Star Force: Upgrades (SF41) Read online

  That had been necessary at the time, but Paul had never liked abandoning the concept of a big, beefy warship to lead a fleet from. Other races had them, but Star Force hadn’t been able to make it work given their technology…until now.

  The Excalibur was the first off the Clan Saber shipyards, measuring in at better than 15 miles wide, as well as being the first jumpship to abandon the elongated design with an armored nosecone. Shield and armor technology had advanced to the point where they didn’t need to worry about small debris during jumps damaging the ship, so the nosecone idea was no longer relevant, with the Melee-class jumpship going back to the donut shape of the original Command Ship, which leaned heavily on the Star Wars Trade Federation design.

  Even more so now that Paul had made some additional upgrades. The entire jelly donut shape differed from the Star Wars design, because the interior wasn’t open to space. But like the original design, the Melee-class had a removable donut ‘hole’ that, once the armor plating covering it peeled back, could extrude itself and maneuver as a separate starship if needed…but whose primary purpose was to become a Battletech-esk, 2 mile wide dropship that could deposit a mass of ground troops to a planet within minutes as opposed to using an unending flow of tiny, conventional dropships.

  That too Paul had stolen from Star Wars, for the Trade Federation ships could do the same, except that the Melee-class was much bigger. So big, in fact, it looked almost immobile, but it had the most advanced gravity drives Star Force could produce, and as such it was by far the fastest jumpship in the fleet…almost up to Hycre standards.

  The rest of Paul’s fleet was much slower traveling between star systems, but once the drone warships deployed they could fly circles around the Excalibur, whose speed was in linear motion, not combat maneuvers. The ship was definitely in the same class as a Super Star Destroyer, meaning that it was a sit and slug it out ship, which Paul had always wanted to have available for some of the nastier fighting the Alliance was seeing, but he knew Star Force’s strength came from having a mobile, redundant fleet of smaller drones, and they weren’t going to abandon that philosophy now, only add to it with a few key pieces that could take the heat in the bigger engagements while the drones were free to do their thing and pick the enemy to pieces.

  The 13 Warship-class jumpships accompanying him out from Namek, which was now so well fortified that he no longer needed to personally babysit the planet or system, which he’d left in the capable hands of Duke Monterrey, were all Mk. 16s or older, meaning they didn’t have the bloon launchers that the Mk. 17s did. Also, the drones they carried were 18% new models, with the rest being older versions that were quickly becoming obsolete.

  Paul didn’t like recycling perfectly good starships, so he had been gathering them up from Alpha Region and intended to put them to use hunting lizards. Coupled with the Excalibur’s combat prowess, and the presence of some of the newer drone models, he planned on thinning down the lizard opposition in the region. Previously that had been the duty of others, but now with Namek being a stronghold rather than a liability, Paul could get back to combat…something he’d been aching to do for a long time.

  The pair of Mammoth-class jumpships with him were purely for cargo. He didn’t even have any ground troops on the Excalibur at the moment, just a slightly better than skeleton crew of Clan Saber personnel, enough to fully fight the ship with, as well as take over remote control of the drone fleet if necessary, though the other jumpships had their full crews on board, leaving the Excalibur merely as backup in that capacity.

  Paul’s fleet was stopping at Atlantica for a pair of reasons. First off, the Retari System had been severed from the comm grid over 2 months ago, and via courier ships he’d been informed that a lizard raid had destroyed the transmitter in null orbit around the star. It had been stealth plated, and shouldn’t have been easily visible to their sensors, but somehow they’d deduced its location and slagged it. Kyler was in the process of rebuilding it, along with a few others, and one of the Mammoth’s had a temporary stand-in to get them back on the grid while he worked out the kinks in how to properly place and defend the next ones.

  The lizards had abandoned any attempts to reinforce the underwater war…which was now over. Kyler couldn’t rule out the possibility that they still had a handful of bases on the oceanic planet, but if they did they were doing a perfect job of playing dead, for there hadn’t been so much as a peep of activity in over a decade. That said, the lizards were still popping into the system occasionally, and now it seemed they’d found something they could shoot up easily without having to vie with the orbital defense fleet.

  Atlantica wasn’t the only place in Star Force territory that the lizards were probing, and Paul knew they needed to keep beating them back in their own territory or they’d get bolder and bolder. He also knew that they needed to drain as much in the way of personnel and resources as they could on this front, for the lizards were pushing hard into Calavari territory, which on the map now had a huge bite out of it that was growing with every passing year. That’s where the thrust of the lizard offensive was going, and Paul wanted to hurt them here as much as he could to draw off resources from the Calavari front, or to take advantage of their weakness here and pluck a few systems from their possession.

  If they really were weak. Paul had the sneaking suspicion that they weren’t and were just biding their time, but no major thrust had come into Alpha Region for some time, just probing skirmishes. Several systems were within a handful of lightyears from one another, meaning the two opposing factions were right on each other’s doorstep, but the lizards hadn’t managed to push Star Force back, and Paul had been resistant to push too far the other direction, for fear of weakening their supply and reinforcement potential. If he gave the lizards an opening he expected them to take it, which was why he had been devoting so much time on Namek to building the frontier defense line to his satisfaction.

