Star Force: Leonidas (SF96) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  “We need their construction equipment too.”

  “Prioritize what you can,” he said, snapping his fingers in a way that got all the analysts and half the other personnel to turn to their stations and get to work. Taren altered the main hologram to give them closer views of what was happening in several locations, with the cat-like bipeds running around in the streets carrying makeshift weapons, canisters, or mostly nothing at all as they scrambled around setting new fires, breaking windows, and trashing vehicles in whatever way they could.

  “Give me something,” Nero reiterated after a few minutes of watching the carnage.

  “Pullout in the southern hemisphere is complete,” someone noted, with Nero seeing the dropship tracks returning from those locations with all personnel onboard save for mech units. A few other dropships still hadn’t recovered people in the northern hemisphere, but so far there were no Star Force casualties…despite the fact that most locations had only one or two individuals per city stationed to oversee it.

  “There goes a field.”

  Nero looked over and saw a secondary hologram displaying a fire in progress in one of the many crop fields the Mendz had across the planet…fields that the Scorpions had deliberately avoided hitting so not to destroy the food supply. Now both the factories to process the food and the fields where they mass produced it were going up in smoke.

  “Deploy every skeet we have to the most intact fields left with orders to shoot the torchers before they can get to them. Anyone that even gets close gets killed. If they don’t even have raw grain to process by hand…”

  “I think it’s too late,” Taren mumbled from beside him.

  “We lose nothing by trying,” Nero countered. “Prioritize something close and drop a few mechs at each one we can preserve. Have them hunt and destroy around a perimeter. Use the damaged ones too. Anything and everything we’ve got left. We have to preserve a piece of the food supply, else we’ll have nothing left to ration.”

  “On it,” Taren said, running out to get to a mech himself along with the rest of the Archons and mechwarriors in the command center, leaving Nero there with the analysts as they continued to pull data from multiple sources and collate it for him to see.

  In the minutes that passed things only got worse. He watched as more fields were set on fire. Fruit trees were chopped down. Roads were damaged by people running out with shovels and axes like morons just wanting to damage stuff so it couldn’t be used. It didn’t happen quickly, for the cities were huge, as were the fields, but Nero had so few people to counter it that he was literally helpless to stop the destruction that was happening everywhere across the planet.

  After four hours two large fields, each more than 100 square miles large, were secured due to the fact that there was only one city near each and a single approach that was being blasted to hell by the skeets, yet more Mendz kept trying to run that gauntlet in order to get to the fields. Nero eventually sent a few of his limited infantry there to deal with anyone that managed to sneak through and put out any potential fires before they got too large, but 2 fields wasn’t going to feed a planet.

  He worked the resources he had and secured parts of 9 more, having the mechs dig trenches with their feet in some cases to stop current fires from spreading. Nero knew time wasn’t on their side, so he chose where he was going to defend against this madness and dug in all the while the rest of the planet burned.

  8 days later…

  Nero walked off a dropship that had set him down on the killing grounds between a city and a preserved field, immediately smelling the stench of dead bodies. His infantry were out of sight, mostly, as they were inside the city now searching it for any sane Mendz left…for all the rest had finally ended themselves in suicide runs trying to get to the fields. That left a wrecked, empty, and in some parts still burning city before him with a pristine countryside of crops behind. If there was any silver lining to this, it was the fact that there were less Mendz around to feed now, but he knew it wasn’t going to matter.

  No one was coming from the other cities to try and attack here, but there was also no one left to harvest and care for the fields. He was hoping there would be some Mendz found that hadn’t taken part in the rioting, but so far his searchers were coming up empty.

  Could all of them have been in on this? Was there not even one individual hiding out somewhere in the city just trying to stay alive?

  As his people continued to search here others were fighting to keep the Mendz out of partial fields saved that had numerous cities around them. He could have been there fighting, but he had a bigger challenge before him…how to pull the planet out of this mess. To that end he began walking through the dead, many of which were now pieces of bodies after being shot by aerial or mech weaponry.

  He took his time, thinking hard and soaking in everything around him and trying to make sense of it. The military was dead. They were the ones that wanted to die fighting, so why would the civilians do this? They’d put up with Scorpion rule…limited as it was…for years now. Why do this now when it made no sense?

  They couldn’t have done it before, else it would have broken the agreement the Mendz were counting on to secure their planet when they won the fight. As soon as that was no longer possible…

  Nero worked his way into the city, in which he didn’t see a single window intact. The roads had holes in them where there wasn’t building rubble blocking the way. Black burn marks were everywhere on the structures that still stood, having been gutted by the flames that had mostly subsided by now, though Nero could still see a few here and there. The smell within the city was of ash, which was an improvement over that of the dead outside, but it was still a visceral sign of defeat.

