Death Mark Read online

  “Ground vehicles?”

  “That is the most even fighting. The Bo’ja are using Zen’zat vehicles and I have the Ter’nat mostly in the same. We have been producing them for years in preparation, but when the shields go down they are quickly targeted by the Oso’lon.”

  “Have you killed any of them?”

  “Only two, more than a year ago. They are more cautious of the Ter’nat now and have not given us an opportunity to take down another.”

  “Is there a shield generator about to go down?”

  “Three are in jeopardy. One is nearly lost and not worth trying to save. It will fall within the hour.”

  “Then that is where we will start. Please provide the coordinates.”

  “Do not be brazen and waste some of your Zen’zat in the attempt.”

  “I intend to waste nothing. Send me the coordinates.”

  “Very well, Zen’zat. If I am wrong and the shield generator can be saved, you will get a Saphorib Shield for this,” Neoum said, referencing the extremely rare Zen’zat combat award.

  “I already have four,” Rajamal noted as the coordinates came through. “Deploying now. Stand by your fleet if a moment of opportunity occurs in response.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  “Win,” Rajamal said, cutting the comm channel and turning to his bridge crew. A slew of detailed telepathic orders followed, then he headed off to the gear room with the rest of the troops onboard as both ships headed down into the atmosphere and were allowed passage through the shield on the safe side of the planet…then they diverted and skimmed the surface at low speed heading around the curve towards the war zones before they broke apart and headed for different shield generators.

  Rajamal’s Wur’ki headed for the one in the most dire situation, and as soon as it came within range on the horizon he spotted 3 Zen’zat Triaf-class aerial fighters making strafing runs against armored ground vehicles…which is exactly what they were designed to do and had the extra shielding and firepower for it, but lower speeds and maneuverability were the downside. They were being escorted by Ter’nat squadrons that were having a hard time fighting against the Oso’lon attack drones that were little more than single floating weapons batteries the equivalent of what the ground vehicles had many of.

  Those attack drones made up for the lack of aerial forces in support, and Rajamal wondered why they didn’t have Bo’ja in fighters. Maybe they weren’t experienced enough yet for that, or maybe the Oso’lon didn’t want to waste the resources on their expendable troops.

  Rajamal ordered the Zen’zat fighters to fall back to the Wur’ki as the ship slid further down into the atmosphere and began making a fireball as it closed in on the shield generator, displacing so much air that it was causing a hurricane around it, and he didn’t want them or the Ter’nat to get caught in the ripples. The people on the ground, down and in the buildings would have to fend for themselves, because he had to bring the ship in this close or risk losing the shield generator before his Zen’zat could get into position to effectively defend it.

  His crew opened up with the point defense weapons on any Bo’ja vehicle they had in range, peppering their shields with small, rapid-fire Dre’mo’don shots before they turned and put Ter’nat buildings between them and the ship…which the Zen’zat would not fire on…but as the warship slowed to a standstill others came into view and two quick vehicle kills were made while avoiding damaging the Ter’nat vehicles forming a choppy defense line around the base of the shield generator tower.

  It wasn’t up to V’kit’no’sat standards, but the shield generator was providing a decent barrier against orbital bombardment out for nearly 200 miles from their current position, under which the attacking troops were approaching. Off over the horizon he could see Oso’lon perching with their necks up high enough to see, and Rajamal ordered a few shots to be taken at them.

  They scattered as soon as the incoming fire hit nearby, retreating further back and ducking their heads to avoid taking any shield shots themselves. Two of the J’gar warships further back began to move forward a bit, but when the Wur’ki didn’t move beyond the shield generator they put a few shots low into it, trying to see if they could skim the horizon and get underneath it…but the shield was set at 50 meters above the horizon, and there wasn’t enough angle there to work with.

  Had it been touching the ground the troops could have deployed shield disruptors to it and potentially brought enough chunks of it down for the warships to shoot through, which was why the ground invasion had to be allowed passage underneath it, with the shield barrier staying just out of reach above them.

