Star Force: Kaalo (SF99) (Star Force Origin Series) Page 5

  The Star Force focus on those few Brat’mar was too much, and within a few minutes both were killed, but at the cost of many more mechs on the flanks of the formation that were distracting the other Brat’mar long enough to delay their retreating into a more compact grouping that was virtually impossible to break into when they went tail to tail in a circle and threw up their bioshields, giving them heavy protection from all lateral angles of attack.

  But Star Force mechs could jump, and Voltrons in particular could fly very slowly when in mech form, so Kevin and two others followed several neos as they ran forward kamikaze style, getting owned by multiple Brat’mar cannon shots, but taking enough hits that the Voltrons could run and slide/jump through the air over the almost locked bioshields and land in the small island inside them.

  As soon as that happened the Brat’mar had to break formation, for their hip-mounted weaponry, even coming from dozens of Brat’mar, wasn’t going to be enough to take down the bigger Star Force mechs quickly enough before they could hammer their tails with damage, so the Brat’mar ring pushed out, increasing the spacing between them, then one out of three turned around and attacked the Voltrons with cannon shots, blasting them so hard the Kevin hardly had time to respond. His shield caught a couple, but there wasn’t much left of it and he was getting hit from all sides…then the twin horns on one of the Brat’mar, covered with armor, rammed into his leg and pierced it, skewering his mech and not letting him move with the giant weight now attached to it.

  He brought his sword down on the neck of the Brat’mar, but he was going to have to hit it several times to get through its shields and he didn’t have that. His Voltron got torn to shreds first, but even as it was falling to the ground with system after system going offline he saw the outer ring of the Brat’mar formation begin to crumble as Star Force mechs pushed into the gaps and many, many neos started shooting/punching into their flanks, bypassing their heavy bioshields and turning this into a massive brawl…one that he’d have to sit out, for his giant Voltron had been reduced to trash and he was pinned inside it in his armored cocoon, now dependent on a Star Force win or he’d end up becoming another V’kit’no’sat prisoner or casualty.

  Yvonne Neir was one of the many mechwarriors being shipped over to the Ribbon from across the star system, but given that they didn’t have the luxury of time those closest had arrived first and were learning the hard way what worked best and poorly against the V’kit’no’sat. She’d come from Triton in a thor, arriving only a few days ago, and what previous battles had learned so far was that the lesser used thors were the best for engaging the Kar’ka.

  As such she was following up the main attack ground at a distance as hundreds of Kar’ka were running fast around the battle to try and get behind the Star Force mechs and get at their landing craft if they could get so lucky, or simply circle around behind and pick off weakened or blindsided opponents. Individually a Kar’ka fared poorly against a mech, but put them in groups by the dozens and they were able to pick apart a lone one with alarming speed.

  That was why the thors were traveling in skirmisher groups while the neos were in the main attack force. Against the quick moving Kar’ka the neos had trouble getting within hand to hand range, for they’d run or jump out of reach, leaving the neos to fight with ranged weapons for the most part. Madcats were best at ranged combat, but the Kar’ka had learned to get in close to them in order to make the kill, for they were far less maneuverable than a neo and particularly had trouble spinning about in place fast enough to hit Kar’ka behind them…who would just circle with them while firing into their backsides where they had little weaponry.

  Thors, however, were more compact, upright mechs with a stiff Humanoid body that were basically walking turrets that had a much better swivel rate at the torso, as well as a rotational spin rate with the mechanical legs, meaning the Kar’ka couldn’t circle them with impunity and the thors outmassed the Kar’ka, meaning they couldn’t knock them down very easily.

  Add to that the fact that the thors carried more weaponry than the neos and they became the perfect fit for anti-Kar’ka operations, able to run in straight line speeds at nearly the same velocity while also able to reach out and touch the enemy with various energy weapons when the Kar’ka used their superior agility to suddenly redirect.

