Star Force: Intransigent (SF100) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  Irene followed them out in the flow, then popped into the air above the Antarctic cityscape as the fighters accelerated up to altitude and formed up by squadrons. Hers was comprised of two gunships and 8 escorting skeets, but the others were a mix of craft that got even more mashed up as they were joined by more aerial fighters coming up from other bases spread across Antarctica.

  “Listen up,” their Archon commander said over the comm to all of the fighters coming out Irene’s base. “Enemy ground troop deployment is scattered and originating from the crashed ships. Nothing got down intact that we could see, but we’ve got survivors in the area to evacuate and enemy troops roaming around trying to kill everything they can while more are crawling out of their wrecked ships. Proceed on course and prepare to attack surface targets on the crashed ships. If they have any anti-air batteries operational we have to take them out first, then we can start pounding the Viks.”

  Irene blew out a slow breath, not liking the idea of going up against naval-caliber guns, but they had no choice. The enemy warships were huge and now cratering the cityscape to the southeast with the smoke plumes even now visible on the horizon. As they gradually got closer she was able to see what looked like mountains sticking up out of the landscape in various places, but they weren’t natural topography. They were the parts of the gigantic V’kit’no’sat ships that had fallen to ground into what had unfortunately been a populated area.

  “All those people underneath,” she said on her squadron comm.

  “Yeah,” Makkron agreed. “Never had a chance.”

  “Battlemap says those things aren’t completely dead, but I’m seeing no shields,” Heather added. “And look at those…”

  Irene heard her cut off the instant they all received organizational orders. Much like the naval warships in the fleet, the fighters were also capable of being directed from afar and the identifier of the one giving them orders was a ViLord that was not part of the aerial core. She was still in orbit, but everyone immediately readjusted onto the various headings she supplied, splitting up the mass of fighters and sending Irene’s squadron along with two others down towards the ground where they began flying at dizzying speed between the tallest of the city spires towards the rising V’kit’no’sat ship debris.

  When they got within 12 miles, targeting data popped up along with orders to slow their speed by half. The rest of the fighters in the overall group pushed on ahead, then Irene’s squadron was released to pursue their target…which was the troops spilling out of the largest ship/mountain on the horizon.

  She watched the others as they engaged weapons batteries on the hulks, seeing immediate casualties as several fighters were batted out of the sky as they swarmed individual weapons, taking them out on a single pass. Irene hoped those pilots’ armored cocoons had held up, but even as she watched in mind’s eye a pair of skeets fell out of the sky and impacted the angled side of the V’kit’no’sat hull, careening down it into the city debris. Then she noted several beams firing on weapons batteries that she backtracked to mech units already in the area.

  That was good, because aerial cover wasn’t going to do enough against ground troops if they could get out into the cityscape and use the buildings for cover…though for her target that wasn’t going to be an issue.

  “Damn he’s big,” Heather said as their primary target shifted from a group of smaller bipeds to a single huge brontosaurus pushing out of a wall segment in the crashed ship and walking into the Star Force city.

  “They are dinosaurs,” Irene said in amazement as the miles clicked off fast and they were nearly in visual range, using the battlemap data to ‘see’ their target before they came up on it. Orders from the controlling Archon determined their approach path along with a timer and Irene adjusted accordingly as the other two squadrons broke off and moved to their own attack runs.

  “At least they’re not wearing arm…” Jarren said, almost getting the last word out before thin lines running across the long-necked dinosaur suddenly exploded out and covered the huge body from head to tail in brilliant green battle plates. “Son of a bitch.”

  A moment later two points on the thing’s body started shooting into nearby buildings…then the first attack came in the form of a squadron strafing it from the northeast just as Irene’s squadron turned into view. They lit it up with a cascade of weaponsfire as they flew past, but what the targeting computer identified as an ‘Oso’lon’ had energy shields protecting it and they didn’t go down.

  Irene got a proximity warning as a perimeter radius was set up around their target as a no-fly zone. For some reason she wasn’t to get her gunship within 600 meters of it, and even beyond that, high speed approaches were being called for as she noticed a star of mechs racing their way through the city about 3 minutes out as a scattering of people could be seen running away from the crash zones on the streets.

  When Irene came around on their attack run she kept her speed up while gaining some altitude…at which point return fire from the Oso’lon hit the skeet beside her. It didn’t go down, but lost most of its shields and had to peel up to avoid getting shot again. Irene unloaded all four of her maulers and a string of missiles into the target then pulled up before the 600 meter line, flying hard to stick to the track the Archon had given her, but she didn’t make it.

  For some reason there was a tug on her ship and Irene couldn’t hold the turn, smacking into a nearby building and bouncing off it, fortunately, but blowing out her shields and crunching the entire right side of the gunship. One of her maulers was knocked offline in addition to a Keema beam, and half the missile launchers were now jammed.

  Irene recovered before she hit another building then fought to get back with her squadron as they circled around for another long pass.

  “What the hell was that?” she demanded, seeing the next squadron coming through also having navigational trouble.

