Star Force: Shiva (SF98) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  “We are not panicking,” the Hjar’at said, with Garrtak’s words sounding as strong as stone to the assembled leaders. “We will follow your command and deal with this treachery as you see fit. Where do wish us to strike?”

  Mak’to’ran looked towards the J’gar. “You will recommend patience. How do you see that transpiring?”

  “These Archons have weaponry that can hurt us, but we have a range advantage. Let us use it now to pluck these defense stations or to force them into a fight without them. We need to limit their safe havens to run to.”

  “I concur,” the Les’i’kron stated.

  “As do I,” Mak’to’ran agreed. “Once the investigators complete their analysis of the captured stations,” he said, looking to the Hjar’at, “destroy them.”

  6

  March 4, 3602

  Solar System

  Inner Zone

  Rio and Ethan were both onboard command ships that were poking around the Inner Zone of the system but staying far enough away from the V’kit’no’sat fleet cluster in stellar orbit to not endanger themselves, though they needed to be close enough to their drone fleets to avoid the signal lag that would effectively make them bystanders in the next conflict. So far the V’kit’no’sat had done nothing more than comb over their captured stations and then destroy them, with both trailblazers expecting them to take further action soon.

  That action soon came in the form of their ships breaking up mostly by race and forming dozens of smaller fleets that left the Mach’nel behind with only 483 ships. The other fleets scattered on different headings, but the Mach’nel didn’t hold position. It was headed back slowly towards the Sentinels on the incoming jumpline.

  “Thoughts?” Ethan asked, suffering through a 3 second lag in their holographic conversation.

  “They’re being overly coy yet arrogant at the same time. I think they want to hit something without us knowing what it is.”

  “You know what the Mach’nel is going for.”

  “And they want to draw our ships to it, leaving other targets exposed.”

  “How do you want to play this?”

  “If they stay out of range and use their Tar’vem’jic we either have to fight them and waste a lot of drones or let them kill the Sentinels. We’re boxed into a corner there,” Rio said grimly.

  “I know. If we wait for it to get to Earth we’ll have lost most of our defenses. We’re gonna get our butts kicked one way or another, but I don’t think we’ll be able to take it out.”

  “I agree. It’ll just jump away before we can make the kill and toast any interdictors we throw at it.”

  “Then we have to ignore it and target its escorts. It’ll stay and fight while they die, correct?”

  “It’ll be interesting to see either way. We’re going to have to bring in more drones to cover the rest of these fleets. Which one do you want?”

  “It’s not one if they’re spreading out. We’re going to have to rely on second gen to keep them from hitting a soft target, and even then I think they’ll punch their way in somewhere.”

  “We need to use the drones to assault the Mach’nel. Anything bigger will just be wasted with their one shot kills.”

  “Maybe two shots,” Ethan corrected him, “but your point is valid. I’ll take the drones, you pull down a summon and pick a fight with the others if they don’t force one.”

  “Oh I think they will. How many interdictors do you need?”

  “Just a handful. Take the rest.”

  “Thank you, I will,” he said as he watched the updating tracks of the V’kit’no’sat ships as they began to spread out across the Inner Zone with some heading for what looked like Jupiter and beyond. “You might want to consider spreading out the Sentinels, either as bait or to delay the Mach’nel from sniping them all down.”

  “I’ll adapt as I go. You better get going.”

  “Watch for a backdoor. They’re going to figure out our battlemap system pretty quick.”

  “They’re not getting me that easy, though I hope they take the bait and try.”

  “Be careful. We still don’t know their full capability yet.”

  “I’ll err on the side of caution. You…” he said, cutting off as both of them saw it.

  “Titan,” Rio agreed. “Time your counterattack as close as you can.”

  “Go,” Ethan ordered, breaking their comm.

  With a thought, Rio ordered a piece of his fleet of drones to break from the main group that would be falling under Ethan’s command and set them on courses to a jumppoint for Saturn, though they were going to have to swing past Mars to get the necessary alignment for a fast jump. The moon of Titan was the planet’s largest and had a mix of Mainline and Clan colonies, with the Angry Chipmunks holding the largest chunk of the planet. What was unique about it was its orbital constructs.

  There were several large stations, but one in particular was so large that it amounted to the size of a small moon, though it was stretched out like partial ring around Titan, wide and fat but more or less flat. The Angry Chipmunks had built it as an experiment in orbital topography, creating surface-like dirt, rocks, rivers, and mountains on an actually flat plain that could be inhabited in an open air environment with redundant shield generators to contain a breach if it ever happened.

