Star Force: Relocation (SF44) Page 5

  When that happened virtually every cruiser on the ground began to lift off and stack the airspace between the target and the incoming Hycre ships while wisps poured out to defend against the incoming fighters…which while ill-suited for going against warships of the size and number of the Cajdital cruisers, were quite capable of razing building and ground troops.

  The upgraded Hycre cruiser got off another shot before its escort destroyers took off, their targets chosen, and zipped out to flanking attack lines while the cruiser gained some altitude as the Calavari anti-air defenses peppered the underside of the Cajdital cruisers. The Hycre ship was obviously their primary target, but it was also much larger than the destroyers and more than capable of defending itself, but to do so effectively it had to start moving.

  After it rose up a few kilometers it accelerated forward and opened up with its formidable array of plasma cannons, hammering the Cajdital ship it had already hit with the cleansing beam. It took fire from several ships, then let the first one go as it accelerated through the Cajdital formation in a wide turn to the north and accelerated heavily as it pulled for more altitude, stretching out the enemy formation as its escort destroyers flicked about hitting the cruisers and running before they could respond with sufficient firepower to take down their shields.

  As they were doing that the Hycre cruiser flipped over and dove, heading straight into the ships that were pursuing it and picking one at a time to unload on before it passed them, no longer using the power hog cleansing beam, but instead relying on its plasma cannons and the two maulers, with one located on each side of the ship but with a rotating arc that allowed them to just barely combine fire into a forward targeting sync, giving it a heavy strafing ability on a single pass…though it had to get very close to get the maximum potency out of the weapons.

  In conjunction the 7 Hycre ships held their own against more than 40 Cajdital cruisers while several dozen Hycre ships, mostly destroyers and smaller, engaged the other enemy vessels as they attempted to pass through their lines and hit the base. So desperate they were to make good on the opening that they hit the Cajdital head on, with ships on both sides going down, but a few ships slipped through and tore up surface targets in strafing runs that immediately caught the enemy’s attention, with the attacker either fleeing quickly or staying to pound the target long enough that it got itself killed.

  One of the Hycre corvettes that suffered that fate managed to fall towards the base, intend on using its death as a weapon until two of the Cajdital cruisers dipped underneath it and used their flat tops to redirect the ship’s fall into the burnt out ring around the base, though they were both dragged down with it into a gigantic, debris-spewing crash.

  The Cajdital cruisers dropping elsewhere landed on the Calavari city buildings, most of which had been evacuated months ago around the invasion zone, but the Calavari ground troops didn’t have that luxury and had to hope that the naval battle occurring in atmosphere directly over their heads didn’t drop down on top of them…with not all of the army units being fortunate enough to avoid the fallout.

  In the fighter engagement the Valeries eventually won out, leaving their reduced swarm free to hit the base and help the Hycre against the cruisers, picking at them and reducing shield strength or hitting exposed hull that their allies had already peeled the shields off of.

  Eventually the Cajdital forfeited the base and sent all their available ships after the cleansing beam-equipped cruiser, which seeing its newfound popularity tipped its pointy nose up and accelerated hard into orbit, pulling the enemy behind it but at a speed they couldn’t match. Eventually it rendezvoused with the Alliance fleet in orbit, safe behind their guns and forcing the Cajdital to wave off and return to the surface, nestling into their other six intact bases while the Calavari army moved in and tore the exposed enemy base apart.

  Seeing the vulnerability in their defenses, the Cajdital fleet in high orbit ran more cruisers down to the surface and expanded their defense lines around the other bases, putting cruiser clusters down outside the defense shields to keep the Hycre ships from trying the same cleansing beam attack again without an immediate counterattack.

  The previous stalemate resumed, but the Calavari now had access to new Cajdital tunnels and poured troops down them, pressing the underground war and taking several new locations before that too deadlocked again, with both sides analyzing the new reality of the battlefield with the Hycre’s ability to hit the Cajdital from range with impunity.

  And that was only one ship, with many more to come to the system in the days ahead.

  Unfortunately the same was true for the Cajdital, with numerous cruisers arriving insystem on a regular basis.

  Over the following months the hit and miss naval war in orbit continued with the Hycre reinforcements beginning to take their toll on the Cajdital cruisers. Combining the Human weapons with the Hycre’s speed, agility, and naval strategy was a winning combination, with small packs of the enhanced ships poaching a cruiser often with a single pass, hitting it with several cleansing beams from range, breaching its shields and armor and disabling it, then coming in close to hit it with plasma and finally maulers. They’d fly off, leaving it severely damaged and move onto the next one, forcing the Cajdital to operate in larger deployments for fear of isolated groups being hunted down.

  That gave the Hycre the run of the system, with the enemy holding several key positions. One was near the star where the primary Cajdital incoming jumpline was located. They could not afford to have the Hycre poaching there, so they spammed the immediate area with ships to discourage that practice, but in order to keep the jumpline clear of potential collisions they couldn’t camp out on the exact spot, leaving some room for adventurous Hycre captains to shoot their ships in and ambush the incoming single enemy vessels, given that they couldn’t jump in clusters.

