Star Force: Resistance (SF75) Page 6

  “Good to go. You all done?”

  “Headed back through the pipe now,” he said, motioning for Jyra to head in first.

  Without hesitation she walked over and pushed her helmeted head into the water, sliding into the pipe with her feet disappearing last. Mace gave her a 5 count then went in after her, with both of them splashing water out, though not as much as last time.

  Brandon waited a bit longer, searching the area around him with his Ikrid then checking on the status of the bombs in his HUD. They’d lose their short range tracking signals soon, but he gave them one last pulse command that triggered a return pulse. All of them updated on his HUD with an extra hour on their timers, for it had taken them longer with the control room than he’d thought and it would be best if they could make it back to their speeders before they blew, though even with the extra hour there was no guarantee of that.

  He dove into the pipe after one last look around, happy to have gotten this far successfully. Now it was time to run, but they had to do so as carefully as before with a city full of lizards all around them.

  That thought was on his mind as he crawled/swam through the dark pipe until he came to the bit of light at the far end where he pushed his helmet back up into the air next to the mental signatures of his team. Leo extended a hand down and helped pull him out, with his armor dripping off excess water within a few seconds thanks to the non-stick coating on the surface.

  His boots stepped into a small puddle, but he didn’t linger there as Mace was already out the door charting their way back. Jyra followed him out next, then Leo, with Brandon bringing up the rear. They’d be in range of a kamikaze burst transmission for a while, which could set off the explosives remotely, but the more city they put between themselves and them would diminish the signal’s reach…plus one that loud would be picked up by the lizards, cloaked nature or not. Brandon also knew that it wouldn’t penetrate the shielding the lizard buildings had at surface level, but if they were discovered in the next little bit he could still trigger the bombs early.

  Fortunately that wasn’t needed and the trek back across the undercity was much like it was coming in, with the dart across the highway becoming a bit more dicey. The long convoy of crate pushers was gone, replaced by groups of individuals walking in either direction. They had to wait it out looking for an opening then play Frogger to get across one by one while the others dampened the minds closest to them. It took time but they managed to get everyone across, then they worked their way back to the ventilation shaft and sent Leo up first, with him psionically checking out the rooftop.

  It was night already, a few hours in, and there were no minds present, prompting him to climb on out and stand up in the planetary atmosphere again after spending so much time buried in infrastructure. He couldn’t feel the wind on his skin, but he could taste the difference in the air as he breathed it in and relished the freedom it invited.

  As the others came up he headed over to where they’d stashed their two speeders, relieved to see that they were exactly where they’d left them and that the two dark blots had ridden out the day cycle without drawing suspicion from aerial traffic.

  He pulled up the sheath on one of them and slid onto the seat with Mace following him and working his armored body around his fellow Arc Commando’s in a very awkward riding style, but after the climb through the ventilation shaft and the water pipe this was easy in comparison, requiring him to do nothing but hang on and ride.

  Jyra took the other bike and Brandon likewise wrapped himself around her waist, then the two speeders pulled up their landing gear and eased up over the rooftop and across to the next building, beginning another hide and seek game to get themselves back to the edge of the city. They took their time, knowing that being reckless right now when they were so close to getting away would be the epitome of stupid, and they were about 2 miles from the rocky wastelands beyond when the timers expired and the bombs exploded.

  Jyra didn’t see or hear anything, simply noting that the countdown inside her helmet expired. She deleted it from her HUD and flew on, knowing that the lizards would be alerted to some form of trouble, but right now it was behind them and they intended to keep it that way.

  With her and Leo being even more cautious on these last few sections of building hopping and stopping more often than not, they eventually came to the low buildings on the perimeter at the same location as before, passing between defense turrets and dropping to the ground in the night on the city’s edge, then slowly easing their way further out and using what terrain there was to further hide the shadows that were their bikes.

  Knowing that they were in the clear now both drivers kept their movements fluid, retracing the path they’d came in by that was still logged in their battlemap and which led them out to the other two hidden bikes that were agreeably still where they’d left them. Jyra let Brandon slide off low to the ground then took a moment to swing her legs off her pommel seat, stretching out a bit before the four of them mounted up again and headed across the countryside for as far as they could get before having to put down and make camp before the sun began to rise.

  Six days later Alpha 9 came up on their extraction coordinates, which were little more than an anonymous spot out in the barren countryside near to the front lines and just on the Star Force side…but far away from any of the captured cities or friendly firebases. They set down inside a shallow canyon and sent a signal straight up to orbit where the lizards couldn’t detect it, telling the fleet that they were here and needed to get pulled out. Their speeders’ fuel cells were almost on zero charge, as expected, and they couldn’t fly the rest of the way to one of the Star Force held regions if they’d wanted to, though they didn’t, for that would invite wisp attention that the speeder bikes were ill equipped to handle anyway.

