Star Force: Counterstrike (SF18) Read online

  That would have stood out against the horizon, she thought, pumping her arms and legs as fast as the machine would let her. The Humanoid mechs didn’t have a top speed, with the stride and balance relying on the pilot alone, so Jasmine tried to get as much out of the mech as possible and was soon dripping in sweat as the cockpit’s air conditioner fought to compensate for her body heat.

  Yet another reason she preferred piloting these mechs with the minimum of clothes.

  “Qui, battlemap up left, aff,” she said, bringing up a small tactical map on the upper left side of her display faceplate. It appeared translucent, with a number of faint colored dots indicating their units and two enemy contacts…but based off the dispersal pattern of all the mechs, which appeared as blue dots, there had to be more than two. So those were probably damaged units showing up on sensors while there were more undamaged enemies in play.

  Jasmine mentally cursed the lizard’s sensor dampening technology as she rounded yet another forest island in the sea of snow, coming up on a downed thor that was missing a right arm and most of its torso. The mech was a vertical variety, looking like the Humanoid mechs and built in similar proportions, but it had no flexibility of design and was run off the same movement computers that her madcat and the other conventional mechs were.

  The Archon slowed to a walk, giving her aching muscles a brief respite, and turned her floodlights on the area, making sure not to step on the pilot if he or she was outside. As the neo walked around to the opposite side Jasmine’s gut flip flopped when she saw that the chest armor damage had reached all the way into the armored cockpit pod and burnt through, killing the pilot inside.

  She ground her teeth together in anger. The mechs had been specifically designed to keep the pilot alive even when the machine was trashed. The cockpit pod she rode in now had special armor, even more dense than that covering the mech, that laid inside the regular armor creating a sort of lifepod should the mechwarrior be defeated.

  Jasmine glanced at the battlemap, seeing that the dead mech wasn’t registering on their battlenet, meaning that its comm system had been totally fried and she wasn’t going to find out who had been inside. What was left of the external markings showed a Clan Kerensky wolf head symbol on the outside of the left leg, meaning it was one of her fellow mechwarriors.

  Pushing on she followed one of several sets of tracks in the snow as the sky began to lighten ever so faintly, pushing back the starlight into greyness but doing nothing to dampen the plasma flares of the battle. She passed three more downed mechs on approach to the base, which was still 3 kilometers away, when a smoking brick lifted up over a section of forest to the south and flew towards her, firing plasma from two forward launchers.

  She knew instantly that the predator was responsible for ambushing their reinforcements, probably picking them off in ones and twos after the main body had gone through. By the looks of it her fellow Kerenskies had made a fight of it, for not only was it smoking from several impact points but nearly all of the craft was showing up on her mech’s sensors now that it had cleared the trees, meaning widespread hull damage.

  Hopefully that meant its shields were still down too, otherwise she was going to die along with the others.

  Anger boiling over, Jasmine turned the mech towards the lizards’ flying weapons platform and ran full steam ahead, zigzagging to throw off their plasma cannons while thanking her luck for getting a neo, which had far more maneuverability options than the conventional mechs. She took hits to her right arm, upper left leg, and abdomen, all of which gouged out chunks of armor but none penetrated all the way through. The predators’ plasma cannons were far stronger than those on the kirbies, and standing toe to toe with one was akin to suicide.

  They did have a weakness, however, that a fast mech could take advantage of. Jasmine broke stride twice to raise an arm up and fire a return salvo of blue plasma against the green coming from the flying tank, the first of which hit armor on the front end, with the second hitting an intact shield on the port side. Combined with the incoming speed of the predator she didn’t have time to get off another shot before she was underneath the brick and skidding to a halt.

  It immediately tried to fly off, but she moved with it, quickly blasting apart one of the belly cannons with a pointblank plasma shot into an already heavily damaged underside of the craft. Half the smoke, it seemed, was coming up and around the edges from wounds sustained from beneath, suggesting that the predator had come down on the other mechs from the sky rather than skimming across the surface as it now tried to do.

  The room above her head to the target disappeared in an instant and it looked like the lizards were trying to crush her mech underneath the predator, but before it could do either she ducked down and lifted her hands straight up, punching into the underside with stiffened fingers that dug into the damaged machine where her left hand impacted.

  Belatedly noting that the other belly turret had already been slagged, Jasmine curled the fingers on the hand that had penetrated the armor and locked them into the predator as her other hand slid across the intact armor, scratching large furrows across the surface with the peeled material flaking off into the snow below. That hand slid off the side of the craft before coming back around underneath and firing plasma into exposed sections as the predator dragged the mech across the snow.

  Jasmine held on briefly, then the chunk of hull broke away in the neo’s hand and she fell to the ground on her back, making an impromptu snow angle as she wiggled around trying to flip over onto her belly and get back up into a standing position. Once she flipped over she saw the predator careen into a section of forest ahead of her, dragging its port side in the snow and digging up the dirt underneath, making a dark little streak in the whiteness to where it stopped half buried inside the trees.

