Star Force: Benefactor (SF19) Read online

  Just then the lead Archon took a plasma hit to his shield, causing him to turtle up a moment before charging forward, knowing that he had to clear the hallway so the rest of Beta team could come through and assist. A wash of green plasma flared around his shield, then he ducked to the left out of view. Jason followed the second skirmisher up, who also took some hits to his shield. He stepped out from the opening and held position, allowing Jason and the others to exit the hallway under cover and spill out around him to either side.

  The trailblazer ducked out right, feeling slow and sluggish in the high gravity as a pack of lizards came into view across the narrow room. Several were already down, but more were pouring in through the opposite doorway into the otherwise empty hexagonal atrium as Jason shot one on the front row, noting that they were not wearing their vest-like armor, but were actually bare chested. His plasma burst caught the one in what looked like an armored plate across where a Human would have had pectorals. The callous-like plate stretched down into a V-shaped tether that dipped down into the yellow leggings that it wore.

  He didn’t noticed much more as he let the gravity drag him down to a knee, causing a pair of lizard plasma blasts to shoot high and miss overhead. With practiced ease he kept his calm and took down his targets one by one as the other Archons did likewise. Soon the bodies were piling up and the lizards entering the atrium were getting tripped up and blocked, allowing the Archons to advance and flank the door, firing down on some of the bodies that were still moving, not wanting to take a plasma hit from below.

  Jason poked his rifle into the doorway and fired off several half aimed shots into the flood of lizards. His earlier thoughts regarding a lack of reaction from the lizards had quickly reversed themselves. They were rushing forward without tactics, just throwing bodies at them, which on one hand was beneficial to the Archons because they were very skilled at defending against such a sloppy onslaught…but it also meant that they were going to have to hack out every inch of territory within the ship until they ran out of reinforcements to throw at them.

  Thinking ahead, Paul slung his rifle over his back and latched it in place before picking up one of the lizards’ weapons and using it to fire into the backlog. Their plasma was more potent, and if this was going to be as long of an engagement as it looked he was going to need to conserve ammo until they could get their foothold established and start bringing in supplies.

  He fired off another shot, noticing that the backlog of bodies was starting to extend down the hallway, meaning that their own dead were starting to push the living lizard hoard back a few meters.

  “Start pulling bodies off to the side,” Jason said, ducking back out of the line of fire and grabbing one of the lizards’ arms from the pile that he was standing in. He yanked the body out, finding it also weighed considerably more in the high gravity, and stashed it against the wall before accepting another from Harrison. He stacked that one on top with more to come as the Archons slowly emptied the area around the doorway to give them more room to move and shoot, as some of the lizards stupidly tried to climb over their own dead and right into their firing lines.

  By the time they got the foot of the doorway clear the pile in the hallway ahead of them was already a meter and a half deep, cutting off almost all return fire save for those climbing over the pile. The Archons kept a pair of gunners stationed a few steps back from the doorway to shoot the climbers down while Jason and another Archon crawled forward and both pulled on one of the bodies at the bottom of the stack. They had to brace their feet on the wall to get enough leverage, but they succeeded in pulling that lizard out and handed it off to another Archon for ‘storage’ as several more spilled down from the pile.

  After a minute of work they had a foothold of two meters dug into the pile of bodies and continued their very slow advance forward as Delta team arrived behind them, finding absolutely no room at all to maneuver in the corpse packed atrium.

  “Jason, what the hell are you up to?” Rafa asked.

  “Follow Morgan’s route,” Jason said, not bothering to stop pulling out bodies. “They’ve broken through. See if you can’t flank these bastards.”

  “On it,” he said as Delta team retreated to the branch and took off the other direction as Beta’s gunners shot another stupid lizard trying to climb over the stack.

  Alpha team was on the run…forward through the ship. As they moved Morgan kept aware of the positions of the rest of the Archon teams coming up behind them and noted the lack of progress Beta team was having so she kept her 10 man team constantly moving in various directions, killing every lizard they came across while keeping them guessing as to where exactly they were heading on the enormous ship that offered them seemingly limitless options the further they fought their way inside.

  Morgan also knew that every hallway and chamber they passed through would be added to the battlemap the other teams were using so she didn’t have Alpha team trying to lock down a foothold. The others could do that, so she’d decided on the fly to turn her team into the venators, borrowing the Canderian expression.

  Most of the region they were progressing through now was storage, storage, and more storage, ostensibly to feed the construction yard they’d entered through. They’d come across several small habitats, she hesitated to call them barracks due to the lack of armament, workstations, and elevator/ladder shafts connecting to higher and lower levels. They avoided the latter, knowing it was best to stick to one level for now, and eventually found their way into an enormous internal structure filled with all manner of stacked crates.

  “Break by twos, locate and tag the exits,” she ordered, heading off across the middle to find the far wall some 400+ meters away with Milli-1382 in tow. Another pair followed them halfway then split off as the others traced the walls in the hexagonal chamber whose ceiling mimicked the perimeter dimensions forming what looked like the inside of a soccer ball with the tallest crate stacks in the middle and reaching halfway up to the flat peak. Every seam in the room was lined with light bars that glowed red, casting a dim glow over the storage floor in contrast to the normal yellow/orange hue of the lizards’ standard lighting.

