Star Force: Termination (SF38) Read online

  “Target neutralized,” the sniper reported.

  “Anyone hit?”

  “Just got my bell rung...but my mongoose is toast,” the Archon that had went flying said as he leaned against the wall while he got his spinning head under control.

  “Get a drone out and up there,” David said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Let’s see what else they’ve got waiting for us.”

  After a couple of minutes of unpacking, a little dog-sized remote control drone zipped past David and headed up towards the wreckage of the cannon turret, still too far away for David to see, even with zoom. He altered his comm settings and pulled the transmission frequency from the drone so it showed in a small popup window on his HUD, giving him an eyes-on view of the tunnel as the end doors/wall gradually grew larger.

  He guessed they were at least a half mile away, but by the amount of time it took the drone to travel the distance it might have actually been farther. Eventually the view of the doors widened, including a crack between the two half, confirming that they actually were doors and not the back wall of a perpendicular tunnel crossing, with a junked turret still hanging from the peak of the ceiling over a small debris pile beneath it.

  As David watched a trio of small objects rose up from the floor, looking for all the world like Doctor Who’s Daleks. A few moments later they started acting like them too, firing blue plasma streaks out towards the drone and knocking it offline with 3 quick hits.

  “Anti-personnel turrets,” David announced unnecessarily, for the rest of them had been watching as well. “I want snipers with eyes on along the walls while the rockets advance up the center with me. Mongooses stay put.”

  “I’ve got a bead from here,” one of the snipers offered.

  “How stable?”

  “Twitchy, but I think I can chew it up a bit.”

  “Give it a try.”

  With the words barely out of his mouth a yellow lachar flash lit up the tunnel, followed by four more in rapid succession, then one of the other snipers observing chimed in.

  “He’s making good hits. I think we might be able to take them all out from here.”

  “Please do,” David prompted, with seven other snipers starting to take pot shots at the turrets…that suddenly decided to retract into the floor.

  “Damn it, they pulled them back in.”

  “Hold on,” David said, pulling a pack of explosives off his mongoose and setting it on the floor before he hopped on. “I’ll get their attention. Rockets and two snipers move up to half distance and stand by.”

  David turned his mongoose back on and slowly rolled it out and hugged the right side of the tunnel, giving the snipers as much room as possible. His armor could stand up to a few wayward shots, but he wasn’t eager to take any friendly fire. He gave the snipers some time to reposition as he maintained his right side line and accelerated up to about 30 kph and held that speed, zooming ahead with his helmet and looking for any surprises, intent on stopping where the drone had been killed.

  He didn’t get that far before a couple of the turrets popped out of the ground and started firing at him…with several yellow flashes answering back. Both hit, with the former impacting David on the chest and being repelled by his shields at first, then one hit lower and punched a hole in the mongoose’s front bumper shield, but it didn’t slow the machine.

  The leftmost turret blew apart after a few well-placed hits…then it was replaced by four more popping up, one of which came out of the wall.

  David slid the mongoose to a stop just short of where the dead drone lay as the plasma and lachars crisscrossed, then it took a few too many hits and lost power…as did his shields as they were overwhelmed with several consecutive hits, leaving the remaining plasma streaks to gouge into his green armor.

  The Archon jumped off the mongoose into a backflip and came down behind it for some cover to let his shields regenerate as the snipers continued to do damage to the turrets that were just a bit too far ahead of David for him to see with his Pefbar, but he could confirm that there were no minds around the tunnel doors and turrets, meaning all of these were automated/remotely controlled defenses.

  He pulled his plasma pistol off his back rack, kicking himself for not bringing a rifle. The one he had on his back was a stinger, given that they planned to take The Word personnel prisoner. Some of the other Archons had plasma rifles and a mix of other weapons, but not him. He just had a plasma pistol and a bunch of ammo, along with a stinger pistol and rifle, plus some Kiritas grenade/mines that he was still too far away to use.

  “Rockets ready,” someone said over the comm as David ducked down behind his quickly shredding mongoose corpse.

  “Test shot…don’t waste ammo,” he said, showing nerve under fire as a single rocket zipped past him. He couldn’t see it hit, but he could hear the explosion.

  “Door hit,” Harry told him, referencing the fact that it had missed the small turret and blasted into the barrier behind it…which was ok, given that David expect them to have to blow their way through anyway.

  “Get closer,” he said as his shields flicked back on, indicated by an icon on his helmet’s HUD.

  “Permission to get reckless?” Harry asked.

  “Define reckless.”

  “Mongoose plus det pack.”

  David smirked inside his helmet. “Don’t hit the drone on the way by…or me.”

  “Keep your head down.”

  David did as instructed, though there wasn’t much of the mongoose left to hide behind. He’d resorted to dropping down on his belly to stay behind some of the debris, but the turrets kept pounding it, whether on auto-tracking or remote he wasn’t sure, but they were methodically eating up his cover, with one of the rear tires exploding into a spray of rubber just before another mongoose zipped past him and drew their fire.

  Harry’s icon fell off behind it, though David couldn’t see anything directly, and it stayed put on the ground as they both waited several long seconds for the very large boom to come. When it did the loose mongoose parts blew back over top of him in the concussion wave, exposing him a partial view ahead.