  “Some type of grapple weapon,” her squadron leader advised. “It’s why we have the ‘no fly’ zone. Get too close and they’ll pull you to ground.”

  “How?”

  “No clue. Can you still fly that thing?”

  “Yeah. Just lost some firepower.”

  “Saw that. We’ll come in a little higher this time…” he said as they suddenly saw another Oso’lon crawling out of the debris.

  “Wonderful. Now there’s two of them,” Heather pointed out as the second one deployed its armor to cover a huge gash in its dark green skin that was leaking enormous amounts of what looked like purple blood.

  “One’s injured,” Jarren pointed out.

  “Let’s add to it,” Irene said, miffed about already taking damage as they approached, but then noticed one of the crushed buildings nearby as the two Oso’lon start to move…with pieces of it taking to the air and flying towards them the size of boulders.

  She took immediate evasive action, but her and four others had to abort their attack run entirely, though the others got through. Whatever damage they did was soaked up by the V’kit’no’sat’s shields, making Irene wonder what the hell was going on. How tough were these things, and since when they could go Jedi and force throw rocks?”

  “Seriously, what the fuck is going on?”

  “Don’t know, just stick to the plan and trust the Archons,” Heather suggested as they turned around to come back at them from a different direction but still down in the buildings enough to give them some cover, for the two Oso’lon were throwing up a lot of anti-air fire above the buildings as Irene got a sudden redirect. She hit the brakes and coasted to a stop as the other fighters mostly continued on, though two slowed nearby her but went different ways as new surface contacts were being highlighted.

  Irene took her gunship down almost onto a street and followed the tracking prompt until she could see a Zen’zat running amongst a group of Humans and shooting them up every chance he got. Gritting her teeth and making sure her aim was good, Irene put a few Keema shots into the pavement near him, causing the enemy infantry to
juke to the side and not shoot the two people directly ahead. After that he was too close to others for her to fire, so she pushed ahead and got right up on top of him…but it was still no good, there were too many civilians fleeing for their lives and getting caught out.

  This guy was so fast he could bounce from one group to another in the blink of an eye, but Irene risked a shot in between two and clipped him in the leg with the anti-infantry weapon, but he didn’t go down. He barely stumbled at all as he continued to run forward and punched a woman so hard in the back his hand came out her chest, then he tossed the body aside and darted inside a building where Irene couldn’t shoot him.

  “Mother fucker,” she swore, swinging around so she could aim at the building entrance. If he came back out she was going to nail him, and if not she could at least buy those people closest to her a bit of a head start…then she got another redirect and flew around a few blocks to find another Zen’zat out in the open.

  This one she nailed with a mauler shot. He went down on impact, but started to get back up as he limped to the side heading for a doorway.

  “No you don’t,” she said, peppering two Keema lances across his path…with the Zen’zat’s body doing a nice Darth Maul impression and severing at the waist with his torso and legs rolling off in different directions.

  “One down,” she noted to herself as the Archon kept her gunship moving through the streets killing/chasing various Zen’zat until a much larger contact came into place overtop the downed V’kit’no’sat ship. The Corvette-class drone took out a few operational weapons batteries on top, then eased over to where the two Oso’lon were stubbornly refusing to go down.

  Irene watched with keen interest as the naval weapons rained down on their shields…which held up for far too long, during which they fired back in what seemed to be a fair contest for a few moments, then the Oso’lon took off running at surprising speed. The first one head butted a Shadow Cat-class mech out of its way and got around to the far side of a building that blocked the corvette’s fire from above.

  The second headed a different direction, and it was towards it that Irene was sent on an individual strafing run. When she got within range the corvette was back to firing a few shots at it, but not many of the weapons batteries had good lines of sight on the giant dinosaur that still refused to go down even as its shields failed in a few places.

  Irene hoped she’d hit one of those spots as she received an order to unload all of her remaining missiles on it…which weren’t that many given the damage she’d taken earlier. When the pilot did so she added the three maulers when power allowed and hit the Oso’lon from the left flank as it ran across a street opening, essentially ambushing it from close range while staying outside the ‘no fly’ zone.

  But that’s when things began to go wrong, for her ship was tugged again…towards the intersection as the Oso’lon stopped, turned, and began running towards her.

  Irene applied as much power as she could, shooting her ship up between the buildings and reaching for clean air, but the big thing was too fast and the closer it got the firmer the hold on her ship became. Soon she couldn’t gain any altitude and actually was pulled back down in front of it, gently crashing into the road all the while her engines were on full to try and get her airborne again.

  Multiple weapon shots nailed her ship, breaking through its robust shields and then quickly blasting apart her hull. Irene lost all weapons and flying capability, becoming the pilot of a paperweight with a few sensors still working along with her battlemap connection so she could see the Oso’lon run up to and step on her gunship…crushing it even flatter than it had been with multiple steps as it walked over top and ran onward, leaving Irene safe in the protective cocoon and feeling like an idiot for getting caught despite the fact that she’d respected the ‘no fly’ zone.

