Star Force: Aquatics (SF31) Page 3

  Several got through the initial wave and hit four of the squids, two dead on. The concussion wave from the explosions rippled through the surrounding water, rocking all craft nearby as the debris seemed to float near to the kill point, unlike land combat that saw pieces of shrapnel flying large distances through the air from the point of impact.

  The other two squids managed to put up their shields in time to block the attack…but not their energy shields. Those were already active and too weak to stop a frigate’s torpedo, though they would ward off a minnow or two before breaching. Each of the squids had four forward arms emanating out of a tail section that contained the jet engines that drove the craft. The tip of each of those arms contained a metallic net that could be expanded like an umbrella, and it was with these that the lucky two squids stopped the incoming torpedoes from impacting the main hull, though one lost half of its arm in the blast while the other lost only the tip and the porous shield that was on it in the detonation.

  In the massive exchange the ocean became turbulent, buffeting Vander’s streak around violently as he closed on the heels of one of the sharks as it was weaving its way through the squids and peppering them from the flank with minnows. He didn’t want to waste one of his three remaining torpedoes on it, so he fought the chaotic currents and rammed it from behind with his shield extension, peppering it with plasma shots and taking some fragmentation backlash on his own shields as he chewed the enemy submersible apart.

  He stayed at it until something internal exploded, shredding the shark. It’d probably been one of the minnows onboard, or perhaps a fuel cell…he didn’t know nor truly cared, so long as it was out of the fight. Vander pulled his nose out of the backside of the carcass, having drifted into it as he delivered the final shots. The schematic of his streak showed minor hull damage on the needle nose, which he hoped wouldn’t affect his steering…though at the moment, with torpedoes exploding around him, that minor inefficiency in aerodynamics was hardly going to be noticeable.

  Vander swung around the dead shark and accelerated towards the next closest one as the rest of the lizard support ships came into contact with the squids, of which there were 3 varieties. The largest was a light destroyer, only 20% shorter in length than the full destroyers that were getting more distance between them and the battle by the second. The main difference was the weaponry on the whale-like hull, which consisted of tree-like arms that the ships deployed when they arrived in position, essentially staking out their little piece of the ocean and becoming mini battle stations.

  From them flowed streams of minnows, for they had none of the heavier weaponry the smaller frigates carried, but the defense ‘trees’ were laced with plasma nubs that would burn anything that came into contact with them. In between the ‘branches’ of the trees there were smaller filaments that would catch objects before they could hit the hull, much like the squids’ arm shields did. Both designs allowed water to move through them in the gaps, but the rigid net lines of the squids were replaced with barely visible strands on the light destroyers, making them almost look like a hoard of spiders had set up in the trees and strung their webs between them.

  The light destroyers were definitely anti-fighter platforms, making them a significant threat to both Vander’s streak and the squids, and he knew better than to go play with one. When deployed, the defense trees would prevent him from getting close enough to the hull to use his plasma cannon, and his torpedoes would get stuck in the webbing. When they detonated they’d clear an area for additional weaponsfire to get through, but the light destroyers required a disproportionate amount of firepower to take down for their size.

  In addition to the light destroyers, the lizards also had ‘hammerheads.’ These T-shaped craft vaguely resembled a skeet, though they were much larger and on a scale akin to the frigates. They were anti-ship vessels with the express purpose of ramming larger craft and using the hundreds of plasma nubs to burn into the side of their hull in explosive fashion. It was no wonder, then, when several squids bypassed other lizard ships and went straight to targeting the hammerheads, swimming up to them and using their superior mobility to attack them from the flanks and avoid the dangerous kill zone up front.

  The first one to get hit got a squid on either side along the tail segment, with each wrapping its arms partway around the hull and bringing the ‘mouth,’ located between the four arms, up against the hull or as close to it as possible. Like Vander’s streak, a short stub of a cylinder-shaped shield reached out and sealed itself to the lizard hull as the squid’s arms compressed and depleted the hammerhead’s own shields.

  That wasn’t necessary, but it removed one impediment for the plasma streamer that followed. A pinprick of bright blue was visible from outside in the gap between hammerhead and squid, but otherwise the destruction that followed was all internal. Both squids latched on like ticks and instead of sucking blood out, poured plasma into the hull and tore apart the deadly craft before it could even think about getting close to the Black Pearl.

  Up and down the line the hammerheads were targeted first and taken out, often with the squids being targeted by torpedoes as they stubbornly latched onto the hulls of their targets. A quarter of the attack drones were lost within minutes, half of which fell to the lizards’ smaller corvettes. They were barely larger than the squids and resembled long tubes until they deployed, making them the second fastest vessels the lizards had after the sharks.

  Several of the squids got caught by the corvettes’ armored claws. Unlike the larger ships the corvette didn’t have shields, but instead made up for it with thick armor that was difficult to crack by explosive concussion, meaning they usually required plasma to take out or successive torpedo strikes. Like a crawdad or other clawed sea creatures, the corvette had four deployable arms…two front and two aft, allowing it to attack/defend itself from either direction. Several squids got caught by those claws and literally cut in half once they latched on and ratcheted up the pressure, and though Vander wanted to help them he knew it’d be suicide to come anywhere near those claws.

