Star Force: Ringworld (SF80) Read online

  There were a host of other remote pilots onboard the command ship, but her and Paul were the only senior Archons. The rest of the mages and scattering of titans were spread out across the fleet, most of which were onboard the warships that were carrying the drones to the battle that was just now breaking out. Should the lizards find a way of actually jamming their battlemap systems…which would be nearly catastrophic…they needed to have Archons onboard the various ships so they could use the shorter range backup systems, even line of sight lasers if needed, to keep in control of the drone fleet.

  Ship Captains and Admirals could do that with the help of their crews, but they didn’t have the same experience levels as the Archons, let alone the few that actually had Sav. It’d been determined that the ability was going to be gained when one made titan with Jumat and Ubven being reserved until one made the next level up that was going to be called ‘ViLord.’ The latter tier 3 psionic trigger had finally been discovered by Vortison after pouring through the biomonitor data from Rio when he’d gone through his ascension. Thanks to his growing understanding of genetics under Nefron’s tutelage he’d been able to find the needle in the haystack that he’d been missing before, so that now made three tier 3s that they were able to share out of the four currently possessed.

  Jason’s Kex trigger was still elusive, but the decision had been made to give new ViLords all tier 3 abilities going forward. Right now that meant two additional ones to the Sav that titans already possessed, but Vortison said he was hopeful to be able to find the triggers for the rest before the Archons even stumbled upon the abilities themselves. Riona wasn’t too sure about that, but would be glad to get the full set…something that no Zen’zat to date had even come close to achieving, though the Archons definitely weren’t following the V’kit’no’sat rules and happily cheating whenever they could.

  At present there were no ViLords, with Morgan narrowly holding the top spot with a level 354 titan ranking. She, like the other Archon veterans, had been given Ubven ahead of time and now stood on par with the rest of the trailblazers and a lucky few second gen like Riona who had also been gifted with abilities ahead of her rank, which in her case was the addition of Jumat…which she absolutely loved and now fully understood the new ranking name, which indicated a proficiency in melee combat that the Jumat was oh so good for.

  That left the non-privileged titans as the only ones that had Sav, but most mages were so used to using the command nexus system that they were far more skilled and had a telepathic advantage over the more mundane neural interfaces that the naval Regulars used. They were also visible within the battlemap system if Riona wanted to find them, but only the ‘biggies’ were constantly visible, with Paul being the only one at present given that the Excalibur was in the process of decelerating from its interstellar jump into the lizard system at extremely low orbit around the pair of stars at a position that the scout had determined was not heavily defended.

  Within a handful of seconds the command ship slowed down enough that sensors began to function and the swarms of lizard ships nearby started to become visible, which she knew would be coming after them as soon as they could, but they had succeeded in hitting a small pocket of space that would give them some maneuvering room prior to the melee to come. They needed that time to set up to cover the incoming fleet, which immediately involved the four Godzilla-class transports that were following the Excalibur dangerously close during the jump.

  They came out in single file spaced only a pair of seconds apart. Any deviation in the mathematics of the jump would have seen them ramming into one another, but the jump deceleration had been spot on and the massive transports that dwarfed the Excalibur successfully arrived right behind them and, as per previous orders, immediately fanned out in four cardinal directions as the Excalibur dove closer to the star to move off their entry jumppoint…which it then sent a signal back to the next ships in line to indicate that it was clear and no alteration would be necessary.

  The next ships were some 30 seconds back and spaced a bit more carefully, knowing that the arrival point was going to clog up fast, but the Godzillas had been designed and sent specifically at the head of the fleet to do one thing and one thing only…release the Warship-class jumpships that they were carrying in racks and get them into the system far faster than had they made individual jumps single file into the jumppoint.

  As soon as they got some distance on each other the massive ships broke apart with a flower petal-like dispersion. Each Godzilla carried 22 warships and had been designed for quick release through three waves, the first of which detached within 20 seconds and got free enough to accelerate further away on their own, clearing the way for the second layer to peel off, then finally the third, leaving a collapsing skeleton of the giant ship reducing itself down into a much smaller vessel that immediately fell back behind the Excalibur as that command ship guarded their rendezvous point.

  With the warships fanning out into a more or less spherical defense screen they began releasing their own drones from their racks, putting several thousand of the advanced starships into play within minutes as the first of the lizard cruiser swarms began to close on the jumppoint that was now starting to spit out more warships that belong to Riona’s task force…which was the Excalibur and a chunk of Paul’s third of the invasion fleet. She handled the ship they were on to free him up, then would coordinate the mages in charge of yet smaller task groups, though at the moment she was letting Paul handle the starting moves and just watching until he gave her something to do with so few ships yet in the system.

  The titan didn’t have to wait long, for with a thought Paul gave her an immediate mission priority. Even though the Excalibur stayed put to cover the Godzillas with a smattering of drones pulled in from the deploying warships, within the battlemap Riona sat in whatever virtual perspective she wanted and mentally went with 16 warships and their drones in pursuit of an approaching lizard fleet tendril that was further away than three others. For whatever reason Paul wanted her to tackle that one and she wasn’t going to argue the point, sinking her Sav-enhanced mind into the task of repositioning every ship in her group where she wanted it and handing out orders to the three mages in it, ship Captains, and even some specific ones to individual support ships.

