Star Force: Resurrection (SF84) (Star Force Origin Series) Page 6

  He watched what Paul was doing off and on, noticing that he was overly pounding the same ground rather than moving on once the nearby buildings were down. That did make the rubble shield against subterranean lizard tunnels and structures more even and compact, but he guessed Paul was doing it because he hated the idea of trapping lizards under the rubble to slowly die…so he was blasting everything so hard that it was unlikely that anything would survive from the upper city.

  That was one way of going about it for sure, and typical Paul, with Greg noting that he was going to end up being more efficient with his grounded warships than his own demolition drone attack had been so long as Paul didn’t encounter stiff resistance from ground defense turrets. He doubted that, but could see a lot of fire coming from the surrounding city that Paul’s shields were shrugging off, including occasional explosions that he knew were not coming from Star Force weaponry and were far larger than lizard infantry missiles could account for.

  He hadn’t noticed those on the first planet, and they were nearly one third of the way across its surface.

  What other little surprises do these guys have waiting for us?

  12 years later…

  “Liam?” Paul asked over the comm.

  “Just about ready. This beast is fat and fighting the accuracy needed. She’s not ready for this, you know?”

  “Doesn’t have to be pretty.”

  “It won’t be,” Liam assured him from onboard the hastily constructed Devastator-class weapons platform. Back on Earth they’d take one of the existing Bra’hem defense turrets and brought it up to orbit, stuck it in a shipyard, and built a warship around it. It wasn’t fast, agile, or efficient, and had to be helped here with the assistance of several jump cradles to get the necessary speed to cross the distance from Star Force capitol to lizard capitol in relatively decent time…but it was the most powerful weapon Star Force had at their disposal, not counting the V’kit’no’sat pyramid defenses.

  “Think the lizards even suspect this is coming?”

  “Ha…I didn’t even think this was coming until Roger suggested it. It’s nuts, you know.”

  “Totally,” Paul agreed.

  “Good thing we like nuts. Alright, we’re ready,” he said as the Devastator sat in very high orbit over the third lizard primary world. The first one had already been conquered and the ground troops were heavily engaged on the second. “Keep your fingers crossed.”

  “It’ll work,” Paul insisted.

  “Yeah, we’ll you’re not the one sitting in it in case it blows up.”

  “How’s it going to blow up?”

  “You know what I mean. Everyone clear?” Liam said unnecessarily, as he could see the battlemap well enough. “Here goes.”

  Paul watched from an external view as the huge ship fired what looked like a tiny green beam down at the planet. It stretched out farther than any of the lizard weapons could even hope to reach, traveling some 149,000 miles to where it hit the first lizard defense shield on this planet while the fleet also sat outside of anti-orbital defense range.

  A close up view of the surface showed that green needle hit the shield plate. It hesitated ever so slightly then punched straight through and melted the building beneath it. The vaporized material mushroomed out and exploded into nearby buildings, looking like a water balloon smash from afar only save the fact that this was actually solid rubble and not soft liquid.

  Paul smirked. A one shot kill. Perfect.

  “Not bad,” he told Liam with a bit of skepticism. “You blow up yet?”

  “Noooo,” he said sarcastically as he studied various readings as the weapon recharged. “Adjusting for second target. Ready to fire in 32 seconds.”

  Paul waited and watched as the second green needle popped another lizard balloon and detonated a building beneath much like the first…both of which had been the shield generator towers, ensuring that they would not be regenerating to cover those cities again.

  “Well done,” he said in all seriousness.

  “The Bra’hem is performing as expected. Odd that this is our first live firing test.”

  “Of one this size anyway.”

  “Like Davis said, no need to blow up a perfectly good ship to just to test it.”

  “We could have found a lizard jumpship easy enough,” Paul differed, having wanted to test the weapons on Earth but getting overruled on that idea. Davis had said he didn’t want to clean up the debris in orbit after they got done playing and told them they could test fire them all they wanted when they build one on a Clan world.

  “I’d say this is better,” Liam noted.

  “Agreed.”

  “Nice shot,” Taryn said, joining in on their little virtual conference. “So we have a lumpy Death Star now?”

  Liam laughed. “I’m surprised someone else beat Paul to that.”

  “I’m glad we beat the lizards to it,” Paul said, deferring their joint merriment. “It’s going to save a whole lot of drones over the coming years.”

  “It’ll be the first thing they target with their fleets,” Taryn cautioned.

  “We don’t have to bring it in early,” Liam differed. “Wipe out the defenders then bring it in with the ground troops.”

  Taryn’s hologram feigned shock. “You mean you don’t want to snipe ships with it?”

  “If they had an invoker or assault pillar sure,” Paul answered, “but cruisers would be like swatting at a swarm of mosquitos.”

  “Agreed. Nice work you guys. Glad the naval geeks came through on this one.”

  Paul and Liam both glared at her as she smiled and her hologram disappeared.

  “Prick,” Liam pronounced humorously.

  “Her braid’s probably too tight,” Paul said as Liam fired the Devastator again, knocking out yet another of the ‘small’ shield segments blanketing the planet. “Any negligible variation?”

