Star Force: Rajamal (SF97) (Star Force Origin Series) Page 5

  And with many of the elite Zen’zat within the galaxy coming here, they were going to set an extremely hard benchmark to match.

  5

  June 4, 3598

  Ittick System (Li’vorkrachnika territory)

  Stellar Orbit

  The I’rar’et First Column of Klaedon 187 came out of its jump into orbit around a giant white star in a closely packed formation, pinpoint dropping where they wanted with only a few kilometers between the small Ti’mat escorts that surrounded four Na’shor battleships. All the V’kit’no’sat races utilized the same military structure, but customized each of their vessel designs as they wished. The I’rar’et shaped theirs in long ‘T’s to give them some internal stretches where they could fly and not be forced to walk everywhere inside their ships, which to the avians was borderline tormentation.

  The Ti’mat were the smallest vessels that the I’rar’et used for warships, though there were more diminutive vessels suited to the Zen’zat and Ari’tat. The I’rar’et did not believe in constructing anything that they themselves could not crew, thus nothing smaller than the 4 mile long/wide Ti’mat was constructed. In contrast, the Na’shor battleships were considerably larger at 26 miles long/wide and carried their version of starfighters that were only used in special circumstances…for they were basically an oversized armored suit that the I’rar’et would wear so they could fly through space.

  To them it was uncomfortable, given the lack of aerodynamics to utilize that created a lingering inability to maneuver as sharply as they liked, but being confined inside a warship was far worse and the K’lak’tal combat suits were their choice of preference when hunting inferior ships. That was why all four Na’shor released waves of K’lak’tal as soon as they saw a guardian fleet of Li’vorkrachnika ships stationed in orbit around the star and headed for them.

  It wasn’t a large number, barely 1200 strong, but there were far more registering in position over the main planet and scattered groups of others spread out across the four worlds showing enemy inhabitation. Being patient, the I’rar’et held their fleet in formation as the 44 vessels waited and secured the jumppoint while the K’lak’tal rushed off to make the first official kills in this campaign.

  With their high powered gravity drives, low mass, and a special auxiliary magnetic drive that allowed them a touch more acrobatics in the presence of a planetary or stellar magnetic field, the winged combat suits flew in a series of elongated lines towards the approaching ships, then fanned out into individual braking runs to match the system defenders’ speed. They too slowed down, but it was the K’lak’tal that had the choice of engagement points for they were by far the most superior when it came to navigation. They came out of their decel jumps right on top of individual ships and began peppering them with green Dre’mo’don strikes that hammered their shields hard, but did not penetrate.

  The Li’vorkrachnika returned fire, but the specialized deflecting shields configured specifically to counter the enemy technology bounced off most of the energy weapons hitting them as they stuck close to their target ships and continued firing their Dre’mo’dons until they finally popped the shields and hit the hull…at which point the K’lak’tal landed on the ships and began firing away at pointblank range.

  They doubled and tripled up against most ships to expedite the process, with them fleeing whenever too many other vessels began to fire on them and their targets, causing almost as much damage as they were as the I’rar’et hopped from one target to another and got the Li’vorkrachnika to keep shooting each other in a vain attempt to knock them down. Given how small the K’lak’tal were it was possible for them to succeed, but the they had maneuverability options that allowed them to run off out of firing range when their shields dropped too low.

  It was risky for them to engage this many Li’vorkrachnika vessels on their own, but it was also a testament to their skill and audacity. Should even one be destroyed they would bear great shame in it, but if they did not their dominance would be even further secured with this display of superiority. I’rar’et had a reputation for being shrewd risk takers, and no one other than Zen’zat piloted single occupant warships within the V’kit’no’sat. That was something they took great pride in, and it was fitting that they were tearing apart the enemy in their first engagement without even having to involve a single Ti’mat.

  After the stellar patrol was annihilated, the K’lak’tal returned to their roosts in the Na’shor while the fleet continued to wait and hold the jumppoint as Li’vorkrachnika vessels began to assemble en mass around the primary planet, either as a staging point to redirect to the star or to wait for the attackers to come to them.

  Before that could happen additional ships began to arrive carrying the ground assault troops that would be needed to take this world and search its contents in order to learn about this race that was slated for eradication. When those massive Dol’vaw cargo/habitat/industrial ships arrived with a final count of 18 they formed up behind a wedge of protective warships and the I’rar’et fleet jumped to the main planet…right in front of the assembling ships.

  The K’lak’tal did not emerge from the Na’shor, but Var’ko beams did. Six from each, with the needle-like red streaks punching through shields on contact and boring very tiny holes all the way through the Li’vorkrachnika ships. Conscious of what was behind them when firing, the I’rar’et gunners continued to pour energy through those persistent lances as they adjusted their firing line ever so slightly…

  It looked like a giant string had been moved, and what little damage a pinprick of hole all the way through did was turned into a killing blow as the Li’vorkrachnika ships were literally cut in half. There were no massive explosions accompanying it. A bit of depressurization here and there, perhaps an overload in an adjacent compartment that would puff outward, but for all the ‘bang’ one would expect from such a ship-killing blow the V’kit’no’sat weapon was not very flamboyant. It simply bisected a ship…then cut back across it several times to increase the number of pieces that were then left floating, often with some weaponry intact, but any shots from the dying fragments were ignored as the Na’shor moved on to other targets.