  It was seen as a luxury within the system and a way to give the inhospitable environment on Titan a makeover without actually trying to terraform the planet. There was so little sunlight available at this distance that it would be difficult to get the surface temperature up to Earth-like levels even with heavy alterations, so the Angry Chipmunks had decided to build a bit of ‘new’ moon in orbit and colonize outdoors there.

  When the Clans had abandoned their civilian populations ownership of the ‘Ribbon,’ as it was called, was transferred to Mainline while the Clan still retained some sectors of the 6,398 square miles for their own use. The facility itself was defended along with everything else around Titan and in orbit of Saturn, but the flat shape made its shielding inefficient and an easy target. Combine that with the amount of people and open space inside and it was definitely a soft target either to destroy or board, and if the V’kit’no’sat were looking for information then taking this bit of planet that existed beyond the planetary shields made perfect sense…in addition to the three different mini-fleet tracks that could easily cross paths and give them triple the amount of ships that currently appeared to be headed in that direction.

  The trailblazers only recognized that addition because it was a somewhat standard tactic the V’kit’no’sat used when they were outmatched…which was rare aside from limited resources. Their empire was so huge that sometimes they’d dispatch a single ship to destroy 10,000 and it was times like that they had to get clever, with a large playbook that the trailblazers had read cover to cover, so they could see the two nearby feints that were in position to reinforce the obvious primary.

  Rio didn’t know how many other targets would get hit or if they were all a diversion to pull ships away from reinforcing Titan, but he knew where he was going to head and he was going to need backup above and beyond the drone fleets and Sentinels in orbit of Saturn.

  The trailblazer accessed an extremely rare function in the command nexus, bringing up a simulated landscape on which he was standing. It was empty yet pristine, with the ground being perfectly smooth blackness with nothing visible other than tiny pinpricks of stars above.

  He raised his fist into the air and looking up at a particular star, for no other stance and eye line would activate the password he was about to speak.

  “Shiva,” he called out, and after three seconds of silence five massive smooth shards of ice fell from the sky and impacted a point before him, fanning out like a flower as a figure floated down from above that was just as clear as the ice, but as the bare legs descended into the center of the ice flower she began to materialize into pale white/blue skin wrapped up beneath a deeper blue shawl. Her hair was long and clumped t
ogether into blue dreadlocks accentuated by golden brackets and rings.

  When she landed she was fully formed, then pulled an arm across to her shoulder and ripped the shawl off, throwing it from her body and breaking the ice pillars around her into thousands of fragments that flew out and passed through Rio’s body without harming him, leaving only the nearly naked Shiva from Final Fantasy standing before him in all her natural beauty. She walked a few steps towards him then swept a hand across from left to right, materializing a mist of frostiness that resolved itself into a series of icy spheres, 38 in total.

  Rio tapped on one of them, turning it from clear crystal into pulsating blue light.

  “Summon,” Rio said, with Shiva taking the single orb in her hands and gently cradling it against her abdomen before pushing it inside her until it melded with her body. Her eyes took on the blue glow and she threw her head back, arms spread wide…then the hologram disappeared and Rio was back in the command nexus onboard his ship.

  Far below the system plane where most of the planets orbited Sol, a remote location received an activation signal that was absorbed by the sensor-stealthed wall that spanned thousands of miles. It was meant to keep any reflective signals from bouncing back to the heart of the system, making it look as if nothing more than a tiny bit of blackness so far away that no one would notice with even the most intense scans, but that wall also absorbed and registered the summon signal that was relayed to the dry docks on the other side.

  These were not a shipyard, but rather maintenance facilities that stored and occasionally upgraded the ships docked on the tiny rod-like spires emanating out from the far side of the wall. At present there was no one here, though facilities for crew were established within the structure to house those that would make the periodic checks and upgrades, having been shuttled here through cloaked Ma’kri and other means to avoid giving away the location of the Shiva platform.

  On the automated signal one of 38 sections activated, bringing to life the drones docked there…but these were not standard Star Force drones. These were larger and specifically made to fight the V’kit’no’sat along a particular tactical avenue. For the Shiva platform that was an augmented shield matrix far superior to what standard drones carried and only made possible by the size of the ships, which ranged from 1 mile up to 6 long and were appropriately shaped like ice shards and coated with a Dvapp-inspired crystal armor outer layer that gave them the gleaming clear surface befitting their theme.

