Star Force: The Dinosaur War (Star Force Universe Book 45) Read online

  Niom growled, wanting to flick his long neck in a gesture of disrespect, but his fellow Oso’lon commander was correct. There was no point in waiting unless the Star Force fleet could be drawn out into combat away from the planet, and it was apparent they were not going to be so easily tricked into fighting at a disadvantage.

  “Very well. If they will not come to us, then we are forced to go to them.”

  “I would prefer another route, but the situation is what it is.”

  “Prepare for fleet orders. We must hit them hard and fast.”

  “We will be ready,” the other Oso’lon promised, cutting the comm as another slew of projectiles came up from the planet towards the fleet. Some of them missed as the ships moved, but a few were not quick enough and had to deflect…with one of the somewhat unpredictable deflections hitting another ship. That ship half caught the object, but not before it hit its conventional shields at partial speed, sapping their strength by more than 40%, though it did not explode.

  A quick scan of it determined it was a solid projectile meant for mass-only damage, meaning Star Force was firing the exploding versions along with the others, and so far ranged sensors were not able to pick up the difference between the two.

  As he monitored that ongoing situation he was mentally coordinating with his staff to set up the attack pattern. It took a few minutes, then the leading edge of his fleet broke into three groups snaking off like tendrils down towards the planet. They approached close to the same location, but began firing on 3 different shield generator locations as the planetary defenses opened fire with a horde of Ardent beams lighting up the closest Oso’lon ships…which immediately retreated, putting other ships between them and the planet to share the damage before a single ship could be destroyed.

  The Star Force fleet responded immediately, collapsing on those three tendrils of ships that quickly moved to engage them and stopped firing on the planet. As they did so Niom brought the bulk of his fleet in between the trio of fleet groups and began assaulting another shield generator, and only that one, while the other ships acted as skirmishers keeping the drones away from the actual point on the planet where the Oso’lon were seeking to penetrate the shields and land their troops.

  Niom watched the shield levels barely dip as his fleet unleashed their Var’ko and Ardents at range, then added their medium range weaponry as they came down to just above the atmosphere, circling back up like river currents as soon as they took hull damage to get in the rear of the formation and then rotate around into firing position again minutes later. He could see the ground batteries trying to pick on individual ships, and in some cases succeeded in doing extreme damage, but none lost maneuvering capability and other ships were moving out to impose themselves between the damaged vessels and the planetary defenses as planned.

  But it was going to take time to punch a hole through these robust shields, and once the damaged ships began cycling back into firing position he was going to start losing some of them. That couldn’t be helped if he wanted to assault this planet, not to mention the other 4 in the system just as heavily defended, but he had to obtain a foothold on Winage before a Uriti arrived. If the shields weren’t down, or he didn’t have a sizeable contingent of troops on the ground, the Oso’lon would have to retreat and give up whatever gains they’d made. They couldn’t, and wouldn’t, engage a Uriti. That meant time was probably not on their side for two had been confirmed to be within a handful of jumps from this system, though where they were at the moment was unknown, for the reports were 4 weeks old at the freshest.

  Niom kept his own ship in the rotation until it took hull damage, then he regretfully pulled it towards the back and kept it there. He couldn’t afford to be lost, but others were as the first ships began to take serious damage…meaning crew being killed internally even if the ship was still functional. The first full ship loss occurred on the third rotation, and from there the number of ships cycling began to slowly diminish. He had over 17,000 for this assault, but he was going to lose a good chunk of those because of the denseness of the shield generators in this system, and if he was going to assault the other planets he’d have to wait until he got more fleet reinforcements.

  He’d known that coming in, but he’d hoped he could lure the Star Force fleet away and deal with them separately, for now a lot of his ships were busy fighting them and keeping them away from the assault column in the center of his current fleet formation. If they were able to sneak through and pinpoint target the damaged ships, they might be able to completely annihilate his fleet.

  But that wasn’t going to happen. His skirmisher fleets were doing their job, and even when the planetary guns hit his ships, the mass of the V’kit’no’sat vessels was their greatest advantage. Add in their shields that had to be penetrated first and they were hard to kill, but the more time they spent firing on a single spot in the shields the more damage they had to eat, and the depletion rate was agonizingly slow as Niom watched the strength of the shield at the assault point grow weaker and weaker.

  When they are about a third of the way through he saw a group of drones break off and try to backdoor his formation and get at the troop transports safely in the rear. He didn’t like pulling more ships off the attack cycle, but Niom had no choice. Those transports were heavily defended, but they didn’t have the firepower to fight back. If he ordered them to flee they would be safe, but he needed them in close to run down through the soon to be gap in the shields and Star Force knew it. He had to send ships to protect them, which would diminish his attack column’s endurance while not diminishing the firepower of the rotating ships, for they were not all spreading out to attack simultaneously.

