Star Force: Equity (Star Force Universe Book 46) Read online

  “That is extremely risky,” the Bsidd warned.

  “It’s that or leave our people behind. Give me a few hours and I’ll lead the assault myself.”

  “You look like you’ve got your hands full with the traitors…no, we will handle this. I’m also sending down two stars of mechs to reinforce you. Do you need infantry?”

  “Infantry don’t do much good against the Ziviri. We need the mechs.”

  “Done.”

  “We can reconfigure our mech bays for Ziviri life support,” the Kvash stated. “It will take time, but we can accommodate some of them if you can send the appropriate foodstuffs.”

  “Our hangar bays can handle the remainder, though it will be a tight pack,” the Bsidd echoed. “At least we don’t have to fit your mechs.”

  “A small silver lining,” Jyra agreed. “But I’d ditch them anyway in exchange for our people. I don’t know if any prisoners have been transferred to the warships. It wouldn’t make any strategic sense, but I can’t rule it out. If they have been we can’t rescue them, and we need to strike before those on the surface can be moved to orbit.”

  “How many Kat’vo are still in play?” the Bsidd asked.

  “Unknown. We killed most of those in combat, but how many more they have in reserve is guesswork. Expect at least moderate aerial resistance.”

  “I’ve got enough squadrons to put them down. It’s the warships that I’m concerned about.”

  “We have to get dirty,” the Kvash said, referencing something that Jyra wasn’t clear about.

  “I know,” the Bsidd agreed. “But there’s no other way with your limited drones.”

  “Explain,” the Arc Commando insisted.

  “We have to use our warships for combat,” the Bsidd said gravely.

  Jyra swallowed hard, knowing that the jumpships typically did not fight and habitually stayed away from weapons range while remotely controlling the drones. “Will that work?”

  “Our heaviest weapons are on the jumpships,” the Bsidd sternly pointed out. “And even if we just soak up hits it will prolong our drones’ viability. If we don’t, too many warships will be able to cover the surface. If they choose to anyway, we could actually win this battle.”

  “You’re our only ride out,” Jyra noted. “Or is there more help on the way?”

  “We can get some cargo ships here, but warships are thin. With your comm relay down we’ll have to send a courier. If we’re going to recover the prisoners, we cannot wait.”

  “If you send your troops here after the assaults we can hold against the Ziviri until we can get a cargo fleet here. I’m not worried about that. But if the V’kit’no’sat show up with reinforcements we can’t hold at all.”

  “I can send one of my ships to summon an evacuation fleet,” the Kvash offered, “after the fighting is over.”

  “I think that’s our best bet,” Jyra said, waiting for the Bsidd to respond.

  “If we can fit everyone onboard the ships here, we leave immediately. If we can’t, we gamble and wait for a cargo fleet. It will depend on the damage we take.”

  “I can live with that.”

  “Agreed,” the Kvash echoed.

  “Stay where you are, Human. We will handle this. Kvash, let us go now before they have time to think.”

  “You have fleet command,” the Kvash relinquished verbally, though it was within the battlemap that the transfer actually took place.

  “Kick some ass,” Jyra said before the link cut out and the fleets began to merge together enroute to the Kat’vo blockade in orbit around, but not over her current position on the planet, for she still had a few planetary guns operational. “Help’s on the way guys,” she said, whispering to the captured troops that could not hear her. “Hang on a little longer.”

  Sar’fen woke when he heard/felt the first series of rumbles through the ground into the holding cell where he and some of the other Clan Saiyan prisoners were held. It wasn’t something Star Force had built, but rather a V’kit’no’sat designed structure that had been erected from a pre-fab kit. The Scionate knew the walls were not very thick, nor was the roof and floor, but there was a shield sitting just inside their perimeter that made it impossible to touch them.

  Even beneath him there was a small gap between the floor material and the shield that he laid on, not allowing them to damage the structure and potentially escape…and when they had managed to beat their way through the limited power shield the entire bay holding some 17 prisoners, but made to hold several hundred, would be bathed with stun blasts, knocking everyone out.

