Star Force: Probe (SF42) Read online

  Before Dan could get around to issuing any orders he got an incoming message from Aaron, one of only two other trailblazers in Sol, but due to the distances involved they still weren’t close enough for real time communication.

  “I assume you’ve already got Randy’s message. I’m taking the 19th, 22nd, and 41st fleets out of Sol within the day and heading straight to Rotunna. If this is a more widespread attack in progress, we also need to secure Iona, for that’s where Randy will have drawn most of his ships from. I’m assigning whatever Clan Nova Wolf assets are available within Sol to you or whoever else is going to assemble the Clans. I think you’ll agree we can’t suck Sol’s defenses dry, and the same goes for the surrounding systems, meaning we’re going to have to pull Clan resources…and probably Canderous too.”

  “I’ll relieve Randy as soon as possible, but we have to hit the Skarrons with a wall of reinforcements, else we’ll risk playing whack-a-mole with the comm delays. By my last count Beta Region contained 13 Star Force systems, though Randy was planning to expand to a few more. I don’t know how far along he is, but let’s assume he’s got a least a couple more colonies up by now. That’s 15 systems and we need to reinforce them all, along with having a force that can poke back into Skarron territory, because there’s no way we’re tolerating this.”

  “Pull whatever Clan ships from the surrounding systems as you can and get an armada to Iona ASAP. I’ll send word back through the relays or by courier once I get to Rotunna. Hopefully I can give you a heads up on enemy strength if Randy doesn’t first, but if I were the Skarrons, the first thing I’d do is cut the relays, so I’m assuming we’re going in blind. Better pack a few spares if there are any available in the system.”

  “If you two are coming, make it snappy and make sure we have enough of a fleet to deal with this. If you’re not, make sure whoever is doesn’t come light. Even if this is an isolated attack on a single system, we need to send a message…and if it is a larger war forming, we need as much of a head start as we can get.”

  The message ended, with a copy notice that it had been sent not just to him, but to Larissa-048 as well.

  Dan hit the ‘replay to all’ button and stood up on his own holoprojector plate, staring out the vidscreen ‘viewport’ at the heavy grav surface of Mordor, which lay on the very edge of the Solar System, so far out that the sky appeared dark even in day.

  “Aaron, good call on the immediate response. I’ll stay back and beat the bushes to get as many ships as possible out of the surrounding systems, then I’ll take what we get and head to Iona and work things from there. Larissa, if you want to head out quicker than that, take whatever Clan resources we’ve got in the system save for my flagship and get going. If not I’m sending them on ahead, then waiting around for the others at a rendezvous point and sending them in bunches.”

  “I think we can survive 50% reduction in mainline units in Sol and the nearby systems. Do you concur?” Dan asked, leaving that as the end of the message. He hated the lag times, but even with telaris comms there was no getting around the billions of kilometers between planets.

  He knew he needed to wait and respond as soon as he heard back, so the Archon planted himself in his office and pulled up a schematic of the Solar System, which was defaultly centered on Mordor.

  It was a hellish world, given the volcanic activity, but that internal heat kept the surface fairly warm at around -10 degrees Celsius on average. The unstable regions were well defined, crisscrossing the planet’s surface with the cities spaced in between them. The world was larger than Earth, with a gravity of 152% that required inertial dampeners and artificial gravity within all the cities to make them livable, though some sections allowed for the natural gravity for training purposes.

  The atmosphere was thin and comprised of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, but thick enough to allow for winged flight, and growing negligibly thicker as the volcanoes spewed out more gasses over the years. The Clans didn’t care about the environment, given that they were living indoors anyway, but overall it was more hospitable than Venus, as well as being completely off the Earth grid, which was the largest selling point.

  Mordor was a Clan-only world, and unlike the other Clan worlds in Sol, Mordor was off limits to the public. The only ships that came to and from Mordor were Clan, and while Clan citizens could transit there, others couldn’t for the simple reason that the Star Force transportation grid didn’t link in. Only registered Clan citizens could purchase transit tickets, though becoming a Clan citizen was easy enough, so it wasn’t exactly a secure world.