  So he did the next best thing and buzzed one, dropping a plasma mine that swam in and latched onto the side and burnt through…though most of the charge was used up in penetrating the armor leaving little to damage the interior, plus the ship was much larger than the sharks and one mine wasn’t going to take it down even if it had tissue paper for a hull.

  Vander swung his streak around in a spiral turn, getting a bit more altitude as he did and came back at the corvette as it finished cutting through a squid that’d just finished killing a hammerhead. That was the only way the corvette could catch the squid…when they were latched onto something else, which made them appear to be the cleaning crew amongst the lizard fleet, going around picking off the Star Force ticks.

  This one pulled apart its claw and released itself from the crushed midsection of the squid, pulling back and tucking in its claws before accelerating away towards another target with the remains of Vander’s plasma mine still attached. Using the depleted mine as a targeting lock, the Archon fired off his second torpedo from the flank and watched it swim an arced line right into the device and detonate.

  With the hole already punched through by the mine, part of the concussive explosion got through to the interior, and as Vander fought the explosive turbulence in the water he saw a gap had formed in the corvette’s hull. It wasn’t big, barely twice the size the mine had been, but it was definitely a breach allowing water in…as well as an opportunity he wasn’t going to waste.

  He swam his streak up alongside and slightly ahead of the corvette as it suddenly slowed, then he dove in towards it and launched his third torpedo, targeting the gap. It zipped across the now less turbulent water, autocorrecting as it went for the various currents, and slipped inside a moment before the hull cracked apart and blew out armor shards in a slow motion fireworks display that was shrouded by a cloud of dust.

  “Got one,” Vander said aloud, adding one more capital shi
p to his personal kill list as a bright blue streak illuminated the water in front of him.

  “Whoa,” he said, diving his streak lower to get out of the firing line of the Black Pearl that had now caught up with the squids. Now that he was paying attention he saw two more almost invisible strands shoot out from the gigantic hull and touch the side of one of the light destroyers, pushing right through their defense trees and triggering the plasma nubs to discharge on one. That strand disintegrated near the lizard ship, then it seemed to regenerate from halfway back towards the Star Force battleship, reaching out to touch the hull again, this time slipping through the branches and punching apart the strands.

  Vander knew that was an illusion, and in truth the extremely long shield column the Black Pearl was extending originated at a width akin to the size of his thumb, then expanded out to more than a meter, giving the medium plasma cannon it was attached to a few inches of clearance for it to fire directly on the enemy craft.

  The shield column flashed blue as another squirt of plasma traveled down the vacuum the shield had created in the water, essentially cheating the two kilometers of distance between the ships. As much as the lizards loved using plasma, and had adapted it to function underwater, their form of ship to ship combat relied on physical contact, due to the water interfering with conventional plasma delivery, but thanks to the ever enhancing shield designs Star Force was fielding, the Archons had found a way around the problem.

  Which meant the lizards were heavily outmatched, requiring them to either flee or charge the ship and get within touching range…something the squids were not allowing to happen, at least not for the more dangerous capital ships. Several small torpedoes and minnows streaked towards the massive hull that was creating an underwater tsunami with all the water it was pushing ahead of it, which actually made the lizard projectiles twitch on approach before they slammed into the shielded hull.

  One advantage of having a ship more than a mile long underwater was the fact that you could carry very large power cores, which fed an unbelievable amount of power to the shields, allowing the battleship to shrug off the bee stings of the minnows and weather the smaller torpedoes. Not only that, they also provided the power necessary to force and hold back the water along the shield columns, something that was not easy to do, with the downside being they were easily disrupted by weaponsfire or collision.

  But their ability to regenerate made them resilient, if not mobile. They couldn’t swing to the side very well to target a moving ship, but rather had to come out of a fixed vector from the Black Pearl, meaning you had to pick your spot to fire on several seconds before you could pull the trigger, making them almost impossible to target the sharks and smaller lizard craft. Moving through the water also put more stress on the shield columns, reducing their effective range, but once the giant ship settled into position its 16 plasma cannons made for an impressive fireworks display at range, though the firing rate was slow compared to aerial or naval combat.

  Everything in aquatics seemed to move at a snail’s pace comparably, giving Vander plenty of time to note the advance of the lizard heavy capital ships into the firing range of the defense tower, which held its own array of shield column plasma cannons, only these were the large variety.

  Those blue flashes appeared off to the left, while the Black Pearl was currently on his right as he swerved around again looking for another shark to pursue. He saw several futilely targeting the battleship and ignored them, looking instead for some opportunity to aid what squids were left. More than half had been destroyed, but all of the enemy hammerheads and a chunk of the frigates were gone, leaving the corvettes and light destroyers as the primary threat…and they were going down quickly under the Black Pearl’s plasma cannons.