  It wasn’t complete, not by a long shot, but it was sturdy enough to thwart the level of attacks the lizards had thrown at them to date…but not against what they were unleashing against the Calavari. Duke Monterrey was carrying out Paul’s continuing building plans, with the trailblazer checking in via relay network occasionally to make adjustments, but his presence was no longer needed in the design room on a regular basis, and after considerable prodding by Sara and others, he acknowledged that his place for the foreseeable future was hitting the lizards in their weak points and chewing up their fleets as only he could.

  Sara was actually out doing the same with her own fleet, as was Greg and Emily, who were hitting the usual targets with quick thrusts to wear down lizard positions without getting into any grand battles. They kept the lizards guessing, as well as making it hard for them to build along the frontier without repetitive setbacks, but Paul was looking for a bit more in wanton destruction, which was the primary reason he’d brought his fleet through the Retari System on his way to lizard territory.

  After the Excalibur and her fleet settled into orbit a tiny dropship crossed from one of the defense sedas over to the Melee-class jumpship and deposited a single passenger, whom Paul met in the landing bay.

  “Please tell me you found something sweet to hit?” he asked as soon as he saw the petite form with just a hint of swagger swinging her ponytail back and forth behind her head step down from the dropship’s boarding ramp.

  “It took a while,” Kara admitted, “but I found quite a few interesting things, including a major construction project they’re trying to keep out of orbital surveillance in the Menversan System.”

  “Define ‘major,’” Paul asked as he fell into step with her as the pair of Sabers left the hangar as the dropship took off to return to the seda.

  “Big and new…at least nothing that I could match up,” she said, raising her Vorch’nas and mentally ordering it to produce a hologram above her left wrist of the site that she’d infiltrated on the ground. It showed a concealment canopy from the inside, like a giant foo
tball stadium dome, underneath which the construction was ongoing, but with little shape to give away its purpose.

  “Did you ask?”

  “I tried, but none of the lizards I crossed paths with knew what it was, just their individual assignments, and I couldn’t find an administrator or librarian. They were all standard variants.”

  Paul frowned as he tried to puzzle out what they were building. The Menversan System was third line back from the border, as he thought of it anyway. Galactic geography was tricky, and 2 dimensional thinking just wasn’t adequate, but in his mind the first line was the nearest systems that Star Force made a habit of hitting on a regular basis. The second line was slightly more developed lizard systems that they hit occasionally, while the third line was far enough back and well-defended enough that they rarely ventured there…though that’s exactly where Paul intended to take his fleet. The question was where to hit.

  “There are only two shield generators nearby, which I think we can take out easy enough with orbital bombardment,” Kara suggested as she shut the hologram down and the pair walked into the ship’s interior, enroute to the bridge, which was situated aft of the ‘donut hole.’ “But I think we should start off with either Kerriole or Verikab. Both have large fleets in play, but not large enough that we can’t chew them up. How are you situated for a bombardment campaign?”

  “Got two Mammoths worth of ammo and supplies, skewed to the ammo side.”

  “In that case there are a few other targets you might be interested in hitting.”

  “Any of their big toys making their way forward?”

  “A few battleships, and Verikab has a dreadnaught, but none of the BIG ones as yet.”

  “You have any trouble?”

  “Jumpship got the paint nicked a bit, but other than that it was just in and out as usual.”

  “Any new memories cropping up?”

  “There’s always something working its way out,” Kara said as they stepped into an elevator. “A week ago I had a dream about an Oso’lon tail kicking a Kret’net…sent the damn thing flying across the room. Those Ultras are far more agile than they have a right to be, given their size. They’re going to tear our mechs to pieces.”

  “We’re working on it,” Paul promised. The Ultras weren’t a race of V’kit’no’sat, but upgraded versions of the other races. It seemed it wasn’t just Zen’zat that got strength and size enhancements, and when applied to dinosaurs that were already gigantic, the Ultras made Godzilla seem puny in comparison…even without their armor. “While you’ve been busy playing with the lizards, some of the others have been working on our second tier mechs. We’ve got some in the field already, but I haven’t gotten any battle reports back as yet.”

  “Well that’s a start…a pathetic one, but a start,” Kara said irreverently, but Paul didn’t take offense. She out of all of them had a unique understanding of the V’kit’no’sat and how badly outmatched they were. “I do like the new ship though. I hope she’s as tough as she looks?”

  “The cleansing beam alone should be to your liking,” Paul said with a smirk. “It’s the largest we’ve ever constructed, including stations and ground batteries.”

  Kara frowned. “I thought the atmosphere interfered with the beam?”

  “It does…or rather did. We’ve worked out most of that problem from the tech, but even with distortion, a heavy beam will get enough firepower through the atmosphere to be useful, and on airless worlds there’s no disadvantage.”

  “Duh,” Kara said, mentally kicking herself. “How many does the ship have?”

  “Just one, but it’s got multiple firing apertures. We can channel partial blasts out simultaneously, so we’ve got the potential for 12 beams.”

