Star Force: Relocation (SF44) Read online

  The whale-like ships pounded its hull at close range, then pulled back as its primary weapon finally came online. The invoker began repositioning over to another jumpline, but the Hycre still had an opening to hit, given that the energy fields were missing around the severed pylon.

  The weakened shields gave way before it could jump out and the Hycre racked up some more small-scale hull damage, hitting both armor and exposed interior components before the invoker accelerated away towards a planet on the far side of the system. The longer jump took additional time, and when it arrived there was already a battle going on between the Hycre and the Cajdital who’d placed cruisers at that location.

  Those cruisers were having their ass handed to them, but the Hycre couldn’t ignore them completely and only got a few light hits in against the invoker as the Cajdital warships hounded them. It jumped out again without taking any further hull damage, enroute to another location that the Cajdital was positioning support ships.

  When it arrived at a large moon of the 6th planet, the invoker ran smack into a larger Hycre fleet in the final moments of tearing apart the cruisers that had been put there to support it. A Hycre battleship was amongst the group, and it immediately surged out towards the invoker that had its braking point at a slightly higher altitude.

  The invoker tried to run around to the nearest jumpline, not wanting to reverse course and go back to the ships waiting for it where it had just been, and began to spin up its primary weapon, but it wasn’t fast enough. The Hycre battleship got up close over the weak spot and blasted away at another pylon, getting through the shields just as the energy field began to manifest. That made the blind spot even bigger, and the invoker tried to spin around to catch the battleship in the intact portion of the field, but the Hycre ship moved with it as other ships also came in and added their firepower.

  Two more pylons were disabled, though not destroyed, before the invoker made the jump away from the moon, heading over to the planet in the blink of an eye. The Hycre followed, but the maneuver gave the invoker a little bit of a head start. It took more damage enroute to the jumpline it wanted, then emerged back at system’s center, coming out against the smaller of the two stars were a large Cajdital fleet was waiting.

  It was battling the Hycre as the faster Alliance ships zipped in and out of their lines, but when the invoker arrived the fleet immediately surrounded it in escort formation as it headed for an interstellar jumpline that would get it out of the system. As they did they lost numerous ships, for the Hycre coming at them from multiple directions ate up their perimeter ships rather than trying to bust through and assault the invoker directly. With a blind spot in its offensive capability the Hycre knew they now owned it, and were more than happy to take the advantage offered them and eliminate more of the Cajdital ships, even if they didn’t get the invoker.

  Which they didn’t. It successfully moved through stellar orbit until it got to its jumpline, then vanished in a blur of motion after the Cajdital support ships moved out of the way after plowing a road through the Hycre waiting to block them.

  When the invoker jumped it was immediately damaged, having run into a mine field the Hycre had hastily set up further out from the star along the jumpline. The ‘mines’ were kinetic, meaning they were just chunks of dense mass deposited in a location where the invoker would jump through. The mines were tiny compared to the size of the invoker, but they cut into it like a hot knife through butter, breaking apart as they hit the hull and turning into a narrow cloud of shrapnel at each location, punching through the entire length of the ship and blasting out the far side, with their debris dragging behind the ship on its outward trajectory with high speed, effectively clearing the jumpline after an hour or so due to the erratic drift of the residue.

  The invoker lost several gravity drives, which eventually killed it a few days later when it wasn’t able to decelerate as quickly as needed, resulting it in hitting the destination star. The Hycre didn’t know of their kill, for they had no ships in the far system to note the impact, but when the mine-layers went back to recover their mines they only recovered 78% of them, so they knew they’d done damage to the ship killer.

  The rest of the Cajdital fleet that had been covering for the invoker got chewed up by the Hycre until they started to mass together, at which point the Hycre spread out and fled, preferring to hunt smaller groupings of the Cajdital around the system or waiting for them to come back to Varasiss and ambush them there when they had other Alliance ships to assist.

