Star Force: Origin Series (17-20) Read online

  “Move, move, move!” Paul yelled, ducking back behind the cover of the building but staying within a meter of the walkway. The anti-air missiles cut out a few seconds later and Paul snuck a peak back out into the now windy walkway with the warm outside air flowing in through multiple sections of broken glass.

  He saw the mech fire again…but it was missing its left missile box, having been sheered clear off presumably by the cruiser’s return fire. Its rail gun slug smashed into the underside of the now smoking ship as a few kirbies started to redock, already having unloaded fresh troops onto the battlefield.

  Suddenly another blast from what was left of the cruiser’s underside weaponry hit the mech square on, blasting apart its stocky body and knocking the machine backwards onto the ground, the impact from which Paul could clearly hear through the broken windows. He could see that the round nose of the central body had been blown open and the mechanics inside severed, which had made the mech’s legs go limp…but there was a bit of a glint from the dense Herculium armored cockpit showing through the blast damage, meaning that the pilot was probably still alive.

  The mech didn’t move, however, and the cruiser left it alone, picking up the kirbies and then fleeing the city as the defense lachars continued to blast away at it through its intact shields as wave after wave of plasma tried to beat them down. One of the docked kirbies exploded from one of the hits, then the cruiser passed out of Paul’s view behind several other buildings as it fled the city, heading back to base to pick up more troops to deliver.

  As if on cue a swarm of lizards came around one of the street corners below and swarmed into the command building they were just now leaving, hundreds strong with a few maulers among them.

  “Keep moving,” Paul yelled at the last few civilian stragglers as four security guards brought up the rear just behind the civilians that were carrying the foamed-up guard. He ran back out onto the shattered glass of the walkway and pulled one woman up who was bodily shaking but unwounded, and pushed her towards the exit before running on.

  He helped the security guards pick up two more wounded personnel, one of which had lost his left leg just above the knee from an anti-air blast, cutting and cauterizing the leg in the same instant. Paul picked the staggering man up like a rag doll and ran him back across the walkway and called for the med kit from the group milling about on the other side as the security guards in the lead held them back until Paul gave the word to move on, and in which direction.

  The Archon used the last of the spray foam on the man’s half leg then gave him an injection to numb the pain, then one to knock him unconscious.

  “Carry him,” Paul told a man and woman beside him who seemed to be keeping their wits about them.

  “Control,” he said, using his helmet’s comm system to radio for assistance. “I need mantises to evac 100 or so survivors with medics on hand. We have some seriously wounded.”

  3

  Two medium-sized mantises landed on the street a block away from the command building and the lizard incursion, retracting their blade-like wings into the hull and lowering down to the ground on anti-grav engines as the civilian survivors rushed to board from their cover inside the nearby buildings that extended well up into the skyline, constricting the transports maneuvering capabilities while shielding them from the nearby ground troops. As the boarding ramps lowered one of the mantises offloaded three Archons carrying an assortment of equipment packs.

  As they stepped off a pair of medics followed them, quickly spotting the wounded and getting them onboard as a third mantis flew in and settled down on the street, accepting another two dozen or so passengers.

  “Thought you could use some backup,” Harrison said, tossing a heavy bundle to Paul as the other two Sabers went inside the building and deposited their satchels before coming back out with weapons drawn and their gaze alert. So far there hadn’t been any lizard activity on this street, but that could change at any moment and they knew better than to get caught off guard.

  “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 place 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, glazed 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 wandering 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, near
ly 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.