Star Force: Kaalo (SF99) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  Sara dropped down amongst them then began backtracking the flow, running through the crowded streets and leaping over a lot of the congested points until she got to a group of Commandos and a pair of Knights that were fighting off Zen’zat that were poking into the civilian lines with hit and run tactics that were successfully killing many people.

  When one jumped down from a building window, shot several people, then sprinted on out the other side, kicking another Commando in the back as he went, Sara took off after him, blowing through the Commandos that got several shots into the Zen’zat’s shielded back…then he disappeared behind a nearby building.

  With a mental lock, Sara went after him and caught up fairly quickly, being led into a trap as two Kar’ka suddenly appeared out of nowhere and fired at her.

  She caught several Chi’parat on her shields before throwing up a bioshield and sprinting to the side…then redirected with a sliding step towards them, jumping into the air and hammering them off their feet with a pair of Jumat blasts from either arm. That disoriented them long enough for her to land between them and get running to nearby cover, for their weapons were just too powerful to go up against with any longevity. One on one she would have tried to take them, but two plus a nearby Zen’zat was too much given the fact she just got here and wasn’t sure what they were capable of these days.

  As she ran she laid down a waypoint behind here, then got around a corner and doubled back, crossing in front of the chasing Kar’ka and knocking them back again with more Jumat, though not taking them off their feet. As soon as she got behind the building wall on the far side she reversed again and came back out right in their faces, jamming them to either side as she passed between them and ran into the Zen’zat behind. Him she punched backward, then ducked underneath his higher torso and shoved his body backward with a combination of Jumat and Lachka as she kept running forward.

  The Zen’zat landed hard, rolling over and getting back to his feet as a Knight ran into view and tackled him. The Zen’zat threw him off then got hit by multiple plasma shots as several Commandos came into the street and laid into him. He tried to run but the Knight reached out and grabbed a foot, delaying him long enough to take even more hits as Sara caught up and knocked him back again, separating him from the Kar’ka as she threw up a huge bioshield she knew she couldn’t maintain for long and blocked the Chi’parat shots heading for her and the commandos as they punched through the Zen’zat’s shields and tore into his armor with more troops following them to the waypoint and adding their firepower to the takedown.

  The Kar’ka didn’t just stand by and let him die, running/jumping forward all the way up to Sara and the Commandos, but by then there were so many enemies to shoot that they didn’t focus on the trailblazer…which they quickly regretted.

  She jumped on one of them, wrapping her arms around its long, thin neck and pulsing her jump pack to drag it down to the ground where the some of the Commandos fired into its shielded belly until it shook Sara off with a strong buck, but she still loosely clung to its neck as it stood up and spun, knocking down a Commando with its tail as the other Kar’ka shot Sara at pointblank range while adding its telekinetic tug against her arms. Between the two of them they pried her off, but by then their shields were dipping so low and so many Commandos were coming that they couldn’t fight them and Sara at the same time, so one of them raced forward and picked up the dead/dying Zen’zat, flipping him over its back with its Lachka before the pair ran off too quickly for the Commandos or even Sara to catch up with.

  “Damn they’re fast,” she said, stepping over next to a Commando who was on the ground and still alive, but had a large hole in her chest armor with at least partial penetration. She knelt down and retracted the armor on her right hand. “Cover me.”

  The other Commandos and the Knight surrounded her, with the latter’s large shield coming down behind her to provide a physical block as she pushed her bare fingers into the charred gore that sank down an inch into where the woman’s left breast used to be. As soon as Sara made contact she started numbing the pain and cutting down the blood loss, reducing trauma lockdown and a lot of other things to bring the body into a semblance of control as she rushed healing with her Haemra ability to the point where the Commando was no longer in jeopardy of dying, though she was still badly wounded.

  “Best I can do,” Sara said, standing up and having the taller Knight take a few steps back, though clearly still protecting the two from any sniping shots.

  “That…really hurts,” the Commando said between gritted teeth, and Sara could hear the tears in her voice, but she managed to stand up and retrieve her weapon.

  “You,” Sara said, pointing to another Commando that had taken an armor shot, though one that didn’t fully penetrate. “Get her back. The rest of you, cover the evac. They’re trying to bait us out. Hold your ground,” Sara said, not taking her own advice and running off through the perimeter buildings.

  By the time she got to Rio he was on the edge of a huge mech fight…like buildings being smashed down mech fight…and she was careful to avoid that and skirt around the edge until she got to him on ground level taking three Zen’zat on the periphery. She sent a mental ping of recognition letting him know she was coming in, then she dove into the combat and started punching and kicking the Zen’zat, getting a feel for their fighting style, speed, and strength before alternating with pulling weapons from her rack and firing a few shots into them…then dropping them and punching some more before telekinetically picking them up and repeating again.

  The Zen’zat had an advantage in that their default weapons were on their forearms, leaving their hands free, but they were clearly outmatched by the two Archons. They took down and killed one, then damaged another to the point where the third covered them so they could run…at which point Rio threw up a hand to signal Sara not to pursue, then he walked over and put several more shots into the armor breaches on the dead Zen’zat.