  Kar’ka weren’t easy kills by far, but thors had a slight advantage on them so long as they didn’t get overwhelmed with numbers and right now the flocks ringing the battle were near to becoming too much too handle…but if Yvonne and the others let them through to the rear of the other mechs they’d tear them apart with swift moving strafing formations while the Brat’mar continued to hammer them from the front.

  That wasn’t going to happen today, so with the other four thors in her star they accelerated over a road/debris field towards the nearest point in the surrounding infrastructure where they saw the Kar’ka heading, popping from one bit of cover on the perimeter to another looking for a good ambush angle.

  The thors fanned out into an arrowhead formation with Yvonne second on the left, giving them all clear firing lines that they littered with Dre’mo’don blasts, churning up pyres of smoke and debris wherever they hit the ground underneath and around the running Kar’ka. When they got lucky enough to hit one the thors moved in, hammering it as it tried to limp off as the others circled back around and tried to flank the thors, coming around a half destroyed building and hitting them from Yvonne’s left.

  She immediately stopped running and spun in place, bringing her arm-mounted Dre’mo’dons around while using the shotgun-like scatterguns to blanket the area ahead of her with tiny, fast moving projectiles. They didn’t do a lot of damage against heavily armored targets, but they were very good against infantry and soaked up a lot of energy from shields...not to mention physically beating back the Kar'ka running towards them and slowing their movements.

  Yvonne kept her ‘sprinkler’ on constantly, showering the three Kar’ka at the head of the line as she pelted the area they were in with Dre’mo’don blasts, some hitting some missing, but with the overlapping firepower of the thor beside her they knocked several of the Kar’ka down while more sprinted in past them, drawing attention away and trying to get within very close range where they could unload shots that were not going to miss no matter how much the mechs moved.

  As Star Force had seen before and she’d been informed about, the Kar’ka didn’t stand and fight. They blew through, exchanging one attacker for another and leaving none to slug it out, forcing Yvonne to either try and focus on one as it ran past or just shoot everything that came into view.

  She chose the latter, just wanting to do shield damage or worse if possible, knowing that her star would add more damage later. Yvonne didn’t need to make solo kills. They needed to work as a unit and wear these fast moving bastards down while holding their ground…but not doing so by standing still the entire time, or the Kar’ka would use that to their advantage.

  So after the first few seconds of their hold, their star leader got their formation drifting back out further into the open plane of debris, with Yvonne having to make sure her mech didn’t trip on any of the larger pieces as the five mechs took on a pentagon formation and forced any diving Kar’ka to pass by at least two of them, increasing the odds of them taking major damage before sprinting out the far side.

  The mechwarriors watched as their own shield levels dropped considerably, and soon Yvonne was out of sprinkler ammo, leaving her only with her energy weapons. In addition to the Dre’mo’dons she also had some anti-infantry Keema beams of very narrow width that doubled as anti-air along with her Ichods…and she had all of them adding whatever damage they could to the passing Kar’ka, making her and the other thors look like a fireworks platform, throwing so much varied firepower at the attacking flock that the misses were kicking up a huge plume of dust that looked like storm clouds around their drifting formation.

  The Kar’ka kept hitting them, drifting further and f
urther out from the cover of the partial buildings until several dozen skeets redirected away from their ongoing battles with the I’rar’et and took it to the Kar’ka…who were too far away from cover now to avoid 6-8 seconds of inferno for those that turned back immediately. Those that didn’t react as quickly to the incoming air strike never made it out.

  With the firepower of the 5 thors being able to kill any Kar’ka that stopped moving fairly quickly the skeets focused on wounding as many as they could, leaving Yvonne and the other mechwarriors to run up and hammer them. Their star broke apart with each thor heading in different directions to make the most of the temporary aerial assist and Yvonne racked up another six kills for their unit before the other Kar’ka fled behind buildings and out of her sights, though some of the skeets continued to shoot them from above and she got a targeting waypoint on the far side of the nearest building.