  The moons of Varasiss were where the rest of the Cajdital fleet was located, despite heavy Hycre efforts to thin the fleet there, but as many ships as they killed, more arrived to replace them, but the more Hycre vessels that arrived the more they could kill, meaning the Cajdital had a numbers race on their hands.

  The incursions on the planet were thoroughly bottled up, both ways initially, but as more cleansing beam-equipped ships arrived the Cajdital could not defended against all angles with sufficient numbers and the Alliance gradually whittled down their shield generators, then their defending cruisers, before finally eradicating their bases.

  It was a significant victory against an enemy that had proved extremely intractable, and as word spread through the surrounding star systems more Alliance reinforcements began to arrive from other races, some of which had no presence in the system to begin with. What they all wanted was a safe zone, and at the moment Varasiss was the closest thing to it. If the Cajdital could be stopped here, then it was possible to push them back elsewhere, giving them a sliver of hope of defending their own worlds…but if this strongpoint failed, it was assumed by many that nothing would be able to stop the enemy.

  Then, as if in some cruel joke, a fleet larger than what hit the planet initially arrived in the form of jumpships carrying nothing but thousands of cruisers. They assembled and waited around the star until their full fleet had arrived, then jumped to Varasiss en mass and blew straight through the Alliance fleet, with most of the allied warships running in the face of the armada.

  As soon as orbit was secure, the cruisers headed to ground…all the cruisers, and began assaulting the city shields, battle forts, air fields, and every other valuable position on the planet, after the destruction of which they leisurely began establishing hundreds of surface bases as their cruisers roamed the planet, eradicating the half trillion Calavari population through close range aerial bombardment.

  Kamalat and the other survivors on Radamal knew what was happening on Varasiss initially, then contact with the planet was cut off, leaving them temporarily safe in their underground base without a purpose to continue fighting for. They knew t
here could be no surrender, and they had no starships to escape on, with the Alliance fleet having quickly disappeared. Where the Calavari civilian ships had ended up no one knew, but if they were still insystem it was likely they had been destroyed…and if they had left the system then they were just as useless to them.

  So Kamalat and the others waited for the end to come, but for months nothing happened. When they stopped hitting Cajdital supply convoys the enemy seemed to forget about them, with many of the Calavari wishing the enemy would just get around to killing them already if it was fated to happen.

  Kamalat didn’t wholly disagree, but knew he’d rather be alive than not, and for the moment they had enough supplies to continue their futile resistance. He could only image the carnage occurring down on Varasiss, with even the less graphic nightmares chilling him to the bone. Varasiss was the home of all Calavari, whether they had been born there or not, and it held the wisest, most skilled of their race. With it falling Kamalat felt like a part of him deep inside was dying ahead of his body, putting him into the same zombie-like stupor that the rest of the base population was suffering from.

  The Urik’kadel were the only exception, either not knowing or understanding what was happening. They continued to head out to the forest on scouting missions, unwilling or unable to understand the Calavari’s sudden reluctance to fight the enemy. They found it uncharacteristic of their gigantic race, who were always ready and eager to fight, and proceeded to do what they thought was their duty, spying on the enemy and trying to figure some way out of their predicament.

  If Kamalat had time to think about it he would have granted that the little aliens were right, but once the base alarm went off he didn’t have time to think. If the Cajdital were finally attacking he and the others were going to take as many of them with them as they could. That sentiment ended the zombification, with a fatalistic anger swelling through the base as they were called to battle stations.

  When Kamalat got on station in the armory he found a very different energy present…one of hope which quickly spread to him and those around him when they were informed that the Cajdital were assaulting the base to try and prevent them from being evacuated. The Alliance hadn’t abandoned them, and once he had his weapons and shield harness on he ran towards the surface exits, coming up through a stairway and into the open where numerous hidden turrets had sprung up and were firing on enemy infantry trying to advance across the grassy plain…with the sight of several Cajdital tanks sitting burnt out from plasma fire that was even now coming down from a trio of Scionate ships hovering over the base.

  A fourth had landed and was spilling out the armored cats that were forming a loose gauntlet path from the base entrance to the ship for the Calavari to evacuate through. Kamalat moved halfway up the line then stepped off to the left, taking a knee and sighting through his rifle as others nearby were also doing, helping to aid their allies that were taking the fight out to the nearest Cajdital in person, jumping up on them in their yellow armor and firing plasma blasts directly into their torsos as they ran with incredible speed from point to point, eventually circling back to the parallel defensive lines that the Calavari survivors were pouring out of.

  Eventually the defense turrets fell silent as their gunners abandoned them to form the last of the evacuee line. Kamalat and the other rifle infantry waited till they ran past, then they in turn formed the last of the line and ran up into the ship with the armored Scionate infantry following them in, with the last two jumping up and into the cargo ship as it began to lift off.

  The three warships pounded the single Cajdital cruiser that had moved over to intercept them, with several more already enroute from orbit and one from another surface site. They didn’t have long to organize the evacuation, but the fact that there were few survivors was a blessing and the four ships raced up into orbit with the Cajdital fleet moving to cut them off…but the ships that got too close were intercepted by a pair of Hycre destroyers that were covering the Scionate exit.