  “Turrets neutralized,” Harry reported with obvious satisfaction in his voice.

  David stood up, brushing the debris off him just in time to see some 6 more pop up out of the floor and walls and start shooting at the two of them.

  “To hell with this,” David said, reaching into his pack and pulling out a partial glove that he slipped over his right hand. “Rockets get as close as you have to and light these bastards up. I’ll draw out the rest,” he said as two came by him in the tunnel before he’d even finished talking. He ran by Harry, who was already side pedaling to get out of the way, then pulled out a Kiritas grenade from his pack with his left hand and rubbed it against the activation pad on his right, taking several plasma hits to his shields that quickly went down again.

  Harry pulled out a plasma rifle and started taking aim at the turrets, hoping to draw at least some of their fire away from David or knock one of them out as he ran forward, but held his position against the wall, neither advancing nor retreating as his shields also went down.

  Rockets and lachar flashes filled the tunnel behind them and poured in on the turrets, blowing apart 3 of them almost instantly, with more of the trashcan-sized pylons popping up to replace them, including some coming down from the ceiling around the remains of the cannon turret. As he soaked up plasma hits on his armor, David sidearmed the remote grenade towards the nearest one then dropped to a knee, keeping his eye on the hockey puck with his thumb rubbing the detonation trigger on his right hand.

  When it bounced off the floor and skidded up next to one he triggered it, blowing apart half the device, but not able to take out the firing eye that shot back at him once before a pair of sniper shots finished it off as they deftly found the hole in the casing he’d just made.

  More turrets popped up and more got knocked down by the rockets, with David advancing a few more steps, arming another
grenade and hurling towards a target, detonating when it got where he wanted it, then repeating the process several more times as his armor got very chewed up…but he knew he was the only one in the group with the denser ranger plates, so if someone was going to play bait it had to be him.

  Eventually the defenders ran out of turrets, thankfully before the Archons ran out of rockets, but as David cautiously walked up towards the debris field around the heavily damaged but as of yet unpenetrated doors his mask filters locked up. He frowned and looked around the area, stretching out his Pefbar into spotlight mode and searching the walls…finding small ventilation shafts that were pumping out a cloud of toxic smoke that was quietly mixing in with the dust from the rocket explosions.

  “Damn it,” he said, knowing that he only a few minutes of reserve air to work off of. They could retreat back down the hall, for he doubted they had enough poison to fill it all up, but it would be taking them in the wrong direction and buying time for the enemy…something they couldn’t afford.

  David picked the weakest spot on the now damaged door and chucked a grenade towards it, telekinetically stopping it before it hit, then wedging it into a nook before letting go and detonating, then he checked with his Pefbar to see how thick the door was, finding in that spot it only had a few inches of material left.

  David marked that position with a waypoint on their battlemap and stepped to the side, ignoring the toxins pouring out around him.

  “We’ve got toxic gas coming in near the doors. I want every rocket we have left to hit the waypoint, and start bringing up the remaining det packs. We have to break through now,” he said as he slowly walked away from the doors as the rocket streaks started coming in and exploding behind him.

  He couldn’t see much from the distant mongoose lights, nor his own armor lights, but in his Pefbar he caught all of them as they passed, along with the explosions behind him, allowing him to monitor the damage even with his back to the doors.

  “Cease fire,” he ordered some 35 seconds later when he spotted a hole forming. Once the rockets fell silent he ran over to it, knowing his oxygen was still on the clock, and examined the basketball-sized hole beaming with light from the far side. He pulled out and primed three grenades and wedged them in and around the hole, with him having to telekinetically hold one in place as he backed up.

  When he trigged them all simultaneously the hole expanded out wide enough for a single person to climb through…which he did after a quick Pefbar check of the far side. Going through head first in a gymnastic spillover that had his chest armor leaning on the bottom edge of the hole so he could squeeze his pack through the top, he rolled out into a bad somersault and fell off to the side, due to his lumpy pack. He got to his feet quickly and looked around, seeing a small clump of mini-skyscrapers and other buildings directly ahead underneath a very high and well lit dome.

  Around the perimeter was an open ring that he now stood in, with The Word city inside covered with numerous Star Force ID tags.

  “I’m through,” he said over teamcomm, walking away from the breach point and having his filters unlock and start drawing in fresh air, thankfully. He looked up at the top of the dome and saw a tiny hole in the ceiling plates where the drill team had come through, realizing that they had beat his team here and were already engaged.

  “Everyone get in here, we’re late for the party,” he said, switching comm frequencies. “Status report?”

  “Hey boss, glad you finally showed up,” Nathan replied. “We’re in a bit of a pickle right now.”

  “What have you got?” David asked, walking a bit further away and looking around, unable to see anything on the outer ring that was completely devoid of buildings or other objects. The dome arched straight down into the floor, with two other large door entrances spaced around the perimeter as evidenced by the battlemap that was now updated with the information the drill team had already gathered.

