Star Force: Marauders (SF63) Read online

  And now it was going to fall to the Voku, but they intended to keep it and give the system a proper caretaker. Pro-zel’s task was just that, purge this system of the lizards and begin bringing in support convoys to establish a permanent presence. Orica was soon to become part of the Voku empire, and neither the lizards nor the distant Skarrons could do anything about it. ‘Old’ as their tech might be now, the ships and troops under Pro-zel’s command were still formidable and wholly outclassed those they were about to do battle with.

  As the conglomerates waited around the red star for the remainder to join them, tiny pieces split off and shot out on microjumps to scout their targets. The last update they’d received was more than a decade old and had come from the Hycre, but with the way the lizards built a lot could have changed in that amount of time.

  The first scouting reports came back as the last of the conglomerates arrived and a sea of lizard ships were waiting out of weapons range for them to make a move. They weren’t running straight at them to die easy deaths like many from this race typically did, which was a pity. It looked like the lizards were going to try and make them earn this system rather than just going out in a blaze of suicidal glory.

  One after another the scout ships reported back infrastructure and defensive upgrades on the varying planetoids, with another 4 having been colonized since the last report. The largest of them all, population wise, even had large segments of a ring shipyard sitting in orbit. A closer evaluation saw that those segments were in fact operational and building ships even as they were being added to themselves. Pro-zel found that to be very industrious of them, but he was going to wreck it all the same.

  Both the Voku and the enemy waited patiently as the scouts zipped around the system gathering intel, for the lizards couldn’t catch them and Pro-zel wasn’t going to give attack orders until he knew what he was up against. The awkward stalemate lasted several hours before the conglomerates finally moved out of their holding orbits and pushed towards the sea of cruisers nearby.

  Those defense ships broke formation and retreated, giving Pro-zel’s ships clear jumplines that they then took to the various planetoids, splitting up and beginning their assault in earnest. With the invading fleet reduced in number at the various locations the lizards finally launched their counterattacks, with the Voku splitting up their massive ships into more agile ones and taking the fight to them head on across 54 different worlds.

  As usual it was might versus mass, with the lizards possessing far more ships than the Voku had brought, but they didn’t have enough to compensate for the superior technology and tactics of the dominant race. They had been trained and equipped by the Elders themselves, and there was no way Pro-zel was going to lose to these primitive barbarians.

  The orbital battles took quite a while to come to conclusion, with more than a week of fighting before all the ships and defense stations across the system had been taken out. Pro-zel had lost only 4% of his ships in the fighting, and acknowledged Cal-com’s wisdom in delaying this assault long enough to get a truly overpowering force assembled. With the Voku fleet mostly intact, they began moving around and taking out secondary targets, whether they be shipyards or cargo ships, while the first of the ground troops landed on three different planetoids.

  Those troops were also equipped with the ‘old’ technology, but even given the lizards’ deviousness and inclination to build a mass of subsurface structures they weren’t going to be able to do more than slow the Voku down, for Pro-zel was spamming these three targets with his troops rather than spreading them out across the system piecemeal. He wanted clean, efficient battles rather than true contests. This wasn’t a mission to test one’s strength, but to clean out the vermin and take possession of the system.

  And to do that Pro-zel had plenty of time, for there was no amount of reinforcements that the lizards could reasonably send that would alter the course of events here. The Voku were going to claim Orica for their own, it was just a matter of how and when. Given that almost guaranteed eventuality, the Voku commander chose to take the patient approach and clear out a few planetoids at a time, giving his forces a base of operations to work out of that wasn’t contested, while simultaneously sending word back for the supply convoys to start coming.

  So long as the Voku had at least one planetoid that was solely theirs they could begin building, for their fleet would keep the lizards away even if they were still in the system…and the sooner they got construction efforts up and running the sooner they could start building their own defenses. Orica had to become an economic stronghold within the region and was key to Cal-com’s plans going forward.

  And Pro-zel intended to take it with the minimum number of troops lost as he could manage. He didn’t like the lizards lingering nearby, but there was nothing they could do to stop the Voku, so he might as well put up with their presence for a while if it meant preserving personnel and equipment for later use down the line. Because old or not, this tech was still valuable, and would be used in forthcoming assaults in the surrounding region, for the Voku were going to carve out a piece of the new ‘border’ inside of what used to be Nestafar space and hold it against the lizards, Skarrons, or anyone else that came Star Force’s way.

  But first the handful of chosen systems had to be taken from the enemy, then the other surrounding ones had to be cleansed even if the Voku weren’t going to set down roots there. It was a campaign that mirrored what was occurring back in their home territory, for per the Elders’ wishes they were expanding their borders and hacking a huge chunk out of Skarron territory, not to mention safeguarding other neighboring races that had previously been beyond their mandate.

