Star Force: Equity (Star Force Universe Book 46) Page 3

  She could see it off in the distance and had been using it for some long range fire support, but this close in to the buildings it didn’t have the line of sight needed, so it was mostly just sitting there waiting for her to call. If the generator was about to go down it would move in and take whatever damage was required, but the longer she let it sit there the more repair work could be done.

  Jyra had no troops with her. They were all fighting in other positions as she was working her way around in a long flanking maneuver. Arc Commandos were good in hand to hand fighting, but that wasn’t why they were chosen. They were meant to be quiet assassins, ghosts that moved about hitting where the enemy least expected it. As one of her trainers had told her, they were 007, not Goku, and right now she was hoping that guile would do more damage than face to face combat.

  Her body had fully healed up from her back injury, but she was tired and had a lot of new weak tissue replacing what had been lost. So she was at ‘full’ strength, but that full strength was not what it used to be, plus she was partially exhausted from the fighting over the past two days. Right now though, none of that mattered. She had a pack full of explosives on her back, a rifle in her right hand, and a stealth suite worked into her armor that made her even harder to see. She was a shimmer in visible light and absorbing everything else that hit her. That was a problem if there was a building behind her that should show up because her shadow created a bit of a void, but it was much better than the enemy getting a direct sensor ping off her.

  Jyra eased up alongside one broken building, then put her fingertips on it and began to climb, clinging to the material like spiderman until she got to the top and poked her head over. She had no battlemap access, for her stealth field interfered with it, and her armor’s sensors were powered down so not to give her away. She had her Pefbar, but it only reached out to about 22 meters. That wasn’t much, but it was enough to watch her back. However, she needed to navigate, and to do that she had to see what was ahead.

  So she stuck her invisible head out just enough to get an eye line on the Zen’zat army. They didn’t use mechs, but rather large vehicles that floated over the ground and could transform into buildings when they decided to settle in. When they did that, the power to the shield generators increased, but right now the 6 she saw nearest here were still moving…or rather drifting, meaning they intended to advance further. Several large buildings were blocking them from firing on the shield generator, and on the backside of those buildings she saw dozens of Kat’vo roosted there. They were clinging to the walls like bats, staying out of the Star Force fire and waiting for moments of opportunity to strike from the air.

  Jyra still had 4 skeets and 1 gunship operational, which she had kept in reserve to cover the area around the shield generator. It looked like both aerial supports were holding off and letting the ground troops fight this out, for she could hear the firepower of the mechs and turrets clashing with more of the Zen’zat vehicles. Some were smaller than a dropship while others were as big as the turtle mechs…of which she had none left. They’d been targeted earlier, leaving only the smaller, more agile mechs in play.

  Jyra planned out her next set of maneuvers then dropped back to the ground, using her anti-grav to cushion her landing. It wasn’t powerful enough to fly her more than a few seconds, but that was all she needed to give her a far greater range of movement.

  The Arc Commando crept in closer, moving in a zigzag pattern until she spotted a group of Zen’zat ahead. She knew she couldn’t let herself get within Pefbar range of them or they’d see her easily through the stealth field, so she had to go a different direction. It took her far longer than she’d hoped, but she came out in the rear of the enemy army and crept through the open area behind them up to the rear of one of the floating war machines.

  Its shields were up, she could feel them with her Pefbar when she got close and there was a faint shimmer to let the infantry know exactly where their boundary was. And it wasn’t skin tight either. Rather it was erected a meter and a half beyond the armored hull.

  If it had its shields down, or even a gap underneath it, she could have attacked it directly, but her explosives wouldn’t do much good now, and the other 8 she could see from her current position also probably had their shields up…save for a damaged one that was parked up against a far building. It had a big gaping hole in the side that had partially made its way into the interior…

  That was her sweet spot, but it was going to take a while to get to it without being spotted. Right now all she had to do was wait, for she’d left timestamped orders, knowing she’d be out of communication…and if she broke her stealth and used her comm, she doubted she’d survive a minute, for the Zen’zat could trace it and the Kat’vo could swoop down on her position far faster than her ancestors could move.

  Most of the fighting she’d done in the past had been against Zen’zat supporting other races. This was one of the few times where she had to fight them directly. They were being directed by the Kat’vo, but the aerial race was more accurately supporting the Zen’zat in a tactical sense. It didn’t seem fair that her own blood was fighting against itself, and she often wondered what had possessed the Zen’zat left behind on Earth so long ago to break the rules and reproduce, for there hadn’t been a single turncoat in this invasion. Not a single Zen’zat that had even tried to switch sides. They were dedicated to the V’kit’no’sat, and the Arc Commando truly wondered if any of these Zen’zat, if left behind, would have second thoughts or follow the V’kit’no’sat code to their deaths.

  Jyra pondered that until the Zen’zat war machines started moving, in response to something she couldn’t see but could hear. It wasn’t loud, but the air disturbance of a starship moving at pedestrian speed through the atmosphere always produced a rumble, and she could hear the Kvash coming into the engagement. She waited for another 40 seconds before making her move, ensuring that their attention was fully on their target and the warship before she ran across the open areas between buildings towards the one damaged floating tank that was taking up a rear position, but still intending to fight with the others and add damage to the huge warship now visible in the sky to Jyra’s left.