  6

  Roger brought the fleet into range of the Mach’nel, accelerating hard to diminish the time spent with it outranging them, then slamming on the brakes to bring the drones in close as the controlling ships stayed far out of the fray. He saw that limited shields had been reestablished over parts of the Mach’nel, but some areas were still unprotected and those were centered around the area where the hull had holes in it.

  He knew he had to target those areas and the Mach’nel knew it had to defend them…with the massive ship moving in close to an evacuated Star Force station and pressing its weak side up against it to block incoming fire.

  “Nice move,” he said as he ordered his ships to focus fire on a few weapons batteries that were exposed. Each one was redundantly shielded, but if he could start picking away the Mach’nel’s weaponry it would diminish the number of ships he’d lose…plus the Mach’nel had just given his ships something to hide behind as well, with him sending out orders to cycle lightly damaged ships behind the station when able, though those being pulverized by the Tar’vem’jic didn’t qualify.

  Roger kept the Ultimas back near his command ship but had the Shivas in the fight to help soak up damage from the secondary weapons. They did nothing but provide big targets to the Tar’vem’jic, but he needed them in there to extend the longevity of the smaller ships, for the V’kit’no’sat gunners seemed to prefer shooting the biggest threat they could find.

  Roger saw one Var’ko battery go out after an insane amount of pounding through its tiny, redundant shields. Each time it fired it had to lower them briefly, exposing only a few meter gap in the coverage to get the energy weapon released, but hit them with enough firepower and on occasion something would get back through the opposite way. Roger didn’t think that had happened here, but the coordinated firepower was enough to rip those dedicated shields away and melt the edges of the Yeg’gor armor crater in which the weapon had sat.

  One less threat to his ships, but there were thousands of weapons spread over the Mach’nel and hammering through the armor to get at the interior and rip away their power sources was not a good option. As it was, Roger wasn’t even going to hammer away on their intact shields, instead focusing firepower and plucking the few weapons exposed by previous damage…then he ordered his fleet to open fire on the abandoned station.

  The unshielded construct held up well to the firepower, for it was armored too, but nothing compared to the protection the Mach’nel had. Roger cut through several sections deliberately while having his ships shoot others for distraction purposes only. Debris was flying everywhere as the Mach’nel kept close and used the delay to continue picking off drones left and right, but what they didn’t see were the channels being cut through the station that several of Roger’s smallest drones, Cutter-class, were sneaking their way through.

  Then before they realized what was happening the ‘safe’ side of the station exploded in a few key points, keeping most of it intact but opening up those conduits to allow the cutters to pass through the narrow gap between station and Mach’nel…and into the craters in its hull.

  Each of the football field-sized ships disappeared inside the breaches in the armor and traveled inside through the gutted areas of the ship, blasting away at blocking debris and pushing their way through what was the equivalent of an 8 foot high snow wall. It was slow going, but it was just a matter of eating away at the internal structure of the ship until they got to key systems…though there was hundreds of miles of ship to push through.

  But Roger had them and he knew it. He ran as many cutters up and into the ship as he could, then he set one at each entry point to act as a relay to get signals through the dense Yeg’gor armor while he withdrew the drone fleet. Several ships were lost on the pullout, but without the engine power to pursue the Mach’nel was now helpless to shoot anything other than the nearby evacuated stations as the tiny technological termites inside it continued chewing out tunnels through deck after deck heading for key systems that Star Force knew the location of thanks to the pyramid database, so the cutters wouldn’t be wasting any time aimlessly roaming about.

  Roger opened a comm to the Mach’n
el as he watched it disconnect from the wrecked station and finish blasting it into pieces before beginning to shoot others as it drifted helpless against the internal naval attack…which was one disadvantage of building a ship that damn big.

  “Your fleet has abandoned you to die here, but I am offering you a chance to surrender with whatever crew you have left. If you do not my ships will continue to destroy yours from the inside out, but unlike you we are not committed to wiping out every last one of you…and just so you know, those stations you’re blowing up have already been evacuated.”

  It didn’t take long for a holographic image of a J’gar to appear before Roger, with the long-necked behemoth visible from below water with its two large sea wing fins splayed out to the side and its four tentacle-like legs drifting below, all of which had weaponized tips similar to the Hjar’at’s Saroto’kanse’vam, those these soft versions were loosely referred to as Ulu’dart, and the J’gar had three different kinds on its body, making it extremely lethal within the water.

  “Why would we surrender?”

  “So you don’t die,” Roger said pithily.

  “Better a combat death than what you would have in store for us. We will not submit nor surrender this vessel to you, but before you claim it through other means let us know the truth about our betrayers. Wait until the others are gone and you have destroyed our long range communications, but at least give us the knowledge of who has beaten us.”

  “We did,” Roger said plainly. “And it’s your arrogance that is keeping you from seeing that.”

  “We locked out the planetary defense station’s weapons. Only we or the Oso’lon could unlock them. Which of us was it?” the J’gar asked, curiously not excusing his own race from possible guilt.