Star Force: Death Knell (SF26) Read online

  None of Star Force’s ships were designed as such, but whether through damage or other models, incoming vessels could potentially breach the atmospheric containment on accident…which was why the short tunnel had been added, meaning the incoming ships, such as the Falcon-class dropship passing through as Wilkinson watched, would have to fully penetrate one shield before they contacted the others. This would contain any atmospheric breach to the small tunnel rather than vent everything in the bay out into space.

  The tri-layered shield had two backup capacitors to power the extra layers in case main power went out, giving the crew time to close the doors before the hangar depressurized. And each of the two backups were located in different locations so that weapons damage to one area wouldn’t take down both simultaneously, with the primary power feed for the third also being routed through another location.

  The end result was that the newer Star Force ships could load and unload continuously while leaving the main doors open without fear of depressurization short of a huge hole being torn in the hull…which was coated with double thick armor around the bays just in case they were intentionally targeted by weaponsfire.

  The falcon came through and set down across the bay near the Captain while another followed it in a minute later, both of which eventually disgorged a string of short, walking rock piles that were the Kvash. The ‘rock’ was actually an exoskeleton, over which they all wore containment suits similar to parkas with only their faces exposed to keep in their body heat on the ‘cold’ Star Force ship. Their eyes were the only visible appendages on their faces, with no nose or mouth, though there was a series of small ridges underneath their pointed chin that produced the audial vibrations for speech.

  Their heads were also flat on top, giving the impression of a tabletop/hat, but at the moment they were covered with thermally insulating material and out of sight as they plodded over towards the much smaller doors that led to the interior of the jumpship, where Wilkinson was waiting. The creatures moved slow, but according to the Alliance data files they were quicker than they looked, though not up to Archon levels of agility.

  “Where are your wounded?” the Captain asked as the first of the Kvash walked up to him.

  “In another transport,” the shoulder-height alien said in slightly lower tones. “Is your entire ship this temperature?”

  “I’ve arranged a less cold area a short walk from here,” he said, wasting no time and pointing the Kvash forward as they began to group up around him. “If you will follow me.”

  “We will,” one of them said, waddling forward with an extra wide shoulder swing that seemed atypical to Humans but was necessary to accommodate their higher masses.

  Wilkinson led them down the hall and around a corner, then walked a few dozen meters more before coming to a door that led to a recently emptied cargo bay with a Knight posted by it in full white armor. The Kvash looked pathetically tiny next to her, but then again so did Wilkinson. “How are we?”

  “Hot,” she said, pulling open the door with a wave of hot air spilling out and causing his face to flash sweat.

  “If you require anything, ask her,” the Captain said, looking back at the Kvash and motioning them in.

  “Thank you,” one of them said before waddling into the improvised sweat room with the others following suit, save for one that pulled off next to Wilkinson and looked up at the helmeted giant.

  “What race is that one?”

  “Human,” the Captain answered while the Knight stood impassive.

  The Kvash huffed, staring up at the behemoth with its dark, glassy eyes. “It looks like a two-armed Calavari. How many sub-races do you have?”

  “None. We’re all genetically the same. This one took growth enhancements during her training.”

  “Growth mods?” the Kvash asked, with another pair stopping to listen while the group from the second dropship appeared around the corner in the hallway, led by another of Wilkinson’s naval officers that had been waiting in the bay. “How do you accomplish that without genetic alteration?”

  “That is knowledge that I do not have,” Wilkinson said honestly, glancing up at the Knight.

  “Something we ingest,” she said with a shrug. “If we want to get larger we eat more, if we want to shrink we drink a different formula. Most of us prefer the 7 foot range.”

  “There’s no limitation?” the Captain asked, curious.

  “Not that I was told, save for the ceiling height.”

  “Impressive technology for such a primitive race,” the Kvash said, with some of the others making gestures of agreement by clicking parts of their exoskeleton. “Your biotech must exceed your starship design.”

  “We have supply crates incoming,” another Kvash interrupted. “Can you have them transferred to this chamber or will we need to carry them ourselves?”

  Wilkinson swiped several rivulets of sweat off his forehead, guessing the interior of the room had to be higher than the 120F he specified. “We will arrange for the transfer. We’re also currently reconfiguring another chamber into a lavatory, which we will hopefully have operational within the hour.”

  “Hopefully we will not be remaining here than long, but thank you for the consideration,” the other Kvash said, motioning for the others to continue inward. They cleared the hallway and allowed the second group to come through, then the Knight pulled the door shut and a blissful wave of air conditioning whipped across the Captain’s forehead now that the blast furnace was sealed off.

  “Told you so,” the Knight said as the Captain flicked off several beads of sweat.

  “Can you believe that’s still cold for their homeworld?”

  “What’s normal?”

  “The files say 150.”

  “Ouch…thanks for not posting me inside.”

  “I wouldn’t do that to a lizard, let alone one of our own. You’ve got to be hot enough in that armor?”

  “It self-regulates to diminish thermals…at least the amount I generate. I don’t think it’s rated to compensate for exterior heat. Not with the small power cell that it has.”