  “Walkers, small quadrupeds and one big biped. Big one shot up on our way down, with a couple of guys falling and getting messed up really bad. They’re alive and we’ve got them out of the fire in a building, but we’ve got our hands full. There are a lot of stationary turrets that we’ve been working our way through, but the big one is preventing us from bringing anyone else down from up top. We’ve got 9 down here and not much in the way of plasma weapons to work with.”

  “David, glad somebody finally showed up,” Rikku broke in. Apparently the ranger had been one of the first ones down.

  “There’s gas at our entrance. They using it anywhere else?”

  “Not that I know of. It’s all walkers and turrets in here…with no people that I’ve been able to find, though we haven’t had much of a chance to look. I can’t sense any within Ikrid range.”

  “Hiding or bugged out?” David said, hearing footsteps approaching from one of the narrow streets between buildings as his team began to come through the door hole one at a time.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Stand by,” David said, running up towards the noise and pulling out his plasma pistol just before a horse-sized quadruped walker moved out and swiveled its dual back turret his way. It pumped more plasma into his already damaged armor, with his shields holding up against the first two shots before going down again.

  David shot back, but rather than gun it out with the thing he sprinted towards it and slid underneath the legs, jamming his own between its metallic supports and twisting them askew. With some heavily applied leverage he tipped the beast over onto its side and kicked his way free before climbing up over onto the back and pumping four shots directly into the turret barrels and slagging them as the walker started to stand up despite the Archon’s weight on it…which wasn’t much with him weighing about 225 lbs including armor and pack.

  David stayed on top of the thing as it righted itself, pumping shots into the main casing until he melted through, then he tossed his weapon aside and pulled out a grenade, primed it as the thing tried to buck him off, then pushed it into the hole…or tried, for he did fall off the second time.

  The grenade fell askew, but with a quick reacting telekinetic grab he redirected it back into the hole then blew the thing, popping out the armor plates like a flower and leaving the dead hulk of the walker standing erect like a dead AT-AT.

  “Sorry,” David said, getting back on the comm. “You guys in any immediate trouble?”

  “We’re holding on our,” Rikku replied, “and thinning out the stationary turrets where we can. It’s the big mech we don’t have the firepower to take down.”

  David looked on his battlemap for the tag, and found the enemy mech just outside his view behind the buildings around the ring to his right.

  “I’m on it. Any signs of a self-destruct?”

  “Not yet, but we’ve been pretty busy so don’t hold me to it.”

  “Keep your eyes peeled. We’ll take care of the mech.”

  “Have at it,” Rikku prompted.

  “Need help?” Nathan offered.

  “Nope, he’s mine,” David said, running off along the buildings in its direction.

  4

  “How many rockets do we have left?” David asked over his teamcomm as he poked his head around the corner of one of the buildings and got eyes onto the mech as it twisted to the left and fired its two arm-based plasma cannons up to the ceiling as a rope dropped down from the drill hole. The plasma melted it in half even as a couple other Archons were peppering the mech’s legs with small arms plasma fire, trying to create a distraction.

  Once the bottom half of the rope fell, the biped mech twisted its torso around and angled its arms down and fired into the street gap between buildings as the Archons fled back to cover, with David spotting a bulgy rocket pod over its right shoulder along with what looked like a stubby head.

  “Seven left,” Harry reported after taking a quick count.

  “Get up here and unload on the thing. Everyone else into the streets and go after the quadrupeds…and stay away from
the big one. It’s got a pair of heavy plasma cannons, but it looks too large to move anywhere aside from the outer ring.”

  “And the tunnels?” Harry guessed.

  “Probably,” he answered as the first of the rocket launcher toting Archons came up behind him. “Pick a spot and everyone hit it. We can’t afford to scatter fire.”

  “We still have some det packs,” Synker-8299 suggested.

  David pulled one of the silver discs out of his pack and held it up for Synker to see. “I still have some of these. Get me a hole in the armor if you can.”

  “Pick your spot,” the acolyte said as two more rocket launchers caught up to them, each with three rounds that they’d collected from the others.

  David grabbed his plasma pistol in his right hand and leveled it at the back of the big mech and fired a single shot, making a tiny pot mark just below the ‘head’ and off to the right. The mech didn’t respond to the sting, but continued to take pot shots the other way as it walked further around the ring and temporarily out of sight.

  “As fast as you can,” David said as the foursome ran up, with him diverting into a side street as he continued to talk on the comm. “Don’t shoot anywhere else if it turns around,” he said, running to the nearest cross street and ducking to the right, intent on getting ahead of it in case it did turn around.

  But between him and it was another quadruped roaming moving up the street, with him turning right into its firing path. Wanting to save his grenades he exchanged plasma pistol fire with it, eventually winging the turret and knocking out one of the barrels before he got up to and jump kicked it down onto the ground…along with himself as he fell off.

  He pumped several more shots into the turret then took off running again, not sure if he’d completely disabled it or not, but needing to get over to where the mech was.

  David passed the next side street, noticing another Archon to his far left taking on another quadruped, along with several other hulks further into the tiny city. Up ahead there was a junked turret that Rikku’s team had already gotten to, and David noticed that it was the same rising variety that they’d encountered back in the tunnel.