  He monitored the transports and the smaller battle breaking out there as another of the projectiles from the surface slammed into a Dak’bri in his fleet and got through. Either they didn’t have dampener shields up, or couldn’t spare the power from their convention shields. The projectile disappeared inside the hull and didn’t come out the other side, but the damage reports from that vessel flashed into view and Niom could see that it was nearly a lethal hit. The ship limped back out of the line slowly, but the planetary gunners didn’t ignore it. They focused several Ardents on it before other vessels could get in place to block for it, and the Dak’bri saw several minor explosions on the hull…not fireballs, but from the vaporization of hull armor and interior decks along with the decompression of living areas.

  Niom ground his teeth together angrily as the Dak’bri lost engine power and began to drift back down towards the planet. He almost wanted to let it hit the shields and make them switch to dampeners to catch it, but there were still crew alive onboard and he’d been ordered to keep his people intact as much as he could. This was going to be a long war, and impatience was an enemy that could not be played with, so he ordered nearby vessels to attach mooring beams and pull it out of the planet’s gravity well while other blockers now got into place.

  More of the projectiles were being flung up sporadically, most of which hit their targets, a few of which exploded once inside. Those ships were lost almost immediately, and Niom hated having to be so confined in low orbit. He was giving them such easy targets, and his fleet couldn’t properly block them while running their conventional shields at such a high regeneration rate. They could have both up at the same time, but there was only so much reactor power to go around, and their weaponry and engines were soaking up a good amount of it.

  However, the toll being exacted on the shield was adding up, and four hours into the assault the first hole opened. It wasn’t long lived, but several shots got through it and hit the shield generator. They didn’t penetrate, for the generator had a secondary shield covering itself, but the recharge rate on the planetary shields only filled in the gap momentarily, with more shots hitting and breaking through again, over and over, allowing a small amount of firepower to hit the surface.

  Niom was watching closely, knowing the moment was near, when more shields started
popping up around the location. It took a moment to identify their source, and it was coming from large mechs that had arrived at the location earlier while the local population had been evacuated. The shields they produced were small, but there were more than 60 of them down there combining to give the primary generator a third shield.

  That would delay the fall of the primary by at least another minute, and in that timespan the planetary defense guns would do more damage to his fleet. Star Force was going to stretch out their damage advantage as much as they could, for once that primary generator went down the closest anti-orbital batteries would be the immediate targets. They had their own secondary shields, but they wouldn’t hold up for more than a few salvos against the combined firepower of his fleet.

  Others with firing lines yet protected under other shield generators would still be immune, but all he needed was one primary shield generator down to land his troops, even if they overlapped a bit. One route down to the surface was enough, and even now as the moment approached he began bringing his transports closer to prepare for the run down to the surface.

  The moment came some 16 minutes later when the secondary shield over the generator went down. The weak third shield wouldn’t last long, so Niom orders his transports forward with blocking vessels to soak up some of the firepower from the planetary guns.

  When those transports got almost all the way to the front lines the other ships parted to let them through as the mechs lay smoking on the ground along with the now gutted shield generator marking the epicenter of the 73 mile wide hole in the planetary shield.

  “Now,” he said, almost to himself as the fleet acted on its own timing. Warships pushed down into the atmosphere alongside the transports until they got too low on the horizon to be targeted by the big guns that were even now being taken down by the fleet in orbit…but other smaller batteries opened up and began to chip away at the descending ships. He saw one transport get hit hard by combination fire and drop to the surface in a controlled crash, crushing several buildings underneath it but telemetry reported that aside from injuries there were no fatalities in the crew…until a nearby battery rotated around and began pounding the ship in one of its hangar bays.

  Niom ordered it targeted and destroyed, but not before 18 signatures within the ship disappeared, two of which were Oso’lon.

  More smaller batteries were being taken out as they identified themselves, for most were hidden prior to opening up. Star Force didn’t want him to know how many weapons they had, and that tactic was costing him some minor losses, but as the rest of his transports all got down to the lower atmosphere he ordered his ships to pull back…then countermanded the order as the Star Force drones tried to run down to the surface and attack the transports.

  Niom felt the pit in his stomach drop out. There were too many drones left to ignore, and that meant keeping his fleet above the atmosphere to battle them or let them get to ground and do an insane amount of damage. He had to fight and contain them up here, even as a few went wide to try and evade and come around from odd approaches…which drew pursuing ships into range of other anti-orbital guns further around the curve of the planet.

  Star Force was going to make the V’kit’no’sat fight over the planet until all the drones were gone, meaning his fleet had to continue to take egregious losses until by the lessening number of anti-orbital guns. He couldn’t withdraw out of range now, or he’d sacrifice his ground troops.

  He was stuck, but if that was the price they had to pay, then so be it. This planet was going to be theirs, and soon even a Uriti arriving would not matter. Unless they finally found the grit to fire on their own people to remove the Oso’lon.

  Niom didn’t think they had it in them, but it was still a nagging worry in the back of his mind. Virokor’s entire battle plan was based on the assumption they wouldn’t. Give the long history Star Force had with the V’kit’no’sat obliterating their planets, it was a safe bet that if they could have made that leap they would have done so long, long ago…but there was still that small possibility that could not be completely ignored.

