Star Force: Marauders (SF63) Read online

  They didn’t like fighting that way, but the lizards would never surrender. Even now Tom was issuing periodic calls down to the various colonies to see if they’d relent, but never once in his life had he gotten a reply. They were intent on fighting it out to the last scaly minion, and with this planet covered in numerous colonies and billions of lizards, it made more sense just to blast them from orbit than to go at it hand to hand, or even with the mechs and aerial craft.

  Tom punched through another shield plate then fired a second short cleansing beam lance down and into the shield tower, blasting it apart with one hit as the internal components were vaporized along the beam’s path and the rapid expansion burst out laterally and popped the tower in the blink of an eye. The debris rain around the site was an added bonus, but the trailblazer turned his mental attention to another colony nearby as the regular cleansing beams began chewing up the now exposed one.

  There were only so many he could hit with the ship in its current position, but he wanted to remove their defenses as quickly as possible to get this small region of the planet knocked down enough that the Zeus could move on to the next while leaving the drones and Ma’kri in place to really hammer it. He hated fighting like this, for it was almost exactly how the V’kit’no’sat would have gone about it, but with the lizards being totally intractable it was the quickest option to take the planet from them, especially considering that they didn’t intend to use any of the enemy’s infrastructure.

  It would all get tore down and recycled, whether it be standing or rubble, so there was no disadvantage in taking it apart from orbit. Tom just hated such destruction, both in the lives and the equipment. When one conquered a planet the idea was to take over what was there. Wiping out a civilization was not conquering, that was annihilation. Star Force were definitely conquerors, but rarely were they annihilators.

  The V’kit’no’sat were almost exclusively annihilators.

  But the lizards couldn’t be conquered. They couldn’t be negotiated with. All you could do is fight and kill them…or be killed by them. That was their choice, and unless Star Force wanted to force them into imprisonment utilizing stun weapons and such, slaughtering them back was the only way to fight them.

  Star Force had never gone that far, for they always gave the lizards an out. A chance to surrender, or sometimes retreat. The outcome was always the same, but it was by the lizards’ choosing, not Tom decrying they had to die.

  But die they would, for the lizard civilization saw their personnel as expendable tools. They’d just grow more in a different location, hoping that these here would do at least some damage to the invaders before they died.

  And that was the primary reason Tom and the others chose to use orbital bombardment to raze the surface…to give the devious bastards less opportunity to find ways to kill a few of his troops when they did go down to the planet.

  Sashneo was not lightly populated either. A lot of the higher tier lizard infrastructure wasn’t present, but in the 221 years since Star Force abandoned this transitional world they’d filled it with low tech colonies, going for a massed approach rather than a fortified stronghold. With the fleet Tom had at his disposal, some 22 Warship-class jumpships and 4 Ma’kri in total, plus the Zeus, he was going to take the planet regardless of how much they’d built it up, but he found it odd that this planet had gone down a slightly different track than the others that Star Force was currently taking back.

  Over the past few decades the map had been changing drastically. A huge swath of what had been lizard-occupied Calavari territory now gleamed Star Force blue, and ever since the massive pushback at Jafat had failed, barely, the local region had pretty much been free pickups for anyone that could overwhelm the local defense forces. No more were there reinforcement fleets perusing about ready to drop the hammer. Everything was now up for grabs, with Tom and a handful of other trailblazers pushing to grab up as much territory as they could before the lizards caught their industrial breath and started reinforcing their systems again.

  Simultaneously the Voku were hitting the lizards hard in what had been Nestafar territory while Kerrie-057, Larissa-048, and the H’kar were pushing out from Alpha Region and securing another huge swath of territory that was slated to become property of the Bsidd as their explosive growth continued…aside from a few planets that would be returned to the refugees in the ADZ that had previously fled them.

  Wes-049 was making a smaller push up the galactic plane beyond Delta Region with Axius, with the intent of adding more colonies in that region to house that growing population, both from internal reproduction and immigration. Axius was now tops within Star Force in terms of citizenry, but it was estimated that the Bsidd would pass them by at some point. Odd as it was, given how this had all begun, Humans were now a tiny minority within their own empire, despite a population that had recently passed 10 trillion.

  Democracy would have put Humans in the backseat, had it still existed, but a beast such as Star Force was such a high level entity that it simply could not exist with such a simplistic design. Humans were the glue that held everything together, because they were better than everyone else. Not in birthright, though the Ikrid blocks and psionics were immensely useful, but because the most advanced individuals in every division within Star Force were Humans, from techs up to Archons. They had individually earned those positions, and acquitted the enormous responsibility for maintaining and advancing the empire.

  That wasn’t something a popularity contest would result in. Star Force had to exist based on merit, else it would have collapsed long ago.

  This next phase of advancement was a huge undertaking, and as such required an increasing level of skill to pull off, not just in taking worlds back from the lizards, but in expanding out to the new acquisitions without allowing Star Force to become too heavy to manage. Some people believed that a civilization could only expand so far before it lost coherency in a variety of fashions. Tom knew that wasn’t true, for there were ways to make it work if you were clever enough, but every empire that grew to significant size had to know what it was doing, else they’d self-destruct in a variety of ways.

