Reclaimers Page 5

  “Dispatch diversion task forces,” the Deoglade ordered, with the fleet breaking up and heading on different vectors as the Hadarak clustered around several planets with lesser formations around the others. All were infested, but they hadn’t owned this system long. There were no surface to orbit growths, and stellar orbit was clear of them save for a few scouts. That meant they were still in assault mode, and needed their void spawn on the planets to go after the enemies there rather than worry about catching others who might be dropping in.

  It took more than half an hour before the first return ping came, and after it a slew followed as the comm lag ran its course, giving the Meerioss fleet an updated map of who was where and in what condition. As it turned out there was a lot of resistance activity going on, and a few chunks of the population were still alive, though besieged in underground sections of the city structure.

  “Dragiel has succumbed,” he noted.

  “It was hit first,” Yui attested.

  “And because of that, most of the heavy combat units have been repositioned to other planets,” he said, keying his intra-fleet comm channel on his console that stood before his command throne and extended up to his elevated position. “Diversion task forces will engage at will, but if you have the opportunity to reliably evac some of the besieged troops do so. If you cannot, feint an attempt. I need their Trugo away from Dragiel without time to intercept,” he said, noting the position of three of the massive moon-sized carrier/bases the Hadarak used.

  He had nothing to take one out, let alone three, but they were slow and could be avoided so long as you had the ability to destroy their void spawn. If you couldn’t, they’d disable and drag you down, but Meerioss warships were built to avoid such instances, so as long as they could get to their target and had ample time to retrieve it before a Trugo came and landed on them, they should be able to pull this off.

  “Harvid…” the Deoglade said, addressing one ship commander specifically. “I need you to watch for any Zoku that move towards us. Engage them away from the planet, and at least delay them from getting to us. Extraction is going to be a vulnerable operation.”

  “I understand. Am I to operate independently?”

  “At your discretion, but I recommend letting the distraction task forces draw their attention first.”

  The Meerioss bowed his large head, then his hologram faded from the bridge as his ship veered away from the few others that were left alongside the Deoglade’s flagship. He let the other units get a head start, then had his ships head towards a different target, intending to microjump off a smaller planet near to Dragiel to disguise their true destination for as long as possible.

  “You look confused Yui.”

  “Our ships can win these naval battles, but once we put troops on the ground we will be overrun.”

  “How many did you face last time you were here?”

  “Less than are on the planet now.”

  “Were they spread?”

  “No,” he admitted. “They were focused on certain sectors.”

  “And now they have no idea where we are going. If we delay too long, they will mass against us and the ground teams will be met with escalating resistance. But we can handle their initial response if we do not allow them to focus on one location. That is why we will be landing in 5 different locations on the planet before heading to the Zanderline.”

  “We’re splitting our ground teams as well?” Yui asked aghast.

  “Trust me. This will work. The Hadarak are reactive, not proactive. When you’re overwhelmed you don’t have the luxury to observe what is going on. But they are not complicated in their maneuvers. They go where the threat is, or where their objective is. We can use this basic nature to misdirect them.”

  “Will the ground teams be rescuing…”

  “No,” the Deoglade said firmly, but with a tinge of regret. “If there were any on Dragiel I would send them, but I cannot have ground teams on other planets, for the effect is a local one. It must be the enemy units on Dragiel that are distracted. Do you understand this?”

  “I understand you are sending men to fight and die for no objective.”

  “Moving the enemy away from the Zanderline is the objective, though I understand your reaction. They will not be left behind. They only need to convincingly distract them for the duration of our extraction. Less actually, for they will pull out before the Zanderline, knowing that the Hadarak can only travel so fast across the surface.”

  “Why are you explaining these thing to me?”

  “Because you are a man who needs answers, and after the betrayal of the Neofan, I want it to be perfectly clear that I will not betray any of you.”

  “But will this Star Force?”

  “I don’t know,” the Deoglade said honestly. “But this is the only possible future we have. If they betray us, we are no worse off than we were before. If they deliver on their promise, then we have a way out of this collapsing galaxy. We have nothing to lose by trying, so I choose to pursue the uncertain future rather than consign myself to certain destruction.”

  “Then may I join one of the diversion teams?”

  “If you can convince me you are not suicidal.”

  Yui’s head came up, and despite the glorified rank this man held, he could not bring himself to obey humbly. “I will do my duty.”

  “As far as the Neofan are concerned your duty is to die and cleanse this galaxy of any of their former property. What is your duty now?”

  “To save as many of us as possible,” he said firmly.

  “That includes yourself,” the Deoglade said, looking back at the tactical holograms as a few more local units identified themselves. “Correction. It seems there is at least one survivor on Dragiel. A small unit hiding out. 8 individuals reported. Would you like to go after them instead?”

  “Neofan?”

  “No. It is a Nu’avi unit.”

