Star Force: Intransigent (SF100) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  The V’kit’no’sat were winning too, and not just in their assault on the shields. If this battle was allowed to continue as it was going the Mach’nel would remain standing after the other ships basically annihilated each other. Ethan knew it wasn’t going to come to that, for the planetary shields were going to fall first, but so long as Star Force didn’t get baited into attacking the Mach’nel they were going to destroy all the other V’kit’no’sat ships with the help of the planetary defense guns. That would be a win despite the losses, but the Mach’nel could then sit over its hole in the shields and systematically destroy every bit of infrastructure on Earth’s surface with impunity.

  Using the summons against it was suicide, for the bigger ships were easier to destroy. Ethan knew they needed thousands of little stings that were hard to target to get through that armor and the V’kit’no’sat knew it as well, meaning that no matter how this battle ended the V’kit’no’sat were going to end up last man standing.

  Except that they had made one critical mistake, and as the countdown in Ethan’s mind began to approach zero he and the other trailblazers started moving the Ultimas in closer to the Mach’nel subtly, keeping them behind a lot of other drones and their IDFs silent for the most part, but getting within range to completely blanket the huge ship. If even a single one of its multiple gravity drives could pull on the star or push off the planet then it could escape, meaning that full immersion was required with enough backups that when the V’kit’no’sat realized their mistake and turned their full attack on the Ultimas the overlapping field wouldn’t fall instantly.

  How long it would stay up was the question mark here, and when the countdown reached 7 seconds all four trailblazers lit up the Ultimas and caught hundreds of V’kit’no’sat ships and thousands of their own drones inside the engine-crippling fields along with the Mach’nel.

  “Time for the boomstick,” Ethan whispered as the countdown reached zero.

  Mak’to’ran was onboard his Kafcha in the outer defense sphere with his Era’tran engaging in battle but also keeping his ship out of the worst of it as he watched the column of ships descending through the hole in the planetary shields. The leading vessels were taking a beating, but he could see that the Domjo with the Zen’zat onboard would easily make it to ground to release them. Whether or not it made it back up to orbit wasn’t certain but they were going to accomplish their mission one way or another, after which the fleet would withdraw and the assault would be solely in the Zen’zat’s hands.

  Suddenly his displays lit up with the presence of interdiction fields. None were crossing his ship, but a huge chunk of both fleets were now without engine power, including the Mach’nel. He expected some type of counterattack to come, but the warning alarm indicating a tiny amount of power buildup at the assumed location of the planetary defense station nearly escaped his attention. Just as he was trying to determine the source of both issues the energy surge spiked as a massive detonation occurred in the cityscape on the heels of a brilliant orange beam that shot at an angle into the sky and tracked through the battling fleets and directly into the Mach’nel.

  The horror of that single attack and all it implied chilled him to the bone. The planetary defense station was operational. The J’gar and Oso’lon had assured him that was impossible, for only they had the necessary codes to unlock the weaponry. This should not have been happening, but Mak’to’ran knew he didn’t have time to think about it. He had his fleet to save…or as much of it as he could.

  “Target their interdictors exclusively!” he roared while also sending out mental commands to his Era’tran and the overall fleet. “We must free the Mach’nel!”

  “Yeah baby!” Sara yelled while still micromanaging her portion of the fleet and making sure all of their own ships stayed out of the firing line they’d cleverly disguised, for only a handful of seconds after the first Tar’vem’jic beam hit the Mach’nel’s shields and took a chunk out of their power a second shot was fired, then quickly a third.

  Meanwhile there was a huge debris cloud expanding out around where the pyramid was, but it wasn’t diminishing. Within the next 20 seconds more chunks of debris were began being blown off, soon followed by a scattering of additional weaponsfire, for while far smaller in magnitude, the pyramid did have more than one battery that could reach orbit. And as more holes were punched in the surrounding cityscape and firing lines were opened up, that weaponry, in both beam and orb form, began flying up to hit the lowest ships in the V’kit’no’sat lines that were no longer assaulting the planet, but were turning around and charging towards the Ultimas.

