Star Force: Consensus (SF43) Read online

  The trailblazer knew the internal comm system was pinging the Skarron pilot, but he wasn’t answering, so with one of their own shooting at them they did was anyone would do…they shot back.

  Randy kept close to his target in the downed tree trench and poured fire into the center of the walker’s spherical top, chewing through the shields and then working on the armor as the Type-4 ahead of them rose up to its full height and fired down on Randy’s Type-5, getting a sliver of a firing angle. The Archon held firm, knowing that he needed to kill the smaller walker before jumping ship, and chewed through the thick Skarron armor until he had a breach point. After that his plasma slipped in and soon the bottom hatch of the walker opened up and the pilot dropped to the ground between the machine’s legs and tried to run off before it could get roasted inside, though it had a difficult time navigating the mess of tree debris.

  Randy would have shot it, but it wisely headed off on an angle that had its walker blocking the Human’s firing line, so the Archon continued slagging the inner workings of the Type-5 up until he was thoroughly convinced that it was dead. After that he turned the walker to the left and walked it through the trash, making sure to take small steps and mash down as much of it as possible as his shields took a torrent of plasma from both of the other walkers.

  He approached at an angle to keep his body from coming into the firing line, and headed into the forest in the direction of the other two that had also veered off to the left to circle around towards him. As soon as his walker was in the trees the incoming plasma reduced greatly, leaving him to pushing his way through, laying over one tree stalk after another as he slowly created his own path forward.

  With that cover in place the Type-5 was shielded from its twin, but the Type-4 was still firing down on the top of his walker, now penetrating the shields and beginning to tear into the armor. Randy shoved his way through the trees as fast as he could without tipping the giant machine over, intent on getting to the other one before he had to jump clear.

  He did…barely. The front of his walker had a gaping hole in the armor that was nearing the pilot’s compartment as he pushed through the last of the trees and ran head on into the other Type-5. Both walkers fired at each other at point blank range, with Randy’s taking the worst damage, for the other’s shields were still up.

  That was alright, for he wanted the walker he was riding to go down…one less for the enemy to use, but he wanted to take the other with it, so he pushed ahead with as much torque as he could get out of the legs and rammed sphere against sphere. Like a slow motion monster wrestling match, the two locked up and tipped over, with his landing on top of the other’s legs and pinning it in place as the plasma from the Type-4 continued to fall down.

  Randy disengaged his psionic link before the walker fell and got his hand grips released halfway down, allowing him to knee-slide off the back and land in the tree mash between its legs as the plasma fell down on the sphere where he’d just been. He let himself hit bottom, sliding between tree trunks and down into the mass of twigs and leaves, all of which helped to hide his green armor from the Type-4.

  He imagined a heated conversation taking place as the Skarron he’d been controlling woke up, but the plasma continued to fall regardless as Randy snuck around underneath the small pile of trees, gradually working his way to the edge and into the clear forest, seeing one of the Type-4’s slender legs punch down through the canopy ahead of him as the big walker moved in for a closer look at the others as it continued to fire on the traitor.

  Randy ran towards the leg, knowing that its shields would be up and any attempt to climb it would be fruitless, but he needed to get close and chanced running up underneath it, now that its belly was riding above the canopy instead of crashing through it. Its other five legs repositioned, knocking over trees or snapping off branches, making Randy stay alert and mobile. He wasn’t sure what its next move would be, but if he was going to have a chance of taking it down he had to stay close.

  Eventually the plasma bombardment ceased, with the Type-5 moving overtop the others. At first Randy thought it was going to try to push the dead walker off the other, then he saw a compartment on the underside open up and a projectile shot out, landing a claw on the walker. Two more followed, and then the connecting lines pulled taught and a loud ground sounded as the Type-5 he’d appropriated began to rise up off the other.

  The one underneath pushed its way out, kicking its thick legs to break loose, for it appeared the Type-4 didn’t have the strength to pull the dead weight all the way off.

  Randy knew the shields had to be down, at least around the exit points for the tethers. He was half tempted to try and climb one up into the walker, but if the cannons on the belly saw him he’d be toast, so he scratched that plan quick enough.

  Next idea he had sent a piece of wood the size of his thumb telekinetically up through the canopy above him. He watched it with his Pefbar as he sent it to impact the underside of the walker, paying close attention to the impact point…and seeing that the thing’s shields were in fact down all over the walker.

  That was his opening, so he ran towards the nearest leg and began to climb up on the underside to keep from being painfully visible. If he stayed directly under the angled leg, he’d come up to the box-like connective point where the legs intersected with the body where there were no cannons. There would be cannons all around that point, but if he could get to the hull he could climb up around them, for they didn’t have the ability to tip to the side far enough to bother him.

  Randy had made it up to the elbow joint on the leg, just beginning to transition to his ‘hands only’ grip on the underside of the walker’s leg, which left his own dangling beneath him as he monkey climbed up when he felt a gigantic surge of motion.

