Star Force: Earth Evacuation Read online

  As horrifying as that was, it didn’t last. Once it was clear that the people underneath them couldn’t be protected the Star Force fleet went crazy and started sending ships down to surface level and fighting the enemy warships just above the building tops. The sky was blocked out with their masses but it was lit up with the bright flashes of weaponsfire worse than any thunderstorm. Piece of ships fell when blasted apart, then entire hulls came crashing down on top of the remaining people in the cities and the V’kit’no’sat troops, killing both.

  Faced with that untenable situation, the V’kit’no’sat ships gained more elevation, rising up back above the atmosphere while firing down on the Star Force ships beneath them so they couldn’t target their ground troops. That lifted the fight high enough that nearby planetary defense batteries could shoot over the curve of the planet and punish the ships that had been below their firing arcs. When that happened they had to pull back even further, leaving six different zones of devastation across Brazil as the warships retreated to a height where the planetary defenses couldn’t target them.

  Without that help the Star Force fleet pulled back into defensive positions, trying to run some of their ships down to the surface to shoot the ground troops but the V’kit’no’sat wouldn’t allow that. Each time they tried the warships came back down and forced a fight just above the atmosphere until a standoff occurred with both fleets essentially agreeing to leave the surface alone, though many smaller craft from both sides were dropping down into the atmosphere or flying across it.

  “They’re sending troops and we are too,” Brad said, wrapping an arm around Jenn as she cried silent tears. “Their ships are going to stay in orbit unless ours come down again. They’re going to try to take out the remaining shield generators and defensive guns on the ground now.”

  “How long until they get here?” Sarah asked.

  “A long time. We’ve got a lot of troops standing by and if they try to take out the rest of the planetary defenses with their warships they’ll get whittled down so far that what’s left of our fleet will be able to finish them off. The danger is on the ground now, so that’s where we’re going to hold them and it’s going to be a long, grinding fight.”

  “Can the galactica ships still get to us?” Jenn asked.

  “I’m not sure. Probably.”

  “When are we going to go, Brad?” Sarah asked.

  “They won’t bring down dropships near the fighting. They’ll pull us up in the safest area and move people overland to there. Europe and Asia are probably the safest places to do that now.”

  “But when will we leave?” she repeated, knowing that approximately a third of the planet’s population was already gone. For all the hopefulness that the V’kit’no’sat wouldn’t come back, thankfully Star Force hadn’t delayed the evacuation. There had been ships running round the clock, many taking people to the nearest star system and dumping them off there while the galactica ships took their passengers much further away, but people weren’t just evacuating from Earth. They were evacuating from Mars, Pluto, Sedna, Krillin, Frodo, and all the other planets in the Solar System.

  “As soon as we can,” Brad promised, “but I don’t think anyone knows when that will be.”

  “What do we do now?” Jenn asked. “Just wait and watch as they get closer?”

  “There’s going to be plenty to watch.”

  “Isn’t there anything we can do to help?” Sarah asked.

  “I don’t think so. If there is they’ll say so.”

  “I need some air,” Jenn said, getting up and heading for the door.

  “I’ll go with you,” Sarah offered, hopping to her feet and following her sister out while Brad remained sitting. He let them go, then used the interactive controls on the news feed to watch what was happening on the ground in Brazil. He’d fought in a lot of battles during the lizard war, but that enemy was nothing like the V’kit’no’sat. They were little and easy to kill, but used swarm techniques that made them very dangerous. This enemy was far worse and operated in a completely opposite manner. Most of the V’kit’no’sat were the equivalent of walking tanks, and even now he could see some moving around in their battle armor.

  He could also see Star Force mechs being dropped off nearby and gathering to fight them as aerial craft gave them cover. Brad wondered where the V’kit’no’sat air cover was, but didn’t see any for a long time until some of the ‘skeets’ that Star Force used as their primary fighter craft ducked into the rubble and flew around some mile high pieces of dead V’kit’no’sat ship that had fell to the surface and crushed buildings underneath. The skeets flew in and around them, only to be jumped by winged fliers that Brad knew were called I’rar’et, but most of Earth knew them simply as Pterodactyls from movie legend.

  They also had armor on, and were firing while chasing the skeets away from what they were obviously claiming as their territory, giving their own ground troops aerial cover. The only difference was they weren’t flying craft, but living beings inside armor, and according to the old records made public, that’s how the entire V’kit’no’sat army operated. They had no vehicles, save for the Zen’zat and a few smaller Dinosaur races, and that was an entirely different type of combat that Brad wasn’t sure how was going to go down, but the trailblazers had been preparing for this for a long time so a part of him was eager to see what happened.

  What he didn’t see were Commandos, Human or otherwise, heading out towards the enemy troops. It took a while, but eventually he started to see a few Commando units in the field helping pull people out of rubble and guarding the evacuation routes for people in the nearby area. They were getting them out of there as fast as possible, but it looked like they were already getting hit.