  It made for an effective prison in the short term, but the Commandos were already figuring out ways to beat it, for there wasn’t a single guard inside. How many there were outside was unknown, and no Archon had been permitted to live, otherwise they might have been able to see through the walls.

  Everyone had already been mind raided, for outside their armor they had no defense against such invasion. Fortunately there had been no beatings or dismemberments, though a couple of Calavari had broken arms that were not given treatment after they’d resisted some of their handlers that brought them here. Sar’fen figured it was both punishment and a warning, letting them know that they needed to sit still and be good prisoners or they’d return as much trouble as was given to them.

  But right now his mind wasn’t on the past, but the present. He didn’t know where he was, for he’d arrived here unconscious, but something was going on outside, and close too. He and the other prisoners listened for several minutes before a mind reached into his, warning him to get away from a particular wall. It wasn’t the one that held the door, and he tried to warn whoever it was about the stun weapons, but apparently they weren’t listening to his thoughts, for a moment later that wall blew out as soon as a couple of Humans nearby moved away.

  As soon as it did the stun guns opened up, and as agreed beforehand the prisoners clustered together and tried to shield each other with their bodies, hoping that someone in the middle would stay conscious. Sar’fen wasn’t that person, but as he felt stun energy soaking into him he didn’t completely black out. Instead he was very loopy as he heard other weapons firing nearby, and they weren’t stun guns.

  Soon he was being physically peeled off the pile by Bsidd appendages and dragged across several meters where he was dumped on the now shieldless ground. He stayed there for a while, trying to get his vision to clear, until a Bsidd came over him and injected him with a destunning serum. His head cleared within a few seconds and he saw more than a dozen Bsidd in their purple armor along with one that was identical except that it was clad in black and red armor…indicating that Bsidd was a Maverick.

  “Dropships are outside. V’kit’no’sat fleet is overhead,” one of the Bsidd Commandos yelled. “Move now or we get blasted into oblivion!”

  The Scionate didn’t argue the point, jumping up on wobbly legs and running for the exit as the Bsidd went with him and the other Clan Saiyan prisoners. When he passed through the gap in the wall he saw several additional prison chambers spaced around a yard that had V’kit’no’sat structures with smoking defense turrets behind them. He also saw several Spider-class mechs that had 8 legs on moveable joints that gave them a lot of maneuvering options. They had less than their Bsidd pilots did, though some of the mechs were standard Neos that resembled a Human frame without a head.

  Sar’fen knew Bsidd used both, but most mechwarriors in their race preferred the additional legs, and he was glad to see anything with heavy armor and weapons that was Star Force made…but he wasn’t going to stare, for he had a dropship ahead of him that he needed to get to, and without armor of his own he was a sitting duck for even a small arms shot to kill him.

  He decided to sprint ahead of the others, using his four legs and long stride to outpace them and get to the dropship first, though there were already some Bsidd inside without armor, and he guessed they were former prisoners as well. He scooted in amongst them, making room for the others as
the dropship was quickly filled and sealed, then it lifted off taking them somewhere, but Sar’fen didn’t care where as long as it was away from here and eventually back into the fight.

  Danngi sat on the edge of a low roof along with fourteen other Irondel, watching the dropships arrive with the rescued prisoners as 10 Bsidd mechs patrolled the perimeter and shot any Ziviri that got too close…and not with stun weapons. They looked to be pissed, and Danngi understood why, for the Ziviri were out for blood and would advance at any time they thought they had enough numbers to push their way in and get at the remaining Star Force troops.

  There were piles of Ziviri bodies, some dead, some still alive, around the perimeter, but the undamaged ones didn’t seem to care about their fallen. They were waiting…no, lurking around the base waiting for a weakness as more and more arrived from across the planet. There were tens of thousands of them out there now looking like rock statues as they waited motionlessly aside from when they attacked with bare hands that could break through weak walls on their own.

