hit a surface generator with the Mach’nel’s primary weapon, taking it down in a single shot and making the eventual fall of the rest of the shield layers covering the continent just a matter of time.

  The pyramid’s own shields couldn’t extend that far out, which was probably why the V’kit’no’sat were attacking that far away, but she couldn’t understand why they were being so stupid. Yes, Star Force had to evacuate the people above them first, but what made the V’kit’no’sat think they wouldn’t come under attack by its weaponry? It made no sense. They obviously knew it was still here, otherwise there would be no reason to invade Antarctica when they didn’t have enough ships and troops to take the planet. They had to be trying to retake the pyramid by landing ground troops outside the shield perimeter, but as soon as the evacuation was complete they were going to get hammered.

  “40 seconds,” the nearby Archon confirmed, watching the tracks of the people moving out through the adjacent cityscape. They had a minimum calculated range to get clear from, otherwise Jasmine would not fire. Dying in battle was one thing, but Star Force wasn’t going to kill its own people no matter what the situation was and damn anyone who argued otherwise.

  “Good,” she said, seeing a column of V’kit’no’sat ships heading to ground already. Gritting her teeth, she realized that they might make it before she could get the first shot off, but there was no way in hell they were going to park there and just unload with impunity. Maybe the V’kit’no’sat were willing to accept egregious losses to get some troops on the planet, but at this point she didn’t care. They’d just made a very bad mistake and she was going to make them pay for it.

  With a thought she shunted power to all the weapon systems in the pyramid, taking them through a quick pre-cycle as the power core buried deep in the planet beneath the pyramid amped up its production by the tens, then hundreds, then thousands of times. What Star Force had originally misinterpreted as the extend of the pyramid was really just the cap on the massive defense station, for below the living levels was over 35 miles of automated structure that sunk down to touch the magma layer beneath, sucking some additional energy from it but primarily using the rock of the planet as additional, lateral armor while the thick Yeg’gor atop protected against the most direct and obvious attacks.

  The structure beneath that cap stretched down like a spike into the planet, and within it was the massive power cores in addition to the bulk of the Tar’vem’jic, whose firing aperture was located atop the pyramid. The destructive energy would be gathered below and channeled up to it when needed, meaning that even if the armored cap was destroyed the bulk of the weapon would still lie intact deep inside the planetary crust along with most of the major systems, insuring that they would outlast the inhabitants.

  Jasmine started sending pyram
id data to the Star Force battlemap over comms so the planetary shields could coordinate their rapid and precise lowerings around the firing lines of the weapons she was about to bring online and had not been test fired in over 100,000 years…but neither she nor anyone else in the pyramid had any doubts as to whether they would work. As malevolent as they were, the V’kit’no’sat knew how to build proper equipment that time could barely scratch at.

  Jasmine let her mind become absorbed in the V’kit’no’sat firing program, into which she incorporated other ‘Zen’zat’ stationed on different pedestals around the command deck. They took control of the other myriad weapons the pyramid had while she retained command of the big gun herself, sending the first energy transfer up to the peak and pooling it there in its final form as the last few seconds ticked off.

  “Confirmed,” the Archon nearby said. “Evacuation zone is now clear.”

  “Firing,” Jasmine said, rousing the large Tar’vem’jic beam cannon from its slumber and taking aim at the Mach’nel in orbit.

  3

  Ethan stood in the nexus onboard a command ship that was situated well away from the combat, as were the other manned vessels that could be taken out in a single shot from the Mach’nel, but his mind was right in the thick of the battle along with the other trailblazers as their drone fleets hammered the V’kit’no’sat in a weapons exchange that eclipsed everything to date in Star Force history.

  The size of the enemy ships was so problematic that Ethan literally had to throw away drones in order to do damage, and even the Shivas and Ultimas weren’t making a huge dent. Had they brought in other summons that would have changed, but they didn’t have time now and they also didn’t want to let the V’kit’no’sat know they existed, leaving him with a superior ship count to fight with, but he was losing them at a rate that was galling.