  Eventually that’s where the Alliance and Cajdital fleets ended up, with a more standard battle ensuing. The enemy kept sending cruiser formations down to the surface of the planet, which the Hycre and others would try and intercept, often with success. As the Calavari army attempted futilely to assault their encampments, going up against the grounded cruisers’ firepower, the Hycre dispatched several smaller ships to assist them, but aside from damaging a few ships they couldn’t get past the clustered Cajdital defenses.

  The Hycre eventually responded by sending down more ships, which is what the Cajdital wanted. With a significant number of their warships on the ground the main orbital assault resumed, with the targets being the remaining Kvash battleships, of which there were 9 left…out of an original 26. They were spaced around orbit in clusters of three, along with most of the rest of the Alliance fleet, though there were some smaller groups from other races dotting the wide spaces in between so they could get better runs against Cajdital cruisers going to ground.

  The enemy hit all three groups simultaneously, with a dreadnaught leading each attack alongside a handful of battleship escorts and a mass of cruisers. Each dreadnaught was three times the length of the battleships and equally rounded and elongated, but with a vertical fin coming out the top and bottom that ran from bow to stern, making them reminiscent of the flat cruisers and equipped with a handful of supersized plasma cannons.

  The rest of their hulls were coated in cruiser-size cannons and anti-air plasma units, making them more than a formidable match for a Kvash battleship. Three, on the other hand, was more than a dreadnaught could take alone, which was where the rest of the Cajdital fleet was going to come into play…but once again the Kvash found themselves on the small side of the engagement, putting them outside their comfort zone.

  But not far out. The three battleships formed into a vertical triangle, giving each a clear view of the dreadnaught minus the ships in between. Most were Cajdital cruisers, but there were also a handful of Hycre destroyers leaping out to the front to zip around and through the enemy lines, hoping to disrupt their formation and cause some damage before the two fleets slammed into one another. Spaced around the trio of battleships were the Kvash’s ‘smaller’ vessels. Battlecruisers, cruisers, and destroyers aligned into a halo around the three, waiting for the Cajdital to come to them, with a mass of Kitot warships lined up in between the gaps.

  They were one of the Alliance’s junior races, brought in by the Kvash and well accustomed to doing battle alongside their benefactor, not just against the Cajdital, but against a number of other threats over the history of their relationship, given that Kitot territory overlapped with the much larger Kvash domain. Individually they were older, much older, with the average lifespan upwards of 500 years, but physically they were small, coming up to a Human’s waist and appearing like a ‘tripod’ on their three legs…which the Star Force pilots had come to nickname them on Daka.

  Their ships were small as well, each being frigate class. Normally that wouldn’t be of much help to the Kvash with heavy fighting, but the unique design of the Kitot warships provided them with far more punch than their size suggested. They had one weapon and one weapon only, housed within the forward column of the tri-finned design that mimicked their body structure. That weapon was plasma based, but unlike a streamer which discharged a continuous narrow beam, the Kitot cannons produced and held the plasma inside a forward cavity, growing the contained plasma orb to insane size before fi
nally releasing it when and where they chose.

  As the Cajdital ships approached the Alliance fleet and began engaging the forward elements belonging to the other races, little glowing orbs of pink popped up like Christmas lights encircling the Kvash warships, with each of those lights growing brighter by the moment as they increased their charge. Then, when the forward Cajdital cruisers began taking hits by the Kvash plasma streamers that tore through their shields in a matter of seconds, the Kitot ships began to move, forming into little schools of fish that swam after individuals ships that moved past the Kvash, either intact or damaged.

  They fell in behind them and launched their pink plasma orbs, each of which hit with a wider cross-section than even the largest plasma streamer on the Kvash battleships, or any other plasma weapon within the Alliance fleet aside from the starbases. The weapons had a slow recharge cycle, but by having 10-15 ships per group, they were able to hit the ship they were trailing with several quick shots that downed the cruiser without trouble.

