Star Force: Melee (SF20) Read online

  “How do things look?” Paul asked, setting the bundle down and pulling out pieces of replacement Archon armor.

  “Last I heard we’ve clipped most of the cruisers’ underside weapons batteries, but they’re still using them to ferry in more troops. I don’t know what their aim is besides finding as many of us as possible to kill but it looks like this is turning into strictly a ground campaign.”

  Paul tossed Harrison his rifle. “Reload that, will ya?”

  Harrison didn’t answer, but walked inside the nearby building and set his other gear down, then pulled out an ammunition satchel and began to feed shells into Paul’s weapon as the trailblazer pulled off his damaged chest plate and replaced it with a new red one. The color didn’t match the rest of his silver armor, but soon that wasn’t going to matter for in a few hours’ time the sun would go down and the battle would be turning into another round of night fighting.

  The other two Archons watched as the last of the civilians squeezed into the three transports and they lifted off, hovering low through the city streets and disappearing around the next corner, making Paul frown as he considered why they were doing that…they’d come in from directly above.

  After he clicked his new chest piece into play he toggled his battlemap and got his answer.

  Another cruiser was just arriving, making the local airspace too hot to risk flying through.

  Suddenly the sun was blotted out as the massive ship passed overhead, slowing to a stop just east of their position but still blocking out their view of half the sky. From underneath more kirbies dropped down and disappeared between the buildings as washes of blue plasma were collected on the ship’s shields as the cruiser blocked the brunt of the attack to protect the transports.

  “What’s the plan?” Fred-498 asked.

  “Run and gun,” Paul said, also replacing a shoulder piece in his armor before carrying the bundle of spare parts off the street and over into the building. “We’ll establish a depot in this building for our gear and anything useful we can scavenge. We head out, rack up a kill count, then circle back here to regroup and reload as many times as we can. The lizards are hitting the command building hard, so there should be plenty to play with.”

  “Any of them in this building yet?” Harrison asked as he handed back Paul his now fully reloaded plasma rifle along with a replacement power pack for his stun sword.

  “A few followed us across the walkway, but I don’t know if they’ve moved in in force,” he said, quickly swapping out the component.

  “The fighting’s getting pretty heavy in the northeast,” Kali said, crossing in front of Paul to guard the door back out onto the street. “And I think that cruiser just added a few hundred more troops to the fight.”

  “How’d you guys get free?”

  “Jason had us hunting a rogue group of lizards in the northwest, then redirected us here along with additional supplies. He says the lizards are up to something but he hasn’t figured out what yet.”

  “What were the rogues doing?”

  “Planting explosives,” Harrison answered.

  “Where?”

  Harrison toggled his battlemap and sent an icon over to Paul.

  “Damn it, I know what they’re after,” he said, opening a new comm line.

  “What?” Harrison asked.

  Paul held up a wait finger.

  “Guys, you there?”

  “A little bit busy, Paul,” Morgan answered.

  “Here,” Greg answered.

  “What’s up?” Jason asked.

  “I think the lizards have figured out that we control our navy by remote and they’re trying to cut off our orbital bombardment by severing our uplink.”

  “That’s nuts,” Cora said over the all trailblazer teamcomm. “We’ve got dozens of transmitters around the planet.”

  “It may not be their only objective, but I’m sure it’s on their to-do list. Suggest you keep a close eye on all comm facilities within the city.”

  “They’ve already knocked out a relay,” Rafa said. “Southern zone. They took down the whole building with cruiser fire early on, so I didn’t suspect it had anything to do with just the comm gear.”

  “Damn it,” Jason said. “It’s not the naval communications they’re after. They’re trying to cut off our battlenet. I’m showing 7 relays down within the city, and we’re close to getting a dead zone in the northeast if we lose another one or two.”

  “They may be after both,” Paul suggested, realizing that without the Excalibur in orbit the only transmitter stations they had for their fleet were on the surface. But unless the lizards were planning on taking out all the Clan colonies they weren’t going to be able to cut them off from their ships.

  “I think they’re up to a lot of things,” Ace added. “I’m seeing a lot of tech gear being offloaded. Looks similar to their det packs only bigger. They’re also trying to take buildings rather than…”

  Paul cringed as a loud screech pierced his ears before all sound cut out. He also noticed that his battlemap had frozen, giving him the last known positions of all troops thanks to the memory chip in his helmet, but the map itself was glazed over indicating no live signal was incoming…save for three dots around his own position on the map.

  “Guys, sound off if you’re there?” he asked, just checking even though he knew they wouldn’t be so when no one responded he switched frequencies to his local teamcomm with the three Archons standing next to him.

  “Are you guys up?” he asked through the comm, cutting off his external audio.

  “I lost my battlemap,” Kali reported back, “but I can still hear you.”

  “Ditto,” Fred said.

  “I can’t get control,” Harrison added a moment later. “White noise?”