  Everywhere the Voku were expanding, making this an exciting and dangerous time for the empire, for there was a lot of work to do, and when you were pushing against opponents those opponents usually pushed back. Fortunately Cal-com had given him enough conglomerates for this mission to be one-sided enough not to be an issue, which had been the point. Orica had to fall and fall quickly to set up a chain of coming events, the most important of which was occurring simultaneously to this assault and other smaller ones.

  For Cal-com would have been here, overseeing this massive campaign himself, if he didn’t have somewhere more important to go. Right now he and a much smaller fleet were traveling far beyond any world seen by the Voku before and headed for the Shaleth System, a target that Cal-com had said was chosen by the Elders themselves.

  The Dafchor rarely confided in his senior commanders as to what the Elders had told him, for his orders were unquestionable, but Cal-com had explained the importance of this mission to him anyway, underscoring that while he was taking Orica, a vital piece in the ongoing strategic puzzle, he would be quietly taking a much more valuable one, from which he would be operating out of indefinitely. That meant Pro-zel and others would be out of contact with him for some time until a proper relay network could be established out to Shaleth.

  Pro-zel didn’t understand why the Elders had instructed the Dafchor to take that seemingly insignificant world, but if they wanted it done then so be it. He and the other senior commanders could operate independently as long as needed, and Cal-com needed him here, in Orica, even after the last of the planetoids was cleansed of lizard presence. Pro-zel was to secure the foothold then organize the acquisition and defense of the Nestafar Region until he could receive further orders from the Dafchor, with a huge responsibility being put on his shoulders.

  But that wasn’t anything new, for commanders all across the Empire were being given tasks that only the elite few would have been given previously. In a time of great expansion such as this, they were being called on to handle tasks far beyond their previous scope, and in Pro-zel’s opinion it was about damn time. If the Elders wanted them to sit and defend territory then he’d do it, but the Voku were a race bred for action, and it seemed fate had finally gotten around to allowing them their due.

  Not in terms of territory or bounty, but in glory. The
responsibility for such great tasks was what they craved more than anything, for the more they were asked to do the more valuable they were, and that put them one step closer to the Elders’ equals rather than being whimpering children begging for scraps of technology.

  Pro-zel doubted they’d ever progress that far, but he liked the idea of being battlefield allies more than being inferior servants…and apparently the Elders agreed, else they wouldn’t have been asking so much of the Voku and giving them so much more technology to accommodate those requests.

  No matter how you looked at it, this was an age of change and Pro-zel was eagerly anticipating the days ahead. These lizards were primitive, but given the scope of their empire and their ability to build replacements quickly, they were going to be a formidable challenge going forward, even if this current assault wasn’t.

  Or rather the challenge wasn’t in achieving victory, but in doing so as efficiently as possible to give Cal-com more troops to work with going forward, and that was a responsibility that Pro-zel took very seriously, for the Dafchor had also confided in him that there were tasks ahead that may be impossible to achieve, but that the Elders had commanded them to try regardless.

  That single bit of foresight made everything Pro-zel did now tinge with greater importance, for these missions were laying the groundwork for the impossible one yet to come.

  When Cal-com’s fleet arrived in the Shaleth System they found themselves above a huge, dying star. It was a massive red giant whose internal fuel supply was nearing the end of days…but given how long stars typically persisted there was no danger of it ‘going out’ any time soon. That said, the radiation levels were considerably lower than they had once been, meaning the habitable planets in orbit were becoming less so over time. Already the outer two had been encased in an ice sheet that had killed off all the vegetation on the planet, with the innermost third still clinging to a narrow band around the equator, though it had been reduced to scrub brush in lieu of the massive forests it had once contained.

  Cal-com didn’t know the history Shaleth, he just saw a slowly dying system that still held use for both the Voku and the lizards, for they had a sizeable colony on the inner planet. Far more so than it would have appeared to warrant, given that this location wasn’t on any of their known supply lines, but rather in a little nook of territory equating to a ‘filler’ system located in between the major ones.

  Cal-com suspected that this one had been around far longer than those his forces were currently assaulting near Star Force territory, hence the greater size. Never the less, it was his target and he immediately dispatched one of his three conglomerates to neutralize the small defense fleet while he took the others and split them up into blockade groups, intent to keep all enemy presence contained to this location. Let a ship escape or an interstellar signal be transmitted and he’d lose the anonymity the Dafchor was hoping for, which was why he also sent a piece of his command conglomerate straight to the lizard colony.

  That piece flew ahead of the rest and dove into the atmosphere, coming down atop the section of the lizard infrastructure that held their interstellar transmitter. Three brilliant energy beams leapt out from the warship, nearly on parallel lines, but they actually converged at a given point several miles below the craft. At first the three beams hit the lizard defense shield 200 or so meters apart, but the green, blue, and orange beams refocused and moved towards each other until they overlapped on the same spot…

  When they did the chimra effect occurred and the shield immediately breached, with the three beams spread out again beneath it and causing damage to separate locations.