  Still, they had yet to demonstrate such an ability, and if his troops had enough time they were going to dig in so hard no orbital bombardment could remove them. The fate of this planet would be decided on the surface…so long as Star Force didn’t bring in another fleet of drones capable of defeating the grounded warships. Zen’zat could disappear amongst the Star Force infrastructure, but Oso’lon were too large. They needed the warship backup until they built or captured planetary shield generators.

  Several small models were already being sent down, but the big ones wouldn’t be shipped in until the surface was truly secure. They weren’t even in the system yet, for a Uriti could easily take those out. This invasion would have to progress much further before they devoted the resources for that kind of a hold, because there was no reason to waste such resources if a trip by a Uriti could scratch them off the surface within seconds.

  Niom needed prisoners to pack around such sites, and until he had them his grounded warships were going to be the only anti-orbital defense he had available. It should be enough, so long as no reinforcements arrived, and with so many other systems being hit, he figured Star Force didn’t have much to spare…though with the importance of this system, he wasn’t going to be surprised if something did show up, and soon.

  5

  July 2, 4897

  Hefo System (Bozse Region)

  Nautilus

  There, Vax thought to himself as she saw the first breach in the planetary shields. It won’t be long now.

  Which was good, for the Garas’tox fleet was losing a fair number of ships and Vax didn’t like taking any losses, but this system was far less defended than many others in Star Force territory. The shield generators were solid, she couldn’t fault them there, but the number of defense ships was lacking. She almost assumed it was a bias against water worlds, but there were also two less populated land dominated planets in the system that were less shielded than this one.

  It must have been a priority issue, but to the aquatic Garas’tox, leaving one of the most deep water planets in Star Force territory without a robust defense fleet was offensive in the extreme. The V’kit’no’sat had always had an aerial bias during the reign of the Zak’de’ron…which few remembered these days…and since then there had been a heavy land bias. Against the Hadarak in space it didn’t matter. A warship was a warship. But when it came to allotting planetary defense stations, the V’kit’no’sat aquatics worlds had always been shortchanged.

  The Garas’tox worlds were heavily defended with other weapons of local production, but anything involving Yeg’gor or Tar’vem’jic had to be rationed and Itaru did the rationing. Vax was sad to see what looked like a similar bias within Star Force.

  She shook off the notion, shivering down her spine and wiggling in the water-filled command deck that had little bubbles of air here and there for the Zen’zat to work in. They at least understood the value of water worlds, and their illegitimate spawn seemed to as well, for the world Vax’s fleet was assaulting wasn’t just populated by aquatics, but by a large number of land dwellers also. They built cities above and below the surface, whereas the V’kit’no’sat usually spurned such construction. There were so many worlds to choose from in their domain they could get picky about where they put down colonies, whereas it looked like Star Force was making due with whatever they had available.

  Or perhaps not. The design of this planet lacked the sophistication of a Garas’tox world, but there was an elegance to the structures. Most could not be seen from orbit, though sensors gave at least silhouettes of most below water. There was a curious sediment in the oceans that blocked full scans, but Vax could see the approximate layout that she was about to invade and the Garas’tox almost approved, save for the diminutive size of most of the buildings. It would require Zen’zat to go in and do most of the fighting, which was distasteful, but the Garas’tox would rule the open water as u
sual…once they got down there.

  Sporadic holes in the planetary shield weren’t going to be enough, and it was looking like the secondary shields around the generators were much more durable than expected. The one they were targeting already had taken several heavy shots and was still holding, but it would fall eventually. Star Force didn’t have enough drones here to stop them, and the planetary weapons, while a nuisance, couldn’t mass enough firepower to cut away at her own. Vax’s fleet was going to break through with less than 6% ship losses, but those numbers scared her.

  Not for this assault. The planet, then the two dry worlds would be hers soon enough. It was the loss of ships that bothered her, for Star Force had so many planets. She might lose more taking the dry worlds, then the next system invasion the Garas’tox would lose more, and more, and more…even if they avoided the Uriti at all times. Star Force has so many planets with heavy shield generators and defensive batteries that the Garas’tox were going to be blooded to the extreme to see this conquest through. Vax worried that Mak’to’ran had been right, but she also worried what Star Force would become if they let them have their freedom. The V’kit’no’sat needed to annex or destroy them now, but the cost to do it was going to be very heavy, for her fleet had to sit and take damage while they drained the shield generators, and without a Mach’nel there was no other way to go about doing it.

  And she hadn’t been gifted with one. Her place in the Garas’tox was too low, and the three Mach’nel that her race possessed were elsewhere, but all had been sent to this war in order to diminish ship losses as much as possible. The problem was, if Star Force knew where they were going to attack they could bring a Uriti in and crush the Mach’nel. So far that hadn’t happened, and Vax expected it wouldn’t unless someone lost their nerve and fought out of spite. Virokor had given strict orders to retreat and not allow that matchup, or any other, to occur with the Uriti if there was the option of withdrawal. Vax knew that didn’t sit well with many commanders, but they would obey. At least the Garas’tox would, though she couldn’t say for sure about all the others. There might be a fool or two among them.