  But that gave Rajamal an opportunity to fight them on the ground rather than in naval combat, and on the ground was where his superior skills could be put into effect.

  Once the Wur’ki was tucked in and sniping what few targets it could without hitting friendlies in the urban environment, Rajamal and 291 other Zen’zat jumped out of the ship and drifted down energy columns to the surface that both slowed their descent and acted as shields to protect them during the drop. All wore traditional armor, for there were no significant psionic threats nearby, and Rajamal was going to need as much speed and agility as he could get to maximize his killcount.

  As soon as he hit the ground he was off running, with the rest of the Zen’zat pairing off in twos or sometimes threes as they spread out on hunting missions. They were not here to defend the shield generator, they were here to go after the Bo’ja and let the Ter’nat defend the generator. The Zen’zat that were assigned to this planet and already on site he contacted and informed them to keep the Ter’nat on task while his team became the focus of attention.

  Rajamal had access to the Ter’nat tactical grid, so he had plenty of targets tagged along with many more that were not and moving through the urban infrastructure for cover. He stretched out his Ikrid and Pefbar as far as he could go and soon found a team of 4 Bo’ja heading through a subsurface tunnel beneath him.

  Rajamal stopped running over the spot where he sensed the tunnel, then knelt down while delivering a hard punch to the ground along with a Jumat blast that cracked the pavement. He telekinetically lifted and tossed aside the pieces, then punched again and again until he broke through and dropped in just behind the running Bo’ja.

  He had to catch up to them, but his movements were lightning fast compared to theirs and two turns down they finally realized someone was coming up from behind, so they turned and decided to fight it out.

  Which was a horrible mistake.

  As soon as Rajamal came into view the Bo’ja found themselves crippled with a Fornax blast. One who held a rifle dropped it, then fumbled to pick it back up as the Zen’zat caught up to them. He got kicked in his armored face and bounced into the sidewall, then managed to fire a few shots from his wrist-mounted weaponry before a fist came into his chest, pinned him against the wall, and cracked his armor on both sides.

  The Bo’ja was thrown out into the tunnel, then an energy blast hit the cracked pieces of armor, melting and blasting them apart before what was left was Lachka lifted away, clearing the way for another punch that coincided with an energy blast that tore into the Bo’ja’s chest and vaporized part of his lungs.

  The Bo’ja collapsed to the ground, hoping his Kich’a’kat would somehow heal him, but there was too much missing tissue in his lungs to replace after his heart was repaired…and by then the lack of oxygen to his brain rendered him unrecoverable anyway, though the regenerator continued to try and put him back together before it finally realized he was gone and shut down.

  The other three Bo’ja suffered similar fates, then Rajamal was off to hunt more of the attackers while his team mostly did the same…but some of them were tasked with attacking and reclaiming some of the Zen’zat vehicles the Bo’ja were using. Doing so made the combat extra hard, but every one they managed to steal was one the Ter’nat could use later, and they intended to take back quite a few of the vehicles designed for them f
rom the Bo’ja.

  Meanwhile the aerial combat continued, with the Wur’ki helping to shoot down the attack drones immediately around the shield generator, though the Zen’zat were plucking them out of the sky with their psionics whenever they came close. They were inferior technology designed for light combat operations, and against the Ter’nat they were highly effective…but against Zen’zat they were little more than a waste of parts.

  The biggest problem was the number of Bo’ja vehicles and the continuing waves of infantry reinforcements that were already assaulting the base of the shield generator. The vehicles were pummeling the wall shields of the tower when they didn’t have anything else to shoot, and if they kept at it with more backup arriving, they could actually break through that way if the generator didn’t switch off the overhead shield to reinforce the secondary vertical ones around its base…but if it did that the not so far away warships would have clear shots at everything else nearby, and they didn’t care much about friendly fire when it came to the Bo’ja getting in the way of their targets.