  A gout of plasma fired back at her neo laying belly down on the ground and vaporized the snow to her right, sending a plume of gas and water up into the air that rained back down on her mech, temporarily blocking her vision. Abandoning the idea of getting up at the moment, she dug her left arm into the snow and lifted her torso up enough that she could get her right arm pointed forward…then she fired on the now stable target, unleashing her mech’s plasma lances as quickly as she could press her right thumb into her palm, switching from finger movements to firing controls.

  Her plasma leapt out across the 150 meter gap in squirts, burning holes into the armor where the trees had knocked down the remainder of the predator’s shields. Three shots in and she was fortunate enough to take out the plasma cannon that was firing at her, while the others seemed to be either distracted or nonfunctional. Taking the opportunity while she had it, she sniped those locations on the hull then thumbed her palm again to deactivate the weapon and give her control over the hand as she pushed down on the ground and brought the mech’s legs up underneath the torso.

  Jasmine got her neo to its feet and walked forward, pouring more plasma fire into the downed predator from both forearm cannons, tearing it apart bit by bit until there was nothing left but a smoking hulk of what had once been a formidable gunship. Breathing heavily, both at the exertion of the full body controls and the adrenaline of narrowly escaping death, Jasmine took 5 seconds to steady herself and assess the damage to her mech before she ran off to the east again, knowing that the others would need reinforced as soon as possible.

  She zigzagged around two more sections of forest before her view opened up onto the main battlefield, with her mech tripping on the snow as she was thrown into a moment of shock. There were downed mechs everywhere, along with six more wrecked predators, as a flood of plasma and a few sporadic missile barrages exchanged between the Clans and dozens more of the lizards’ flying tanks swarming over the Clan Star Claw base, blasting away at mechs, ground troops, buildings, and anything else they felt like blowing up.

  The main defense turret was down, literally having collapsed at base center. The perimeter turrets were also gone, the one on Jasmine’s left look
ed as if it had exploded from the inside out, with nothing but the shredded bottom half remaining. In the distance she could see swarms of lizards on the ground, moving around the perimeter of the exterior wall to several breach points where they were pouring inside. Her eyes backtracked the flow and saw a landing zone to the northwest where several dozen kirbies had set down and were offloading troops while firing on any mechs en mass that dared to approach, though most were still tied up fighting the predators, all of which were keeping very low to the ground or building tops.

  Jasmine saw another downed predator near the edge of the base with a set of huge holes in the side, suddenly realizing that the Kerensky turret was targeting them across the 17km gap if they flew high enough, so the lizards were keeping low to avoid the heavy lachars that pretty much ignored the fact that they had shields. She guessed they had to learn the hard way, but there were so many remaining on or near the ground that she cursed their adaptability.

  Her mech stood in place for a number of seconds after regaining its footing, with Jasmine just looking around trying to figure out what to do. Running out into that mess and getting herself killed wouldn’t do anyone any good, so she had to be smart about this and find a place where she could help. Part of her wanted to go after the downed kirbies, but even their smaller plasma cannons could rip her mech to shreds in sufficient numbers…and going after not one, but several predators was worse, even if she did have some help from the mechs still in the fight.

  Just then she saw a group of skeets fly by and strafe one of the predators, blasting through its starboard shield and hitting the hull, shaking Jasmine out of her hesitation as she began walking forward, searching for a weak spot to hit.

  Just then the predator that had been targeted by the skeets tipped to the side, grabbing the Archon’s attention and dismay. A neo had jumped up and grabbed the unshielded portion of the gunship, climbing its way on top and blasting handholds into the hull armor as it went. The predator’s anti-grav engines compensated for the additional weight, leveling out the craft as the neo hung on, rising to the top along with it.

  Jasmine saw it punch down three times, hammering a topside shield until it breached, then amazingly the mech stood up on top of the brick-like design and began blasting down at the hull with impunity, strategically placed between the plasma cannons where all but one couldn’t reach. That one had been the pilot’s first target, then the mechwarrior began carving out a large breach point in the hull, firing one plasma blast after another down at her feet and cutting into the beast as it continued to target other mechs below.

  More skeets flew in, this time from the west, and fired on the kirbies, the lizards crossing to the base, then a pair of the predators before they pulled back out, one of which took a hit and lost most of its tail, dipping its cockpit down backwards between the two remaining forward anti-grav engines before leaping up higher for a moment as the propulsive engines tipped skyward. Either mechanical failure or by pilot control those engines cut out and the skeet fell laterally towards the ground, still suspended on its two intact gravity drives which were no longer providing enough repulsive force to keep it in the air. The skeet angled into the snowy plain to the east, nearly impacting the fearless mech on top of the predator before passing out of Jasmine’s view as it dropped toward the ground.

  As it disappeared the predator did also, suddenly falling from the air down into one of the base’s streets, throwing up debris as it at least partially landed on one of the buildings. The mech on top fell with it then jumped free as it hit the building, landing with one foot on the top of the outer wall and bouncing over it to land in a crouch on the mech strewn ground outside the base as if the mechwarrior was a commando rather than a pilot inside a giant machine.