  After a couple of hours a dropship was sent down from orbit along with a convoy heading towards one of the secure landing zones. It split off from the group near the surface and buzzed the terrain all the way out to their position with the lizards not bothering to follow it, fortunately. Jyra watched it coming on the battlemap that they were now fully reconnected with given their distance from any functioning lizard city…though there was one about 75 miles out that had been reduced to rubble. It had been the first they’d targeted from orbit and thoroughly razed in order to clear a decent perimeter to set down their first prefab structures around. Since then they’d been taking the other cities over land save for the anti-orbital guns and shield generators that they’d plucked from them.

  Destroying an entire city took time and Star Force hadn’t brought many bombs with them, knowing how inefficient such weapons were in a long campaign. The charred wreck beyond them had been taken down with energy weapons only, with all of the high buildings being torn down to the point where Jyra had only been able to see a few jutted pieces on the horizon before they’d come down into the canyon.

  There was nothing left there to pick up their signals even if they’d transmitted in the open, so using their normal ‘secure’ signals was of no conceivable threat this far out. And if even they were picked up, there were no lizard units nearby to intercept them…so long as their ride got here, otherwise they’d be in a heap of trouble.

  But it came without incident, zipping into the canyon and dropping down right over their location. It opened its boarding ramp midair and the four speeders flew into the hold of the Falcon-class dropship, passing inside its IDF field and allowing the craft to start accelerating away before the door had even began to shut.

  Jyra popped out the landing gear and set the speeder down on the deck, with the cloaking sheath having already been powered down but not removed, for it had been firmly attached at a few points before the mission. She peeled it back and climbed off at the same time the others did to find an Archon acolyte standing at the end of the bay looking at them.

  “You guys alright?” he asked.

  Leo pulled off his helmet and looked at the helmetless Archon that was ot
herwise fully clad in his silver armor. “We’re good.”

  “Blow up anything useful?”

  “We didn’t stick around for the fireworks,” Brandon said, likewise removing his helmet, “but unless they found and disarmed the bombs, which I think is highly unlikely, then you can scratch one lizard hatchery off the list.”

  “A hatchery?” he said with a satisfied nod. “I was under the impression you were going for some firearms warehouses, or maybe a production facility.”

  “Gotta have lizards to shoot them or they don’t work,” Jyra said as she and Mace also pulled off their helmets.

  “True,” the Archon said, looking them over. “I gotta ask…why the old armor?”

  Brandon shrugged. “We haven’t always used it, but I personally like the extra 7% armor on it.”

  “Yet you aren’t wearing the heavy model that has 46% more?”

  “A little too bulky for my taste. Maybe if we were as fast and strong as you guys we would, but it slows me down a bit too much.”

  “I’m just an acolyte, so my strength probably doesn’t exceed yours…yet,” he said, motioning behind him to the passenger section. “Come on, brought some hot food for you guys.”

  “Ah…” Jyra sighed. “I love you.”

  “How’s the fighting going?” Brandon asked as Jyra slid past the Archon and out of sight into the forward section.

  “Tooth and nail. We’ve got reinforcements on the way, but we’ve got to hold onto our orbital slot and at least one ground site until they get here. Since you left the lizards got one of the anti-orbital guns working again. If we don’t start expanding our foothold soon, we’ll either have to fight another costly bombardment war or pull back our cover of the ground troops…which we cannot do.”

  “Damn,” Mace whispered. “I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

  “They’re flooding us with swarms of a size we’ve never seen before, from wisps to tanks to infantry, and the cruiser count in orbit is going up faster than we can cull them. I think the lizards have been letting us take worlds while they focused their attention on Skarron territory, but they know they can’t lose this link in their supply chain so we’re getting the full hammer, and they know what it takes to beat us. We’ve given them plenty of lessons in the past of how many troops are not enough. They’re not making that mistake this time.”

  “Any word on another mission for us?” Brandon asked.

  “Not yet. Eat up, rest, and get some training in. If you think of anything on your own again, don’t hesitate to ask. If you really did get a hatchery, it’ll have an effect. Too bad we can’t confirm it from orbit.”

  “Sorry,” Leo offered, heading past the Archon to find Jyra and the food. “Those bombs are too heavy to carry.”

  7

  March 3, 2934

  Gvaris System (lizard territory)

  Far Outer Zone (on approach)

  Paul waited in the command nexus onboard the Excalibur in the final stages of his journey to the Gvaris System where all available Star Force fleets were diverting. Those closest to the invasion point that had been engaged in attacks on less defended systems had already been diverted to reinforce the foothold Sara had gained on one of the two inhabited planets there, but in her updated report sent out via courier ship she’d indicated that the situation had grown far worse despite the reinforcements.

  IT’S GOING DOWN. EVERYONE GET HERE NOW OR WE’RE LOSING THIS ONE.

  Per her summarization, he had heeded her request and dropped what he was doing in the ADZ and gathered up as many Clan Saber ships as he could, namely the ravagers that he’d been producing independently from Mainline, but he had also grabbed whatever else he could naval wise and set off to aid the others that were also converging on that point with a variety of fleets.

  So it only mildly shocked Paul when just prior to deceleration they picked up a repetitive warning signal being transmitted from the enemy system. It was Star Force, and indicating that a huge swath of the jumpline in near the star was a ‘no go’ zone. That meant something was blocking their path and a collision was imminent, or some other type of nastiness was waiting for them.