  So the main shield had to stay up and the secondary shield had to hold on its own…which meant Rajamal had to take some of the pressure off it.

  He wove his way in between Ter’nat vehicles, hoping they knew the difference between Bo’ja and Zen’zat, though the body shape was nearly identical. Across the field he ran, not even caring about jumping into the hot fire zone between the two, for he was moving so fast from one bit of cover to the next that the enemy didn’t have a lot of opportunity to track him, though a few shots did come close, and one clipped him in the shoulder, sucking 12% of his shields away.

  That meant it was a heavy weapon, and if he took a square hit he’d lose most of the shield in an instant, but before they realized what was upon them the legendary Zen’zat had crossed the gap and was now in between the enemy ground assault vehicles, along with his array of well-honed and powerful psionics.

  The weakest of the Bo’ja minds succumbed to his influence, actually climbing out of their vehicles at his command to be shot by the Ter’nat or Rajamal, and the others with more resistance were hit with Fornax and other disabling techniques as the Zen’zat ran from vehicle to vehicle and broke inside, pulling out and killing the crew, then tagging the vehicle was a non-combatant that needed to be claimed by the Ter’nat.

  He proceeded to do this for many hours, and the Zen’zat he brought with him did the same. Never taking on more than they could handle or dying bravely for the cause. They were smart, sneaky, and overpowering compared to the Bo’ja who had just been in the same position versus the Ter’nat.

  By the time they were done it was the Bo’ja survivors who turned and ran back towards the distant Oso’lon, with Rajamal letting them go rather than pursuing and getting too close to the long necks. They could savage Zen’zat in close combat, and taking them down required a combination of coordination and skill that few had. Rajamal wasn’t going to take on one today, but now that they knew there were ample Zen’zat on the field that could overwhelm their Bo’ja, they were going to have to switch tactics and come in here with them…or find some other way of taking down the shield generators.

  If they got reinforcements then they had that option. If they didn’t, then their best hope was to assault so many different shield generators that Rajamal and his teams couldn’t cover them all.

  He hoped they didn’t get a good head count on how many he had, and spent a lot of time analyzing and preparing their next move here. That would give the Ter’nat time to repair some of the fixed emplacements and let the evacuees from this area filter out towards the safer areas without Bo’ja poaching them from the rear columns.

  When there was nothing left to hunt in the immediate area, Rajamal climbed to the top of the shield tower so he could look out over the terrain himself, and using his armor’s enhanced vision he zoomed in on his opposition in the distance. Several long necks were swaying back and forth over the assembly area where there had been a lot of drop pod activity bringing in new troops from orbit, but no longer. They’d shut down the troop movements, which suggested they were not coming back to this site soon.

  Rajamal stood there and watched, then a tight beam transmission hit his armor without proper coding. It was being transmitted in the clear, but only to his position.

  He returned the gesture, aiming a tight beam of his own back along the path to the Oso’lon from where it had come.

  “What is your name, Zen’zat?”

  “I am Rajamal,” he said plainly, not worried about them targeting him later, for they would based on his combat profile even if they did not know his identity, so little was lost by telling them.

  “You are known,” the Oso’lon said, as if the statement itself was high praise. “Why ally yourself with this fight when there are far more valuable worlds to defend?”

  “Why betray us with a death mark? The Zen’zat never betrayed the Oso’lon or the J’gar, and Zen’zat fought on both sides during the original Zak’de’ron war. We serve faithfully, and now we are rewarded with genocide?”

  “Faithfully? There is an empire in the Rim led by treasonous Zen’zat offspring. Do not talk to me of faithful service. Your kind has proven to be flawed, and while presently superior to the Bo’ja, they will not show the same deviance as your race.”

  “Destroying us will not erase our kin in Star Force. What do you hope to accomplish by this?”

  “The V’kit’no’sat must be purified. We can no longer trust the Zen’zat, thus you are replaced. I am here to exterminate the vermin, but I understand if you choose to fight to the death rather than accept your fate. I would most likely do the same.”