  “I didn’t know your armor was powered at all, aside from the helmet comms.”

  “The movement is all me, but there are a few auxiliary systems with a low power draw. The techs plan to add more as the weight requirements diminish.”

  “Is Archon armor the same way?”

  “I don’t know for certain, but scuttlebutt says it is.”

  “Did you feel that heat?” Wilkinson asked, pointing at the door.

  “A bit soaked through,” she admitted.

  “Carry on,” he said as a third group of Kvash appeared, led by yet another naval officer. The Captain headed off to the left and back around to the hangar entrance via a different hallway, then stayed to observe the continual offloading of personnel and later the supplies, which consisted of octagonal crates that wouldn’t fit through the hallway. Those he had transferred via the cargo corridors that ran throughout the ship like mini highways, one of which passed over the Kvash-occupied cargo bay.

  Several other issues arose during their stay, but were dealt with in course…with Wilkinson finding as many solutions as he could that avoided him and his people from having to go into the hot zones. He desperately hoped he’d never have to abandon his ship and take refuge on a Kvash vessel. Some Alliance races he could handle shipping with, he guessed, but the heat loving living rocks weren’t one of them.

  The metallic slug shot out from the ‘forward’ end of the frigate as the ship hovered half a kilometer above Sri’ka’s surface with the slimmest forward tilt possible to give it the depression necessary to target the hoard of Nestafar walkers a little over 10 klicks away. The projectile flashed by too fast for the eye to see, slicing through the air and punching into the side of a super dragon with an enormous sonic boom following it as the concussion wave punched in the air eventually caught up with the slug’s target.

  The heavy armor on the walker crumpled around the im
pact as the rail gun ammunition broke through into the super dragon’s insides but failed to punch out an exit wound. Instead, all of the momentum was directed into the walker itself, knocking it over on its back where it came down on a pair of giraffes that were escorting it towards the heavy fighting further north.

  Morgan smiled as she watched the damage even one of the weapon impacts could do, let alone the accuracy of her pilots as they fired the weapon laterally, having to compensate for the perpendicular gravitational pull. Her view from one of the cameras on the frigate swung to the right as the ship twisted ever so slightly, then the image corrected itself and zoomed out, showing her the line of walkers scattering every which way, save for another super dragon a bit further up the line that was too slow to do much else than continue walking forward.

  A second shot fired with similar results, save for this one hit slightly off center and spun the giant machine around a quarter spin before dumping it onto its collapsing legs and down to the ground. After that the frigate closed range and started firing at the other walkers with its plasma cannons, not wanting to waste the heavy rounds against the smaller targets. Simultaneously it fired a lachar off at the shields covering the prefab base that was the functioning as the LZ for the newly arrived walkers, having been offloaded just prior to the naval battle in orbit.

  The heavy blast impacted the dome-like shield, catching on the partially energy-resistant matrix with almost no penetration, unlike the naval versions that a lachar could get through with ease. Star Force also utilized different shield technologies on the ground than in space, but they were all a combination of physical and energy shields. Why the Nestafar would only equip their bases with energy-resistant shields and not any of their other war machinery was confusing, but that was the nature of the game they were playing. A lot of the aliens’ tactics, allies and enemies alike, didn’t always make logical sense to Morgan, but they had to deal with them regardless.

  From their intelligence on the Nestafar’s various shields, a cleansing beam still should have been able to punch through, but the atmosphere-capable warships weren’t large enough to carry the weapon and firing through the atmosphere via orbital bombardment was problematic, given that the beam would scatter and, even if it did manage to hit the target, would only deliver a fraction of its original power. Had the frigate had one, it would have been useful at the closer range in atmosphere, but since that wasn’t an option the bases were going to have to be taken down primarily via plasma…which the frigate wasn’t planning on getting close enough to use.

  It was going to do some damage with its lachars, though, and continued to do so as a swarm of fighters came out of three nearby prefab bases the Nestafar had set up. They swirled about at range until they were all assembled into a large fighting unit, then they attacked the frigate in several waves, zipping in and releasing smaller versions of the Nestafar naval missiles along with pinpricks of plasma.

  Anti-air lachars across the ship, designed specifically for shooting down incoming missiles and starfighters, tore through the stupid pilots as they ran up on the giant block of a ship, shredding a full third of their craft and most of the missiles they launched on the first strafing run.

  The survivors spun around and appeared to set up for a second run, then they abruptly broke off and fanned out around the perimeter of the frigate in packs, as if waiting for a vulnerability to appear for them to exploit.

  As the frigate pounded the walkers with blue plasma orbs that melted through their armor on the first hit, the dozens of targets also fired back, bathing the ‘forward’ shields of the ship in an ongoing cascade of red but failing to penetrate the much larger shield generator’s matrix. Once the frigate smoked the walkers over the next 10 minutes it headed up north, away from the Nestafar bases, and began hunting down more walkers that were currently engaging the Calavari army near a semi-large city isolated on a grassy plain.