  “Looks like it,” Paul said, still toggling his battlemap and comm gear, trying to isolate the source without success. All their various signal routes were being flooded with randomized data, making it impossible for their comm systems to filter out what was signal and what was junk. Normally they had backups to prevent this sort of thing from happening, but according to Paul’s armor’s self-diagnostics all the backups were being flooded as well.

  “Kali, sing a song and take a run down the street.”

  “Any requests?” she asked, heading out the door as Harrison moved over to take up her sentry position.

  “No Ilva Sesteren,” Fred said, knowing that Kali was fond of that particularly annoying singer.

  “Buddy you’re a boy make a big noise playing in the street gonna be a big man some day,” she sang as Paul watched her tracking dot move on his battlemap hugging the building and running away.

  “You got mud on your face, yo big disgrace, kickin your can all over the place, singing…we…rock…will…you…” Paul heard before her audio completely cut out, followed by her dot a moment later as it froze in position, glassed over marking her last known position.

  “She does know to come back, right?” Fred asked as Paul measured the distance to be approximately 70 meters before signal loss, meaning that their local transmitters were strong enough to punch through the rest of the signal, allowing their comm filters to pick up the pattern despite all the rest of the white noise. Star Force had gone to great care designing their comm systems to be nearly unjammable, and he was glad that they at least retained some functionality in this digital snowstorm.

  “you’re an old man, poor man pleading,” Kali’s voice came back along with her dot as she ran back to the door.

  “Got it, Kali,” Paul said. “Looks like 70 meters or so. As long as we keep close we shouldn’t be affected.”

  “Where we headed?” she asked, coming back inside and bumped the other Archon out of her spot.

  “It can’t be coming from the cruisers,” Harrison suggested, “or they’d have used it by now.”

  “The new arrival brought a transmitter with it?” Fred guessed.

  “No, Harrison is right,” Paul said, walking over to
the door and looking up at the big lizard ship as it continued to sit in place soaking up weaponsfire with its shields as kirbies buzzed around underneath redocking. “They could have put one in place days ago. They have to be using one of ours…and I know the first place we’re going to look.”

  “Let me guess,” Fred asked. “The command building?”

  “Big transmitter and they attacked it directly,” Harrison commented. “But it’s small compared to the orbital relays.”

  “Misdirection,” Paul said, stashing the bundle of armor parts into a nearby closet along with a host of other clothing and accessories that the store in this building supplied to the local Star Force personnel, and would one day sell if and when the mass civilian colonists from Sol would ever be given clearance to start arriving. “They’re probably going to hit those later, but as a stepping stone, and to keep us off balance, they seize one of the smaller ones.”

  “And blow others up?” Harrison asked. “Sounds like a bit of a stretch.”

  Paul fervently shook his head. “No, it’s typical lizard thinking. They may use mass tactics, but they still think they’re superior and can out think us. They started out bold, and every time we’ve made them pay for it they’ve gotten more and more devious. They know our ability to take out their bases with orbital bombardment is the one advantage we have over them, and now that we’ve got enough ships in system to hold off their defensive raids we’ve got them beat and they know it. They have to take away that ability, and the only viable way to do that is to cut our comm link.”

  “You’re sure?” Harrison said, seeing the wisdom in his words but not the evidence to back it up.

  “They also want to kill as many of us as they can, but then again that’s also window dressing to make us think this is one last, desperate attack. We know they can grow new troops in a matter of months to replace any they lose here, and they can repair and refit their cruisers in even less time, so the only damage that truly counts is what we do to their bases.”

  “Ok, I’m sold,” Harrison said, adding another equipment satchel to the closet before dragging a low shelf over in front of the door to keep the casual wondering lizard out. “What’s our plan of attack?”

  Paul just stared at him through his faceplate. “Kali, what does putting that in front of the door suggest?”

  “That there’s something behind it we don’t want people to see,” she answered.

  “Stick with anonymity,” Paul said, motioning for him to put it back.

  “Ok, you have a point,” Harrison said sheepishly as he dragged the shelf back to where it had been.

  “Grab any lizard weapons you come across and stash them at various points around the building,” Paul said, walking off further into the structure with the other Archons falling in line. “We’ll need them if we run out of ammo and I’d rather the lizards not have access to them. Follow my lead and pick up what I drop. They were establishing defensive lines last time I came through, so they shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  Paul led them up through the building towards the walkway, racking up a team kill count of 56 before they got to the entry atrium. There they ran up against two portable turrets, a ring of barricades, and several dozen more lizards. They hit and destroyed one turret then fled off into the building in pairs, hoping to draw off some pursuit.

  Kali and Paul did, with a group of 8 lizards chasing after them, which left Harrison and Fred free to double back and hit the defenses again. They knocked out the other turret and took possession of the first two rows of barricades before they got stopped up by reinforcements coming across the walkway. Of the three rings of barricades, each of which were about chest height, the pair of Sabers held position on the outside of ring 2 and were firing on the inside of ring 1 where five lizards were hunkered down, trying to hold on to that defensive position until reinforcements arrived.