  But it was out of the public view, in so much that the planet maintained a very insular society that was comprised of all 100 Clans. The smallest ones had an embassy-level stake, much like they did in Antarctica, while the larger Clans on the world controlled huge tracks of land, Clan Star Claw among them. Whereas Earth was the industrial powerhouse for Star Force, Mordor was the heart of Clan industry, both on the planet and in orbit, not to mention housing well over 9 billion Clan citizens in total.

  That was why Dan had remained here, despite the fact that he was on the extreme end of his growing system chain up into Delta Region. While other trailblazers overseeing Star Force and/or Clan expansion had moved out to more centralized hubs within their target areas, Dan knew that part of his success lay not in only establishing the Clans in Delta Region, but in growing his own Clan to a point where it could secure Delta Region, and a lot of those efforts were taking place on Mordor and elsewhere in the Solar System.

  In overall power rankings Clan Star Claw sat in fifth, but Dan had been pressing it hard to expand and now had territories on a total of 19 worlds spread over 8 systems. While tiny compared to mainline Star Force, Star Claw was developing near to a level where they could start taking on new projects solo rather than having to co-op with other Clans to gain the necessary resources. Dan’s Clan wasn’t the only one with this mindset, but there were only a few putting as much effort and resources into expansion…which led Star Claw to have one of the smaller military fleets.

  That said, none of its troops were currently engaged on the lizard or Calavari fronts, leaving them free to redeploy to Beta Region so long as there were still mainline units in the systems to cover for their defensive loss…which wasn’t going to be the case in all, meaning Dan was going to have to pick and choose what to pull off and what to leave behind. With the distances and comm delays involved, it was very easy to wait and monitor a system until its defenses left, then assault it shortly thereafter with the defenders unable to call for help.

  That was the unfortunate reality in interstellar expansion, and while he didn’t know of any threats to the Core Region at present, he hadn’t expected the Skarrons to hit Beta either, so out of prudence he and the others couldn’t take every ship available and run off to help Randy.

  On the up side, a lot of the Clans were in a similar position to Star Claw, being that they had military assets lying around defending systems that didn’t require them, given that mainline fleets were already on station, and a great deal of them were right here in Sol. Those would be easy to assemble, it was the other systems that would take time to rally, once again due to the comm delays. At present the interstellar relay system could send a signal crossing 6.8 lightyears in a day, faster than Star Force’s gravity drives, but that left signal lag at more than a day for even Epsilon Eridani to Earth, and vice versa.

  As Dan was doing a head count of all other Clan warships and ground troops within Sol he got a response from Larissa, and brought up the holo, superimposed over the asset map.

  “I concur with the 50% mark. I’ll remain here and shift mainline assets around as needed to maintain security in Sol, so take all the Clan assets you can with you. If they resist, pull rank. I’ll keep the system safe until you return and have already ordered all Clan Meteor troops loaded up onto jumpships, including every mech we’ve got in storage. You’re going to need them with those Skarron Walkers.”

  Dan
nodded agreeably as the message ended, seeing that they were of like minds. Even at 50% strength Sol would have a solid defense force. They didn’t need to hoard ships…unless they were hit, then that 50% number would see rather ridiculous, but to quote James T. Kirk, “risk is our business,” and there were no safe calls to make here, for the in the vastness of space you never knew who might be on the prowl.

  But Dan was comfortable with 50%, and so was Larissa. A few minutes later and a message from Aaron would seal the deal, which spurred Dan to get moving. Contacting all of the Clan leadership within the system…all of whom were not trailblazers…he arranged for their combined fleets to load up and head towards the central star and drop into parking orbits. Dan joined them there once his own Clan assets on Mordor had been assembled, along with drawing in those from Triton and Ganymede.