  As Morgan got to the other side she began to see markers popping up on her battlemap as Alpha team identified the exits, and there were several. She found one more on the far wall bringing the total count to 8 as they downed a rogue lizard roaming the crate stacks. That was more than she liked, but it was a workable number.

  “All teams,” she said, resetting her comm to reach all Star Force assets within range, “rendezvous point marked. We’ve got a large cargo area with plenty of cover. Establish and secure routes from the breach point, then start bringing in the cargo and personnel to establish our base camp. Alpha will hold location until reinforcements arrive.”

  Beta team finally pushed through that gruesome hallway on their own accord, breaking out into another forked intersection. By that time Knights had begun to arrive, so Jason let them guard the fork while they pushed up to the right through the lesser flow of lizards and into a larger chamber filled with small cubicles, each of which housed a single machine, though the designs were varied. Most were located along the walls, but enough were spaced around the center to give the lizards good cover, so Jason and his team had to spread out and eliminate the pockets of resistance much as they had done numerous times in challenges…save for this time the weaponry was live.

  He was glad to see no hesitation or nerves from the others, despite the small amount of damage done to their armor. None of the Archons had taken a direct hit, merely singes, but with so many opponents to fight even singes, added up over time, would kill them. Knowing that, his team wasn’t playing it conservative. They were sticking with established tactics and procedure while improvising when necessary.

  Jason and Paul had had many discussions about the mettle of the second generation Archons, which until Corneria had never been truly tested. There had been so many small engagements on the ground, air, and in mechs
that he’d set aside most of his concern for their skills and nerve, but this was by far the most in your face fighting any of them had ever seen and he was glad to finally put to rest any lingering doubts he’d been carrying about them.

  Then again, these were all Sangheili and Saber Archons, and he wasn’t above entertaining the notion that they might be slightly better than the rest.

  When Morgan’s call to set up base camp came through the Betas were still wrapped up in clearing out the various nooks as more stragglers came in to join the party. It took another 10 minutes to secure the facility, whatever it was, after which Jason called up Knights to hold the position while they pressed on towards the rendezvous point along with the others teams that wisely carved out multiple routes to the Alphas’ position.

  On the battlemap there were four fingers reaching out from the breach point that coalesced back into the rendezvous point, with the intermediate spaces being cleared, one by one, by the reinforcements coming in, eventually establishing a wide territory within which to move and work.

  And work they did. A second docking port was established, allowing the shuttles to run nonstop bringing in more Archons and Knights, along with an intrepid group of techs that began battlefield construction of their base as well as sealing off extra corridors with mobile bulkheads that they spot welded in place, reducing the number of access points into Star Force territory. That freed up more Knights to reposition elsewhere, some of which were tasked with guarding techs that were trying to hack into the jumpship’s computer systems using enemy tech captured from their ground bases.

  Beta team eventually found their way to one of the 8 entry points into their ‘base’ where they met up with a pair of Archons from Gamma team on guard duty, quickly redirecting them to the other side where the lizards were making a push into the cargo area. Jason ran his team across the hold, weaving in and out of crate stacks that resembled small mountains until they arrived on the far side, seeing an entry point with no guards but with the telltale sound of weaponsfire further out.

  The two Beta skirmishers lead the team forward, their shields showing several holes where the plasma had chewed completely through. Jason followed right behind them, as usual, until they came up on Morgan’s and Rafa’s teams involved in a heavy firefight across a much smaller cargo complex. They immediately folded into the combined Star Force ranks, reinforcing their light positions within the crate-filled area and adding their firepower to the suppression effort against the incoming lizards from three separate directions.

  Jason fired twice as he ran forward, then ducked down behind a stack of much smaller crates, two deep, that rose a little over a meter high…much smaller than those in the ‘base’ room. He nudged one with his elbow, finding that it gave slightly, meaning that whatever it contained wasn’t all that heavy, especially considering the above normal gravity.

  “Nice of you to join the party,” Morgan’s voice chided him over his helmet comm.

  “I hate to ask, but have you seen any det packs popping up yet?”

  “No we haven’t, and I’m hoping it stays that way. Half the lizards coming at us aren’t even armed.”

  “They’re trying to overwhelm us with numbers,” Jason commented, popping up and firing off three shots into lizards preoccupied with other targets before slamming back down on the floor behind the crates, helped along in no small part by the high gravity. “You get an ammo resupply yet?”

  “About five minutes ago.”

  “Good. If we start to run out we’re going to be in a world of hurt.”

  “You take any casualties?” she asked, the sounds of her own plasma shots wafting through her comm signal.

  “Negative, you?”

  “No, but we’re getting chewed up by partial and lucky hits. We’re going to need armor replacement at some point.”

  “Paul’s on top of it,” he assured her. “He was arranging for more cargo shipments out here in addition to the supplies we packed, so as long as we hold our ground we’ll get what we need.”