  She micromanaged ahead of time as much as she could, then when her hastily formed battle group came within weapons range she had to trust in those under her command to handle the duties. She could control a lot of ships and weapon systems simultaneously, but battles of this scale quickly became chaotic and overloaded a person with detail…but for Star Force they never got that far because the commanders shared duties and spread out the work load, as Paul had done by assigning her to this task.

  Likewise she let the three mages guide the chunks of this battlegroup as she kept an eye on the larger strategic picture while mostly tuning out what was happening back at the jumppoint and pouring her attention where it mattered most. The lizard fleet tendril was stretched out, with the leading elements trying to get to the jumppoint as quickly as possible. That left her with wider spacings between the enemy ships than they needed to really pound Star Force’s advanced shields and she took advantage of that right away, sending some priority target markings to the battlegroup and letting her subordinates decide exactly how to handle the attack.

  The mages likewise did the same, deferring to their ship Captains who then deferred even smaller details down to their remote pilots so a gunner didn’t have to worry about anything other than shooting the target assigned to him, while Riona didn’t have to worry about aiming any batteries or maneuvering ships around to get a better line of sight on targets. She could mentally click a target or fleet move orders with a variety of priorities and her people would carry them out more efficiently than any computer system, given the fact that they could adapt and improvise using their skills and experience.

  The lizards, on the other hand, just threw themselves into the chaos. Riona could see some coordinat
ion between them, and they no doubt had commanders and probably even masterminds organizing the mess of ships, otherwise they would have literally been running into each other in such large numbers, but when the fighting started she could sense the chaos and its effects in their fleet movements. The coordination lessened into a mob mentality, pursing a single target or order and leaving the fighting to the individual ships. They adapted on that level rather than with fleet tactics…which just let Riona cut them to shreds.

  She rotated ships in and out, getting shield-weakened ones away from harm by looking at the surrounding area and anticipating lizard moves. It was all very simple, but in a mess this big there was so much to watch and do that you could easily get blindsided by the simplest of attacks if your attention was elsewhere.

  Riona wasn’t overloaded, not on an engagement this small, and neither were her mages with the lizard ships coming in piecemeal. That density increased until some of them tried to make a run around her glob of ships and get in to the jumppoint, but she saw the maneuver coming even before they got parallel to the jumpships, which were sitting mid formation and sniping targets at range with their heavy Keema batteries and bloon launchers.

  She diverted a slew of drones out to intercept the blockade runners and successfully got them there in time, though a few managed to ram her drones. Just as she was issuing a recall order for a couple of them the part of her mind that she’d left free to observe what was going on with the rest of the fleet back at the jumppoint she saw a massive flare of shield energy behind them that she recognized as a dampening umbrella.

  Riona was glad for the stop, but the fact that the lizards were already trying long range kamikaze runs against them was chilling…and that one had been a jumpship, blocked by a Star Force jumpship specialized not for carrying drones, but for being able to drop a huge interdiction field that would chop down massive amounts of momentum. Paul must have gotten it into place as soon as it came out of the convoy, and it had just saved at least one of their warships, if not several that would have been caught in the debris wake had there been a collision at those insane speeds and that high mass.

  Glad that Paul was a step ahead of the lizards already, Riona kept the bulk of her attention on her own engagements and truly forgot that her body was back at the jumppoint inside the Excalibur. Her point of view was fixed inside her own battlegroup as she constantly adjusted their formation to counter the incoming waves of ships. The mages would add their own tweaks to her orders without contradicting them and in effect make her own tactics more effective in doing so…right down to the gunners and helmsman that did the same within their very narrow-focused tasks. The overall effect was immensely damaging to the lizards’ chaotic attacks, but their numbers continued to climb higher and higher, even as they were having to navigate around their own ship debris to get at the Star Force fleet.

  Managing that debris was one of Riona’s primary tasks, with her giving specific orders to the support drones in her battlegroup to get to and push it into various positions, some being sent back into the approaching lizard ship flows as slow moving islands that they’d have to divert around and lose some of their grouping over…and the more they could spread out the enemy ships, even if just in a handful of situations, the less firepower they could get on the Star Force shields, whose recharge rate was so impressive that a single cruiser could be firing on a Star Force destroyer and take more than an hour of continuous damage to even bring the shield down…whereas the destroyer could take out the cruiser with three quick Dre’mo’don blasts.

  The lizards had to mass against them or they were just wasting ships, so Riona’s primary mission here was to cause them to get into positions where they wasted ships…but even as she watched what was coming towards her battlegroup she could see what was on the horizon as Paul had sent scouts out into the rest of the system and that data was feeding back to her mind via a short delay.