  The Ti’mat however did strike at those remaining pieces, knocking out any that remained an active threat and allowing the others to wither away on their own merits. The smaller vessels did not carry Var’ko, but rather relied heavily on short range Uit carlo streamers. An invisible conduit was extended from the ships, out through which a cloying carlo energy matrix was shunted directly into the ship fragments. When that happened the fireworks erupted, literally, as the matter of the targets was vaporized into quickly expanding nebulas that dirtied up the battlefield in subsequent flowers of debris, but not so much that the I’rar’et sensors couldn’t see through the mess…and it did nothing to dull the accuracy or power of the Var’ko as they reached out and sliced up ship after ship while the Na’shor shields casually lapped up the pathetic energy weapons the Li’vorkrachnika employed. Though to their credit, at least they’d made it past plasma cannons that many in the galaxy still relied on.

  Oddly the Li’vorkrachnika didn’t run, which frustrated the K’lak’tal pilots that wanted to engage again. Instead the defenders held their ground and made it easy for the I’rar’et to destroy them. Suicide attempts at ramming a Ti’mat were easily blocked by cushioning shields, catching the incoming ships and holding them in place briefly as they were met with a Uit that ate through their shields in less than a second, then reduced the attacker into the tiny fragments they had intended on becoming…only without taking the recently identified V’kit’no’sat ship along with them.

  The battle was fierce, but completely one sided. It ended with the remaining Li’vorkrachnika ships fighting to their quick deaths then the I’rar’et fleet moving into bombardment range of the planet’s surface. The Ti’mat held silent as escorts while the four Na’shor moved within the edge of their firing range, finding that the planetary defense systems cou
ld not target them at that distance. Rather than venturing in closer to find out that range, they opened fire with the pinprick beams that created huge distortion cascades on the thick atmospheric defense shields as they absorbed the massive amounts of energy that the constant beams poured forth.

  Or almost constant. They couldn’t keep them firing continuously and after their maximum 37 second duration they had to suffer through a 19 second recharge, but with 6 per ship and four ships in total they maintained constant fire on one particular section of shields that were breached within 3 minutes.

  It wasn’t a total collapse, but rather a spot overload that allowed the beam through momentarily until surrounding energy refilled the gap, but the bit that did get through hit a shield generator and was able to tear an 18 meter gash through it laterally before the moving beam was caught again.

  That generator went down, weakening the umbrella overhead as more gaps were opened up and the other nearby generators were disabled. Soon what remained from more distant generators was so weak that the entire regional shield failed, at which point the Dol’vaw began dispersing landing craft that followed the second release of the K’lak’tal who dove towards the open sections of surface at such a rate that they were hard to target by the planetary defense guns that were quickly going extinct directly below them. The orbital bombardment didn’t cease as they descended, with the warships cleaning up the perimeter of the landing zone to reduce the amount of incoming weaponsfire against the landing craft.

  When the bombardment eventually fell silent the rest of the Li’vorkrachnika guns had not, for those sitting beneath intact adjacent shields were tipping over and firing almost laterally as much as they were able, but the few shots that hit the descending transports were absorbed. The shorter range defenses below that were far more numerous were drawn out by the K’lak’tal who began swooping down to building level and flying through the Li’vorkrachnika buildings and targeting them at close range, aggressively plucking the defenses enough to allow the first transports to land uncontested.

  Out of those came more I’rar’et in much less bulky armor, but they were also protected by energy shields and carried smaller weapons more befitting their agile accoutrements. They surfed the air with glee, targeting Li’vorkrachnika ground troops, civilians, and pretty much anything that moved or shot at them as they secured an expanding circle around the LZ as armies of Zen’zat ran out onto the ground and began to sweep the streets and nearby buildings.

  They secured the area then sent teams off to specific coordinates on the planet based on orbital scans. Some were to take down the other shield generators and planetary defense guns, but others were headed for what were suspected to be communications and data hubs. They didn’t want the Li’vorkrachnika deleting data before they could get to it, for this invasion was first and foremost about information gathering. The extermination of the system’s population would come easy enough after the fact, but the challenge here and now was to secure that which could be destroyed before they got to it.

  Included in that last caveat was the different types of Li’vorkrachnika that they had learned about in their previous encounters. Stealth teams of Zen’zat were flown out on equally stealthed I’rar’et to be dropped in locations where different mental signatures were detected, then they would track them down with all haste so they could be captured and interrogated for both their experiential knowledge and their genetic memories.