  Yui bristled. The Nu’avi were not always on good terms with the Meerioss, and their hairless flesh stank with brine, but they were fellow warriors serving the Neofan…which now meant what?

  “I will go if you allow it.”

  “Permission granted. The mission is yours to command. Organize your assault force.”

  Yui stood still in shock, for he was so low ranking that he was further away from command than he was the mechanics.

  The Deoglade saw his confusion. “I am giving you a field commission of Par’gi. Now go. When we hit the atmosphere your team will launch immediately.”

  Yui nodded, but was still too stunned to speak, so he simply turned and walked off the bridge, not believing what had just happened.

  But then again, with the galaxy burning, what did ranks matter? Still…

  Yui stood shoulder to shoulder with other Meerioss warriors, all dressed in golden armor and carrying a crooked rifle over their left shoulders, a double barreled pistol on their right hips, and a shield gauntlet over their left forearms that was heavy and hard to move, but when activated it would provide more than thirty times the protection of their body armor, so it was worth the effort when going into a highly lethal environment.

  The new Par’gi blended in with is troops seamlessly, with no outward visual markers to identify him, but on the visual overlay inside their helmets, additional data was added beyond rank. Strengths, loadouts, experience level, and current status were all visible at a glance, and most of the Meerioss around him had experience bars far larger than his.

  But his octagonal cylinder gave him the prestige level that none of the others could match, in that it confirmed his full command of the mission in addition to his rank marker. He had 328 men with him onboard four landing ships and another 6 starfighers to provide aerial cover, not to mention the automated Sho’joo that would be guarding the landing site.

  The landing ships had been shot out of the underside of the flagship as it skipped across the surface of Dragiel’s atmosphere, popping them out not over their target, but a fair ways from it to distract the Hadarak on the surface. Yui saw his starfighters immediately dive to take out a scattering of anti-air batteries as a few of the shots made it to his landing ship and thumped against the strong energy shields that would protect it all the way to their target.

  The Hadarak were not stronger than the Neofan empire, but what they had was numbers, and reinforcements could be grown on site in a matter of weeks for the smaller units. And this planet had far more time to reinforce itself now that most resistance had been eliminated.

  When the landing ships finally touched down everyone was given the order to leave, even Yui, as the pilots handled the landing. Doors on three sides peeled open, and the troops poured out through the semi-clear containment shields that would prevent any projectiles from entering the troop bay.

  He ran out with the others, then his helmet began pinging questions from his various sub-commanders about how to proceed. Yui answered back silently, using an integrated command system that he could access with a combination of eyeline tracking and mental activation. The Meerioss had never used it in this fashion before, but he was well acquainted with the technology and was able to send out detailed orders within a few seconds splitting up his men and having them fan out on various missions.

  They entered combat seconds later as the Hadarak came to them, or they went to the Hadarak, but it was light resistance. Yui didn’t even get to fire a shot, for the troops staying with him were moving around him in a phalanx and gunned down the approaching crawling spawn before he could even get a clear line of sight.

  As the rest of the teams moved out to engage, his group of 15 and another of 8 headed towards the beacon location, with the latter proceeding them until they hit a patch of resistance. They dove into it, allowing Yui’s team to skirt around th
e perimeter while the enemy was distracted and get close to the half-destroyed building ahead where the signal was coming from.

  They didn’t get there unmolested, for a wave of aerial Dupla came in and strafed them with acid…but it just rolled off their armor, not affecting their shields that were programmed to let it through unless their armor was breached. That was a trick they’d learned long ago, and it saved shield strength that the acid otherwise would have tore away quickly.

  Yui pulled out his pistol and fired up into the stream of fleshy bodies racing over their heads, hitting something before they were gone…though several had careened into the ground nearby with two Meerioss running that way momentarily to end any survivors before they had a chance to explode with their full acid reservoir going everywhere. That only happened when they chose to do it, and that was when they were wounded and unable to fly. Quick shots to their heads or their long necks did the trick, leaving the acid in their underbellies to sit in their organs until it quickly decomposed within a few hours without the necessary enzymes being produced to maintain it.

  One more wave of Dupla came at them from a different direction before they got to the building, then they had to crawl around the debris to find a way inside, but the Meerioss could jump several meters with ease, and most of the debris was smaller than that. An entry point on the second level was discovered, and one or two at a time Yui’s unit went indoors and moved through the elliptical hallways as they tracked down the beacon.

  He expected to have been met by the Nu’avi as soon as they entered the building, but that didn’t happen. No living Hadarak were in here either, but the smell of death was everywhere. Gore lined the walls, but most of the pieces had been removed…most likely eaten by other Hadarak to conserve biomass. They wouldn’t usually eat enemies, but they would eat their own dead after the fighting was over in some cases depending on which type of spawn they were. And it looked like they had already cleared this building.