  Yvonne took after it, running up to speed and hanging the turn as well as her stiff mech could to find a Kar’ka with a leg missing hopping off as well as it could on one and trailing diminishing drops of blood behind it as the skeets had to break off to deal with a few I’rar’et that were not going to let them keep getting free shots against the Kar’ka.

  Yvonne didn’t like taking down nearly helpless targets, but after seeing the information packet all incoming mechwarriors had received that contained the images of unarmed evacuees being shot dead or crushed beneath V’kit’no’sat feet as they fled, let alone picked up telekinetically and torn limb from limb within a second, she knew she couldn’t leave any of these bastards alive or they’d find some way to do more damage. With that in mind she followed up the fleeing Kar’ka and hammered it from decent range with three Dre’mo’don orbs, dropping it to the ground and running up nearby it as two others took Chi’parat shots at her, almost taking down her slowly regenerating shields.

  Yvonne knew she had to get back to the others, but she wasn’t going to let this one’s healing tech allow it to survive and be recovered. Firing heavily into the bloody and broken armor, she put enough shots into it that there wasn’t much for the V’kit’no’sat to recover even if they tried…then a group of four Kar’ka emerged around a building chunk behind her and blasted into her rear shields.

  They held up a bit longer than the front ones would have, but they still fell before she could turn around…with them blowing past her so fast she had to twist her torso back ahead of her legs to get a shot off at even one of them. It was a clean hit with the Dre’mo’don, but her other weaponry did little more than paint their shields while most of it hit the ground around them.

  “Yvonne, what are you doing?” her star leader asked over the comm.

  “Making sure one didn’t get back up,” she said, not chasing her new attackers and returning towards the debris plain where the others were. “Heading back,” she added, just another larger wave of Kar’ka raced into view and they all hammered her right leg…blowing apart the knee and dumping her mech to the ground face first.

  6

  Rio, Sara, and 13 other high level Archons rode into the battle area on the back of mechs, clinging to them with the grip pads in their armor and dropping off short of the actual fighting and clear of the roaming Kar’ka and Zen’zat skirmishers. The team immediately found an intact building and went underground, deep enough to get past the surface ‘remodeling’ that the V’kit’no’sat had done and made their way through the undercity where the Brat’mar could not follow and the Kar’ka would be so confined their speed and agility would be of little advantage.

  That left them with Zen’zat to worry about, but the Archons progressed a remarkably long way before even catching the smallest hint of a mind below ground. As per instructions, all of them except Beth-5311 were traveling with their Kgat enabled, shielding their minds from detection but likewise blinding their own Ikrid senses. The single Archon that was visible to the Zen’zat was also sensing them and the V’kit’no’sat above and guiding the team via battlemap and comm, for her telepathy wouldn’t reach the Archons only meters away so long as they were mind shielded.

  The Zen’zat that came to intercept Beth didn’t recognize the trap until he was within Pefbar range, but by then it was too late because when Sara and Rio exposed themselves to view they reached out with their combined Lachka, amplified by their battlemeld Nemsa, and wrapped an invisible band around the Zen’zat that he could not break easily. It prevented him from running away until the Archons were on top of him, then they beat/blasted through his shields and armor until they were able to pry a piece of it off.

  Sara retracted the armor on her right hand as the others kept the Zen’zat physically subdued, then when she touched his exposed skin and bypassed his Ikrid blocks the combination of her and Rio’s mind quickly broke through his mental resistance. They held position while the other Archons fanned out into a small perimeter, getting loads of information from him, most pertinent of which was the location of the prisoners.

  They were being held in three different spots in this camp and routinely mind raided for information as hunter teams were occasionally bringing more in from across the Ribbon. The Archons also confirmed that several of their own had been taken prisoner and were the focus of interrogation, but those civilians that proved of little use were being sucked dry of all pertinent knowledge then summarily executed.

  Sara finally stood up in disgust, wanting to dig through more information but knowing there wasn’t time. The V’kit’no’sat expected Star Force to come for the prisoners, but this one didn’t know about any actual traps laid and she wasn’t about to send two of her team back to take this Zen’zat with them for further interrogation. They were going to need all 15 of them to have a chance of getting anyone out.