  But throughout this invasion they could not find the strategic leader model that they suspected of being here, given the size and importance of the world. Some had seen him previously, but he moved like a ghost among them and would never be found on the planet, dead or alive, nor on any of the others in the system. Either he wasn’t here at the time of the invasion or he was hiding out ahead of the extermination teams that gradually moved through city after city, deliberately leaving the structures intact as they eliminated their occupants. Normally all of it would have been obliterated from orbit, but if this was to be a proper intelligence retrieval operation then the entire planet should be preserved for continuous study…so that they didn’t have to go to such delicate measures anywhere else.

  To that end, some of the Li’vorkrachnika population was captured and contained, but it quickly became apparent that they would not hold to captivity and reviving those that killed themselves became such a chore that the I’rar’et instead decided to spare a small section of the planet that they placed a blockade around to insure that none got out, but did not attack or interfere in any obvious way to those inside save for killing them when they assaulted the perimeter.

  But unlike the Li’vorkrachnika defense fleet, they did not all run to their quick deaths. They held onto the city and used it, rebuilding, expanding, and probing against the impossible opponent that surrounded them…sparing the I’rar’et from going to the frustrating lengths of preserving a limited number of individuals in closely monitored cells.

  While it initially appeared as an unfinished assault to Rajamal when he later arrived, the Zen’zat quickly realized what an inspiration the tactic had been. He no longer had to rely on reports of the enemy to learn of them, which had been quite detailed and thorough, for now he could slip past the blockade along with other research teams and monitor their active minds, raiding whatever information they desired while other teams scoured the planet gathering and cataloging the technological assets the Li’vorkrachnika had and learning how they’d made use of them.

  Such study did not happen quickly, so Rajamal focused on the pertinent areas to the upcoming assaults that he would be authorizing, tantamount among them being starmaps and fleet numbers, the latter of which was not present in any form. This world only possessed knowledge of this region and nothing beyond it, though there were enough general starmaps present to give him the basic sketch of their overall empire, though the exact borders were impossible to determine.

  What he found mildly surprised him, for it was larger than anyone had speculated even taking into account the noted losses by the Skarron invasion. The Li’vorkrachnika had so many worlds to draw resources from that Rajamal could partially understand their arrogance. If the Skarrons were the greatest foe known to them, then they should have believed themselves to be superior enough to take on anyone, for he was fairly sure that the Li’vorkrachnika were going to defeat the larger empire due simply to the density of their conquests and the way they made use of their fleets.

  Nothing was critical, everything could be sacrificed if the need existed and rebuilt later. On top of that, their aggressive expansion policy gave them new worlds to replace those being lost, meaning that the defeats they were taking were little more than inconveniences if they could stall for time. They could very well bleed the Skarrons dry and then outbuild them in the aftermath and secure an unsuspected victory, and Rajamal found he had a mote of respect for them and their methods. They were harsh and uncompromising, but they had mistakenly crossed a foe so superior to them they probably didn’t even comprehend what they were doing at the time.

  Had they not succeeded in killing the Zen’zat they might have lived through the reprisal. It was strange that they should be punished for the failure of the V’kit’no’sat rather than rewarded. Something about that did not sit right with Rajamal, so long as he considered them to be so inferior that the V’kit’no’sat were spectators watching pets play…but if the Li’vorkrachnika were going to contend with them as equals, then there was no room for leniency.

  They had attacked and scored a victory that should not have been possible, and whether or not they intended that, for a brief fleeting moment it put them on par with the V’kit’no’sat.

  And it was that peerdom that had sealed their fate, for while a master could be dismissive of a pet, a rival could not be tolerated. If the Li’vorkrachnika had truly attacked them out of ignorance and scored their victory through sheer luck, well, then the universe had it in for them, because that would have been one of the largest miscarriages of meri
t he could imagine. He pitied them that possibility, but the board was set and this eradication was not going to be repealed.

  They had struck a lethal blow, and now they must all die for that success.

  If one was not able to contend with the V’kit’no’sat as equals, then they had best not try to poke the giant, for there was no gray area to maneuver within. You either stayed out of their way or fought them straight up…and if you started a fight, you had better be able to finish it.

  It was clear now that the Li’vorkrachnika could not finish it. They could not even mount a defense, and if Rajamal did his job appropriately there would not be a single death of a Zen’zat nor any other V’kit’no’sat for the Li’vorkrachnika to lay claim to. Their one victory would be their sole one…and their last of all time, for soon they were going to be erased from the galaxy and relegated to the historical records that would largely be written based on the research done on this planet.

  And so be it. They were not the first the V’kit’no’sat had been compelled to wipe out, nor would they be the last, but they were Rajamal’s to attend to and once he got a good feel for the geography of their empire and their military capabilities he would begin drawing up invasion corridors and handing each of the 7 factions their assignments…then dishing out more to those who proved themselves the most competent and efficient, regardless of the Sector Capitol’s wishes.

  This was his campaign and he would lead it. That’s what they’d requested him for and that’s what they were going to get, whether they liked it or not.

  6

  January 24, 3599

  Ittick System (Captured System)