Star Force: Penance (SF49) Read online

  She took 9 neos into her personal ‘binary’ and went to the head of the formation, with it splitting into two stars that kept close to each other, with Morgan at the point of hers. They ran as quickly as they could manage, with the other mechs trailing behind in a long column towards the edge of the engagement zone before splitting up to go after individual targets. On the march over to the enemy Morgan got a good look at what they were up against…and she wasn’t disappointed.

  The fields of short blue grass were covered in Scionate yellow, both from their tanks and their personal armor, with thousands upon thousands of infantry storming the city’s outer walls and overwhelming the defense turrets that were chewing up everything within sight with lethal precision. The defending mechs had been forced to flee to the edges and fight around the city, drawing off tendrils of the enemy troops in order to avoid being overwhelmed with plasma…which added to the yellow motif that was drowning out the blue landscape and now encroaching on the white/greys of the city.

  The city gates were raised, matching up with the underside of the bubble shield that was still holding. Valerie attacks on it were light, given the anti-air turrets raising up and popping through tiny holes in the energy barrier. Same with the primary turret that was roasting distant tanks and infantry with its single cleansing beam, but most of the enemy hoard were now below its firing angle, up close against the city walls, which in some cases were only lightly armored building exteriors.

  That said, there was no way for the enemy infantry to get inside the perimeter without blasting a hold in either a building or the gates that had risen up to cover the gaps in between the structures, making for a crude, jerky line rather than a curved exterior, given that this city and others were constantly expanding. Morgan was glad they’d included the permanent defense protocol in the colony mandates, giving them a way to shut off access to the city from the ground at any stage of construction.

  As she was running forward, now about a kilometer away from the nearest Scionate a pale white beam shot over her mech and hit one of the tanks ahead, moving down slightly as it fired and bisecting the rectangular slab with little effort while also vaporizing a few infantry on the far side where the beam sliced a narrow trench into the ground that erupted with a backblow of soil and moisture.

  That meant the first hoth was finally unpacked and into play, something she was grateful for as a large group of tanks and infantry began turning towards her mechs, with them soon to be overwhelmed.

  “Alright guys, this is it,” she announced to the cluster. “Don’t dig too deep or you’ll be toast. Hit and fade and pull them away from the others. Fighting retreat if possible. They’ve got the numbers, so we have to split them up…and remember to give the hoths some clear firing lines. Watch my back and shoot targets of opportunity, we’re about to bust them up and I’m not sure how they’re going to respond. Play it conservative until we get a feel for them.”

  There were no responses from the other mechwarriors, given that none of them knew her personally. They were all acolytes and lower, mixed in with a lot of Regulars that also weren’t very experienced. Those that were were either fighting on the fronts or positioned to more valuable worlds. Admat was low priority, but per Star Force protocol they didn’t underdefend any world, meaning these mechwarriors had decent skills but were nowhere in Morgan’s league and they knew it, preferring to keep a respectful quiet as they headed into battle…though that wouldn’t last long before they started chatting at each other coordinating attacks.

  Morgan used her superior skill and familiarity with the neo to goose her speed, running faster than the others could do without tripping over their own mechanical feet and pulling ahead of her star slightly as she popped up both mauler cannons on her mech’s arms and started firing at the nearest tank…completely ignoring the infantry until they got underfoot. She haphazardly punted one of the armored cats that didn’t move out of her way as she tore through the shields and armor of one of the tanks that couldn’t quite manage to keep her in its primary sights, giving her the opportunity to kill it quickly without having to suffer a main cannon strike to her shields.

  Her neo was covered with hundreds of infantry blasts, which she knew would add up eventually, but right now, at the beginning of battle, it was the tanks that were the most dangerous so she swerved to her left and attacked another one from the flank, melting it with her maulers rather easily, taking only 9 hits before she dropped it to the ground unpowered with large chunks of the machine dripping in molten globs onto the grass and setting it on fire.

  Soon there was smoke billowing up in multiple locations as she and the other mechs hit the tanks, all the while the now two hoths were sniping more further back in the lines on a regular basis as they slowly walked forward. Morgan watched her shield strength closely, backing off twice for a run through open field before circling back at a different point and hitting a strategically placed tank that further opened up the infantry to slaughter by some of the heavier armed Type 1s in her cluster.

  The Scionate didn’t blink, pressing their losses by diverting more troops Morgan’s way, so many in fact that the armored kitties started jumping at and on her mechs, knocking over several before others came in to help shoot the cats off. Small as they were, the quadrupeds were heavy enough in numbers to make it difficult for the mechs to get up and move around, with her seeing a pair hanging onto the leg of a starbright whose shields had already gone down. They were latched on and firing their tiny plasma cannons into the mech at pointblank range before Morgan got to it and latched her mechanical hands around both and pried them off…then pitched them each baseball style back into the hoard.

  After she threw the second one a few more infantry tried to jump on her mech…only to get a rude awakening as she maneuvered it around more like a giant suit of armor than a walking machine, punching and kicking the Scionate into mangled pulp inside of what felt like tin cans from the neo’s perspective.