  “Rail guns, I assume?”

  Paul shook his head. “Nope, relying on the fleet for that. This baby’s too big to turn to aim well, and I didn’t like the volume loss of conical units. If we need to hit a planet, the cleansing beam will do the job.”

  “Accuracy?”

  “About the same. The beam is straight line, but we still haven’t gotten the V’kit’no’sat reticule orrery figured out. The nanotech is giving the techs trouble.”

  “Unlimited ammo?” she asked sarcastically.

  “I wish, but to answer your question, we’ll get far more shots out of it than a rail gun.”

  “Downside?”

  “Clouds, storms, and other atmospheric turbulence. Metallic rocks don’t care much, but the beam does.”

  Kara nodded as they stepped off the elevator into a wide hall with a scattering of personnel moving about. “What else does this beast have?”

  “The biggest bridge to date,” Paul said, crossing the hall and through a double set of doors. The outer ones opened to reveal a short hallway that Paul knew had defense turrets hidden within the walls, which the pair walked through without incident, then the interior ones opened up and Kara’s eyes went slightly wide.

  “We could hold trials in here,” she said, looking out over the multi-leveled room that appeared more like an asteroid crater with catwalks crisscrossing the interior. Workstations were everywhere, along with multiple holographic generators…full size generators…popping up at regular intervals across the landscape and down over the slightly angled decline to the center of the ‘bowl.’

  “I wanted all the drone pilots in one place,” Paul explained as he led her to the edge of one of the catwalks that would take them out onto the platforms suspended over the crater in the dead center of the room where the command staff were situated. “We’ve got more interior armor surrounding us than most warships have on the exterior.”

  “Nice to know,” Kara said, raising her left hand and flying up off the floor to get a bird’s eye view.

  Paul rolled his eyes, but in truth he wished he had one of the damn things so he could do the same.

  Kara floated a few meters above him, hanging from her Vorch’nas, and followed him across the huge deck to the central command area, seeing dozens of levels higher up that made use of most of the open air, but giving people ample room to jump off and break bones and necks on landing. Curious design, but she liked it. It gave one a plethora of cover and movement options should combat ever break out here, which she was sure was one consideration Paul had when designing it.

  When she eventually landed next to where Paul stopped, he telepathically pointed to an input terminal, where she walked over and touched her Vorch’nas, mentally telling it to download the intelligence data she’d accumulated on her scouting mission, which Star Force now had the technology to interpret via flash physical data transfer. The total time of contact lasted .73 seconds, then multiple holograms popped up amongst the command ‘pylon’ on which they stood.

  Paul’s eyes were drawn to them immediately, with Kara jumping in at various points to narrate as the ship’s Admiral and others listened in. She’d picked up a lot of intel over the past 8 months, all of which was vital, given how widespread the lizard frontier was and how little they knew of their enemy.

  By the end of what became a two hour report, Paul had a good feeling for how they were going to proceed, which mimicked most of Kara’s speculation as to which targets he would choose to hit, though one in particular did surprise her, given that it seemed to be on a world that was of low importance.

  Then Paul showed her a tiny bit of information from the ship’s databanks in conjunction with her intel, drawing a raised eyebrow from the ranger. “Sneaky bastards.”

  “Very,” Paul confirmed. “Time for us to be sneakier.”

  4

  February 28, 2465

  Krichjan System (Protovic territory)

  Eshwan

  With the Tassadar back in planetary orbit, Kip stood in a briefing room along with three Clan Protoss mech-specialist Archons and two more from Clan Metal Gear. They’d been studying the ground situation in detail, with information coming in from their advance units as well as from the Protovic, but the bulk of the Star Force troo
ps were still on their jumpship transports, waiting for the major pushback to come.

  It was up to Kip to decide where to make it. The Skarrons had already begun aggressively engaging Clan Metal Gear, but the size of their walkers was making their ability to track down the newcomers difficult at best. The Metal Gears kept redeploying their lines, stretching out the Skarrons and picking them apart piecemeal up until a Type-3 walker came up to engage them…which they would respond to with an immediate pullback.

  The Type-3s were easily twice as large as the Type-4s, with an extra set of legs bringing them up to 8 in total and standing some 7 times as tall as a Star Force neo. In additional to the plethora of plasma cannon ports covering the thing like zits, the Type-3 had a large anti-air cannon on top, the size of which could put a dent in heavily armored aircraft, such as gunships. It didn’t appear that the cannon could tip down to fire at ground level, which was odd considering its power. It was almost as if the Type-3s had been designed as anti-air units first, then added to with ground defenses second.

  Around the cannon mount on the top of the double body, which had two spherical sections connected by a thick middle in which the cannon sat, taking it out of view of all but lateral ground targets, was a ring of anti-air pulse generators that would throw out a segmented ring of plasma to hit fast moving targets. Based on data from the Protovic, Kip had seen the things throw out 10 rings/spheres on multiple angles inside of 3.5 seconds, meaning these things could light up the local airspace if they wanted, making close-in air assaults very dicey…and the same was true of launching missiles on target, which the plasma rings would eat up if they came within a kilometer’s distance.