  But the Ultimas weren’t the only interdiction-capable drones in the fleet, and the much smaller support ships were actively snagging single vessels and delaying their attacks on the larger platforms as the Mach’nel used its own Tar’vem’jic to shoot through multiple drones simultaneously to get at the Ultimas. It didn’t even bother trying to shoot back at the pyramid, who now had its own shield generator active beneath the planetary layers, making it clear that nothing was going to get down to it.

  That meant it was a race to do damage to the Mach’nel before it could escape, and Sara literally jumped for joy a few inches into the air when subsequent hits from that big, beautiful gun finally punched through the Mach’nel’s shields and hit the Yeg’gor armor beneath. It had already been damaged from its run-in with the star, but it greedily began soaking up as much energy as it could and diminishing the destructive effect…but there was no way to absorb that much energy, and bits and pieces of glowing armor debris began blasting off like fireworks with each additional hit.

  Over and over the pyramid fired, with its secondary weaponry getting more and more intense as it ripped apart the cityscape around it. Those Dair’me and Sat’chi may have been older models, with the former now replaced by the upgrades made to the Var’ko that most V’kit’no’sat ships carried, but the sheer size of the Dair’me saw pure green beams of transit energy hit enemy shields and scatter across their surface like lightning, draining so much energy that it almost like cheating.

  The shield draining weapon did damage to the hull where it hit, but considerably less. The armor on the V’kit’no’sat Kafcha especially could almost shrug it off, but the gunners in the pyramid wisely didn’t continue with the attack, switching to other ship targets that were going for the closest Ultimas and stripping their shields away as well, allowing the drones to do more damage on their own but also setting up shots for the Sat’chi orbs.

  They were the slowest firing weapon the pyramid had that could reach orbit, though their tightly packed energy matrix continually expanded as it traveled, making it an extended ‘medium’ ranged weapon, but the V’kit’no’sat fleet was close enough and their ships large enough to catch virtually all of the sparkling teal orbs that were the big brother to the basic Dre’mo’don that was the foundation for V’kit’no’sat weaponry.

  When one of the Sat’chi hit the unshielded hull of a V’kit’no’sat Domjo it nearly snapped the entire ship in half, melting in through the armor and detonating inside. It blew out through so many areas that the ship was immediately out of the fight, though the larger vessels with thicker armor didn’t succumb so fast, but there were six different Sat’chi cannons in the pyramid and soon all of them had broken free of the cityscape and were following up on the Dair’me, knocking out ships so fast that many Ultimas survived longer than they should have on the lower edge of the battle.

  All the while the Tar’vem’jic continued to hammer the Mach’nel, pounding the same spot in the armor until it finally broke through. When it did the interior decks vaporized…both the water, the J’gar, and the weaker internal structures. The ship was so huge everything didn’t die at once, but with a couple shots put into that hole the Tar’vem’jic readjusted its aim and started boring another one some 60 miles away on the hull all the while the Mach’nel sat helpless as it fought the surrounding fleet trying to free itself from the interdiction effect.
/>   Kaalo saw the cityscape over the planetary defense station explode, with his eyes noticing the orange beam leaping up into space even before the destruction registered. It was so powerful it just melted through all the unarmored structures above, then the surrounding destruction ensued as horror gripped him and every other Zen’zat. Their mission had gone from one of leisurely time to a desperate assault. He knew they had to get to the planetary defense station and disable it from the inside while the fleet retreated, but…

  Then those hopes were crushed as he started to see the cityscape surrounding the defense station explode where the Tar’vem’jic wasn’t, and even as their column of warships were rushing their way down to the surface and almost ready to release the gunships he knew their mission was a failure…for the secondary weaponry in the defense station was blowing apart the cityscape covering it, and if that continued there would be no way for the Zen’zat to approach the structure without getting immediately shot. The disadvantage Star Force had created by building a city overtop the defense station was literally being peeled away, meaning he and the other Zen’zat had no chance of success.