  He hadn’t seen this coming, for it was completely illogical. Dying fighting in battle was one thing, but destroying the very infrastructure you needed to survive made no sense no matter how he looked at it, and Nero realized that was why he hadn’t seen it coming. It was so stupid, so completely moronic, that it had escaped his mind. He’d spent 13 years preserving these people while killing off their military, keeping their cities intact and them out of the fighting except where they chose to insert themselves. Hating him and Star Force was expected, for he didn’t expect them to welcome Scorpion rule, but this…

  Nero still couldn’t believe it as he reached out with his psionics looking for survivors. If there was just one here that would be something. Someone to save and to prove the point that there might be others out there that he could collect, rally, and start rebuilding with while the rest killed themselves off however they damn well wished.

  But no, for as he walked what was left of the streets and climbed over and through destroyed buildings he found no minds other than those of his own troops, and neither did they. The entire city was dead. And those who had destroyed it now lay in bits and pieces outside.

  The Archon inspected what was left of the various factories, finding some small pieces that could be salvaged but not enough to get anything working. If other components were found elsewhere maybe he could transport them all to a secure site and patch together a working facility, but that was the best he could hope for. And if he didn’t have anyone to work those factories then it was a moot point anyway.

  Nero roamed for a long time, so long that eventually a madcat walked up behind him, its giant metallic feet making small tremors with each step as it moved across the debris far easier than he did. Turning around, he looked up at it as it stopped a few dozen meters away and a private comm channel opened up inside Nero’s helmet from Taren.

  “It’s over,” he said simply.

  “Are the other sites secure?”

  “Burn attempts have diminished, but there are still stragglers coming out to get themselves killed…and that’s not what I meant.”

  “What did you mean?”

  “I mean it’s over. These people just killed themselves. We can’t rebuild without techs and a workforce.”

  “We can’t
assume everyone on this planet is in the same boat. There could be pockets of resistance out there that are just hunkered down trying to wait this out.”

  “A possibility that we can’t stick around to find out.”

  “Why? Got somewhere to be?” Nero said with more venom than he intended. “Sorry, that came out wrong.”

  “You’re taking this harder than me, but I feel it too. These bastards made their own bed, and we can’t save them from it. It’s time to leave.”

  “And just let them…”

  “If we can’t stop it, there’s no need to stick around and watch. Even if we called for and got a relief fleet here, there’s not enough time. These people are dead, Nero. When they torched their storehouses they doomed themselves to be dead within a month, two tops, and there’s no one here left to save anyway. I wish there were a dozen or so we could rescue from this, but there’s not. And I doubt there will be elsewhere. Meanwhile, as we search, they starve or kill themselves in whatever way they want. They meant to deny us, not survive.”

  Nero balled up a fist and punched his armored thigh hard.

  “This isn’t over yet. We’re not just packing up and leaving…but you are right.”

  “What did I miss that we still have to do here?”

  “We’re not just bailing. We’re going to tidy up first.”

  The madcat’s right arm dropped until the barrel touched the ground.

  “Let’s get to it then,” Taren prompted, with Nero running over to it and climbing on so the Archon could ride back with him to the LZ.

  Over the next three weeks Nero had the Scorpions out searching the remains of every warehouse and collecting what bits of food and other essential supplies remained, then when they were ready to leave that individual city they piled up a fair amount of it in one central location for any survivors left to use or burn…whichever they chose.

  They spread out the supplies between the cities, saying goodbye to each one that they’d painstakingly conquered previously until all that remained were those surrounding the intact fields they still guarded. In those they added what equipment was still workable, stacking it on cleaned up streets in the chance that someone out there might have a wish to survive and take to harvesting the fields on their own or using the equipment for other purposes.

  The surplus of foodstuffs they left there as well, thinking that if someone was going to harvest the fields they’d need more strength to do it, plus the fields might draw others to these locations and increase the local population…which wasn’t much at this point, with quite a few starving Mendz visible scurrying around the city at a much slower pace than before, doing what Nero didn’t know, but he was going to give them a lifeline before he left.

  If they chose not to take it and just trash the supply dumps, well, he wouldn’t be here to know either way.

  Once those fields and the nearby supply caches were laid out and a final transmission was sent telling anyone who could receive it where the supplies were, the forces guarding the fields were picked up by aerial transports and taken back to the main base where they were disassembling it piece by piece, intent on leaving no Star Force technology behind.

  The mechs went back to their ships in orbit along with all the structural pieces, leaving only a few patrolling skeets over the shallow crater in the ground where the base footprint had laid. Nero made one concession, staying behind a few minutes and placing a portable holographic generator the side of a footlocker in the center of that crater where he recorded himself giving a long explanation of events that happened here and detailing how the Mendz chose to destroy their own planet rather than accept foreign rule.

  Nero made no excuses for them, but wanted an accurate account of what had happened should someone come to this planet later and find it lifeless and in ruins. He didn’t need to explain himself or Star Force’s actions, but what happened here was an abomination that he felt like turning his back on responsibly, so when he was done recording the message he played it back, ensuring it was sufficient, then set the proximity sensor to display it whenever someone or something came near, thus preserving its power cells for a very long time.