  Others did the same thing at various points around the moon, with some 28 Scionate ships in all finishing up their flash evacuation and taking cover behind a handful of Hycre ships that only now raced down into low orbit ahead of a sudden microjump by one of their jumpships. Its weaponry, also upgraded with cleansing beams and maulers, discouraged the scattered Cajdital cruisers from further pursuit after gunning two down while the Scionate starships boarded the giant transport.

  They were followed in the three massive holds by the Hycre warships, and once they were all onboard the intimidating vessel jumped out of the moons orbit, carrying with it a scattering of survivors...the last of which they would be able to recover from the system after several months of similar efforts. Not for lack of trying or enemy resistance being too great, but for the simple reason being that there were no more Calavari left alive to rescue within the system.

  6

  March 21, 2473

  Numar System (Calavari Territory)

  Sashneo

  Kamalat walked off the Scionate cargo ship that he’d spent the past week onboard, tasting planetary air and sucking in its refreshingly unique feel as he joined millions of other Calavari survivors in one of their remaining ‘safe’ systems, though their number were diminishing quickly with both the Cajdital and Nestafar picking off their worlds in alarming number, and rumor had it several smaller races were also taking the opportunity to take what they could from the withering Calavari empire…races that normally would have been squashed under their imperial foot.

  But things were not what they once were, and the Calavari had gone from being a dominant race to a group of scattered worlds with most of their populations turning into either refugees or corpses as their enemies continued to hunt them down. Sashneo may have been secure at the time, but no one assumed it would stay that way for long.

  It was a moderately developed world, dry air, low topography, and the thick atmosphere that the Calavari pilots liked, giving them plenty of engagement room above the surface and keeping the warships in orbit further away. Cities dotted the planet, but they hadn’t consumed it, with more wild regions than infrastructure. Its normal population was a tranquil 200 million, but it had swelled to nearly a billion as they took in refugees, last Kamalat knew, but what he didn’t know was how many people had been pulled out of Varasiss to swell those numbers.

  As soon as he and the others got off the Scionate transport they were met and escorted into a makeshift processing center that looked to be of relatively new construction…and not of Calavari origin. He could have sworn it was an Irondel design, but on the inside there were only Calavari present.

  “Kamalat?!” he heard someone shout off to his left as he stood in line with the other survivors. He turned his large head and raised a hand in greeting when he saw a familiar face.

  “Nemaba! What are you doing here?” he said as the other Calavari walked over to him in a uniform that denoted him as part of the staff. “I thought you fighting on the Nestafar front?”

  “Was,” Nemaba said, pulling him out of line and over to a corner of the crowded room where they could get a little privacy. “We took two planets from them before my ship was destroyed, then I got shuffled back to the Chattis System, which fell a month after I arrived. I made it out, and have been bouncing around from one place to another until I landed here. Now at least we have a stable platform to work out of.”

  Kamalat frowned. “What’s different here?”

  “What’s different?” his Calavari broodmate said incredulously. “Did you miss the fleet in orbit?”

  “I was on a Scionate ship,” he explained.

  “Then you really don’t know?”

  “Know what?” Kamalat insisted.

  “This is a gathering world. Transports from many Alliance races are bringing survivors and evacuees here and to the others the Hycre have set up. Most of the people coming through here are shipped out within a couple of months back to the Sanctuary Zone, which is where you’ll
be headed unless you want to stay on here and help me and the others organize the mess of people coming through. The Calavari are easy enough to work with, but some of the other races are downright obstinate.”

  “Brother, I’ve been stuck in a base on Radamal forever. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Nemaba shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed. A lot of people are coming in knowing less than you. I thought the fleet would have been kept informed. The Kvash withdrew their support after the capitol fell and are pulling all their ships out of our territory to reinforce their own worlds under assault. The Kitot, Fanset, and Seenqua have gone with them.”

  Kamalat’s fists clenched up in anger, as did his teeth, but he quickly released the tension, knowing that meant the Cajdital were going to overrun their worlds much quicker without the Kvash’s superior naval forces. “I suppose that was inevitable.”

  “The Bsidd have also officially withdrawn their support, not that they had much here to begin with. The Hycre have stepped in and assumed control of this half of the Alliance, and are pretty much calling the shots now. The Cajdital are hitting them hard, but so far they still haven’t lost a system. They’ve got worlds inside Kvash and Bsidd space, with that being the only link left. Otherwise the Alliance has split and races are running to cover their own asses and most likely pick the circumstances they’d prefer to die under.”

  “Your tone suggests that’s not the case here. If we couldn’t stop the Cajdital with the Kvash, how can we do it without them?”

  “There’s a plan. I don’t like it myself, but the more I’m here the more I’m beginning to think it has a chance of working.”

  “What plan?”

  “The Hycre are establishing a Sanctuary Zone that we’re evacuating refugees into. The Scionate are actually relocating their entire population, crazy as that is, but then again maybe they’re the smart ones. Wish we’d thought of doing that with Varasiss.”