  There wasn’t much more Vander could do here, so he set out to find the closest, but yet untouched squid that appeared to be in danger, sighting one that a corvette was pursuing. It wasn’t going to catch it, due to the speed difference, but Vander could see that the squid was heading to one of the remaining frigates and downing a torpedo coming its way with a wave of intercepts…clearly intent on closing to lethal range with the lizard craft…which would then allow the corvette to come up from behind and cut it in half.

  Vander kicked in his anti-grav for a short speed boost, coming up behind the corvette and seeing that all its arms were tucked in for maximum aerodynamics, giving him an idea. He snuck up behind it, getting closer and closer to its aft end, essentially daring it to open its claws and grab him, but it seemed to either not care or not want to slow down from the drag, because it didn’t respond to his presence.

  “Ok, you’re making this too easy,” he said, nudging a bit closer, ready to hit the brakes when needed, as he extended the short shield column out in front of him and nestled up against the back of the corvette, fighting against its jet engine wash. The lizards, so far as Star Force knew, had differential gravity drives in some of their equipment, but it wasn’t very advanced, meaning their naval cruisers had to rely on thrust engines for their more extreme lateral thrusts.

  Some ships had the differential engines, some didn’t, but to date none of their aquatics ships did, according to the schematics Star Force had recovered from the lizard bases captured on Corneria some two centuries ago. A lot of technological enhancements could have been made in that time, but so far using anti-grav for aquatics propulsion didn’t seem to be one of them, so the lizard ships had to rely on water manipulation.

  The corvette had intake vents on the side, pulling water into an internal caterpillar-like drive unit that exited out the back end between the retracted claws…and was spewing water directly onto the streak, making it difficult to stay close enough to get the shield column in place. Vander had to maneuver a bit high, so he was riding just over top the jet stream, in order to get in close enough to make tentative contact…fortunately the shield designer had accounted for some variation, because it auto-adjusted to the erratic movements, maintaining the vacuum corridor with a solid seal on the aft end of the corvette.

  Still no claws came out, so Vander pumped a plasma shot into the hull…then jammed on the brakes as the minimal damage seemed to awaken the lizard ship, for it deployed both claws simultaneously and arched them back to grab at his slender streak.

  Cutting his jet propulsion and flicking the maneuvering vents in reverse he quickly put some distance between the two ships, with the corvette continuing to chase the squid that was just now reaching its target. Vander thought hard, trying to figure something he could do to distract the corvette away from the squid, knowing that his one remaining torpedo wasn’t going to do much to stop it, and with the claws now deployed he wasn’t going to get close enough to hit it with a plasma shot again.

  Just then he noticed another contact on his battlemap closing fast as the corvette slowed to align with the squid that was now latching onto the frigate as it tried to flee, dragging it through the water as it did so. The corvette moved after the pair, then turned to the right suddenly, but not before another squid shot in and rammed it in the midsection between the forward and aft set of claws.

  It latched onto the ship with its arms…then inexplicably let go as soon as it had a grip, escaping the incoming claws and swimming off sharply, leaving the corvette to drift momentarily with a crack in its hull from the impact. The squid’s arms were even more damaged, but not so much that it couldn’t tuck them up into a fat needle and zip off elsewhere.

  Vander wondered what that had been all about, then saw a tiny silver tendril shoot across his vision and into the side of the now more or less stationary corvette. It widened ever so slightly, then a blue plasma blast shot into it from the not so close Black Pearl, thanks to the squid having set up the shot.

  “Good work,” Vander commented, though his comm wasn’t open. He accelerated forward and under the shield column as another plasma blast was delivered, off to hunt more opponents in the ever shrinking battlefield…then he noticed the distant contacts on his bat
tlemap, seeing that the turret tower was now under heavy assault with the incoming reinforcements getting painfully close to joining the fray.

  Too close for the Black Pearl to intercept in time, meaning the defense tower was as good as lost.

  4

  At the base of the defense tower, well lower than the altitude of the battling fleets, part of the lizard infantry was swimming across the rocky ocean floor while the rest assaulted higher portions of the huge, narrow cylinder sticking up out of the ground and running almost all the way up to the ocean’s surface 1.4 miles above.

  It was an immense construct, guarding an even more immense city beyond it, but given its size it was difficult to properly defend. This the lizards had learned in previous years as they assaulted the Human cities, trying to find a way past their defenses so they could eradicate the infestation from the planet even as orbit was being contended for in an ongoing naval chess match between massive fleets.

  Reinforcements kept coming down to bolster the growing lizard colonies, even as the Humans continually raided and destroyed those they could find. Give the lizards time to build and grow and they’d overwhelm the planet, but hit them early and often and they could stem the tide…as well as causing them to divert resources from other planets to this one, all the while Star Force’s infrastructure continued to grow.

  The defense tower was one of the more impressive underwater constructs that they’d come up with, and even now, further above, the heavy plasma cannons were lighting up the ocean with streaks of blue as they targeted the incoming lizard capital ships in between the massive explosions of the incoming torpedoes, which had the nasty habit of breaking apart the shield conduits the plasma flowed down. That bit of offensive defense was also something the lizards had learned, and it kept their fleet intact long enough to vie for the tower in what otherwise would have been a short battle.