  As Nero walked away it triggered, creating a duplicate Archon behind him as he slowly headed for the last waiting transport that would take him back up to orbit and from there his small fleet would return to the ADZ…in victory or defeat was the question. They’d accomplished their mission in stopping the Mendz from attacking nearby systems, and in subsequent years the Mendz holdings there had been retaken without resupply from their homeworld, but at this cost it didn’t feel like a victory, even given the fact that they’d done this to themselves.

  Either way, Taren was right. There was nothing more for Clan Scorpion or him to do here.

  6

  October 20, 3574

  Unknown System (Crusade front)

  Inner Zone

  Aaron’s three ships came out of their jump into one of the systems known to be controlled by the Protovic, braking hard to avoid low stellar orbit and immediately glad they did as Aaron saw from the bridge of the cargo ship the immense Skarron fleet choking off the bottom end of the jumplane.

  “Well shit,” another Archon mumbled beside him as some dozen of them from his training group had come up to observe their destination and find out what these new Protovic were like, but no one had expected this system to be under attack. “They moved fast.”

  “That fleet is insane,” the Captain of the jumpship mentioned.

  “I’d guess they’re not getting much resistance,” Aaron agreed, “and that’s why they’re here sooner than anticipated.”

  “Or have more fleets available,” a titan chimed in.

  “That too. What are we getting on the two planets?”

  “Vislight indicates Skarron fleets over both.”

  “Is there anyone left?”

  “We need a closer look,” the analyst said, having next to no information to work with so far away other than what amounted to telescope imagery.

  “What do think they’ll do when they find us here?” the Captain asked.

  Aaron raised an eyebrow. “Our ship hulls are almost identical to what they fought in the past, so I’d be surprised if they didn’t identify us. Given how many ships they have here…”

  “At least 2 million,” the sensor officer chimed in.

  “…I think they’ll be extremely territorial in mindset and try to chase us down. They won’t be able to catch us, right…” he said, looking at the Captain.

  “Not unless you want us to loiter, no. Our engine capacity far exceeds theirs.”

  “We’re not going to, but we are going to see what the status of those two planets are. Bring us in close but keep us moving at all times.”

  “In concert?”

  “One warship with us, the other to the other planet.”

  “Shall I give the order?”

  “Unless we start shooting, I’m playing spectator,” Aaron said, referencing the seldom-used command nexus build into the side of the bridge. Most Star Force jumpships had them as standard design, but on a cargo ship without Archons they almost never found use.

  “Do you have a preference?” the Captain asked as he began pressing buttons on his command chair.

  “The green one.”

  “Helm, new coordinates,” the Captain said, shooting him an approach vector that the pilot would tweak to his own satisfaction before implementing. “Let’s get moving.”

  When they got closer to the planet the carnage became obvious. Debris in orbit was rampant, but the mass of Skarron ships there created a broken ring around the planet, a piece of which detached and began to pursue the Star Force ships futilely. But while the battle in orbit was over, the ground campaign was not yet complete. There were a mind boggling amount of walkers deployed and visibly running over cities no matter how much defense the Protovic put up, though there were a fair number of white dots covering the surrounding area to attest to the fact that this was not c
ompletely a one-sided fight.

  But the outcome was not in question. There were so many Skarron units in play that no matter how many the Protovic destroyed there would be more stepping in to take their place and pour firepower into any defenses they had en mass. The only advantage the Protovic seemed to have was the fact that the Skarron walkers were slow and they were able to hit and run somewhat, though the Skarron air power was pummeling them relentlessly.

  Better than 80% of the planet near Aaron was theirs, while the other one was worse off with only a handful of areas not yet succumbed, though in a few days they would be. The Skarrons were exterminating them with no visible prisoners being taken, though a detailed inspection of the images taken from the surface showed two instances of Aronsic camps that were feasting on glowing orange/green flesh.

  As much as he hated the lizards he’d been kind of hoping the Skarrons would kick their ass, but now seeing this and having old memories of the Skarron war returning fresh to his mind, he couldn’t stomach either of the dishonorable empires. He hated not being able to fight either one because of the stupid V’kit’no’sat, for they both needed conquered or destroyed in a bad way, and as long as they remained people like these Protovic were going to suffer for it.

  Though to be honest, he didn’t know if these Protovic were good guys, neutrals, or just as bad as the Skarrons…but there was only one way to find out.

  “Dexter.”

  “Yeah,” the Archon answered, looking up from a station on the bridge where he’d been having a private discussion with an analyst.

  “I need you in the big chair.”

  The ViLord raised an eyebrow. “What are we up to?”

  “Forced extraction,” Aaron said icily.

  “Our dropships won’t get through their air cover.”

  “Not on their own, no. We’re going to box with the drones.”