  An explosion to his right cut off his conversation as he scurried along the crate row and saw one his team down against the far wall. “Zander?”

  The Archon didn’t answer for a couple of seconds.

  “Here. Just got my bell rung,” he said, dragging himself up off the ground. Fortunately he’d been thrown behind cover.

  “What blew up?”

  “A lizard…I think someone hit his plasma rifle.”

  “Confirmed,” Harrison said, breaking into the team comm conversation. “Accidental. I don’t think they can trigger them manually.

  “Copy,” Jason said, glancing over Zander’s armor. “No damage to speak of. You alright?”

  Zander looked around. “My weapon.”

  Jason looked around but couldn’t see it either. “Here,” he said, tossing him his own rifle before retreating back towards the entrance and grabbing one of the lizards’ weapons from a corpse.

  “Jason, hit that top crate 11 o’clock from the door.”

  The trailblazer spun around and looked straight ahead, yet slightly left, seeing a half dislodged cubical box a little wider than his chest above a group of lizards firing on Morgan’s position nearby. He brought the enemy weapon up to his shoulder, finding it was getting heavier and heavier as this battle dragged on, then popped up out of cover and blasted the base of the crate with a single shot, ducked down, then back up to fire a second shot. He did the same thing with the third and fourth, having to wait out the recharge period in between each.

  On his 7th shot the crate, broken and charred, tipped over and fell on the lizards…then in a blur Morgan’s green ranger armor dropped in on top of them.

  5

  October 13, 2264

  Epsilon Eridani System

  Inner Zone

  Paul spent an hour on the treadmill in the Excalibur’s small fitness area, warding off the stagnation of having to sit, wait, and watch while the others were onboard the lizard jumpship taking the fight to the enemy. He wanted to be with them but knew it was more important that he stay on watch in case the lizard cruisers reappeared. He expected they were still back on Corneria, but without being able to track their location it was conceivable that they could appear at any location at any time.

  Captain Evinson could handle himself and the assembled fleet well enough, but Paul knew that Jason and the others were counting on him to watch their backs and, to be frank, no one else in the system had his naval skills. Roger and Liam were the only other ones he’d trust to do his job for him and they were currently stationed in the Sirius and Alpha Centauri systems respectively, growing the small defense fleets there in case the lizards saw fit to start hitting their other interstellar colonies. At present they had 8 inhabited systems, seven of which had colonies. The 8th was the Morpheus system, which had no planets, but Star Force had established a Canderian seda there as a way station.

  Sirius and Alpha Centauri had the most infrastructure and population outside of Epsilon Eridani, so the other two naval experts had been sent there with the limited supplies making their way out to those systems. Almost all jumpship traffic had been diverted to Corneria, and Paul’s peers were the best equipped to make the most out of the limited naval assets that those systems currently fielded.

  Fortunately the lizards hadn’t made their way to any of their other systems yet, and given the recent insights into their MO he guessed that they wouldn’t have to worry about reprisals outside of Epsilon Eridani. He did wonder, though, how much information the lizards had sent back to their territory, either in the form of courier ships or perhaps some form of interstellar communication system. He knew the V’kit’no’sat could send messages between the stars, but he didn’t know whether or not the lizards could.

  If they did have that capability and had already sent a signal, then it was just a question of time before another lizard jumpship arrived to continue the war. Paul seriously hoped they’d have some time to catch their breath and build
before that happened, given the distances involved, but there was no way to know what the others lizards knew, or how quickly they’d respond if they did.

  No, he couldn’t transfer over to the jumpship and take part in the close quarters fighting happening all over the ship. He had to stay put and play Admiral, ensuring that their boarding parties wouldn’t be cut off from reinforcements and resupply.

  The first of their supply ships had gotten out to the fleet yesterday, bringing with them more Archons and Knights, in addition to security personnel and a load of supplies, including ample ammo stores which they’d been in desperate need of. More often than not the boarding teams had been using the lizards’ own weapons against them, having expended their Star Force ammunition during their forays out from the base of operations and into enemy-held levels. Hunter teams had been established and were making deep runs further into the ship, killing whatever lizards they came across and then retreating back to base for resupply and rest.

  Over the past 5 days they’d managed to secure a large chunk of the ship, approximately 8% of the ‘aft’ section…which the techs they’d brought onboard had discovered was actually the port side. Their hacking efforts had been mostly fruitless, though with some of the handheld pieces of technology recovered from the surface bases the techs had been able to open some light security doors and pull up some basic schematics. It was all access granted to the lizards and therefore not traditional ‘hacking’ given that their techs didn’t have a clue how their programming language worked, but every advantage they could give the boarding party was valuable.

  They’d also confirmed that the port gravity drives were offline, damaged in the prior battle. The ship couldn’t jump without both engine sections working in sync, though it should have been possible to limp the ship around the system with only one section active. Why the lizards hadn’t done that no one could figure, and securing the starboard region of the jumpship had become one of their top priorities.