  “Take his armor off,” she said, knowing that there were no external releases available when in combat mode without the proper codes, and only other V’kit’no’sat armor contained them so an enemy couldn’t compromise the defenses of a pinned or fallen ally…but the Archons had incorporated the codes they had into their own armor and they weren’t working on this one. Apparently an upgrade had been made over the years or the codes had been specifically changed when they came here hunting rogue Zen’zat. If this one had been a bit weaker she would have taken control of his mind and had him remove it, but there was considerable resistance to that invasive of a mind raid.

  They might have been able to do it if they all joined up in a single battlemeld, but 15 minds together was not something easily done and it would reveal the presence of all the Archons to anyone else in range, most of which were still hiding themselves with Kgat, though this Zen’zat had reported that there were multiple Archons here before he had been subdued, meaning the V’kit’no’sat there was more than one of them underground at this point.

  The Archons shot, pried, and punched his armor into pieces until they could pull the unconscious Zen’zat completely out while Rio maintained a hand on him at all times to insure the rough extraction didn’t wake him back up. Keeping his mind suppressed wasn’t hard now that he’d knuckled under, but with the Ikrid block it did require a hand on him at all times.

  Meanwhile Sara took a few Archons and moved ahead, securing their route and ready to intercept the Zen’zat they knew would be coming. Not wanting to kill their Zen’zat prisoner but knowing they couldn’t allow him to rejoin the fight, they did the next best thing by destroying his armor and taking his single free weapon with them far enough that they could stash it in a room that he wouldn’t find. They left the armorless Zen’zat in one of the underground chambers in the deepest sleep Rio could manage then moved on, knowing that unless he was suicidal the Zen’zat couldn’t fight until he got another set of armor, and he’d have to retreat all the way into their camp to do it…and by the time he did this battle would already be over, one way or another.

  Rio’s group caught up with Sara and they all ran hard towards the farthest prisoner encampment, knowing that they weren’t going to be able to get to all three,
but expecting the V’kit’no’sat to be waiting at the closest one for them. Beth and two others continued on that direction, with only her mind visible, then she went dark as well and backtracked to a predetermined rendezvous point, after which all the Archons moved through their own city with ease under the Ikrid invisibility that Kgat provided until they physically ran into another Zen’zat several kilometers later.

  Knowing that a simple comm would have revealed their position, the leading Archons let go of their Kgat and killed the Zen’zat after a brief, one-sided fight. She was outnumbered and couldn’t run, especially from the trailblazers, and they didn’t have time to take more prisoners. Two more Zen’zat found them later, attacking in a pair, but they too were overwhelmed…either not having received a heads up to the numbers they were facing or not realizing how strong these Archons were.

  But that was as far as the easy combat went, for when they soon came to the underside of where the prisoners were being held they ran into more than a dozen Zen’zat waiting for them and could sense both Kar’ka and at least one Brat’mar on the surface.

  What happened next surprised the Zen’zat, and Rio assumed the Brat’mar and Kar’ka had to be monitoring somehow, for the Archons, when going against slightly greater numbers of Zen’zat, inexplicably were able to disable and disrupt their opponents with far more than Fornax. As far as he knew, the V’kit’no’sat were not aware of the battlemeld psionics written into the Zen’zat genetics by the dragons, and if that were so then this was the first time they’d ever encountered them being used.

  Rio didn’t think they understood what was happening, but when the supposedly equal forces clashed in the corridors of the undercity the Archons owned them from the first exchange of fire, getting up into melee range and never letting them retreat. The Zen’zat weren’t easy or quick kills, but none of them could focus long with multiple Lew conduits bypassing their Ikrid blocks and jamming whatever premade thoughts were wanted into their minds…whether it be disabling freezes, ghost images, or sensory overloads…every time they passed between a linked pair of Archons.