Star Force: Foothold (SF25) Page 3

  That wouldn’t happen soon, for the Nevarsor System was uninhabited. It lay 23 lightyears from the nearest lizard-held planet and hopefully was off their radar, which would give them time to get established before they alerted the enemy to their presence.

  Paul knelt down, a la Gladiator, and picked up a bit of soil in his fingertips. He wasn’t wearing any armor, just a standard white Archon’s uniform, which gave him a better tactile feeling of the world that he was going to be calling home for several decades if all went according to plan. The other 8 trailblazers with him would be frequenting the planet until they were ready to expand into adjacent star systems and start building their little empire out here, but Paul would remain stationed on Namek as its caretaker and guardian, for it was the one planet they could not afford to lose.

  As soon as the first cargo jumpship fully unloaded, which would take a few days minimum, it would be turning around and heading back to Star Force territory to reload and begin establishing the out and back supply chain that would feed Namek additional supplies and personnel, and from Namek the rest of the soon to be new territory would be fed, so securing the planet was of the utmost priority, which naturally fell to Paul, given that he was the mastermind behind the foothold strategy.

  The soil felt harsh and very dry, as if it was soaking the moisture out of his fingers…but to Paul that signified raw building materials and a planet just waiting to be reworked into a bastion of civilization, as Davis would have put it. The galaxy was indeed vast and wondrous, but also harsh and terrifying. One side goal of Star Force, aside from surviving against the V’kit’no’sat and others, was to bring a beacon of light into the wilderness, and from Davis’s point of view that light was civilization.

  ‘The more civilized you became, the more likely your neighbors are to emulate,’ the Director had said in one of their recent discussions when Paul had been back to Earth. It had been strange seeming him again after so many years apart, as well as several of the other trailblazers and Star Force personnel, for now, as their territory grew, they were getting more and more spread out, but no matter where they went within their territory and beyond, Star Force infrastructure…Star Force civilization bound them all together with a common purpose and even the most remote planet in their dominion felt like home when you saw the recognizable grey stations and bases that they’d been seeding across their small slice of the galaxy.

  Now here, on Namek, they’d be doing the same. What was a harsh, untamed world was going to be transformed into an outpost of civilization, one from which they would be able to strike at the lizards and push back their barbarism, shielding other nearby worlds with populations that were no match for their common enemy, many of which hadn’t yet achieved space travel and knew nothing of the threat that lurked nearby.

  ‘For over a thousand generations the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic,’ Obi-wan Kenobi had said, and Paul felt that Star Force had a similar calling…though the ‘peace’ part wasn’t completely accurate. He and Jason had often discussed the difference, with his friend pointing out that Star Force was less Old Republic and more Empire, only with Jedi leading it instead of Sith…and Paul had to admit he had a point. Like the Empire, Star Force was all about infrastructure, military might, and securing the galaxy.

  As much as Paul identified with the Rebel Alliance, especially now that they were faced with a similar situation against the lizards, he preferred the good guys to be more than a ragtag band of hopeful idealists that overcome their enemies through wit and luck. Here on Namek they definitely wouldn’t be playing rebels, for they were taking a page out of the Empire’s playbook and building fortified military infrastructure, which was one of Paul’s favorite hobbies.

  He dropped the handful of dirt and stood back up, seeing Kyler-042 walking his way after coming out of a nearby dropship as techs and cargo handlers began unloading behind him.

  “Long ride, but we’re finally here,” Kyler said, walking up on Paul’s shoulder as he watched dozens more dropships descending to the planet.

  “What was the score?”

  Kyler smiled. “Greg 6, me 4, Sara 3, and Emily 1. You?”

  “Jason and me both had 5, Rafa 4, Travis 3,” Paul said, giving the training scores from the trip out. Instead of the trailblazers all traveling on their own jumpships they’d split up into two groups so they could use the 4 month trip out as a group training exercise. Given how little they saw of each other it was an opportunity that they weren’t going to pass up and had spent most of their travel hours in the sanctums on the jumpships.

  “Middle of the road again,” Kyler said of his own performance. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “Greg really got 6?”

  “Yes, and I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear you didn’t.”

  “What happened with Emily?”

  “Heavy grav training was wearing her out and she didn’t want to nix it.”

  “I’m surprised she even got 1,” Paul said, impressed. “What’s she up to now?”

  “1.4 gs for base training and 3.2 for power segments.”

  “Ouch…I haven’t heard of anyone else getting that high?”

  “Neither have I. She’s got one hell of a vertical now too. Looks like she’s got springs in her shoes in normal gravity.”

  “Makes me feel like I’m slacking,” Paul admitted.

  “If you got 5 that’s not slacking.”

  “I haven’t been using gravity training, and I’m wondering if I’m missing out.”

  “What have you been focusing on?”

  “Hi-Lo…running, agility, and evasion.”

  “Swords too?”

  Paul smiled. “Always. Two of my increases were in that subcategory.”