  “Don’t get close to the mechs. They’ll try to draw you back there and the Kar’ka are setting up ambushes everywhere.”

  “Found one already. How we doing?”

  “Badly, but delaying them. You bring me any more mechs?”

  “At the LZs and probably on their way here.”

  “Come on. Help me hunt down some more Zen’zat. They’re planting explosives and a lot of other nastiness to catch our mechs. We can’t send our infantry against them. We have to use mechs only.”

  “Lovely. Lead on.”

  Rio took off running to the left and she followed, then they had a hell of day trying to delay the V’kit’no’sat long enough to get this section of the Ribbon fully evacuated…of the living and dead, for if Star Force left the bodies of the civilians they couldn’t protect behind the V’kit’no’sat could revive some of them and add to their prisoner count. As for Star Force, their medical stations were too busy saving the living to try and revive any of the recently dead, and unfortunately they were not as good as the V’kit’no’sat regenerators…a pair of which Rio and Sara were able to steal from some Zen’zat medics during the fighting, which were put to good use saving a handful more of their own as both the troops and civilians pulled out under fire, leaving nothing but mechs remaining that then ran off across the Ribbon in a fighting retreat until the Brat’mar stopped chasing them.

  Sara pulled a chunk of her Frieza armor off her leg where the auto-retraction failed due to a melted spot, then tossed it to the ground alongside Rio as he stripped his armor and clothes off and slid into a shower tube. She followed a couple minutes later when he got out, not bothering to dry or drain the water, and allowed her a few minutes to clean up in one of the abandoned buildings within the ‘safe’ zone of another LZ that hadn’t been hit yet aside from a few Zen’zat scouts.

  By the time Sara got out Rio was already dressed and back in his armor, but with the helmet and hand pieces retracted as he chewed threw a box of foodstuffs, some of which were ambrosia laced. She got dressed an
d into her armor minus the damaged piece that she’d have to get replaced, then began eating along with him as they carried on a telepathic conversation covering everything from the varying Zen’zat strengths to mech tactics to planning their incursion to rescue the prisoners…which were being kept at one known location and who knew how many others.

  After taking their quick break, the trailblazers headed to an equipment room where Sara got a replacement for her extremely heavy armor and the weapons Rio had requested had been stacked in numerous crates. He opened several of them, pulling out a lot of non-standard weaponry that he knew they were going to need to take down that super-Zen’zat that they’d encountered earlier, for he wasn’t going to be kind enough to stand still and let them shoot him.

  Pistols were better than rifles, but what they really needed was more range and more bang, with their plasma weapons not having the same kick as Dre’mo’dons…but unfortunately Star Force hadn’t miniaturized them far enough yet and they’d decided to stick with continually improving plasma weapons until they had.

  But since that wasn’t going to be good enough now, Rio grabbed a special gauntlet that attached over his right forearm, elbow, and ran all the way up to his shoulder. Nicknamed a ‘Seru’ it was a tiny mauler that would help penetrate shields as well as tear through armor and would provide a much bigger kick than any of their plasma weapons short of a hand cannon, though the Seru was going to slow down his arm movements appreciably.

  “Here,” Rio said, tossing Sara a long narrow cylinder. “You whack, I pop.”

  “And us?” Angel-676 said as she walked in with several other Archon ViLords.

  “Accessorize as you like,” Rio said as he also grabbed a sword cylinder and attached it to his back rack.

  “How are we getting the prisoners out?” Mathis-831 asked, pulling open another crate.

  “We probably won’t be,” he answered honestly. “Most will probably die, but if we can even get one out before the V’kit’no’sat kill them it’ll be worth it. We’ll take them out by air if we can, but we’re also configuring some of the mechs with cargo compartments.”

  “Do you expect to sneak in?”

  “We blast in with mechs and air, then we try and sneak in through all the noise.”

  “Just my kind of mission,” Mathis said, pulling out some sticky grenades.

  “We’re the only infantry going in.”

  “So stay close,” Sara added. “And in battlemeld at all times.”

  “All of us?” Darrel-627 asked.

  “Pairs at minimum, more when you can manage it. We know there’s one badass out there and there could be others. We gotta kick their ass and not be subtle about it.”

  “While pulling out prisoners,” Angel added.

  “Anyone we bring out is bonus points,” Rio said firmly. “At the minimum, we don’t let them die in an execution. They go down fighting with us.”

  “Extra armor?” Jyra-836 floated.

  “We’re not sure how many troops are in there, so we’re not going to take any. We need as much firepower as we can get.”

  “Understood,” she said, strapping on an auxiliary shield generator to her right thigh opposite three death sticks on her left.

  “This isn’t going to be fun,” Sara said, knowing they all knew it, but feeling it needed to be reinforced. “We have to be the weapon, not the shield. If we pull someone out, we can’t defend them. We have to cover with fighting and give them a chance to run. If we go defensive we’ll get overwhelmed. And if we take too long…”

  “…we get stomped on,” Nathan-937 finished. “We know the score. Just promise you’ll kick Superman’s ass.”