  The warship adjusted the targeting on the constant beams and brought the intersection point down to the transmitter. When it touched the beams no longer melted the infrastructure on contact, but they exploded it in such a magnitude of force that the entire assembly was junked instantly. The warship ceased fired when it was inoperable and flew back up to orbit, ignoring the ground defense batteries that were only tickling its shields.

  Cal-com observed the attack from afar, intently monitoring the output from the enemy transmitter. As far as he could tell no signals had been sent, meaning their surprise attack was going to remain a secret for some time and he intended to keep it that way. With the blockade formation patrolling the area around the star, both to intercept ships trying to flee and to poach any that might come into the system in the coming days, the Dafchor expected to have a decent amount of time available to him before the lizards had a chance to respond…which he was going to need.

  Once the system was cleared of enemy ships Cal-com ordered the first conglomerate and pieces of the second to head down to the surface and begin cleansing the planet. As they did so he took a chunk of his command conglomerate, which of the three was the only one comprised of the new technology the Elders had gifted the Voku, and flew to the outermost planet of the three in the system.

  There he found an ice-covered world, but per the instructions given to him via his implant he searched a specific set of coordinates with the ship’s sensors until he found structures buried beneath the ice. He didn’t know what they were…until the implant suddenly released new data it had been withholding until this moment.

  Cal-com suddenly understood why this system was important. Not only was it centrally located, offering him reach options to the other servants of the Elders, but it held the remains of another race that had died out long ago. One that also served the Elders up until they were overcome by an enemy too powerful for them to hold at bay.

  That knowledge settled a question that had long been lingering in the core of his mind. Would the Elders intervene if the Voku faced annihilation?

  Apparently they would not. Their servants had to learn to stand on their own, in victory or defeat. Help them the Elders might, but they would not carry them.

  Then again, the Elders had only recently returned to the Voku. What they had been doing in the absence Cal-com did not know, but if this race, who had been called the Yampley, had been in a similar situation and not been able to survive in their absence as the Voku had…

  The thought sickened Cal-com, for if the Yampley were as loyal as the Voku they did not deserve this fate. Powerful the Elders might be, but the remains on the planet below only underscored how vast and dangerous this galaxy truly was.

  That thought made it all the more imperative for him to get to the other servants before it was too late for them. If he failed, this would be their fate at the hands of the lizards.

  Giving the order without delay, even as the ground battles on the other planet were just getting underway, Cal-com had his conglomerate section disintegrate and break up into a number of protective warships and the Hatomek seed that subsequently plunged into the ice near to the ruins, burrowing its way down to the surface and beginning to locate and extract the necessary materials to grow itself into the world-building machine that would eventually create the defenses to hold this system against any lizard counterattack.

  Cal-com noted with pride how much faster this seed worked than previous models, for it was constructed from the new technology as well, and took very little time digging its way into the bedrock and carving out a dome in the ice above for the Voku workers to begin grounding additional supplies within.

  4

  February 28, 2735

  Numar System (lizard territory)

  Sashneo

  Tom-008 stood in the nexus onboard the Zeus, personally controlling the ultra-heavy cleansing beam that the command ship was using in low orbit to pulverize the lizard infrastructure on the planet below. The defense shields protecting the numerous colonies covering the planet couldn’t stand up against the beam for more than a handful of seconds, for it was a major upgrade over the previous versions, capable of delivering pinpoint destructive energy on a level that Star Force had never achieved before.

  Tom and the other trailblazers knew the days of the cleansing beam were coming to an end, in light of higher end weapo
ns projects coming down the research pipe, but that didn’t mean they’d given up on their current batch of tech. There were always improvements to be made, and the ‘ultras’ were one of them. Beam width was the same as a ‘heavy’ but the intensity was ratcheted up so much that only a very dense shield could hold up to it…or a different matrix that the lizards couldn’t yet produce.

  Regardless, with the ultra onboard his command ship Tom was able to bust through lizard defenses that typically would have delayed a planetary assault such as this for days as orbital bombardment hammered each of the shields until they fell, then cleansing beams or rail guns would take out the exposed generators and primary defensive emplacements, opening up the bases or colonies to a ground attack or further obliteration from orbit.

  Odd as it was, throwing a chunk of mass at an opponent never got old. The physics were simply undeniable, with the rail gun, a weapon that dated back to the very beginning of Star Force, slated to always be in the offensive bag of toys, right up to the day when they finally caught up with the most advanced tech the V’kit’no’sat had. They’d be highly modified rail guns by then, but the principle was sound and there was no easy way to kill the momentum they produced.

  Ammo resupply was their weakness, and in a situation like this it made more sense to use the cleansing beams to knock down buildings along with a few Ka’sevron rounds thrown in by the Ma’kri. In the past Star Force would have tried to assault the lizard colonies with their buildings mostly intact, preferring a cleaner battlefield to work on, but the more time that went on the trailblazers had just gotten in the habit of obliterating them from orbit, then sending down skilled teams to deal with the rubble fighting and subsurface hunting.