  The walker below and to his left dropped back to the ground as the tethers went slack, but the Type-4 also stepped to the side, running Randy up into some thin branches that he was fortunate not to have been knocked off by. Just as soon as he got his legs up into a crunch position and had his feet planted above his head against the walker’s leg did the whole thing drop down towards the ground.

  The leg bent heavily, undoing the angle and turning Randy’s handhold into more of a ceiling hold. Only when the walker steadied itself and the sound of a disengaging panel crackle/whined its way out of the belly armor did the trailblazer notice the mind of a Skarron on the forest floor below. It was the one that had jumped ship when Randy had toasted the first walker, and now it was coming up underneath the big one.

  With his eye line set on the underside of the walker’s leg, Randy used his Pefbar to look behind him and underneath the machine as a type of boarding ramp extended out of the hull between armor segments that had peeled off. It telescoped the rest of the way down to the forest, and Randy could sense the Skarron heading for it.

  “Haha,” the trailblazer lightly laughed as he suddenly had a far easier option present itself. He reached out with his Ikrid and got a feel for the three Skarron minds inside the Type-4 and began to send waves of Fornax blasts toward them as he released his grip from the leg and dropped down to the ground.

  With his focus on the psionic workload, Randy’s balance was less than adequate, tossing him to the right suddenly as his feet hit a curved trunk. He banged his head good on impact, but sent out more Fornax blasts immediately to keep the cannons from firing or the ramp raising if they saw him. He got to his feet and sent a fourth Fornax blast into the one heading for the ramp, causing it to trip and fall over its own legs as they suddenly ceased to work.

  Randy ran after it, hopping over tree debris while throwing more Fornax up into the walker’s hull. He kept all four Skarrons subdued while he jumped up onto the back of the closest one and leapt off it up onto the ramp and climbed the ladder-like catwalk up into the walker.

  Inside there was a cramped chamber…by Skarron standards anyway. It contained a central corridor with six pods spaced around the stalk, each of which was huge for Randy
’s physique. He walked into the corridor and found it was also like a catwalk, but with round holes in the structure rather than slats.

  Making sure not to trip on any, or to let his foot slip through, he reached out to the three minds inside and placed them, numbing one as it reached up a weapon and aimed at him. Randy didn’t move, but kept it in check while trying to do the same to the other two. He didn’t move its gun arm, nor any other body parts, for he couldn’t do that without focusing exclusively on one of them and he had three to hold at bay.

  Which quickly became four as the one at the base of the ramp camp up and poked its ugly front end inside. He stretched out his Ikrid and nulled it too, essentially freezing it in place by not allowing it to make any additional movements, but while maintaining its current posture.

  “Out,” he said, pointing towards the one at the ramp. It didn’t understand English, nor the trade language for that matter, but Randy got the telepathic impetus through, along with a heavy dose of influence. He couldn’t take control of its body, but he could tell it to.

  Slowly the Skarron backed out of the entrance and headed down the ramp, seeming to crawl backwards as easy as it did forwards…with its foot claws digging into the holes in the metal for extra grip. Randy kept his Ikrid link to it strong, despite the meters of distance it was putting between them, then he pointed to the other three and thumbed backwards over his shoulder.

  “Everybody off the bus,” he said, taking a step to the side as the big quadrupeds climbed out of their pods. Randy put a hand on the curved wall for support as his mental effort had to increase greatly as the fourth one got to ground. He switched over to nulling it, which saved a little mental expenditure, but influencing the other three to do what he wanted was pushing his Ikrid to the limits.

  The first one went by, not bothering to look at him, then headed front first down the steep ramp, gripping it with its feet claws that emanated from the underside rather than the front where toe nails would have been. The second one did the same, but the third stopped at the edge and just stood there, and Randy could feel his grip on its will slipping. It was on the verge of questioning what it was doing, at which point the ruse would end. He had to keep it distracted, and too much thought in any direction would break the hold.

  To that end he released the furthest of the Skarrons. With the lesser load Randy increased his mental pressure on the last one, remembering what Obi-wan had said about the Force having a strong influence on the weak minded…and this Skarron was stronger than the others.

  “Run!” he yelled, with is mind imparting the same message. “Run, run, run!” he repeated so fast that the Skarron didn’t have time to think. It charged down the ramp, knocking the one in front of it off before ramming the one that Randy had released as it came back up. With that tangled mess breaking his hold on the pair he released all three and send a Fornax wave in their direction and held the production until he got to the ramp controls, already having gleaned their location from one of their minds.

  Randy held the Fornax as the ramp pulled back into itself, then leveraged up into the underside of the hull, with the last steps being the peeled back armor plates to seal over it…leaving Randy alone inside.

  Almost immediately his captured walker came under fire from the lone Type-5 remaining, thanks to the Skarrons and their personal communicators.

  “Ok, what now?” Randy said, running and looking around. Some of the controls were familiar, but a lot weren’t, and this was his first time inside one of the Type-4s…in person anyway. When he was linked to a Skarron’s mind everything had context, but now it was just him and what he could remember.