  “What’s your running pace up to now?”

  “I’m keeping it short…just 5k segments, three a day, and I’m holding 4:10 pace.”

  “I’m doing 10k twice a day, at 4:50, so I wouldn’t say you’ve been slacking. Do you notice something funny with the air?”

  “Does have a bit of a twinge to it.”

  “I like it. Keeps you alert.”

  “Now that we’re here, let’s start the warship crews on their trials,” Paul suggested. “They’ve been hammering the simulations all the way out, and the sooner they start competing with each other the fresher they’ll be if we have to fight off a lizard attack.”

  “Haven’t spent much time with them, but you’re right, they’re sick of the sims. How long will it be before they get some surface time?”

  “Good question…we can organize field trips if we have to, but it’ll be at least a good 6 months before we get a proper mech bay constructed.”

  “That’s too long. We need to set up some field camps for at least part of the troops to rotate through…and I’m not sure what to do with the aquatics short of digging them a swimming pool.”

  “They’re just going to have to live off the sims for now.”

  “They know that, but I’d like to get their feet wet sooner rather than later.”

  “First expansion wave they will.”

  “Two years?”

  Paul chewed on his lower lip as he mentally calculated. “I’m hoping for sooner than that, but I’ve got a prerequisite list for this world before we shoot off to any others. Faster we get through it, faster we start spreading out. You’ll just have to make do with the swimming pool until then.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about. I’m as much of a mechwarrior as an aquatics specialist now, but our Clan and line troops don’t have that luxury. And you’re joking about the swimming pool, right?”

  “Good luck finding enough water on this rock to fill it.”

  Kyler frowned. “I thought there were subsurface deposits?”

  “The Hycre scans say yes…but who knows.”

  “Hello, Paul,” Sara said with a smile as she walked up behind him and poked a finger in his back, startling him. “You guys having a cookout or something?
”

  “Just enjoying the view,” Kyler commented as Paul mock slapped the blonde Archon, missing her face by an inch.

  “We do know how to pick them,” she said, kicking at the dirt. “Not quite Corneria, is it? Looks like this place was made for fighting.”

  “I had Clan Saber pack some seeds. We’ll start to green it up if there are subsurface water pockets.”

  Sara blinked. “Didn’t realize that was part of the plan.”

  “Oh yeah…and the trampoline is going right over there,” Paul said, pointing off to his right.

  “You’re terraforming now?”

  “Bit of a side project, but yes, and we’re going to relandscape too. Put some border hills up to give the base and the mechs some cover to work with. Plus our anti-lizard booby traps are easier to hide in vegetation.”

  “If we do our part they’ll never get here,” Kyler pointed out.

  “You’re assuming they’ll hit the closest systems first…they may leapfrog instead.”

  “Not really their style,” Sara added, “but Kyler has a point. Unless the system defense fleet is overwhelmed they’re not going to get down to the surface.”

  “Plan for the fights you don’t want,” Paul quoted.

  “And that’s why he’s the masterbuilder,” Kyler said, pointing both index fingers at Paul’s chest.

  “Take notes.”

  “Na, just give me a nice waterworld to defend. I’ll be good.”

  “Speaking of which,” Sara said, “since we don’t have a use for them here, how long are we going to delay our aquatics?”

  “We were just discussing that,” Kyler pointed out.

  “Everyone stays put for now,” Paul said, watching the hundreds of cargo lifters buzzing around carrying crates out of the dropships and into makeshift stacks. “I’ll let you know when we’re set to start building other bases. We need a prerequisite amount of infrastructure in place and operational here first.”

  “I meant for hunting.”

  Paul frowned. “Are the lizards on any nearby water worlds?”

  Kyler shook his head. “Not that I know of.”

  “No, I mean how long before our fleets can go hunting.”

  “That’s not what you said,” Kyler differed.

  “He said ‘building bases,’ so I asked about ‘hunting.’ Try and keep up.”

  “Not yet,” Paul cautioned. “Let’s see if anyone notices our presence here first.”

  Four months later…

  Paul touched the surface of the worktable and slid a holographic icon floating above it off to the side on the base schematics, then dragged two others in, trying combinations of positions and seeing what arrangement he liked best. The spaceport was in the dead center of the infantile city and largely complete, with a few other structures ringing it in various stages of construction. Two miles away from that was a large pile of dirt that was stretching out into a line that would circle all the way around the center zone when completed, but for now only three segments, each about a kilometer long, were visible on the map, rising up as shallow bumps, under which construction crews were working furiously to get the mech bays built.

  Learning from past battles with the lizards, Paul intended to put the already well armored bays under an additional layer of dirt on Namek, burying them inside the perimeter mounds as well as digging further below the surface and making them multi-tiered facilities with ramp staircases for the mechs to climb up and down. There were three in the works, located north, southeast, and southwest at even intervals and the general framework construction was already complete and holding up the soil above.