  Neither Brad nor the reporters could tell where they were coming from, but individual Zen’zat were popping up everywhere and shooting whatever Humans they could find on sight…then running off and disappearing into buildings or rubble as Commandos went after them, though most were trying to establish defensive perimeters so the civilians would have a safe place to run to.

  The dull white armor of the Commandos were everywhere now, but the dark green/black of the Zen’zat were very hard to see and they were moving so fast the civilians never stood a chance. They were here to slaughter them, and for as many as the Commandos saved there were far more that they couldn’t.

  Brad gripped the armrest on the couch as he watched, and without realizing it he dug his thumb all the way through the shell and into the padding underneath. Part of him wanted to be out there doing something, but he hadn’t fought or even combat trained for a long time.

  And there was no way he was going to leave Jenn and Sarah alone. Looking after them was enough of a mission to suit him for now, but seeing his fellow Commandos out there and him sitting on this stupid couch watching didn’t feel right…but then again, nothing about this invasion felt right.

  Brad kept watching for a long time, then the girls came back and he realized 5 hours had gone by. It had felt like half an hour, then as he pulled his hand back he noticed the hole in the couch and how he had been the cause of it. Balling his fist, he stood up stiff and walked past the girls.

  “Where are you going?” Jenn asked.

  “To find something to punch. I’ll be back.”

  “Better be.”

  He paused at the door, turning back and looking at them both. “Whether we get out of here alive or get caught and killed, I’ll be right beside you. I promise.”

  “Not very reassuring, but I’ll take it.”

  “There’s no reassuring now. The planet is in a fight for its life,” he said, then walked out and headed for the nearest gymnasium.

  Three weeks later and the V’kit’no’sat were still bottled up in Brazil. Star Force had brought in so many ground troops that no matter how many mechs they destroyed the invaders couldn’t get outside of their landing zones…but Star Force couldn’t get into them either, and for every Triceratops or Stegosaurus
that they killed more were being rushed down from orbit with skeets and other aerial craft from Star Force fighting against Pterodactyls and some other V’kit’no’sat flying Dinosaurs. They weren’t going to let them land troops for free, and whenever they tried to bring more down another massive aerial battle broke out with mixed results. Star Force was killing units in the air, but they weren’t getting all of them and that reinforcement was enough to maintain the V’kit’no’sat foothold on the planet.

  Meanwhile the fleets in orbit were in a staring contest. The V’kit’no’sat held defensive formation just outside the range of the planetary defenses but close enough for them to intervene if the Star Force warships tried to go after the ground troops. Without that cover the warships would smoke the ground targets and they knew it, so they couldn’t leave.

  But at the same time those warships could go after other ships in the system, so the Star Force fleet was essentially standing guard around them in a containment measure while the rest of the Solar System continued to evacuate. The big galactica ships weren’t coming to Earth anymore, rather evacuating people off the other worlds while those on Earth were being taken from planet to planet in smaller craft.

  By the time the V’kit’no’sat broke out into nearby Bolivia their reinforcements arrived. There weren’t many enemy ships coming into the system, but they were primarily troops ships and the V’kit’no’sat warships already present made sure they got to the surface after a rough fight in near the star. After that Star Force didn’t try to hit the ships again, instead pulling back into defensive alignments to protect the ongoing evacuation while the aerial forces tried to knock down as many as they could as enemy drop pods continued descending through the atmosphere almost round the clock.

  Some that they did shoot down saw ground troops crawling out afterward, for the armor they wore had both resistances to weaponsfire along with energy shields…not to mention regenerators of their own built into it. So even when you killed one they didn’t always stay dead.

  It was clear that Star Force wasn’t going to win this fight, but they were doing a remarkable job of slowing it down, so much so that they were still contained to South America when dropships came in to Jenn and Sarah’s city. There were no more individual evacuations now, with everyone nearby getting on and filling up every seat they could. The sisters didn’t make the first group and had to wait another two weeks as the city’s population quickly thinned out, but more people were also being brought in from other areas on the planet so when another group of dropships were due in Jenn, Sarah, and Brad each packed a single duffle with a few clothes and some prepackaged foodstuffs, not even filling the bags up halfway, and camped out at the spaceport along with a lot of other people waiting in line.

  They were there for two days, but thankfully everyone was well behaved. Had the fighting got this far that might have changed, but Brad never had need to draw his stinger pistol even once. Everyone seemed to be falling back on their maturia training that surprisingly resurfaced very fast when needed, with everyone staying orderly as more and more dropships came in and people were loaded up.

  When their turn came all three of them got onboard the same craft and sat down next to each other with Brad in the middle as they carried their duffles on their laps because the floors were also being used to seat people, squeezing in as many as they could without getting desperate about it. Then the boarding ramp pulled up and the hatch closed as they departed the spaceport and took to the air, heading up to orbit well away from the V’kit’no’sat fleet.