  It stood up and ran after another target not yet over the base perimeter as Jasmine glanced at the battlemap.

  “Qui, eye track,” she said, then looked at the moving blue dot that represented the mech. “Data.”

  A small display screen appeared in the upper right of her faceplate, detailing the mech, its current damage, and pilot.

  “Clear data, aff,” she said, taking off in an adrenaline-inspired run to catch up to Cora, but having to step carefully to avoid all the debris on the snow field surrounding the base. If anyone was going to be able to pull them out of this mess it would be her, and Jasmine was going to do everything she could to assist the trailblazer, even if that just meant soaking up some hits meant for the other mechwarrior.

  4

  As Jasmine’s mech ran toward Cora’s another predator went down on her right, crashing into the snow nearby a trio of Clan Scorpion mechs that were just now being reinforced by a pair of Kerenskies. The five linked up and tackled the next closest predator while it and the others mixed their fire between the mechs on the ground and the buildings in the base, many of which were already destroyed.

  Jasmine ducked left to run around a fallen Star Claw vulture, then ran straight under another predator, firing up at the underside with both forearm cannons as she passed by, not even drawing any return fire on the chaotic battlefield. There were so many targets for the lizards to shoot at that she ran into the clear on the other side without taking a hit, coming up on where Cora’s neo and a pair of Scorpion madcats were running circles around a pair of predators while support fire was coming in from half a dozen other scattered mechs.

  Plasma flashed over the flying tanks’ shields, with Jasmine adding a couple plasma lances of her own as she approached, then a flick of motion impacted the side of the more distant predator, with the subsequent plasma coming from the mechs on that side now getting through to hit the hull.

  Another flash of motion and the shields on the other predator’s flank went down and the two madcats running through the gap between enemy machines turned and fired two linked pairs of plasma each into the side of the alien gunship, setting it a smoke from the damage. Cora didn’t know what was taking down the shields, but she wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. She ran left to swing around the front of the nearest predator, taking a hit to the right arm as she did so, then began adding to the damage the two Scorpion mechs were racking up when the predator’s starboard side came into view.

  More mechwarriors did the same, and soon the weak sides of the two flying tanks were swarmed by the walking machines. One of the madcats lost an arm, the other an empty missile box as they ran the gauntlet between the two and attracted most of the predators’ firepower, but soon the enemy weapon platforms had their anti-grav drives hit and dropped to the ground, whereupon the mechs finished off any still active weapons batteries.

  Jasmine skirted around the edge of the downed predator as she searched for Cora’s mech, which the battlemap said was heading the opposite way, back north towards where the Clan Scorpion base was. As soon as Jasmine caught sight of her neo it ducked inside the Star Claw base wall and disappeared again.

  Another skeet squadron flew by overhead, strafing the predators now spread out over the battlefield…which was a mistake on their part. The surviving mechs were now grouping together and hunting down individual enemy units, taking one down then moving on to the next while the predators seemed content to just sit in place and blast away at whatever came near them…which made Jasmine wonder where Cora was heading.

  She didn’t want to distract her with the comm, so the Kerensky just ran after her and entered the base through the same gate the trailblazer had. When she stepped inside she saw dozens of buildings had been obliterated, while others were under attack from the lizard ground troops. Barely two steps in and another of the buildings detonated in a blast too large to have come from the predators…meaning it had to be a det pack.

  Outrage burning up inside her, Jasmine ran her mech down the rubble strewn street and began picking off every lizard she would find with ranged plasma shots. She knew better than to shoot one with a det pack up close, and she didn’t have time to take a close look at which of the vermin had one or not.

  Co
ra’s mech was nowhere to be seen, but that didn’t matter right now. As Jasmine walked forward she caught a glimpse of street fighting to her right between the lizards and what looked like Star Claw security forces augmented by a Knight. She stopped her mech and twisted around, lining up her right plasma cannon carefully, then fired just behind the lizards, killing two and knocked half a dozen more to the ground from the blast wave. She adjusted her aim forward slightly and fired twice more, then dropped her arm and let the Star Claws clean up what was left of that group of lizards.

  Jasmine pulled out of the side street and walked on down the main that led to the rubble that had been the base’s primary defense turret. There two more predators were hovering and blasting away at buildings with impunity while the mechs were outside dealing with the others. Pulling her arms up and forward, Jasmine fired off repeated blasts towards the nearest one as she began to run at them before ducking into a side street when the pair began to return fire at her. Down that street several blocks was another predator floating over the base, which she fired at quickly as she ran towards it, intent on ducking right at the next intersection. Three steps prior to that the predator suddenly went down, from what damage Jasmine couldn’t see.

  Knowing that some of its weapons could still be functional and dangerous Jasmine ran at it, intent on putting it permanently out of commission. She fired as quickly as her weapons would allow, pummeling the downed gunship as she approached. When she got up close she entered a section of the base with several leveled buildings that gave her a clearer view of the area, which was when she spotted Cora’s mech again.