  He had four seconds to dwell on that before a green beam leapt up through the distant debris clouds and hit the Domjo he was in. The Dair’me tore through the shields in one shot, with the excess energy eating into the hull armor but not penetrating it…then a second shot hit and Kaalo could hear the destruction outside the gunship.

  When the third hit it was only a graze, for they had dropped too low for the weaponry to target them around the curve of the planet, but it wasn’t a Dair’me. It was a Sat’chi orb whose graze was enough to tear off a section of the Domjo, destroying enough gravity drives that the ship fell out of alignment with the others and almost rammed a Dak’bri covering it from behind. A collision was averted, but when the Domjo slid out of the protective arrowhead blocking that was dying for it, a pair of Ardents from the surface hit the ship and reduced it to a giant falling ball of metal with the Zen’zat stuck inside.

  Kaalo’s gunship immediately lifted off, with the pilots not waiting any longer. They overrode the hangar bay doors and opened them just in time for about two thirds of the gunships to escape before the Domjo rammed the planet’s surface fast enough to imbed the entire ship in the cityscape. Kaalo saw it from a much too close rear view as the weight of the ship crushed the towers beneath then punched into the undercity and down into the bedrock below…with him knowing that the Zen’zat still trapped in the hangar were either dead or pinned inside.

  A few gunships nearby his got hit with anti-air fire and exploded on contact, for whatever was shooting them was not small weaponry, but the pilots already had the flock of Zen’zat craft heading for the surface and soon the survivors got down below building height and out of most of the anti-air, though Kaalo’s own ship took several smaller hits as they angled into surface-hugging flight as the pilots evaded whatever they could without orders to follow.

  Still receiving telemetry from the orbiting fleet, Kaalo could see the destruction around the defense station continue with debris flying up for miles around the orange beam leaping into the sky…and during the brief pauses in firing he could see the green/black Yeg’gor armored plates that were the peak of the defense station reasserting themselves over the landscape as if the city above had been little more than worthless camouflage.

  Someone had screwed up massively, but Kaalo didn’t expect he’d survive long enough to find out what had happened. The more he watched the destruction around the defense station the more he knew they could never achieve their objective…which left the question of what could they destroy elsewhere in preparation for the inevitable assault to follow, for no matter what happened to the fleet in orbit, the V’kit’no’sat would not permit these abominations to exist and they’d return in far greater numbers…whatever was necessary…to purge this planet and all others that they had defiled.

  And whatever the Zen’zat now beneath the planetary shield could destroy would keep other V’kit’no’sat ships alive later when it happened…meaning they needed to take out anti-orbital guns, shield generators, and power cores.

  “Kaalo,” he heard another Zen’zat’s voice say over the comm, “we need to combine our forces to have the most effect. Proceed to the new landing zone with as many gunships as you can get through.”

  Kaalo saw the now distant landing zone pop up, several hundred miles away but not near the defense station. Traveling that far by air was risky, but it was Neatras giving him the order and the older Era’tran Zen’zat was one that he was not going to argue with.

  “Confirmed,” was all he said, then he shunted the coordinates to the pilots of all the Brat’mar gunships and got them headed towards the edge of the defense station’s own flat shield that was covering the landscape, but not so low that they couldn’t fly under it.

  “Zen’zat, hear me,” he said through the comm to all the Brat’mar gunships remaining. “Our mission has failed before it began. The defense station is operational and the Star Force structures we were to approach through are being destroyed. We cannot get close to it now without dying needlessly, so we are proceeding to secondary targets. We will die on this planet shortly, but the more damage we can do now will assist the planetary assault that is assured to come later. This treachery will not be ignored and you can be confident that this world will fall. How many V’kit’no’sat die taking it is the question. If we can destroy a single shield generator we will reduce that number, so as we travel across this vermin-infested world and we are killed one by one, know that we are fighting to save the V’kit’no’sat coming here in the near future. Hold nothing back, but focus on worthwhile targets.”