  “What is your name, Oso’lon?”

  “Yel-san.”

  “I hope the warships stay out of this long enough that you and I can meet.”

  “For what purpose? There is no negotiation possible. The death mark cannot be negated for any reason. Itaru has made that clear.”

  “If we meet, only one of us will live. So whenever you’re ready to quit hiding over the horizon, join your new Zen’zat replacements and come fight us. I promise that I will find you if you do.”

  “You are no Ironnsey.”

  “And you are no Primearch. Why don’t you spend your time fighting Hadarak? That’s your duty.”

  “The empire must be reforged first. Without the true triumvirate it was irrevocably flawed. A painful lesson to learn, but one we are not going to forget. If you wish to live, I suggest you run to the Rim. No system in V’kit’no’sat territory will be safe for you.”

  “No system is safe with the Hadarak already within our borders. If you wish to waste resources and time hunting us, then you are the traitors.”

  “Whom do you serve, Zen’zat?” the Oso’lon scoffed. “You have lost Itaru, Mak’to’ran is dead, the Hjar’at and Era’tran have lost their capitols and are leaderless. The Urrtren is down and no one cares enough to come defend the Ter’nat other than you. Tell me, whom do you serve in this apocalyptic scenario?”

  “Vengeance,” Rajamal said, ending the tight beam and their conversation. He had worked with many Oso’lon in the past, and this one was nothing special. Too high on ego and too low on experience, without an understanding of the way of the empire. Perhaps the Oso’lon were short on experienced personnel as well. Taking Itaru may have cost them more than was previously known.

  He stood there looking at his opponent for a moment longer, then he brought his vision back to normal and descended the tower. After a quick rest and recharge, he and his troops were moving on to the next area of conflict. They didn’t have the luxury of staying put and defending a fixed target, and if the Oso’lon tried to take this shield generator again he’d be back. Until then he was going wherever the fighting was, and both he and his Zen’zat were more than happy to reduce the Bo’ja population in the galaxy a bit further.

  The idea of them replacing the Zen’zat was absurd, and even with reduced numbers the Oso’lon were go
ing to have to send more than them to take this planet. And when that happened, Rajamal was going to add another Oso’lon to his kill list, as long as he had his team to back him up. Ironnsey might have been able to take down one single handedly, but unless they were a total rookie Rajamal wasn’t going to be able to do that.

  But that was ok, because Zen’zat also hunted in packs. And with the right team, Rajamal could kill any Oso’lon with the propper preparation and opportunity.

  He just hoped he got one before the shields went down and this turned back into a naval war.

  7

  January 3, 128820

  Iom System (Midzan Region)

  Puvvcor (Ter’nat colony)

  The V’kit’no’sat warships were a big problem for the J’gar and Oso’lon. As long as they were in play they couldn’t engage in a standard assault so long as the warships used the weak planetary shields to their advantage, staying beneath them and firing up through well-coordinated momentary openings. If the enemy had more ships that would have been different, but as it was they couldn’t use their Oso’lon on the ground to get the shield generators, and they couldn’t get the shield generators from above because of the warships below.

  Never the less they pressed on with their Bo’ja, counting on their small size in the urban fighting to save them, but against the Zen’zat it was a hopeless fight. Even the Ter’nat warships were enough to provide close fire support in some areas, and their ground vehicles were performing better than Rajamal had expected. Especially when they got a few more from enemy captures.

  The enemy had taken only one shield generator in nearly two years, and that was largely due to Rajamal’s presence on the ground. He was unkillable by the Bo’ja, and the only way one shield generator had gone down was with multilateral assaults where Rajamal couldn’t be two places at once. His loyal Zen’zat and those that he can ‘claimed’ from this planet with Neoum’s blessing, though he had little choice once the living legend arrived, were fighting to protect their Ter’nat kin, and with the galactic order for their annihilation and so many Overlords pulling out, Rajamal had far more command presence with them than the Hjar’at did.