  They were not back down though. It was as if the more troops they lost the more committed to winning the Scionate became, with Morgan’s cluster eventually having to retreat back to the hoths to avoid being overwhelmed. They all made it out, but a few had taken significant hull damage and had to be rotated to the rear of their ever changing formation that she kept modifying with the flow of battle. Her own neo was showing light damage in places but mostly for her it’d been shield damage that she’d suffered, though she had taken a square hit from one of the tanks that left a melty patch on her chest.

  She’d berated herself for walking into that for some thirty seconds afterwards before letting it go and adjusting. The Scionate where now coming after the mechs in tank groups of no less than three, making assaulting them more difficult because at least one of them would usually land a direct strike when a neo approached, and multiple ones for the less agile mechs. Morgan began hunting those personally, with the others supporting her when she busted up their formation.

  With the retreat they’d stretched out the Scionate lines…but their infantry was actually surging ahead of the tanks and running suicidally right into the mechs around the hoths’ feet. Morgan knew this was their chosen tactic, no matter how many they lost they were going to swarm the mechs, meaning they had to make a stand here or abandon the hoths, which no matter how heavily armed and armored they were, the hundreds of tanks coming their way would eat them alive given enough time.

  Morgan ran the numbers through her head, sizing them up visually rather than trying to count as she considered having to do just that and evacuating the pilots by some means, perhaps right now before they were swarmed, but that would mean taking the hoths out of the fight and they badly needed their firepower…not just the cleansing beam, but the auxiliary weapons that were only now coming into play and firing own on the infantry with numerous plasma cannons designed for just this purpose, along with a quartet of maulers to deal with larger, close-in targets.

  It was going to be a tough one, but the more they kill
ed out here the less there would be for the infantry within the city to deal with, so Morgan decided to make their stand, sort of.

  “Alright, we’re digging in here. Don’t get sloppy and keep cycling out as needed to recharge shields, but we’re holding position on the hoths, and the big boys aren’t going to be standing still. You’re going to position 400 meters apart, side by side, and casually advance. We’re going to work around you, but we are not going to get stuck in one spot and become turrets. That’s what the Scionate want, and we’re not going to give it to them. We’re mobile, so fight mobile. That order goes to everyone.”

  “Keep clear of the hoth feet and let them clean up the infantry that gets to them. We break up the chunks ahead and they sweep, got it? If we go down, stay down and inside your mech. Don’t try to evacuate or you’ll be target practice. Anybody with missiles left unload them now…all of them, hit the isolated tanks. I’m going for the groups,” she said, running in a long circle to turn around, then accelerating to breakneck speed and trampling a few Scionate that got in her way, trying to trip her up.

  Morgan shot several with her maulers enroute, but as she zigzagged heading towards one of the tank groups a white cleansing beam passed through it and cut two of the five tanks in half, greatly increasing her odds. She wanted to say thank you but knew there was no time, firing four shots against one of the intact tanks as a second group not far away also targeted her.

  Knowing she had to get some cover she dipped her arms as she ran and popped out the underside sword blades, jumping into the air using her anti-grav and landing on top of one of the bisected tanks. She slid off it and skewered one of the intact ones, punching through its shields and then its armor with the corovon alloy blades. She wasn’t able to cut sideways, so she pulled them back out, one at a time, and jabbed them back down in, going for both the cockpit and power core, eventually hitting which one she wasn’t sure, but the tank suddenly stopped shooting her with its anti-personnel turrets, signaling to the trailblazer that it was dead.

  A plasma shot hit them both, washing against her shields and taking them down a chunk as the other Scionate tank group fired on its own in order to hit her, committed to defeating their enemies no matter what the cost or sacrifice. She knelt the neo down then jumped again, this one mostly going sideways and got to another of the closest tanks and began hacking it apart, knowing that properly used the sword blades would kill faster than her maulers.

  Doing her best Optimus Prime impression, she finished off that tank and ran across the burning ground to the third as another hoth cleansing beam hit the other group, taking one of their tanks out of the fight…with hundreds more approaching on the cluttered horizon.

  “Not going to make this easy, are you,” she whispered, running three steps before soccer-style kicking a Scionate that didn’t move fast enough. It bowled over three others, which she proceeded to try and step on as she ran past, managing to put foot to only one and bury it into the ground on impact heading towards another tank, this one smoking from previous missile damage but still firing its main weapon.

  She took it out with her maulers from range, then knelt down with its hulk to her back, gaining some cover as she targeted the nearby infantry behind her with her maulers, resetting them for quicker, smaller bursts…with the energy expanding rapidly enough to turn the weapon blasts into mini shotguns at range. Normally that wouldn’t have been effective against a tank or other heavily armored target, but the infantry was another matter, with her lining up shots with many targets down the line and hitting them with ease given the dispersion.