  Altogether he had 18 warships and 28 cargo/transport jumpships from Clan Star Claw with him, and he would pick up more as his message went out through the network to surrounding systems. Those between Sol and Beta Region would assemble over the following days and be picked up by the main armada as it passed through a specified series of systems. Those not on the Beta side were told to make best speed to Iona, with Dan knowing they’d arrive considerably later.

  That couldn’t be helped, and holding up everyone to travel in one massive group wasn’t logical, which was why he sent along an option for those systems closer to Beta to send ships immediately if they were of a mind to. Piecemeal reinforcement wasn’t always a good idea, but in this case time was of the essence, and a few dozen ships arriving a couple of days early could make a big difference in the right circumstances.

  The ‘pick up’ order was more about establishing a minimum departure date, underscoring the importance of the situation for those Archons in those systems that may or may not understand the gravity of the situation. There wasn’t a trailblazer in every system, and some of the deployments didn’t even have an acolyte in place where the locale was deemed to be remote and secure. What they did have were Regulars and the warships that they inhabited, with them needing to be whipped into transport mode sooner rather than later, for it took time to bring mechs up from a planet’s surface, not to mention supplies that would be needed for a long campaign.

  Dan explained all of this in a very long, comprehensive message packet that he sent out to every system in Star Force territory, even the ones that he knew wouldn’t be sending reinforcements, such as Namek which was on the opposite side of the Core Region from Iona. Plus those fleets were in place to counter the lizards and couldn’t be withdrawn except under exceptional circumstances…which this didn’t qualify as, given that there were other fleets to respond with.

  But Dan wanted everyone to know what was going on, and he didn’t want to waste time recording multiple smaller messages. Once he sent the message out he waited onboard his flagship, a Mk. 17 Warship-class jumpship that had been built in orbit of Mordor less than 5 years ago, and one that had yet to see real combat, which the same could be said of the bulk of the Clan fleet.

  Four days later Dan jumped out of Sol enroute to the Merovingian System, the first stop on a chain of jumps to get them out to Iona, bringing with him the largest fleet Star Force had ever assembled, including a small contingent of Canderous warships whose design, as to date, had never been battle tested.

  That didn’t stop them from immediately volunteering, for the military civilization considered themselves too sheltered as it was, with only a small presence on the lizard front. They were eager for righteous combat, and so too were the Clans.

  6

  July 14, 2467

  Iona System

  Horizon

  Dan’s flagship, the Wolf’s Gaze, decelerated into orbit around the Clan Star Fox planet while the rest of his 2,473 jumpship fleet was coming into the system and parking around the gigantic white star. Dan had come through first and microjumped out to the fourth planet so as to avoid the time lag with communications, and pulled an immediate data uplink from the planet when he arrived, as well as contacting the ranking local Archon.

  Enroute he’d picked up multiple updates from Beta Region as they passed from system to system through the relay network. Randy’s reinforcement of Rotunna had yet to arrive, given the extreme distance out to the system, but a few of the local defense fleet had survived and sent data back through the relays for a while, detailing their harassment of the Skarrons in orbit while the enemy maintained control of the surface, fighting with the few Star Force units that remained. They’d managed to keep their jumpships intact, forgoing one massive, costly battle, and were nipping away at the enemy ships and reducing their 531 count wherever they could as the Skarrons set about conquering the planet.

  In addition to the warships, the Skarrons had also brought a fleet of jumpships carrying cargo and troops for the ground campaign. Those ships were considerably bigger than their warships, but their warships didn’t need jumpships to carry them around, meaning that even while Randy’s fleet would outnumber the Skarrons by a factor of two, each of his drones was considerably smaller than their counterparts in the Skarron fleet.