  The large block, growing ever larger in the distance, literally roused a war cry from the Calavari all across the battlefield as it started to poach the enemy troops from range with its lachars, punching exploding holes in the backsides of many spiders while the Calavari’s flying tanks fought a gradual retreat back towards permanent, shielded defenses set up around the city. The turrets had already come under assault, with half their number slagged from spider strikes while the faster giraffes had moved up to deal with the tanks.

  Suddenly that trend reversed itself with the Nestafar troops split between continuing their advance and retreating…which occurred in multiple directions as they fired back up at the frigate. In the confusion the Calavari’s weaker army jumped the walkers, ganging up on the stragglers while the Human warship hammered the largest concentration of spiders with plasma as it floated intimidatingly forward up to and over the battlefield.

  Halfway through the fight, with its shields already partially weakened from the first group of walkers, the frigate’s ventral shields came down, exposing the hull to Nestafar plasma. When that happened the panicked confusion of the survivors seemed to evaporate as every unit within firing range turned back to target the exposed underside.

  A sheet of missile launches came up, streaking in and getting mowed down by the still active anti-air lachars while the plasma started melting small divots in the adamantium armor. The damage it did was insignificant, for the walkers weren’t targeting individual weapons batteries, shield generators, or engine vents…they were just throwing as much firepower at the exposed side of the ship as possible, and some from significant range where they didn’t have the option of pinpoint targeting.

  Eventually attrition wore the enemy down, with the death knell coming when the frigate’s ventral shields reformed, catching the last few globs of plasma being thrown at it and continuing to recharge at the same time. It hung in the air above the wildfires spreading across the dry grassy plain and the smoking hulks of the dead walkers as it finished off the few surviving ones that the Calavari didn’t get to first, after which it swung back around to the south and approached the closest of the Nestafar bases, staying out of plasma range while getting within decent lachar range.

  From there it systematically picked off the anti-air cupolas, having to gain some altitude to target the backside ones. It took down one base, then another, and then another…taking away their overlapping anti-air cover from range, then it moved in and started taking apart the first base in a plasma fight, now that its shields were fully recharged.

  The base heavy defense turrets were more powerful than those on the spiders, but they still didn’t have the punch necessary to get through the frigate’s shields fast enough. With decent pacing and diligence the warship had the bases owned, even with the rocket launcher infantry they were deploying, along with whatever walkers they had left inside, to augment the base’s firepower.

  It was at that point that Morgan stopped watching, flipping over to another feed to watch a second assault beginning elsewhere on the planet. That one she monitored for a few minutes before forcing herself to trust her people with carrying out the attacks on their own while she headed back to her quarters and the nearest cafeteria, grabbing a bite to eat, taking a nap and shower, and then meeting up with the handful of other Archons onboard the ship in the armory where they began suiting up for the upcoming assault on the jumpships.

  5

  The Archons took an Eagle-class dropship off the Red Ranger and went around to the other three Star Force warships and collected the Archons there, bringing Morgan’s addition to the Calavari boarding parties that were even now knocking down the jumpship’s front door to 14. The trailblazer was the only ranger among them, with 6 acolytes and 7 adepts making up the balance. They were all naval specialists, but given that Archons were qualified for all 5 areas of combat she knew they’d be better equipped to deal with the Nestafar hand to hand than the Calavari, despite their size and strength advantage.

  The request for Kvash troops had been a no-go, the Calavari commander had informed her, so it w
as going to be up to the system’s natives alone to capture the three enemy jumpships and Morgan wanted to assist them as much as possible, even if her strikeforce had only been equipped for naval engagements.

  That said, each warship was a jumpship, and as such contained an Archon sanctum and armory, meaning she had more than enough small arms and armor replacements to equip her small boarding party. Not knowing exactly what to expect they’d brought a little bit of everything, with Morgan opting for a shield and heavy pistol combination, along with auxiliary weapons stashed on her back. The others carried plasma rifles, stun sticks, and one had even brought a sniper rifle along, given that the slim amount of intel the Calavari had provided indicated that the Nestafar jumpships contained large open areas inside where they flew about, though that was just from scuttlebutt amongst the troops, with no actual blueprints provided.

  That meant they were going in blind and were going to have to fight their way through the fog of war. Every room, chamber, and hallway the Archons would pass through would automatically build up a communal battlemap as they progressed, but Morgan would really have preferred to have tangible mission parameters to work with rather than just going at it free for all…though technically they were here to assist the Calavari, not lead the attack.

  And as such they weren’t the first to board. A host of smaller starships came up from Sri’ka’s surface and began pounding away at the bay doors after Morgan’s fleet took down the ship’s limited shields. The Calavari assault gunships pried open a section of one of the hangar bays through controlled explosions and fought their way inside the ship through a temporary atmospheric containment shield that their spaceborn construction crews welded over the doors after the breach.

  As the eagle passed through the field, Morgan noted that the Nestafar version was also active a short distance inside, making the Calavari’s improvised containment field appear pointless, but she knew it wasn’t. Without their own in place, which covered the entire span of the hangar, the Nestafar could purposefully expose the bay to space after the Calavari had begun unloading their troops, killing them all within a few moments. Despite their preferred use of starfighters, it seemed the Calavari army/navy had a significant amount of experience in boarding enemy vessels in vacuum.