  Once the task was done the Kitot swarm turned around, snaking their way back up in next to the Kvash ships where they waited for their next target, either picking one themselves or going after ships the Kvash tagged for them. Conventional wisdom held that when attacking the Kvash you had to go after their biggest ship first, else they’d wear down your fleet, diminishing your weapon count, and making it harder to take down the biggest one later.

  With that tactic in mind, the Kitot were literally daring the Cajdital to shoot at them instead. A gifting of shield tech gave the little ships more durability than most, but they wouldn’t stand up against a lot of firepower…but if they were attacked, then they were taking the hits for the Kvash, which would mean their bigger ships would persist longer in the battle, which was bad news for the Cajdital.

  If the enemy didn’t target the Kitot, they’d essentially get free shots in that would assist with the Kvash’s weapons fire, exploiting shield breaches or weakening others as an extension of the Kvash fleet when needed. More often than not the Kvash ships would hit a passing Cajdital cruiser, taking down its shields but failing to kill it, then they’d send the Kitot to finish it off, often with the support of the Fanset, another Kvash invitee to the Alliance, but one that they had a looser relationship with.

  The Fanset fleet was lined up behind the Kvash, given their ships were largely inferior to the rest. What they had going for them was mass…they were all fat blobs halfway to being a sphere with strategic/random protrusions over their hulls, and not all of their ships had similar designs. They, along with six other races, in addition to the Hycre, were deployed behind and around the Kvash, letting them take the brunt of the attack.

  The Kvash had indicated that they wanted it that way, with the understanding that the others would move forward and engage when called for or when they saw an opportunity to strike without getting themselves mauled by the larger Cajdital ships…which headed straight for the Kvash behind a wave of cruisers.

  The dreadnaught targeted the lower Kvash battleship, pouring its forward cannonfire squarely into the forward lobe of the tri-sphere ship, smothering the shields with huge green plasma orbs as maroon streamers replied from all three battleships. Smaller cannons on the dreadnaught that were in range also opened fire, though most didn’t have firing lines given the angle or the mass of other ships flanking them.

  The Cajdital battleships also targeted the same Kvash battleship, which quickly became overwhelmed with plasma, prompting it to rotate to bring another sphere into the firing line as the Kvash signaled for the other races’ fleets to begin assaulting the flanks of the enemy.

  They responded by flying around the outskirts of the Kvash fleet and angling in on strafing runs, small ships and large, against the battleships and whatever cruisers got in their way. Many of them moved slowly, but they didn’t stick around to slug it out with the Cajdital, forming several rivers of ships that constantly kept moving, all the while the Kvash remained as still as the rocks they looked like.

  The Fanset were the only ones that didn’t move, for the Kvash were keeping them in reserve. As it was plenty of cruisers were coming their way as they strafed the battleships, which the Fanset were engaging if they moved through the gap between the fleets, in the middle of which the Kitot were chasing down many. It wasn’t until the Cajdital dreadnaught lost its forward shields and saw that it wasn’t going to be able to take down the battleship that it dipped underneath the Kvash formation and accelerated ahead, trying to get away from the battle as the enemy cruisers continued to fly and shoot in a frenzied storm, now targeting the smaller Alliance ships.

  The Kvash battleships continued to pour plasma streamers into the top of the dreadnaught as it passed underneath, then two of the Kvash cruisers dropped down to pace it, exchanging close range fire with its side batteries. That was when the Kvash commanders tagged the Fanset with hitting the dreadnaught as it accelerated away closer to the planet as it curved through a wide arc setting up for a jump.

  Using their fat hulls to surround the dreadnaught, the Fanset hit it with everything they had as the Kitot swarms were sent after it as well. The Kvash battleships and most of their support ships took on the rest of the Cajdital fleet, which was still largely intact, leaving the hunt to their two subordinate races now that they’d wounded the big ship.