  That was true of the lizards, Voku, and even more so the Skarrons. The size of their empire was ghastly huge, and even with the lizards tearing huge chunks out of it the overall mass was unaffected. It was simply too huge to kill. Tom didn’t know how that fight would ultimately turn out, and whatever went down was going to occur on the other side of the ‘no-go’ line so it was probable that Star Force wouldn’t know, unless the Skarrons pushed the lizards back this far.

  Respect was due to anyone who could assemble and maintain an empire of that size, and with the path that Davis had set Star Force on, it wasn’t going to back down from those challenges ahead. It was already proven that they could do things better than everyone else on a ‘small’ level, and now was the time to prove they could do it on a larger scope. V’kit’no’sat or no, they couldn’t hide and let the galaxy burn around them, and while there had been some hesitancy on that issue in the past, that was no longer the case.

  Star Force was pushing hard into the lizards, using the window of opportunity that Paul had told Tom and the others about from the Dragon Forecast Bureau. And in truth, technological advancements aside, the only way to truly beat the lizards was for Star Force to grow insanely larger. They couldn’t do that purely with Humans, nor was Star Force really about just Humans. It was a set of principles, based on the sovereignty of the individual and not the race, that just happened to have rogue Zen’zat that came with a slew of genetic abilities that the others didn’t possess.

  But as Tom and the others had learned over time, those abilities weren’t all encompassing, with other races holding single, or sometimes multiple abilities that could be used to enhance Star Force above and beyond what Humans alone could do. The Bsidd were the biggest case in point, but the Kiritak were the first major addition in that department and were still quietly forming the backbone of Star Force�
��s industry.

  Add in the hundreds of other races that were part of Star Force, whether by group or individual, and on the whole they were stronger than ever. Now they needed to add more systems and more population to the mix. That, coupled with the continuing tech upgrades coming out of the pyramid and the way Star Force was now gobbling up lizard territory, had gently shifted the trailblazers’ focus from holding back the lizards to outright beating the bastards at their own game.

  The no-go line kept a complete victory out of the question, for in order to defeat the lizards it seemed you had to annihilate them, and now they’d passed into a region where Star Force wouldn’t go. There were other races and factions out in the rim, like the Nexus, that were far more powerful and territorially large than Star Force and the V’kit’no’sat hadn’t bothered to notice them, so it was hoped that the same would be true of the Humans’ expansion. But going closer to the core would be akin to waving and shouting at them through the Skarron empire, so despite their newfound boldness Star Force was going to keep a safe distance, even though there would never be any guarantees of anonymity no matter how far they went rimward.

  As Tom finished popping the shield plates over the last of the lizard colonies within range, he took a moment to run his fingers through his shock-white hair, rubbing a spot on his head that was still aching from his last ascension. Paul had brought it out to him a month ago, before Tom had left on this campaign, and still there was a lingering bit of friedness there.

  He wasn’t complaining though, for the Sav ability was a tier 3, and had he wanted to he could have controlled all of the cleansing beams on the Zeus and half his drones simultaneously. The processing upgrade had been one that had long eluded them, save for Bo, but now that they’d finally cracked the trigger all the trailblazers were getting it and Tom didn’t mind the discomfort that came along for the ride. It was almost gone anyway, and more than worth the tradeoff.

  He rubbed it a few more times through his genetically altered hair as he mentally checked on the locations and statuses of his entire fleet, which were currently assaulting three different positions on the planet. The flurry of indicators flooded through is mind within .4 seconds, and thanks to the Sav he comprehended it all with clarity. In truth he’d gotten good enough with the nexus interface that he’d already acquired some impressive skills in that regard, but the Sav had taken everything he’d built up and just multiplied it exponentially.

  Incorporating it into his standard training was his next big challenge, for it literally changed everything as far as what he was capable of doing, but he’d have time for that later. Right now Sashneo needed his oversight, and he’d have plenty of breaks to train in over the coming weeks. While his fleet was fully capable of handling this invasion without him, he knew that him being linked into the system and making little tweaks here and there could have a cumulative effect going forward.

  And with billions of lizards down there that needed killing, there were lots of opportunities for tweaks to be made and deviousness to be uprooted before it could kill his people. That was the biggest need for him and other Archons with the fleets across lizard territory…sniffing out traps and figuring out how best to hit the lizards when they were dug in underground. This planet wasn’t the biggest one he’d been involved in hitting to date, but it was the most populated, offering up a little bit more of a challenge.

  At this point though, for a trailblazer, this was easy peasy. It was vitally important, but not a real stretch of Tom’s skills. From an outside perspective, what was taking place on Sashneo was armageddon. The operation was so huge it left any civilian awestruck, but after so many battles his troops had become seasoned fighting the lizards and didn’t hesitate when given a target of this size. There was an awful lot of work to do here, but they knew they could handle it, one piece at a time, with Tom handing out assignments as they moved forward.