  As she fired she also got a visual look at the rest of her mechs…which were not in good condition. Some still had shields up, but most were taking some level of armor damage. In the corner of her eye she saw a madcat with multiple Scionate hanging on it, then under their combined firepower the left leg broke off, sending the mech to the ground as it was no longer able to stand. To the pilot’s credit it moved itself around enough with its stubby arms and remaining leg to get its weapons pointed towards the enemy so it could still fire in a straight line whenever an enemy crossed it.

  Her battlemap tagged the mech as down a moment later, with the infantry around the area all turning and swarming the injured target.

  Morgan clenched her teeth and sprang up from her cover, sprinting back towards it as one of its weapons was ‘chewed’ offline by the tiny yellow plasma blasts. She didn’t dare use her maulers with a friendly underneath, so she popped her blades back out from underneath her neo’s wrists and went in hacking and kicking as more and more infantry poured in to replace the ones being lost.

  Midway through that frenzy her battlemap pinged a warning…indicating that one of the city’s gates had been breached.

  4

  When Kara got the breach warning she wasn’t even fighting in that city, but she knew that was where she had to go and took off like the flash, flying low to the ground and shooting a few more Scionate infantry as she got up to speed…then she was over the blur of blue grass below with a moment of calm that she used to check out the situation on the battlemap.

  It wasn’t good. The sea of Scionate was even larger around the city that was showing Morgan’s ID tag. The trailblazer was in a neo and a tough fight herself, but the enemy troops were now pouring through the breach in one of the city gates, with the surrounding defense turrets all showing to be offline…meaning they were probably slag by now. That left an undefended side that the Scionate were grouping around and sending a small, but constant stream of troops through, including tanks by the look of it.

  She pulled up a side diagram on her HUD that showed camera footage of the breach with measurements overlaid. It was wide, but narrow enough that she thought she could clog it up. That wouldn’t prevent the Scionate from poking another hole elsewhere, but it would buy the city some time and relieve the ground troops already fighting off the enemy infantry in the streets. They appeared to have them somewhat contained at the moment, including a couple of ravens to add firepower, but the Scionate, the big ones anyway, appeared to be just as strong as the Knights, for she could see some of them going at it hand to paw in a wrestling match where the enemy had rushed several defensive barricades and leapt over.

  The bodies were starting to pile up too…all Scionate. They were running right into a Star Force buzz saw and attempting to overcome it with numbers, armored and very agile numbers, but numbers none the less, and Kara knew she had to cut off or at least disrupt the flow before the good guys started to go down.

  The back lines of the Scionate hoard became visible ahead, a growing mass of yellow that Kara didn’t hesitate for nor slow down, passing over the rear tanks too fast for them to target her and firing down on the infantry randomly as she made a straight line to the gate breach. When she neared it she arced upwards and came down on top of those passing through like a red bullet, landing on the back of one of the Scionate so hard she heard its armor crunch…then she brought up both arms and fired her Dre’mo’don at those outside, mowing down a dozen of them before turning around to fend off a lunge/jump from those just inside the gate.

  An easy spin kick sent that one flying backwards, with her shooting it out of the air and nailing three others below it before it even hit the paved ground. A cartwheeled roll to the right got her out of the firing line of one of the tanks that landed a huge plume of plasma on the ground where she had just been standing, melting the pavement into a brief-lived puddle of molten goo that resolidified within seconds.

  Kara’s palms morphed and produced the orb emitters, then she summoned up and fired a green/white glob of energy and sent it directly into the tank, knocking down its shields and melting through the armor plating before detonating inside and blasting it apart like a child’s toy that had broken, though the heavy parts didn’t fly far, more like they just fell apart from the green glow that flashed inside.

  Kara shot down another two dozen infantry before summoning up another large orb and killing
a second tank, with the remains of both now sitting just outside the gate breach and becoming impediments to the oncoming flow. Doing so was creating a significant power strain on her Vorch’nas, but she didn’t have time to poke the tanks to death with so many enemies around her, not to mention the hundreds of plasma blasts coming her way that her shields had to deal with.

  To ease that burden she retreated a few steps and swung around behind the edge of the hole in the gate, shooting some more infantry on the inside then laying in wait for the next ones to come through…whereupon she mowed them down easily, with the rim of the breach now superheating as the tanks outside tried to expand the breach and get to her position.

  Kara backed up, then flew/jumped across the gap, killing two more infantry on the pass and took up refuge on the other side, simultaneously getting a glimpse of the enemy troops on the interior that Star Force was managing to thin out and overcome. A line of blue plasma even shot through the breach and held steady for several long seconds as one of the ravens took aim at a tank outside, meaning that Kara had succeeded in giving the troops a breather, even as more Scionate rushed through the gap that she diligently mowed down into a growing pile of bodies.

  A large bolt of yellow plasma came back through and hit the distant raven, impacting on its shields and not getting through, with Kara having a moment of epiphany that she thought Paul would be proud of. More for the sake of the other troops fighting and only a little for her own amusement, Kara opened her comm for wide broadcast, knowing that everyone would hear it, and jumped out onto the top of the pile of bodies, ducking as another blue continuous plasma beam shot by over her head a couple of meters and two yellow ones returned, also missing her as she summoned up another large orb.