  The defense fleets around the planets weren’t holding idle and they were already sending ships their way, with the intent obviously being to smash this incursion before it could get any larger. Neither Megan nor Jack’s command ships were here yet, let alone their portions of the fleet, meaning there was no one to backdoor the lizards and make them pay for lessening their defenses…though at this point Riona figured they probably didn’t care. They just had to stop Star Force from securing a foothold to bring in the rest of their fleet.

  Then Riona noted that another battlegroup was sent out, for it went flashing past her position making a small jump under the command of a mage that was actually in one of the warships, unlike Riona who was only here in mind’s eye and was restricted by lag range, so Paul couldn’t send her out to take advantage of the opportunity.

  No, she was stuck within an operating range from the Excalibur, which wasn’t going to be an issue here because she got an automated prompt from Paul that went out across the entire fleet that indicated they were going into ‘Alamo’ mode. Riona knew that meant they had to hold this position at all costs, but a quick personal message from Paul indicated that he didn’t want her group just sitting here and shooting ships as they came in.

  She agreed, knowing that the situation would snowball out of control if they let them group into insane numbers, so she had her fleet abandon its current battle and fight its way clear of the growing debris field to the point where they could make their own short microjumps in clear space and flank the approaching swarms. There were so many ships that they couldn’t microjump in close, forcing them to move under relatively slow speeds like flood waters choking out a narrow river.

  Riona’s battlegroup hit one of those big river tendrils from the side further out, destroying ships and forcing them to fight her there…which would decrease the flow going in to the jumppoint slightly and give them less incoming firepower to soak up.

  It also meant that her battlegroup was going to get overwhelmed quickly if the lizards chose to divert enough to pounce on them, but their reaction speed wasn’t great and Riona had a couple of minutes to do a lot of damage before she saw the shift coming from ‘up river.’

  Rather than stand and fight, she ordered another quick pullback to clear space and sent her group even further up the flow and hit them again, making the pursuing ships choose between chasing them or letting them keep ambushing their fleet from the flank.

  The enemy chose the latter and had the pursuing ships turn back towards the jumppoint, deciding to weather the ambush with almost all the ships that Riona was firing on ignoring the attacks and pushing on ahead. Gritting her teeth she resolved herself to the now obvious mission.

  She was getting free shots and had to take as many ships out as she could, for they wanted to shut down the jumppoint and ambush the incoming Star Force ships if possible, and right now they were sending so many ships towards them that it looked like they were not going to be able to hold them back without losing a massive amount of drones, and maybe not even then.

  Riona knew she had to change the game, so she dispatched her few support ships to go after the lizard debris that was drifting past their position. Latching on and slowing it down, then hauling it out into the traffic. She was going to build a damn with it if she could and disrupt the flow, and her battlegroup was providing her with plenty of stones to work with, for their Dre’mo’don were literally cutting the cruisers in half on impact and the smaller drones were shredding others with repetitive Bri’mart conical blasts as they tried to fly past.

  Riona had her fleet stretched out into a long line and, like an assembly line, chewed the closest ships to bits with the support ships grabbing chunks at the end of the line under her personal command and started building her floating asteroid field that was already starting to bottleneck a bit of the enemy flow. There were so many ships getting past though, without even taking a shot, that she knew Paul was going to have his hands full. If they could just hold out long enough to get their entire fleet here it would be a different story, but right now it was a race for tim
e and position, with Riona easily able to destroy the ships passing her position but with too few guns to take them all out.

  Like a school of yellow/tan fish ignoring a predator, they zipped by en mass and poured down onto the defense lines around the jumppoint with Riona unable to watch much of what was happening with her focus being on killing every possible ship that she could to lighten the load on Paul.

  4

  Ouch, Megan said when her command ship came out of its jump into a small open area that had Star Force ships continuously moving out to clear the path for more to come in. Meanwhile there were entire portions of black sky and the double stars obscured by yellow/tan clouds of ships.

  No kidding, Paul replied through the battlemap system along with a waypoint. Get at it.

  Happy to, Megan said, immediately diverting her heavily armored donut straight ‘down’ as Paul tagged a few warships and their drones to go with her along with the incoming ships in her task force that would be following along. She knew instantly that there was not going to be any end runs going on right now, for the situation was so dire that holding the jumppoint was the only priority that mattered. If not, the rest of their fleet would get ambushed as they came in, with all the lizards having to do was park their cruisers just outside the jumppoint and let the incoming speeds provide all the destructive power required through collisions.

  Keeping them from doing so were large Star Force formations stretching back along the jumpline from the jumppoint, around which the lizards were trying to circumvent. The waypoint Paul had given her wasn’t there though, rather it was a staging point for a quickly transmitted battle plan.

  Mentally linking with her growing number of ships, Megan took them away from the jumppoint and into one of the few remaining clear areas, for the lizard swarm was beginning to creep around and would soon encompass the entire area, hitting them from all sides as even more continued to pour in from their parking positions around the pair of stars and a lesser stream coming in from the planets. She should have been going after those with prodding attacks, but it seemed their arrival had drawn more attention than expected…or the lizards had just gotten lucky and had the bulk of their fleet randomly positioned near to the incoming jumppoint.