  “Not yet. We’ll see how long this can last. Davis really should have let us test fire these on Earth.”

  “I think he didn’t want us putting on this big of a fireworks display.”

  “People are going to know now,” Liam pointed out.

  “Should we edit this bit from the news vids?”

  Liam considered that as he set up another firing angle. “We’ll seal it classified and send it to Davis. He can decide if he wants to make our possession of the boomstick public or not.”

  “Boomstick…that’s way better than Death Star.”

  “I have my moments. Too bad Roger isn’t here to see it.”

  “I’m sure he’ll manage to find a way to gloat from afar,” Paul said smugly, referring to the other piece of their naval triumvirate that was off hitting smaller lizard worlds low on the galactic plane. “And he deserves it this time. I didn’t even think about trying this.”

  “Neither did I, though it seems kind of obvious right now.”

  “I was still thinking in terms of production. We couldn’t have built another for at least 20 more years.”

  “We could do it in 15.”

  “Still too late.”

  “You think we’re going to be done here in 15?”

  “I don’t know. If we just slaughtered all the lizards we could.”

  “Not an option. Besides, I want to have a walk around their homeworld and see what’s there. Let’s try not to blow up too much of that before then, ok?”

  “Getting cocky now?”

  Liam smirked, this time in apology. “Right. Don’t want to jinx us,” he said as he fired the weapon again, popping another shield. “This is seeming too easy.”

  “Let’s milk it while we’ve got it.”

  “You going down with your fleet to lay the parking lot again?”

  “Yes.”

  “The ground forces won’t be available for a long time.”

  “We can start building regardless.”

  Liam looked at him oddly, then caught on. “Baiting them out?”

  “As long as we have warships within ran
ge, why not?”

  Paul’s peer sighed. “We have got to find a better way to defend a planet. Orbital bombardment is too damn effective.”

  “Easy enough when you know where they’re going to fire.”

  “Even then, the V’kit’no’sat could punch through any shields we have in place this easily. A Mach’nel would punch right through our shields with their baby Tar’vem’jic,” Liam said, referring to one of the larger V’kit’no’sat warships and the largest naval weapon that they possessed, which was a smaller version of what the pyramid’s main gun was.

  “I’m working on it,” Paul said grimly.

  “We all are, but you know as well as I do that we haven’t caught up enough yet. 1,200 years of research with their playbook and blueprints and it still hasn’t been enough.”

  “If this tech was easy, a lot of other races would have it. Be glad that we’ve got what we have, otherwise the lizards would have killed us long ago.”

  Liam glanced back down at the planet, taking in the mass of infrastructure and life within it…malevolent life intent on killing just about everything else in the galaxy if and when they had the opportunity.

  “Yeah, I guess we overlook that sometimes. It’s still scary though. The lizards have nothing that can stop the Bra’hem, and I wouldn’t want to be in their situation now.”

  “No…they have the chance to surrender and live. We won’t get that opportunity. Whether it be lizards or V’kit’no’sat, they’re coming for blood.”

  “True,” Liam said as another green needle punctured a shield and detonated the tower beneath. “Let’s keep whistling past the graveyard then and hope we have enough time to catch up before fate comes knocking.”

  “They’ve also had 100 millennia to make upgrades.”

  “Let’s hope Kara is right about them being slackers when they’re not pushed.”

  7

  June 7, 3221

  Krachnika System (lizard capitol/homeworld)

  Trexklip

  Greg was on the surface of the fourth planet that Star Force had invaded, helping a team of Bsidd clear out yet another piece of the lizard infrastructure when he got a report from one of the advanced teams fighting a few hundred kilometers to the north. The Archon punched another lizard back into a wall then dashed into a trio to his right, ramming one with his shoulder and spinning through a wrist lash that caught the other two, knocking them unconscious with the body blows from his very hard armor.

  He put a shot into all four lizards, then used a Jumat blast to shove back a fifth that a nearby Bsidd finished off for him as a team of 13 of them finally caught up to his position. Greg mentally signaled to them to hold position and watch his back while he took the comm call.

  “What is it?” he asked the Archon titan whose headshot appeared in a tiny square of his HUD.

  “We have a prisoner.”

  Greg frowned. “A lizard actually surrendered?”

  “Not intentionally. He was unconscious when we found him, but we now have him in custody.”

  “And why are you doing that?” Greg asked, knowing that every lizard they’d ever taken prisoner by force had killed themselves rather than remain confined, so Star Force had adopted the practice of only taking voluntary prisoners with regards to the lizards…of which there never were any.

  The Archon’s tiny head image smiled. “He’s a mastermind.”

  Greg immediately stiffened. “How, where, when, and what’s his condition and current location?”

  “Building destruction, pinned under light rubble in a subsurface bunker, damage induced about 20-25 hours ago, we found him about 10 minutes ago, and he’s sedated and being brought back to the nearest firebase for treatment and containment,” the titan said, mentally ticking off all the points.

  “Keep him unconscious at all times until I get there. I’ve got some fighting left to do here, then I’ll personally take custody of him.”