  If push came to shove, Randy had said he thought he could neutralize the enemy fleet with his own, but even if he succeeded and they canceled each other out, he had no resources to mount a surface campaign, and according to sensor records the planet was already crawling with Skarron walkers.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. Based on the reports coming in, Brenns had also been hit with 629 warships and Ghanis with 489. Last he knew that was as far as the Skarrons had gotten, both those three systems were not close to one another, spread out across more than 40 lightyears in an almost perfect triangle that was slightly lower on the galactic plane than Iona. That made them as far apart as the Core Region was wide, and they occupied one small corner of Beta Region. Given that the Skarrons were willing to hit systems so far apart, there was no guarantee that was the furthest they were going to hit, and Dan was relieved to see that Horizon still stood intact.

  “I’m very glad to see you here,” Sendra said as her hologram popped up in front of Dan’s command chair. “And according to the sensor grid it looks like you brought friends.”

  “Aaron is on a direct route to Rotunna with 3 mainline fleets, I’ve brought the Clans here with enough numbers to fight this war…or at least I hope so. I’ve been picking up bits and pieces on the way, have we lost more than three systems?”

  “Two days ago we got a report from Iverie that they’d come under attack, and we’d already pulled most of their defenses and rerouted them to Rotunna before we understood the scale of the invasion…though it probably wouldn’t have mattered, given the numbers the Skarrons are arriving with.”

  “I’m looking at those now,” Dan said as updated information began to come in and his bridge staff was sorting through it and relaying the key pieces to his holographic display. “Are the relays still functional?”

  “As far as we know, yes. The Skarrons may not even know they’re there, and the surviving warships in all three systems are still feeding us intel. Nothing new from Iverie as of today.”

  “I’m glad they’re not all destroyed,” Dan said, partially relieved. “How are our guys stacking up?”

  “Plasma weapons are less effective, but if you can keep the enemy at range you’ll own them. The system commanders have been sending back data, and Randy sent an updated assessment of the Rotunna files with suggestions.”

  “We’ve already uploaded all pertinent files, so I assume it was in the batch?” he asked, glancing at his Captain…who nodded in the affirmative. “Yes, we’ve got it.”

  “How many ships can you leave me?” she asked bluntly.

  “The bulk of the fleet stays here to secure the system and be in a position to send support out to the rest of Beta Region. I’m sending 200-300 warships out to each of the systems, meaning that will leave you with over 1000 to work with, plus cargo ships.”

  “1000 warships or d
rone warships?” Sendra asked to clarify.

  “1000 warships, each with 50-100 drones onboard. I brought all the Clan ships I could get my hands on, including some from Canderous.”

  Sendra let out a loud sigh of relief. “If you were down here I’d kiss you. I’d recommend sending groups out to at least the nearer inhabited systems, maybe even the Kiritas colonies. I held off doing so with the reinforcements that have already came in in case Iona got hit. I don’t know if the others are going to be targeted or not, and I didn’t want to gamble. If the Skarrons do hit another system it’d be best if we didn’t let their walkers get to ground. I hope you brought some ground troops with your fleet?”

  Dan nodded. “We did.”

  “Then I’m happy to turn things over to you. I’ve been crossing my fingers and hoping the Skarrons didn’t get here before you did. I wasn’t sure if what we had plus the Kiritas fleet was going to cut it.”

  “More ships are on the way, though how many for sure I don’t know. I couldn’t wait for all of them. Keep what you need here and reinforce where necessary.”

  “Gladly.”

  “What’s the traffic look like?” Dan asked, referring to the inter-racial commerce that routed through most of the Beta Region colonies, but especially Iona, which had the Babylon 2 diplomatic station.

  “Very heavy. The Skarrons aren’t just hitting us, they’re hitting lots of people coreward from here. We’ve got ships hanging around that have nowhere else to go at the moment…and unfortunately most of them aren’t warships.”

  “Any scuttlebutt on where the Skarron fleets are originating from?”

  “Nothing solid, no. Are you planning to hit them back?”

  “Secure our own worlds first, worry about payback later. But it’s on the tentative to-do list.”

  “Good,” Sendra said, iron in her tone. “Sign me up.”