  The infantry moved too, repositioning and making Jyra go evasive twice to avoid their Pefbar bubbles, but eventually she got to the rear of the floating vehicle and was happy to see no shields up on the underside. There was one on top, but the damage must have knocked out a generator or an emitter, so the crew was putting all their defensive power to the most obvious angles of attack and covering the breach in their hull….leaving the intact underside armor uncovered.

  Jyra ducked down and scurried her way through the 1.5 meter gap as she dug into her pack. The little mines were stealthed when she pulled them out, then appeared when they touched the underside. If the crew were watching they could probably see them with her Pefbar, but she hadn’t sensed their fields…meaning they probably didn’t have them up and were using the vehicle’s sensors and targeting data. The infantry around them was supposed to provide backup screening against this type of attack, but right now, in the rear of the formation, it was extremely lax.

  Jyra planted three devices on the hull then took a knee, letting the vehicle drift over her until her head was clear, then she ran off to the side and found some cover as she waited for the countdown timers to end. The three explosives synced with themselves, for concussion wouldn’t set them off and one blowing before the others would just disable them. But linked together they detonated in unison, with the blast wave being strong enough to knock her to the ground and even interfere with her stealth for a moment, but she was running and invisible again before anyone noticed…with the underside of the vehicle billowing smoke through the cracks in the dirt as it smashed down to the ground unable to move.

  “Got ya, you bastard. Now who’s next?” she asked herself as she heard a large strike from one of the Kvash’s main batteries hit nearby. Pieces of broken building were dislodged and dropped all around her, but it hadn’t hit the structure. Rather it had hit another of the Zen’zat tanks, and if it hadn’t finished it then Jyra would once she could get to it.

  She had to keep looking with her eyes constantly, and as she did a rotation around to look behind her she saw that the Kat’vo were gone, no longer on their protective perch. Her eyes glanced to the sky and she saw flocks of them, more than had been here, shooting at the warship in a swarm of little dark spots that were going untargeted. Apparently there weren’t many, or perhaps any, point defense batteries still working, and the big guns would be a waste on the small targets, so the Kat’vo were essentially getting free shots.

  Jyra couldn’t watch more than a glance or two. She had to keep moving and repositioning, for the Zen’zat were still advancing and she had to take down as many heavy vehicles as she could. For if it came down to hand to hand with the infantry, they weren’t going to be able to disable the shield generator from the outside. They’d have to fight inside the structure, and her Knight teams could take them in those confines…not to mention the mass of workers waiting there with spare weapons around outlined kill zones.

  No, the main threat was from bombardment on the exterior, and each tank she could kill or finish off meant one more heavy gun that wasn’t going to do damage.

  8 hours later…

  Jyra put a rifle shot, one of the few she had left, into the Zen’zat on the ground, making sure he didn’t get back up again. Over the course of the war with the V’kit’no’sat, the Zen’zat had gone from having no regenerators in their armor to having a small one that could revive them from modest injuries, but the hole she’d just blown in its chest was beyond its ability to heal, meaning he or she was now unrecoverable.

  The Arc Commando limped on, having had t
o take down 4 Zen’zat herself in the last 10 minutes. Fortunately 3 of them had been wounded before she got to them, with her catching them from behind as they retreated. One of them had full armor, but weak shields, and she’d had a handful with him. His larger size made grappling untenable, so it was just a matter of shooting and evading, with his armor having more volume due to his 7 foot height. That meant more goodies in it, and with the ability for it to reform over damaged spots meant she had to put a lot of firepower into him to finally take him down.

  He was the one she’d just shot an extra time to be sure, and her own armor was covered in melted craters…but they’d held up better than his because he couldn’t land shots in exactly the same place. Jyra had lost 16% of her emitters, meaning her shields could not recover to full strength, but right now they were recharging and giving her just a hint of a shield as she moved on through the wreckage of the dead Zen’zat tanks.

  Some were still partially operational, now working as buildings with a few small turrets that she had to be careful of, but none were mobile. She had 2 mechs left in good order, and they were moving around to take out those heavier guns, but the threat to the shield generator was gone. Now only infantry saboteurs had to be guarded against, and that wasn’t going to be a problem with so many people stuffed inside. Too many, for their limited supplies, but there should be stuff in the outer buildings that was salvageable.

  Off to the west the Kvash starship was on the ground, and in it, for the triangular hull had dug deeply in the dirt when it finally crashed. It had saved the shield generator by soaking up all that damage, but it was not spaceworthy by a long shot. Some of the interior would be, but Jyra didn’t know how much. She was still comm silent and prowling the battlefield looking for targets to stab in the back, but her explosives were long gone and her ammunition was about out. It was time for her to get back before she was caught weaponless, and against the Zen’zat her tier 1 psionics didn’t count.