  Acting quickly, for the signal strength wasn’t up to interstellar relay standards and could only reach them a short ways out, he ordered his fleet to come out at a different jumppoint further out in the system, requiring a much harder deceleration. Had he not been in the nexus someone on the bridge crew would have acted on the warning, but he got to it first and sent the signal out to the ships following the Excalibur and giving them a bit more of a heads up before they all began to push against the limited gravity pull of the star ahead sooner than normal.

  In addition to that the Star Force ships exerted more than normal power, for typically one didn’t overexert gravity drives during system to system travel unless you were in a massive hurry. The Clan Saber fleet hadn’t been going slowly and were making good time, but they always kept some engine power in reserve for just this reason. Flying blind into a star system was a good way to run into a debris field that hadn’t been there before, and the lizards had tried that trick at Brenaldfor, damaging sixteen jumpships on arrival but failing to kill any of them thanks to the slower speeds of impact.

  Since then Star Force ships entering an unknown system often went in on irregular jumplines or more slowly using a considerable portion of their gravity drives’ tugging power to actually decelerate slightly off jumpline by pulling on a planet or even going into a slingshot deceleration curve around the star where the lizards could not anticipate them.

  Paul and the others hadn’t seen many more debris mining attempts, but if they really were pulling out all the stops for this one then it made sense for them to have thrown out a bunch of rocks for his fleet to run into, and cleaning up such things took a lot of time, which was why Star Force didn’t use the tactic, not to mention for the possibility of snagging other ships entering that were not the enemy.

  So when the Excalibur decelerated hard, coming out of the jump first in the convoy, Paul expected to receive the battlemap information from the other ships in the system and see debris fields blocking several of the jumplines…and he wasn’t disappointed, save for the fact that the field seemed to cover huge swaths of space around the star, and the millions of ‘rocks’ were in fact lizard ships.

  “Damn, Sara,” he said, mentally diverting the Excalibur off the jumpline and sending out orders for the rest of his fleet to do likewise, heading for one of the smaller outer planets where a priority tag was situated, “they really don’t want us getting this one.”

  As the battlemap transmissions were picked up, the ship’s computer made them instantly accessible to Paul’s mind, allowing him to read through them far faster than his eyes alone would have allowed. Rather than going through the summaries he instead went straight for the tactical feeds and used his Sav to start running through the battle history since the last records Sara had given them as his ships continued to drop out of their jumps and follow his command ship over to the priority tag slowly.

  The situation was not good. The lizards held naval dominance throughout the system save for several points that Star Force was hunkered down in. The main planet still had a Star Force fleet in an orbital slot covering their ground invasion corridor, which had added another lizard city to its possession since the last report, but otherwise was still hemmed in firmly by the enemy in an Alamo-type scenario, save this one was taking place across a region hundreds of miles in radius.

  What had not been in the previous report, at least not by the time he’d left the relay network, was Star Force bases on not one, but four outer worlds. Two were moons around a distant and cold gas giant, with the other two being on planets that held no atmosphere at all. Each of them had a defense fleet guarding what was listed as active construction projects, one of which Liam’s ID marker was at, in addition to 3 other trailblazers that had apparently already made it to the system to reinforce Sara and Kiran.

  There were
also lizard fleets around those planets/moons, spamming swaths with nothing but cruisers, and Paul intended to head not to the ‘safe’ zone above this planet’s outpost, but directly into the lizards to say ‘hi’ on his way in. He didn’t even bother to wait for the rest of his fleet to catch up, instead barreling straight into the outer band with a quick microjump that wouldn’t allow his presence to be detected given the lag of the lizard sensors.

  When the big donut of a ship decelerated he was within 120 miles of the nearest lizard ships and drifting closer on purpose, eventually coasting to a near stop within weapons range as the cruisers inexplicably ran rather than stood their ground and fought. Paul raised an eyebrow and took off after some of them, for while his ship was bigger it was also the faster. He succeeded in killing a few dozen cruisers before a holographic transmission from Liam appeared in his nexus and off his right shoulder.

  “You won’t get many that way,” his fellow naval expert advised. “They’re blocking transit of smaller craft but refusing to engage short of insane numbers. If we take after them in force they’ll counter with the same, but otherwise this has become a chess game that we are badly in need of more pieces to move around…especially those ravagers you brought.”

  “You’re welcome. Now tell me what the hell is going on? The last report I got didn’t indicate a lizard fleet one tenth of this size. Where are they coming from?”

  “Both directions, but the masses are coming from their core systems. I think we’re seeing the reserves they’ve been holding onto, but not the last of them. There’s been a continuous flow of ships coming in, and despite some initial successes at sniping them on arrival, the lizards are doing a good job of preventing that now. I can’t stop them with that many ships around the star, which if you’ll look at closely contains some chess pieces of their own…which are also growing in number.”

  Paul bit his lip even as he was controlling the still ongoing hunt for some of the cruisers in orbit with part of his mind while he spoke to Liam. “26 invokers? Please tell me you’ve killed at least one?”