  Star Force warships were everywhere, standing by to defend the tiny craft if needed as they moved out to a jumpline and cranked their engines up as high as they could. Normally they weren’t used for planet to planet travel, but everything available had been stretched to its operational limits and the dropships did have the capability, so another flock of them took off and headed out towards Mars.

  It took nearly a day to get there, but Jenn was more than willing to suffer the discomfort in order to get away from Earth.

  5

  September 6, 3604

  Solar System

  Mars

  Living on Mars wasn’t much different than on Earth, save for the fact that you couldn’t go outdoors, but in truth a lot of Earth’s cities were self-contained anyway and Jenn often would go weeks without tasting the outside air. With less of it here and mostly carbon dioxide, you couldn’t survive outside without a filtration mask.

  Over the centuries there had been some terraforming that had gotten the atmospheric pressure up high enough that you wouldn’t explode when you walked outside, but the efforts here had been more experimentation than anything. They’d never taken it all the way because Star Force had gotten used to building on dead planets and moons throughout the star system and abandoned terraforming save for select situations, preferring instead to just build enclosed facilities so the habitability of a planet really didn’t matter.

  Mars had about a third of the gravity Earth did, but Jenn still felt normal gravity walking around the very crowded city where she’d been given temporary quarters. They were tiny level 1s, but at least there were enough for everyone. So many people had been pulled out of the Solar System already that there was a lot of openings to fill, though Jenn, Sarah, and Brad had volunteered to share the same quarters in order to make room for more people being brought over from Earth as the fighting there was still ongoing.

  So far Mars hadn’t been hit, and with their fully intact planetary shields and defensive guns the V’kit’no’sat would have to pay another heavy price to establish a foothold here like they did on Earth, but everyone knew it would be coming eventually. Right now they were preoccupied with taking the primary planet in the system and having a hell of a fight on their hands, so Jenn was glad to be on Mars now though she and the others were still waiting for their evacuation from the system entirely.

  There wasn’t much to do here, so everyone was training and filling what jobs they could. Most were industrial and everyone who had skills that could be used were working their asses off to make more warships to replace those that were lost and continuing to be lost, though the facilities on Mars were small compared to elsewhere in the system. There were so many shipyards here that they should have been primary targets, and they were during the first attack years back, but most had been preserved and were even now pumping out replacement drone bricks for the control ships to deploy and use up, gradually diminishing the number of enemy ships here.

  But the V’kit’no’sat were also getting reinforcements periodically with everyone knowing by now that the system would fall, but the more warships they produced the slower that fall would be and the more people could be evacuated, so whoever had industrial or mining skills had volunteered even if they weren’t Star Force employees…but everyone else had nothing to do. Some private companies were still functioning and servicing the people here, but many more had already been moved out in part, leaving a lot of workers behind that likewise were doing little more than waiting for their ticket out.

  The training facilities were packed, as had been the norm, for with people reverting back to their maturia habits they fell into old rhythms while also working out their frustration of being stuck here with nothing to do but boredly wait.

  Jenn was no exception and was heading back from some sparring work as she and others practiced very old skills in the vain hope of being better able to defend themselves if, or rather when this city was attacked. The stronger she and others got the better, but most people knew it wouldn’t make any difference if what they were seeing on Earth made its way over here.

  When Jenn got back to their quarters she found the other two were gone…which wasn’t surprising. If they stayed in here too long it quickly got claustrophobic, for the quarters had been built as the minimum for one person, not three, though they weren’t the only people doubling up to make room.

  Taking advantage of the peace and quiet, Jenn stripped down and retreated into
their shower and submerged herself in the vertical tube, pressing her forehead against the clear glass as she triggered the rain droplets to start falling from the ceiling.

  If Jenn didn’t have her training she didn’t think she would have kept it together this long, and even now she was barely hanging on to her sanity. The constant pressure of impending doom was getting to her and a lot of other people here, and though they were trying to give each other their space and make this work, tensions were high and occasional fights were breaking out. Some days Jenn thought she wanted to jump into the middle of one, but so far hadn’t been caught up in any of the non-training fights.

  That was another reason why people were sparring a lot. It was constructive and let them beat each other’s frustrated nerves out, but it wasn’t enough for Jenn. If they didn’t get out of here soon she was pretty sure she was going to lose it.

  She’d tried not watching the battle reports coming in from Earth, but a part of her couldn’t just ignore what was happening to the people back there. Plus she wanted to know when the damn Dinosaurs were coming here, and as long as they were still on Earth that gave her mind a little breathing room, but as soon as they decided to come out to Mars she was sure that the people trapped here were going to explode before the V’kit’no’sat even got through the planetary shields.

  Jenn knew it wasn’t Star Force’s fault, for the reports of evacuation ships coming and going were constant. People were being moved out rapidly, but Sol was the capitol system of the Star Force empire and heavily populated. You couldn’t just pick everyone up and head out unless you had a ship the size of a planet, and even then you’d have to make multiple trips to get everyone across the system evacuated.