  He jumped back and forth between two pods until he found the shield controls and powered them up as a portion of the front hull began to lose armor, along with a plasma cannon mount, he thought, based on one of the display panels. After that he looked around, playing with various controls, most of which he had to use his fist/elbow to toggle, given how large they were. Eventually he determined that one of the pods was a restroom, then climbed up into the highest one and found the weapon controls, still trying to clear the smell from his nostrils. His armor might not have deemed it toxic, but his biology certainly did.

  As the walker got pounded on the outside Randy got the weapons controls working…only to discover that they were for the anti-air weaponry. Abandoning that pod he tried another, eventually getting to the plasma cannon controls in what seemed to be a multi-tasking format. Maybe one of the other pods controlled them directly, but what he had functioned well enough, with him targeting the Type-5 outside that had already broken through his shields and was busy melting off armor with its primary cannon.

  Fortunately it had a decently long cycle in between shots, so Randy wasn’t in immediate trouble. He aligned all of his own plasma cannons within the appropriate firing arc for the other walker and synced them to one targeting reticule and placed it on the enemy…then he couldn’t find the firing trigger.

  He looked around, belatedly remembering that it was on the floor. He couldn’t reach it and the aiming controls at the same time, so he stared at the control knobs for a long couple of seconds then dropped down to the floor of the pod and stomped on the button.

  It didn’t fire, nor did it depress all the way, so Randy tried again, jumping with both feet, and this time it went all the way into the ground.

  Outside every plasma cannon in range fired once, then fell silent.

  “Crap,” Randy said, jumping on it again, then climbing up halfway to get his head within view of the readouts. Telekinetically he moved the controls, realigning his targeting reticule to a more favorable spot, then jumped back down on the firing button, pounding it into the ground multiple times like a child throwing a tantrum before climbing back up again to see what he’d hit.

  The Type-5 had moved, but only partially, with his plasma still landing on the spherical ‘head.’ Randy readjusted his firing line and went back down to the ground, repeating the awkward attack function over and over again until the Type-5 was damaged enough that it tried to flee.

  “Oh no you don’t…bastard,” Randy said, running over to another pod and getting the walker walking, albeit slowly. He set it on autopilot, meaning it just went in a straight line, knocking down trees and hoping they didn’t trip it up, then ran back over to the weapons pod and got another salvo of shots in on the other walker.

  That process repeated itself for over an hour as the two walkers played tag, with Randy running himself silly trying to operate the controls that were designed for an elephant until the Type-5 finally went down, literally, and Randy pounded it further with plasma until it was a smoking mess of melted metal.

  “Oh, god I don’t want to do that again,” he said, sitting down and leaning back against the curved wall at the bottom of the central shaft as he activated his helmet comm. “Anybody out there hear this?”

  “I’ve got you, Randy, but faint,” the dropship pilot who’d brought him to the walkers replied.

  “Come pick me up. The three Type-5s are junk, and I’m inside the Type-4, so don’t worry about it shooting back. What firearms do you have onboard?”

  “A couple of pistols, one plasma, one stinger. Why?”

  “There are Skarrons loose on the ground. We need to clean them up, and I don’t think the skeets will get a clean shot. Comm for a ground team and mark this location.”

  “Copy that, I’m on my way in.”

  Randy cut the comm and sighed, taking a moment to rest before heading over to the ramp controls and opening the damaged mech up. With the shields down and the armor already damaged, the skeets would have an easy time finishing it off, so his work here was done, so long as he didn’t let any of the Skarrons back inside, and given how far the machine had walked he had no idea how close they were now.

  When the dropship arrived he triggered the ramp closing mechanism and jumped out, sliding/falling down the angled metal as it closed up, then dropping to the ground after bouncing off
a couple of intact branches that the Type-5 hadn’t hit on the way through. Randy took the fall well then ran out into the opening created by the downed trees and signaled to the dropship to come down and get him.

  Once onboard he called for the skeets and waited until they were on station and blowing the crap out of the walker before he let the pilot leave.

  3

  August 17, 2467

  Rotunna System (Beta Region)

  Ida

  “Ships are in bombardment position,” Admiral Nellis said for Aaron’s benefit as the 19th fleet stood broken up and holding various positions in low orbit.

  “We’ve still got two red flags, Admiral. Commence firing on all other targets,” Aaron ordered, watching the bridge tactical holo. A few moments later metallic rain began falling down through the atmosphere and targeting the Skarron walkers that were away from population centers. The two ‘red flags’ were inside cities where the inhabitants weren’t all clear yet, and each of those held a Type-1, making them primary targets that needed to be eliminated from orbit, lest there be a much larger fight on the ground.

  Ida had 29 tier 1 colonies under construction, which when fully completed would be self-sufficient entities of their own on the planet’s surface spanning hundreds of square miles. Other auxiliary facilities dotted the landscape as well, but overall Ida’s population was spread out with a ‘work in progress’ feel to the planet, despite the fact that it already held some 2 billion Kiritak and several hundred thousand Humans.