  “We intend to,” Rio said, now fully geared up, “but he may have friends, so keep an eye out. We have to retreat in the case of a fair fight.”

  “Killjoy.”

  “You’ll have plenty of time to fight Zen’zat later,” Sara said. “But we have to be cautious with this guy.”

  “We’ve got your back,” Angel promised.

  “I know,” Rio said sarcastically, “but if you try and block a Brat’mar shot, it won’t go well. Stay away from them no matter how tempting a target they make. Unless you’re in a star of mechs, don’t go near one.”

  “Or a Voltron,” Sara added, “of which we’ll have several drawing them off. We stick together and stay away from the big guns…even if it means we have to abort. We are not losing anyone on a rescue mission. Clear?”

  “I think the V’kit’no’sat might say otherwise,” Nathan differed, “but I’m game regardless. Let’s do this.”

  “Everyone done shopping?” Rio asked, getting nods of confirmation. “Then let’s find our ride.”

  5

  March 18, 3602

  Solar System

  Titan

  Kevin Sandre flew over the cityscape in a crude block of machinery in a formation with many others behind a wall of skeets and gunships as they headed towards one of the V’kit’no’sat’s main encampments on the Ribbon. Already the I’rar’et had begun nipping at the edges of their formation and were getting beat down by the missiles from the gunships, but now that they were approaching the first defense ring, weaponsfire was starting to come up from troops in and around the crushed cityscape they’d been clumsily remodeling…meaning it was time to land and take this fight to them on the ground.

  Kevin trigged the landing cycle, slowing his block to a stop and lowering it to just above the ground as four others hovered nearby. With the dropships landing in the background and spilling out tier 1 mechs, his block began to transform. It altered in shape and began to attach the others around it, eventually forming arms and legs before a head popped up out of the central section where he rode, completing the Voltron-class mech.

  He reached a giant hand over his mechanical shoulders and pulled a large, nearly flat shield off his mech’s back and swung it forward as the smaller weapons of the Kar’ka began to spit at them from various bits of surviving buildings. His shield blocked most of that, and with the other Voltrons assembling beside him they came together and formed a loose wall that the other mechs, mostly made up of neos and a mix of madcats and starbrights, lined up behind as they walked forward, slowing forming into a large column that was to meet up with the Brat’mar as skeets buzzed around the sky overhead to keep the I’rar’et from strafing them.

  The first cannon-like blasts hit the Voltron shields, absorbing into the energy barrier overtop the physical components before subsequent hits started to tear through here and there and chip away at the armor, but that was the Knight-like shield’s job…soak up hits while the mass of mechs came in closer behind them before finally breaking up and spilling out around the 9 Voltrons and engaging the Brat’mar at close range where they could better flank the heavily armored triceratopses.

  Kevin, with his shield almost to the point of burning through in a few places, reached back with his other mechanical arm and pulled a cylinder off his back which he then extended out into a simple bladed sword, then he started his tier 2 mech running forward, taking cover behind the heavy shield as he headed straight into a trio of Brat’mar. He didn’t care how much damage he did to them, for the more shots he took the less the smaller mechs would be hit. The mechwarrior expected his mech to be destroyed, but before that happened he was going to do some damage.

  He popped up several shoulder-mounted weapons and fired as he ran, but they weren’t going to do much again the huge bioshields the Brat’mar were throwing up in front of their armor’s own shields, blocking as much incoming fire as his physical shield was. Deciding to force the issue, he ran forward and punched his shield against theirs in what looked like a slow moving collision, but one with a huge amount of kinetic force behind it.

  His mech slowed considerably, but he managed to push the Brat’mar back a dozen meters or so until it got its footing and drove itself forward in a short lived contest of strength before Kevin forced his way to the right, trying to get around to its flank, bu
t the Brat’mar turned with him…exposing itself to the Voltron beside Kevin who slammed down on its back with the giant sword it carried.

  It didn’t penetrate the shields, much less the armor, but the Brat’mar was forced onto its belly with its legs either crumpling underneath or being forced to the sides, giving Kevin a few steps free of it that he used to get around to its other flank and unload all the weaponry his mech carried into its topside shields as he took another Brat’mar’s cannon shot to the left shoulder where his physical shield was tucked.

  It burnt all the way through this time, soaking away some of his mech’s shields as he flipped the sword over in his free hand and brought it tip down on top of the Brat’mar as the other Voltron rushed in and smashed it in the face with its shields, delaying its moving long enough for Kevin to make contact with his sword, whose tip came down with such force that it penetrated the Brat’mar’s shields and put a slight dent in its armor…all the while driving it back down to the ground again with the other Voltron kicking it in the face while unloading its energy weapons onto it.

  Their little 2v1 didn’t last long, for Kevin’s right leg was suddenly knocked out from under him as another Brat’mar rammed him. He fell forward over it and took a cannon shot to the chest as a result, but his weight smashed the Brat’mar’s face down momentarily as the two got tangled up on each other…then a pair of neos ran in and started hammering the Brat’mar in the flank even as it threw up its bioshield over its face to protect against missiles coming in from several nearby madcats.