  “We understand,” another Zen’zat said, with telepathic pulses from the others indicating their agreement and Kaalo knowing he needn’t say anymore. All Zen’zat were fiercely loyal to the V’kit’no’sat, and as had been determined previously, this Star Force was not rogue Zen’zat. They were something else, a type of abomination that Kaalo would not survive long enough to figure out, but the Zen’zat here were loyal beyond question and they would do their duty to the end.

  But if they could get to ground near their target and disappear into the undercity, they were going to be very hard to dislodge. He had no doubt there would be plenty of Archons to kill along the way, but their primary objective was the planetary defenses…though he wouldn’t mind if a particular Archon showed up and gave him a third try to destroy him.

  And with his fellow Zen’zat alongside, Kaalo had no doubts as to the outcome if such an encounter was to occur again.

  4

  When Roger saw the first Tar’vem’jic blast penetrate the Mach’nel’s hull, 28 weapons ports went offline with it. While in the overall carnage of the battle that wasn’t much, it did slow the destruction rate of the drones a bit and the trailblazer now had a dead zone to maneuver in. It wasn’t safe from fire, for there were many other weapons on the Mach’nel that could still cover the area around the breach, but it was less dangerous than before and he needed to take every advantage possible keep the Ultimas in position for the maximum number of seconds.

  Right now they were getting hammered, with Roger and the others pulling so many drones in front of them to block that the region around each of them looked like a confetti field. Even so, many of the Ultimas were being destroyed and he had to keep moving those still functional around and adjusting the size of their interdiction cones to insure enough overlap that the destruction of one wouldn’t open up a gravity drive that could then drag the enemy ship out of the others.

  The more chess pieces Roger lost the harder that was, but every shot they could get in with the pyramid defenses was worth it, not only against the Mach’nel but the rest of the V’kit’no’sat fleet that had to stay here to defend it. They were losing many ships to the other pyramid defenses, but the drones were inflicting the most damage…though their number was decreasing rapidly.

  But the trailblazers were pla
ying a losing game and soon Roger saw a hole open up in the IDF coverage. Rio adjusted quickly, bringing around another Ultima and repositioning its field, but oddly the Mach’nel didn’t move during those 6 seconds of opportunity. The Tar’vem’jic from the pyramid kept hammering it while the Mach’nel’s smaller version continued poaching Ultimas up until another hole in the field resulted that the trailblazers could not cover. Only a piece of the Mach’nel was now free to touch gravity, but again the massive ship didn’t move for a good 20 seconds…then it began a slow drift away from the battlefield, too slow for the pyramid’s big gun to miss as it continued to pound additional holes in the armor and gut the interior.

  The movement caught the Ultimas out of position and while Roger tried to move his to follow, the rest of the V’kit’no’sat fleet was in the way and he couldn’t get his Ultimas through quickly enough. Adjusting cone size bought them another half minute, but eventually the Mach’nel pulled out entirely and made a slow microjump up to a higher orbit.

  “Stay,” Roger said to the other trailblazers as he saw several ships from their groups begin to break off and pursue as he organized what remained of the Ultimas and began pinning as many V’kit’no’sat ships in place as they could. Many began to flee in the wake of the Mach’nel, but the more they could hold here the better. Roger knew they needed to chase the big ship, but if them delaying a half hour saved another hundred drones then it would be worth it…though he too wanted to kill the thing once and for all.

  Fortunately the other three trailblazers trusted him and began reforming their fleets into containment bottles, using both the IDFs and their dampener shields to block exiting jumplines as the pyramid continued firing into the fleet…and with the Mach’nel no longer around to shoot at, it’s big gun was now targeting the ‘smaller’ V’kit’no’sat ships.