  Back in the day, when Tom had passed his test for the A7 program, he never could have comprehended doing something like this, let alone how routine it had become.

  Then again, he’d never expected to be 700 years old either. That longevity of growth had to have an effect on people, Archon or not, but back on Earth when he was a kid such things were out of the societal viewpoint, deemed nothing more than myth, so it was understandable that he had no clue a person could rise to this level. Now he was focused on taking care of business and continuing to climb the improvement ladder, for he and the others knew the V’kit’no’sat were still well ahead of them.

  Back in his basic days he thought he’d comprehended the threat they posed. Now he realized he hadn’t a clue what they were capable of, data files or no. And what was even scarier was the fact that while Tom was a couple centuries away from catching Yoda, there were V’kit’no’sat hundreds of thousands of years old…and more.

  With his mind still linked in to the battlemap he looked down on the huge lizard civilization he was set to destroy, realizing that compared to the level of the V’kit’no’sat, this was still just child’s play.

  5

  May 4, 2735

  Noop System (beyond Gamma Region)

  Tieor

  The Mandoshan freighter made its braking maneuver into the commerce system on an odd jumpline, but odder still was the fact that the ship’s deceleration track ran to a normal orbital depth, though with a much higher rate of transition. That indicated gravity drives far superior than what the Mandoshan built into their ships, but no one noticed, or had the technology to, for unlike the more impressive star systems, this one had no stellar tracking grid.

  The freighter in question redirected to the only habitable world in the system without incident, making the microjump at a speed expected from such a lethargic craft. Hundreds of others of different makes and origins were transitioning to and from the star every minute, with this freighter just mixing in with the flow until it reached the planetary monitoring grid and was picked up by the local traffic control staff.

  It was queried as to its destination, then given a route to take to get down to the atmosphere without bumping into anything else in the cluttered orbital space. Thousands of habitats orbited the planet, along with just as many parked ships offloading cargo or personnel into the various public terminals. The Mandoshan freighter wasn’t headed for any of those, but had a destination point marked on the planet’s surface in one of the less respectable spaceports.

  It was one of 189 on the planet registered for regular traffic and saw a fair amount of lower level commerce, so when the freighter in question dropped into hover mode over the cityscape it had to wait for the choke point to clear as a pair of Gordin freighters, twice the Mandoshan’s size, came up out of the half mile wide opening and made for the clouds overhead.

  When given the go ahead from bay control the Mandoshan freighter eased its more or less circular bulk down through the ‘tight’ opening and into the enclosed airspace below that stretched out in a radius of several miles. The covering was little more than a sturdy tent, with no armor or defensive value other than to keep the weather out, but visually at least it separated the bay landing pads from the rest of the city.

  The freighter eased to the west and came down on the landing pad assign to it next to four other craft, parking next to a Vrax freighter of similar size, but when the Mandoshan ship set down it didn’t offload any cargo, just a group of passengers that walked to a nearby exit where they were met by a single individual that then led them out of the spaceport and through the city via less than savory routes.

  All eight individuals wore grey robes with large hoods that covered most of their faces, keeping them out of sight as they meandered through the scattered crowds made up of numerous races. Tieor had no native population, and had begun as an entertainment resort complex for the wealthy travelers on an uninhabited world. Over time those operations expanded, and were still present in one small corner of the planet, but ancillary development had started up around servicing those high end customers, and no
w, thousands of years later, it was the lower end that dominated the planet with their economic presence dwarfing that of the privileged elite.

  Tieor functioned as a way station for some 80 star systems in the local region and even had connections further out, with it being on one of the major trade routes connecting the three major powers in the expanded region, those being the Hershat, Zocktrel, and Worar. That fact alone attracted a lot of varied races, but the ones beneath these hoods had never been seen in this part of the galaxy before and preferred to keep it that way.

  The guide was one of Tieor’s natives, a Donklap, who looked halfway between Ewok and monkey. He stood shoulder height to most of the robed individuals, but walked in a very peculiar way, with his arms lunging side to side rather than swinging front and back like most others. Even that didn’t stand out in the crowd, for there were other Donklap around, along with many other races that clashed so much that they all seemed to blend together into a mix-matched harmony.

  The Donklap led the eight robed individuals to a location not far from the spaceport, bringing them inside a commercial district and into an alley between establishments. On the far end of it was a locked loading door for cargo arrivals, which the Donklap had a key for. He slid the two-pronged ‘C’ into the holes and rotated the mechanism around, popping the door locks and allowing it to slide into the wall to reveal the interior hall. All eight passengers slipped inside, then the Donklap shut and locked the door from the inside before ushering them on into the facility.

  They passed several sealed doors, for these had been welded shut to keep anyone from the stores from accidently stumbling into the portions of the shared complex that didn’t belong to them. After passing through several ‘dead’ rooms they came to another locked door, which the Donklap knocked on three times, then stared up at the security camera above it. He reached a hand up and split his fingers apart in the secret sign, with the door opening a moment later.