  “Copy that.”

  “And you, young man, are getting an extra box of donuts.”

  “A whole box? Not sure I earned that,” he said deadpan. “The falling rubble actually deserves the credit.”

  “Noted. How bad are his injuries?”

  “He’s pretty torn up, but he’ll keep all his limbs.”

  “Head wounds?”

  “Concussion, but I think his marbles are all still there.”

  “Thank you,” Greg said with emphasis.

  “Just picking up the trash,” the Archon said, his image winking out as he got back to work killing other lizards.

  Greg contacted his command ship in orbit and arranged for them to prepare a holding cell and all necessary medical treatment to keep the mastermind alive, then he also go back to the task at hand, not wanting to risk his Bsidd unit by his absence and not wanting to order them to pull back. He’d finish up this latest push, then when they settled into defensive arrangements he’d take his leave and go have a chat with their elusive Jackalope.

  Other than Kara, nobody had ever seen a mastermind in person. No mastermind had ever been captured. No body had ever been found. They were known to exist in many systems, based on the way the lizards there fought differently under their control, but they were kept well hidden despite many attempts to root them out. This one having got caught in a building collapse and still living was a stroke of crazy luck…so much so that Greg had the mastermind thoroughly scanned for booby-traps of any known kind just in case this was a Trojan horse to get at the Archons.

  Greg suspected it wasn’t, but he didn’t want to take chances. The lizards here were beat, but they were making Star Force fight tooth and nail for every last bit of ground. This invasion could have been over years ago if only Greg and the other trailblazers had authorized total bombardment from orbit, obliterating every last thing on the surface and most of the subsurface. There would have been pockets of survivors underground that could have been hunted down and killed or left to starve to death afterwards, but Star Force was not going to fight like that.

  He knew they were making this harder on themselves, but they were not going to become barbaric. The lizards were going to have a chance to surrender, each of them as they came into their areas, and Greg would be damned if they ever got in the habit of just shooting them on sight before they had a choice. Star Force was not going to become the lizards in order to defeat them. If they had to be killed, then so be it…but it would be done Star Force’s way on honorable terms, no matter if the conquest of this system took a century to complete.

  The same was true of the assaults happening in other star systems, for Star Force wasn’t just fighting here. This was the most heavily fortified lizard system by far, and while there were other nasty core worlds to tackle there were probably not going to be any like this again. This was going to be the worst of it, and even if the lizards were building a new capitol in the coreward region it would take an insanely long time to develop it to the extent that even one of these six planets had risen to.

  All of them were essentially one big city split up into shielded segments, and all of them stretched far underground where orbital rounds could not follow. Every building, every subsurface level, had to be fought into and cleared, looking out for explosives and other booby-traps, and sealed off so the lizards couldn’t flank the invading troops and get into areas already cleared. It was an insanely difficult task that Star Force now achieved almost casually…unless you were on the ground, where you realized the enormity of the endeavor and just how damn good the troops being deployed actually were.

  And now the Star Force type of war was giving them an added benefit of a mastermind prisoner. With the templars and sovereigns all assumed to have been evacuated there was no chance of catching one of them here, but needle in the hay stack was an overly generous comparison to this situation where you had trillions of lizards and planets full of infrastructure to hide in. Greg was overly pleased that their methodical assaults had paid off in this lucky stroke, and neither he nor the other trail
blazers were going to waste the opportunity it gave them.

  None of them were here yet, busy with other things in the system, so Greg was going to have first crack at him. When he arrived back on his flagship he headed straight to the holding cell, entering in his pink ViLord armor that had a few scratches on it from recent battle. It stood out brightly compared to the already gleaming white armor of the Knights standing guard, who nodded down at him as he walked past them.

  Greg retracted his helmet and looked at the nearby medtechs. “Learn anything yet?”

  “Cognitive density is far larger than the librarians. I’m guessing this variant is by far the smartest the lizards have…though without being able to examine a templar I can’t say that for certain. It’s no wonder these guys are used as their battlefield commanders.”

  “Much more than that, I’d guess. Find any bioweapons in him?”

  “No. All indications are he was really caught unawares and his imprisonment was an accident.”

  “Good. Wake him,” Greg said as he took a step towards the security field in front of the medical table where he lay under several scanners.

  “He’s not restrained,” the medtech pointed out.

  “I can handle that, but I can’t push out the medication you have in him.”

  “Very well,” the medtech said as he gestured to another who began operating a control panel. Within the chamber most of the medical sensors retracted into wall slots where they couldn’t be damaged, but a few mechanical arms remained. One of them reached down and injected the large, muscular lizard with a counter-serum that would clear the sedation medicine from him within a matter of seconds.

  The remaining monitoring arms disappeared from view as well several seconds before the mastermind began to twitch its way back to consciousness.

  Greg kept a link into its mind so he could forestall any attempts to kill itself or cause other problems, but beyond that he let it wake naturally. Eventually it shook its head clear and rolled to the right, catching itself on the edge of the bed before falling off, then looking out through the clear blue energy field at the Human beyond.