  Unfortunately Danngi and the other Irondel could not help. Their mechs had been destroyed, and without them they were useless. They’d be evacuated back up to their Kvash motherships, but there they’d just sit and wait until they got to a Star Force depot and received new mechs. Until then they were just in the way, so they’d decided to sit up here and watch while staying away from the large feet that could squash them with a single misplaced step.

  The Kvash moved so slowly they were easy to move around, but onboard their ships they didn’t intermingle because their natural atmosphere was so hot the Irondel couldn’t survive in it. Instead the Irondel had their own section onboard the Kvash ships, but they were so small they didn’t take up much room. Thus they’d been the perfect match to give the Kvash mechwarriors and aerial pilots that could fit inside their Star Destroyer-class warships that were meant to be a one-stop shop for warfare.

  The Kvash had other models that had their own mechwarriors and pilots, but the Irondel worked so well with them that they’d been paired up for longer than Danngi had been alive. The Irondel race hadn’t joined Star Force. They still had their own planets and military, but it was small and ineffective compared to what Star Force had. Danngi had been born into Axius along with a lot of other Irondel, all descended from others who had joined the empire as individuals. Because of that the Irondel did not have their own faction, and were used to supplement the Kvash in a mutually beneficial arrangement.

  The Ollafan served the same purpose with the Kvash in an aquatics sense, though none were onboard the ships in orbit. The Kvash had Star Squasher-class vessels for aquatics assaults, so Danngi had never met them, but there were even fewer Ollofan in Star Force than Irondel, because their race was destroyed by the lizards with only a few survivors making their way into Star Force.

  Both the Ollofan and the Irondel were tasked with big rolls in support of a full-fledged faction within Star Force, but right now Danngi just felt helpless, and so did the others. They’d all survived because of the survival pods within their mechs and their small size, but without their mechs they couldn’t do crap.

  Another Irondel walked up beside him and sat down, with Danngi recognizing him as Seepla, one of the Kvash’s aerial pilots that had lost his ride as well.

  “You know, we make a better target all sitting together.”

  “At least we’ll take the shot meant for someone else,” Danngi said with a grim sarcasm.

  “The Humans and Protovic can’t do much against the Ziviri either without mechs.”

  “They can fire rifles.”

  “So can we.”

  All the mechwarriors down the line and turned to look at the idiot.

  “Okay, okay,” Seepla said, raising his tiny hands in surrender. “A thousand of us couldn’t bring down one of them with ours. I’m just saying we’re not the only ones dispossessed.”

  Danngi was about to say something, then a warning signaled inside all their helmets, for they were wearing their survival armor with battlemap links…and it said they were evacuating and needed to get to the spaceport.

  “Let’s go,” he said, looking on the battlemap to see who else was nearby as the pack of Irondel scurried off the ledge and headed across the roof. Two levels down he saw there was a Scionate, so he contacted him on the comm and asked for a ride.

  He received a waypoint in response, then they met the large quadruped on the floor below them. It stopped and held still as the little chipmunk-like Irondel jumped up on its armor and climbed up to its more or less flat back. They all got up there together and latched on in three rows looking like they were on a rollercoaster, then the Scionate took off at an easy run through the base and got them to the spaceport far faster and safer than had they gone on foot themselves.

  The Scionate ran them all the way up inside the nearest dropship and made sure none of the Bsidd in it stepped on them. He slid up beside a stack of crates and let them hop off, then he didn’t stick around, instead running back out of the ship and off to what looked like the battle lines around the base that were surging with activity now that it was abundantly clear that Star Force was pulling out and the Ziviri wouldn’t have another chance to kill any of them.

  “Bunch of ingrates. We ought to bombard the base when we leave,” another Irondel mechwarrior commented as they all watched what was going on around them via battlemap as their dropship lifted off.

  “They won’t leave the shield generator up,” another said. “The V’kit’no’sat or the Ziviri could use it.”