  Several green plasma blasts flew overhead as the incoming lizards took some long range shots over top their own troops, nearly hitting one of them when it popped up from cover to fire. Harrison ducked to the side, then fired a couple of lances of blue plasma back into the approaching lizard troops, taking two down as the group had nothing to hide behind on the walkway. He saw one jerk to the side out of reflex and fall out the broken window…then reach back up and grab the leg of another, pulling it to the ground before the two of them managed to get the fallen one back up into the walkway.

  Harrison didn’t get another shot off because the five lizards on the barricade all came up at once and started laying down suppression fire in sequence, each taking their turn so that they couldn’t be caught off guard during the recharge period between each shot. That kept the Archons pinned down before Kali came back into the atrium firing as she crossed over to another exit in the room.

  “Fall back,” she said, providing them some cover as she shot one of the lizards on the barricade.

  Harrison and Fred scooted across the ground then hopped over the third ring of barricades at different points. Harrison took a glancing blow on his left leg as he flew over the top, then the three Archons retreated out of the atrium and further into the building.

  “Split up and ambush at will,” Kali told them before ducking down a side hallway.

  “Adios,” Fred said before heading off a different direction.

  “Run and gun,” Harrison reminded himself in a whisper as he settled into a jog and began working his way around a figure eight section of the level they were on and camped out there until lizards started to come his way in twos and threes…which were easy pickings for an Archon.

  Back in the atrium Paul emerged a few minutes later carrying two lizard rifles, one in each hand, and running at full speed towards the barricades. He shot one lizard before he got to the outer row, then hurdled it and shot another upon landing. With the ease of an Olympic athlete he cleared the next barricade and fired again when his feet hit the ground, nailing another of the few guard lizards left in place while the others were out searching the building for the other Humans.

  Paul sailed over the last barricade and kicked one lizard aside while shooting a second, then quickly finished off the first. He paused for a moment, then fired off two shots down the walkway, both of which made it to the other side without hitting the walls. Turret fire answered him and he ducked aside, disappearing back into the corridors of the building and waiting to see if they had any more reinforcements to send.

  Two more waves would come, then the lizards stopped sending troops. Paul and the other Archons rearranged their barricades and began pushing one slowly across the walkway, using it as cover against the turret all the way up to the other atrium, from which they sprang out and took down the light defenses. Only 1 turret and 4 guards had been posted on the far side, but more lizards were quick to show up once the firefight started.

  The Archons split up two and two again, each taking one side of the hallway and fighting down it until they came across good ambush positions. From there one Archon in each group would run off and start killing everything in sight until they drew a sufficiently large response, then they’d run back to the other and draw the lizards into their improvised kill zones. They kept that up until their ammo began to diminish, then they retreated back to the atrium and across the walkway, disappearing into the other building again.

  The next assault they made was on ground level, having broken in through some of the lower windows and bypassing the guards at the doors. They went on another killing spree, thinning the lizard numbers as night fell, along with which came another cruiser and more kirbies landing right outside the command building, delivering more troops to hold the structure than the Archons had managed to kill in the previous hours.

  Knowing that their best bet to thin them down would be to draw them into the other building the Archons staged small raids all night long, but only succeeded in drawing a few dozen off initially, then the lizards changed their tactics and no longer went beyond the boundaries of the command building. From the
ir they began beefing up their defenses with additional turrets and barricades the kirbies were also bringing in, making it harder and harder for the Archons to enter the building to make their hunting runs.

  Midway through the night the foursome took a break to get a few hours of sleep, taking turns on watch and getting something to eat, as well as additional ambrosia doses to replace what they’d burned off. With all other troops busy at multiple invasion points, and their communications still down, Paul’s group had the command building all to themselves and a lot of work to do the coming day.

  Patience, he knew, was key to their longevity and kill count…and as long as their supplies held out they were going to take out as many lizards as they could, hoping that meanwhile the rest of Star Force was doing likewise and the lizards didn’t have any more surprises for them planned during the shroud of this comm whiteout.

  4

  March 23, 2266

  Epsilon Eridani System

  Corneria

  Paul’s eyes snapped open as Kali’s hand jostled his shoulder. He looked up into her helmeted face as she gestured to the right and headed over to Fred and woke him up in the same manner, followed by Harrison. None of the three Archons said a word, but all grabbed their helmets and weapons and followed Kali outside the third floor interior office they’d claimed as their rest zone.

  She crossed over to the edge of a commons area and crawled up to the edge of the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the street. Paul did likewise while the other two Archons held back and stood watch over the approaching hallways. When he pulled up into view he saw a dimly lit street with harsh shadows being cut by the rising sun eeking through the slots between buildings…and a line of lizards marching from left to right following one of their assault vehicles.

  “That’s not a good sign,” Paul said over the comm.