  It was a fair fight, with the Fanset and Kitot taking heavy losses, but their combined firepower shredded the dreadnaught’s exterior hull, knocking out most of its weaponry before it resorted to lightly ramming three Fanset ships out of the way to make an escape jump, with the rest of the Cajdital fleet retreating soon thereafter.

  The other two Alliance fleets didn’t fare so well, with one losing a battleship and the other losing two, though that Cajdital assault group was virtually destroyed in the effort. The other two groups had different races in support, for each faction within the Alliance didn’t like splitting up their fleets, leaving the Kitot and Fanset bolstering only the one group of Kvash ships, which had made the difference in this engagement by giving the Kvash more combat assets to work with, whereas the other races were more or less random factors in the otherwise controlled and scripted battle.

  The Hycre poached many ships in the engagement, including the dreadnaught some hours later when they ran it down and delivered a fatal blow to its gravity drives, pinning it in place in orbit around the 12th planet in the system. After that it was just a matter of time before they killed it, though they got many cruisers to die defending it beforehand, essentially using the monster ship as a lure to peel off ships from other deployments into smaller, manageable numbers.

  The other two dreadnaughts suffered damage as well, with one being destroyed and the other coming off lightly. It retreated along with the other ships, but failing to have taken out more of the Kvash ships the Cajdital transitioned to a more coy strategy, given that their long stream of jumpships entering the system had come to an end. There would be more reinforcements coming in the months ahead, but their initial assault group was now fully assembled, with there being too few ships to rely on the swarming tactic. Had they eliminated the Kvash battleships it would have been another story, but six still remained, and that was more than the Cajdital could easily handle.

  With troops already on the ground and the ability to land more under protest, the Cajdital switched from an orbital assault plan to a ground assist strategy, with cruisers running cargo ships to ground and clustering around their shield generators when the Hycre came knocking. Had their warships not been in play, the Cajdital would have sent their ships en mass into the atmosphere to attack Calavari ground targets, but they knew that was suicide, so they decided to play the waiting game, defending their footholds as needed while they constructed bases that would eventually grow to the point where they could start producing troops and ships of their own.

  When that happened, they would be all but impossible to remove from the surface.

  4

  July 2, 2470
/>   Pagalis System

  Radamal

  Kamalat ran through the trees, a rifle in both sets of hands, following three of his fellow Calavari as they retreated ahead of a thong of Cajdital infantry whom they’d just ambushed. He ducked under one low branch then pushed his way through a dense set of bushes until he came out onto the creek bank and ran across the mostly dry stone wash, hearing the smaller Cajdital foot strikes closing in behind him.

  His shields flared with a plasma hit on his back as he got to the water, but they held up, protecting his otherwise vulnerable skin. The shield harness he wore blocked energy only, not physical objects, and fortunately the plasma counted as both, but he knew it wouldn’t last against more than a few hits without time for its capacitor to recharge, so he dug down into his well of energy and forced his tired legs to move a bit faster.

  Before he got to the opposing brush line a hail of golden plasma streaks sailed around him and the others, coming from concealed snipers. Though he couldn’t see it, more than a dozen Cajdital went down behind him as they exited the vegetation cover, with more coming out by the second as they ran into the second part of the ambush.

  Kamalat burst through the green leaves and back into the forest, turning a quick right and zigzagging his way around to an opening in the Calavari line that had decent cover, then he knelt down and brought both rifles up into firing position. With the leaves covering most of his body and his eyesight, he relied on the holographic tracking icon that floated above the top of each barrel as he set the power level to low and began firing off a hail of golden lances.

  He and the other Calavari mowed the Cajdital down with great satisfaction, with Kamalat wounding/killing at least half a dozen himself, though it was difficult to keep track of them all, for there was so much plasma fire exchanging and bodies dropping that it quickly became chaotic…then he heard yells from the opposite side of their line, Calavari yells, which told him something had gone wrong.