  “We’re not safe yet,” Danngi countered, seeing the alarmingly high number of Vik ships still in orbit and very few Star Force drones left alongside the Bsidd warships that they were not heading to. The larger vessels were shooting back and forth at range with the Kat’vo ships, but neither seemed to want to close to short weapons range, and many on both sides had marks of hull damage to testify to the slugging match that had previously taken place.

  In fact, one of the Bsidd warships was not taking part in the fight, rather limping off behind towards the Kvash ships that were taking onboard the first waves of dropships. Danngi didn’t know where they’d fit them all, for they couldn’t stand the Kvash air, but that wasn’t his problem. The Irondel levels were built for their tiny size and the other races couldn’t fit in them, so he wasn’t going to be cramped once he got back…though he saw he wasn’t heading for the same ship he’d been assigned to.

  “They got one,” another Irondel said, referencing the nearly dead Bsidd jumpship. “It’ll never leave the system.”

  “At least they’re not trying to stop us from leaving,” the pilot pointed out. “Maybe they want the planet more than our deaths.”

  “That would be a change,” Danngi commented as they continued to fly, then just before they got to the Kvash hangar bay he saw the shield generator go down. He backtracked the battlemap records and saw that one of the Kvash ships had dropped down into the upper atmosphere and fired on it, with the shield going down just before that happened.

  So it had been intentional, not an enemy attack, and as he checked he saw no more battlemap signatures on the surface. They were all in dropships headed up to orbit.

  “We shot it?” another Irondel said aghast. “What a waste. We protected that damn thing for so long…”

  “Yeah, I know. But if we come back I’d rather not have to shoot through it,” Danngi said as he saw the Kvash warship shooting other targets on the surface, but not the hordes of Ziviri. He almost wished they would, but that wasn’t Star Force’s style. They may have betrayed them, but they were no threat now and as much as he wanted to shoot the arrogant bastards, he was just as glad to be heading away from the planet to some other place where he could get a new mech.

  5

  June 22, 4907

  Sanisten System (Ziviri Region Capitol)

  Balboa

  Jyra’s evacuation fleet had traveled to the nearest Star Force-held Ziviri planet, with their
Bsidd ships being peeled off and reassigned while the Kvash continued as escorts for the survivors that were transferred to cargo ships and sent to the Sanisten System, which was the command and control center for the Ziviri Region. It was the most well fortified, though not the original Ziviri capitol. Rather it was where Star Force chose to place its regional capitol and where it had located most of the loyal Ziviri so they could grow and develop amongst likeminded individuals rather than have the constant drain of dissenters slowing them down.

  Jyra and the Clan Saiyan survivors had expected to be put back into the field, with their recall to the capitol being a curious call until the Arc Commando was summoned to the planetary command center and personally debriefed by Duke Yani. From him she’d learned that the comm grid relay link back to the rest of the Star Force empire had been broken in the Sopva System, which laid outside the Ziviri Region but not far from the border spinward. The Kat’vo had destroyed the relay and the status of the system was unknown, but there was no longer any information flow coming to and from the region.

  They were cut off, blind to what was happening elsewhere in the war, though this wasn’t unexpected. Duke Yani and Archon Victoria-243 had expected that to happen eventually, though the amount the Ziviri Region was being targeted was a bit of a surprise. It wasn’t strategically important for the assault of the major Star Force systems and they’d figured there was a chance the V’kit’no’sat would ignore them entirely, but no such luck. They were hitting the smaller systems, the weaker ones, the far flung ones, trying to draw out Star Force’s fleets and Uriti in a chasing game.

  But there were no Uriti in the Ziviri Region. Nor was there much infrastructure. The Ziviri were a mostly unwilling annex and one still in the early stages of conversion, but the Kat’vo were here hitting them hard and now Star Force had to deal with not one, but multiple Ziviri uprisings.

  The Knillo System wasn’t the first, but it was one happening more or less at the same time as four other invasions of Ziviri systems. It also appeared to not be accidental, for Zen’zat messengers had been discovered in the Hvwen System and their capture and interrogation had confirmed that the Kat’vo were actively recruiting their help with the promise of inclusion in the V’kit’no’sat Empire afterward.