  The construction crews were now creating the interior of the bays, which would include not only mech repair facilities but the factories to make entirely new units, as well as research and design apparatus that would allow them to make modifications to existing models or design completely new ones. Given the distances involved between star systems and their relatively slow gravity drives, Paul was realizing more and more that each system they possessed had to be reworked into an independent entity that didn’t need to rely on interstellar resupply.

  That had originally been the plan as far as logistics were concerned, but given this new front they were opening up against the lizards they were going to, he expected, be fabricating new models of mechs in the coming years and there was no way a 9 month round trip back to existing Star Force RnD facilities was going to work. He needed a local hub, even if they couldn’t build up every star system to the same infrastructure levels, and Namek was going to be the hub for this bit of territorial expansion.

  Paul switched out another structure, not liking the virtual placement, and brought in a different one. He’d been tempted to build the entire base underground, for security reasons, but part of him felt that was retreating from the problem. The mech bays needed to be a hardened target, because they would be on the enemy’s primary hit list, but the rest of the base he wanted to keep on the surface. Maybe it was a point of pride, but if the enemy could hit them at their strongest point then this whole mission was going to be for naught, so he decided to keep the tall skyscrapers and work around their weaknesses.

  First off, the standard structures were continually being upgraded for strength, both in terms of rigidity and armor. Small scale weapons fire was no longer a threat, and even the lizards’ det packs couldn’t individually take a building down anymore. Redundant support beams were now standard package as well, meaning the enemy would have to take out multiple ones to bring down even a medium-sized structure…and Paul felt that tactical difficulty was enough of a security countermeasure to enable ground troop reinforcement or evacuation of base personnel if and when the time came.

  What he had to avoid was the one shot kill, which their cruisers or kamikaze kirbies could potentially land. Star Force shield tech had steadily been improving, but samples taken from lizard shielding had yielded more immediate upgrades than the far superior models detailed in the V’kit’no’sat databases. Though it was difficult to produce, both in terms of time and resources, the B-type shield was now one of the standard pieces of tech the Archons had available to them for use in the field.

  ‘B’ stood for many things…base, bubble, beta, big ass, and beautiful. It was a clear spherical shield that could be calibrated on any static location, then provide it with significant physical and energy protection. Downside was it was a power hog and couldn’t be passed through by troops, skeets, or anything else…nor could it be any other shape than a sphere. The radial degrees of coverage could be modulated to only protect a portion of said sphere, allowing ground troops to move about beneath while the shield terminated a few dozen meters over their heads, and the radial distance could be adjusted, making the shield bigger or smaller, but other than that it couldn’t be sculpted to fit any other shape…meaning it couldn’t be fitted to skeets or warships.

  That said, Paul was quite glad to have it on his holographic pallet as he refined the base designs. The dirt ring was going to be the operational borders of the base in phase 1, but later the interior area would become a city that would eventually expand beyond it and the ring would function as a fallback barrier should the enemy infiltrate it as they had Corneria Prime. In fact, right now he was moving buildings around with just such an invasion in mind, positioning them in the best defensible arrangement possible, knowing that they were going to dig connecting tunnels underneath to facilitate transport even if the streets had been taken by an invading army.

  “You look busy.”

  Paul’s head came up, as did his right eyebrow. “You’re late.”

  “Blame the Hycre,” Sam said as he walked in and pulled a stool over to the elevated worktable on the opposite side from Paul. “They were a month late in getting there, though we only had to delay a week. The lizards were more entrenched than anticipated.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Deviousness…they had one standard base on the surface, which we smoked easily. Then when w
e went down to pick off the survivors we stumbled across a subterranean base, hidden beneath the shallow lake and nearly invisible from above. I had it targeted from space and we tore it up pretty good…until we realized it was only one of several surface access points for a huge monstrosity that they were building underground.”

  Paul frowned. “Either this is a later stage of their standard game plan or they’re adapting to our orbital bombardment.”

  “Bingo.”

  “How’d it play out?”

  “The lake water flooded a lot of it, and we poked as many holes as we could before we went down hand to hand. Fortunately most of the base was empty, as it was still under construction, but if operational it could have held well over a million of the little buggers.”

  Paul whistled. “I hope you checked for others?”

  Sam nodded. “We did, and had the Hycre do a sweep as well. The planet is clean of lizards.”

  “And the Hycre?”

  “Just saw warships before we left. Don’t know when their construction crews will arrive. Any of them swing by here?”

  “No visitors yet, from either side.”

  “So when are we going to make introductions?”

  Paul sighed. “After persistent nagging by a bunch of little whiny girls I’ve agreed to move up the timetable and let three teams go sniffing around. We do need our own maps of the area, to at least confirm and update the Hycre ones.”

  “When?” Sam repeated.

  “You’re included in the little whiny girls metaphor, by the way,” the Admiral said, moving around another holographic building to a more strategically viable position. “I told them as soon as you caught up.”

  4

  May 7, 2402

  Menthat System

  Ricopal