  She continued to snoop around until she caught sight of a group of Clan Saiyan troops, then she shot them a battlemap blip a moment before her stealth went down so they wouldn’t shoot the disturbance. Normally that wouldn’t be an issue, but with what they’d just survived she expected them to be jumpy. So many people had been killed that, at this point, shooting the first non-battlemap signal that moved made a lot of sense even if you weren’t half crazy from all the carnage.

  “Jyra,” a Bsidd said, scurrying up to her. His armor was still intact, which wasn’t surprising considering he carried extra shield generators within the gaps between body stalks, “you survived.”

  “Affirmative,” she agreed, walking up and putting a hand on one of his appendages. “But just barely hanging on. I’m almost out of ammo.”

  “We’ve got a store left,” he said, taking the liberty to make a request through the battlemap. “It’ll be here shortly. Can you still fight?”

  “Yeah. What have we got left?” she asked as she studied the battlemap with half her attention.

  “More than they have. We wiped out their entire army save for some infantry. Do you want them run down or let them retreat?”

  “Pick off the easy ones. No air cover left?”

  “All down long ago.”

  “Let the others go and consolidate our perimeter. We need to salvage supplies and get what production we can back. I see nothing’s changed in orbit.”

  “You’ve been dark this entire time?”

  “I had to.”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “My body…is trash. I didn’t have time to acclimate the new tissue. Feels like I’m about to snap.”

  “You need out?”

  “Don’t have that luxury,” she said as a small blur appeared from the direction of the shield generator that towered over them, but was actually more than 2 miles away. The blur had a battlemap signal, and Jyra recognized it as a Rammus rolling its way like a wheel at high speed across the debris field. When he got near them he slowed, then unfurled and ran on his tiny legs until he fully decelerated, then he popped open the cargo canisters he carried on either hip.

  Jyra reached inside and pulled out ammo clips for her rifle along with a couple of food cubes and a tiny pouch of water.

  “Watch my back a moment,” she asked the Bsidd as she peeled back half her helmet on mental command enough to expose her face. She was beat red and slick with sweat, but the Bsidd didn’t have long to look as she downed the biofuel and sealed back up. “I need a new pistol,” she told the Rammus, tossing her own damaged one on the ground.

  “Ok,” he said, sealing up the pouches then turning around and running a few steps to get momentum before beginning his body spin that would accelerate him far faster over distance.

  “That’s not blast damage,” the Bsidd said, looking at the cracked pistol.

  “No. I had to use it as a club earlier,” she said, showing him her knuckles and the cracked armor on them. “I ran out of long punches.”

  “You were well chosen for your rank, Human. What do you need of me?”

  “Priority goes to our wounded. If any are salvageable, get them. Then we need to go after the prisoners before the Kat’vo put them onto their ships or move them beyond the shield dome.”

  “An attack?”

  “I don’t feel like it, but we have to hurry and recover as many as we can.”

  “I agree. I will organize the search for survivors. Rest here while you assemble a strike team,” the Bsidd said, scurrying off before Jyra could object.

  She took a long sigh, knowing better than to let herself actually rest or her body would start to shut down the emergency overrides that were keeping her going. She had to stay on the move, so she began to walk the way the Rammus had gone while she made some contacts via comm and got some information about where the prisoners were and how many guards were on them…

  4

  May 18, 4907

  Knillo System (Ziviri Region)

  Baskerno

  Jyra sat in the command center next to the shield generator when she got word of reinforcements coming into the system…and they were Star Force, not V’kit’no’sat. It wasn’t much, only 14 Bsidd Warship-class jumpships and 2 troop transports, but it was a welcome sight on the sensors as the ring of Ziviri around the base continued to grow by the day.

  They were attacking regularly, though they didn’t have much in the way of weapons. They were simply using their bulk to try and rush past what little defensive lines Jyra had left. So far the base was barely holding and keeping the shield generator intact while the V’kit’no’sat sat in orbit watching and waiting for when it fell. Their ground troops were nowhere near here, having taking up residence some 1200 miles away in another fallen Star Force base. Jyra had everyone left gathered here, including the prisoners they’d rescued shortly after the V’kit’no’sat attack on the shield generator had failed.

  There were others still out there and out of reach, but now that the Bsidd had arrived she hoped that would be enough to reclaim the others before they were killed or moved to orbit.

  Naval command was not hers, for she wasn’t an Archon, and the Bsidd and Kvash linked up on their own and began to approach the planet before contacting the ground base and filling her in on their plans.

  “We do not have enough firepower to defeat the Kat’vo fleet,” the Kvash commander said, “but they can no longer keep us from getting to ground. We can evac you or reinforce your position. What do you prefer?”

  “We can’t hold the planet with the Ziviri turning against us. We have 3,000 baby Ziviri and a couple hundred adults that are still loyal. We can’t leave them behind, but our first priority is the prisoners. I need the Bsidd troops to take them back as soon as possible.”

  “If I am reading the battlemap correctly,” the Bsidd commander commented, “most of the prisoner sites are beyond the shield perimeter. Our troops would be vulnerable to orbital bombardment if we land there.”

  “Which makes it tricky, but not undoable. You have to come down directly on top of them so the warships can’t pick you out from their own troops.”