  But when he got within a few dozen meters of the signal the sight of a pile of Nu’avi bodies nearly made him retch, even given the reduction filters on his helmets breathing vents. There were hundreds of them here, and piled up neatly into one large mound…and from inside that mount the transmitter was signaling.

  “Is anyone alive in here?” Yui called out as his men circled the room searching, but finding no one.

  “Someone had to activate the transmitter,” the trooper beside him noted just before the pile of dead moved slightly in one spot…then in two more. Slowly several living Nu’avi climbed out from under the pile of dead, sliding on lubrication from the blood as the pressure of all the dead weight tried to pin them in place.

  And out of that mess came 8 rail-thin Nu’avi with no armor and gore-covered clothes that were more or less intact.

  “Nutrient packs,” Yui ordered, with two of his unit pulling small circles out of the hump on their back that contained a small space for cargo. They pressed them on the exposed skin of the Nu’avi that were trying to speak but for some reason unable to, with condensed food being injected directly into their blood streams.

  Yui pulled out his own water rations, two of them anyway, and gave them to the nearest two Nu’avi as other members of his team did likewise. Most barely responded, looking like they were about to keel over dead, but one was more animated than the rest and sucked down the water gladly before looking up at Yui from his kneeling position as he sat on his tail that should have been twice as thick as it was now.

  “Where…did…you come…from?” he asked, his voice raw and dry.

  “We’re here temporarily on a retrieval mission. We’re taking you out with us.”

  “We…were…aban…doned. Neofan…left…us…behind.”

  “I know. I was here to get them out. A Deoglade decided to come back. Can you walk?”

  He responded by standing…and collapsing back to his knees after a few wobbly steps.

  “Carry them, two each,” he ordered, with some of his men pulling their gauntlets off and snapping them onto their backs in a crude carry position so they could free up both of their huge arms which easily picked up the starving Nu’avi one in each.

  Yui signaled his other teams out engaging the Hadarak that they needed cover so they could run the Nu’avi straight back without having to stop to fight, and he saw a scattering of unit icons on his local map moving to adjust into skirmisher positions along the route they were going to have to take.

  “Ready?” he asked as the others picked up all the Nu’avi and got into a line with the cargo in the center.

  A series of grunts answered in the affirmative, with Yui taking up position at the head of the line and activated his gauntlet, with it expanding into a physical shield as wide as his body, and out of that energy extensions provided more protection while allowing the necessary sight to navigate.

  “Forward!” he yelled, taking off running with the others tucked in behind him in a stagger formation.

  6

  Yui’s column was almost back to their landing craft but all of them had their energy shields depleted, or nearly so, as the Hadarak seemed to be coming out of everywhere and filling the horizon as they converged on and attempted to kill the Meerioss and their cargo. Projectiles and biologically created energy blasts zipped and zinged everywhere, often into other Hadarak, but Yui’s starfighters were strafing the largest groups on the ground while trying to fend for themselves in the now clogged sky.

  He could fire upwards and have a decent chance of hitting an aerial Hadarak, for the sky was full of the smallest ones with a scattering of the larger. Their flocks were growing even as the starfighters plowed them out of the sky with their ramming wedges, dropping their incinerated carcasses down like rain onto the rubble strewn ground.

  As for Yui, he was now middle of the pack as his shield gauntlet had been depleted and destroyed. Another two had taken the lead, alternating against the heaviest firepower until they were likewise depleted…but they were nearly back, and Yui could already hear the landing ship’s perimeter guns firing as well as the Sho’joo’s thuds as its mechanical feet plodded around the four craft and the mechanized walker tackled the largest enemy grouped with overwhelming firepower. Those few that got through were audible in the zapping sound of the defense field frying any who touched it.

  And that’s what most of the Hadarak on the ground were engineered to do. Physical assaults with either club-like limbs, cutting claws, piercing teeth, or acid glands. Yui could out run most of them, but having to carry the Nu’avi meant the group had to move as slowly as their heaviest carry, so many of the crawlers were catching them from behind and had to be fought hand to hand on the run.

  But his unit was managing, and before long another strafing run cleared the path away enough for him to see the landing craft with piles of dead spawn heaped up on one side of it…with others crawling on them to try and get over the top. But the shield was spherical and there was no top, yet that didn’t stop them from killing themselves on it to make footsteps for the others to follow on until the Sho’joo walked around the perimeter and cleared them off once again.

  Typical, brainless swarm tactics…but the pressure on the shield that kept incinerating everything it touched had a draining effect, and every piece of technology had its limit. Fortunately the landing ships hadn’t reached it’s yet, and a portion of the shield turned blue, indicating that you could pass through it slowly, but no energy weapons or high velocity projectiles would.

  Yui and his team ran right up to it and inside the protective umbrella, with the last member in line turning and throwing an Essence wave back into those following him to give the pilots enough time to transfer the shield back to normal.