  The group of ships numbered 620 and slowly but simultaneously undocked from the structure and floated free behind it, then using mooring beams to give them a little physical nudge they eased up above the sensor wall and came into view of anyone watching…though the very weak sensor bounces coming off wouldn’t reach their receivers before the ships did as they began slowly accelerating into jumps headed directed for the star using the limited gravity at this range.

  Bit by bit they picked up speed, getting closer to the star and soaking up more of its gravitation tug to advance their closure rate on their weaker gravity drives, for they were not jumpships despite their size. They were designed with sufficient movement capability for insystem deployments but didn’t waste the extra hull space for additional jump power. They were designed to defend this system and only this system, with every aspect of their construction being a counter to the V’kit’no’sat ships, including their greater size that the standard drones could not match.

  The ships from Shiva continued on a predetermined course straight for the star until their acknowledgement ping went out to Rio and he responded with a set of coordinates from them to come to. The ships were functioning on autopilot and altered their trajectory towards the star at the opportune moment to get a slingshot effect that sent them out towards Saturn at high speed. When they eventually entered their long braking maneuver there the local remote pilots assumed command over the big, icy vessels and broke up their fleet, sending individual ships to different places around Titan which made the formation spread out like a cone on approach before they began rendezvousing with the standard drones, jumpships, and command ships already in position near the Ribbon or beside other orbital facilities.

  A few dozen Sentinels were also in play, but mostly out of position save for the two closest to the Ribbon, one of which had already been destroyed by the time the Shiva ships arrived. The other was still actively fighting the combined forces of Brat’mar, Kar’ka, and I’rar’et vessels that were poaching many orbital stations while more of their kin had already broken through the Ribbon’s shield and landed troops inside while their ships kept Star Force reinforcement teams away, giving them possession of the Ribbon and a decent naval advantage as additional drones from nearby defensive assignments showed up to even the odds.

  The arrival of the Shiva ships was totally unexpected, and as soon as they were folded into the fleet composition Rio brought the heavy end of the hammer down on the V’kit’no’sat ships that now had to defend their position at all costs or abandon their troops inside. He had them at a disadvantage until they could pull some of their other fleets here, and he was going to make the most of the short window of opportunity that he had while Ethan was slugging it out with the Mach’nel half a system away down in stellar orbit.

  7

  The Tar’vem’jic’s orange beam stretched across some 180,000 miles of space and slammed into the shields of the Sentinel, whose own Ardent could not return fire that far away. The Mach’nel and its escorts were not approaching, rather holding at that range and letting the big ship mount the assault alone while the nearby Star Force fleets watched. The second beam shot hit and was also repulsed, for Ethan had previously reformatted the shields so only those facing in the direction of the V’kit’no’sat were powered and thus reinforced, but it was only a delaying tactic. The fourth shot pierced what remained of the upper shield and slammed into the armor, vaporizing meters of it in a shower of gaseous debris that marked the location of the undefendable attack.

  More orange beams came in one at a time from the unseen attacker save for the tiny spec on sensors that the weak gravity drives onboard the Sentinel could not hope to reach, leaving it a helpless victim whose middle and lower shield matrixes were also penetrated and the armor beneath them blasted away. Ethan did note that three of the massive beams missed the station as they tried to target specific sections of it, for they didn’t have the help of the shorter ranged weaponry to pulverize the structure that they’d learned could still be combat operational even with moderate damage. Thus they had to take their time and pierce it repeatedly if they wanted it totally out of commission, but after some 18 minutes of bombardment they stopped, leaving its more or less intact floating carcass drifting inside an asteroid field of its own making as the fragments continued to expand in radius around what was left of the superstructure…then the V’kit’no’sat fleet repositioned slightly and opened fire on the next closest one.

  “Smart bastards,” Ethan muttered, realizing the bind he was in. The V’kit’no’sat weren’t going to quickly punch holes in the Sentinels then run in to finish them off with their mass of weaponry. They were just going to sit patiently as their big fat chess piece slowly took them apart one shot at a time.

  “Listen up,” he said, addressing all the remote pilots that would be operating the combined fleet that would soon be going in, for they had no choice but to stop this before all those Sentinels were needlessly lost. “Do not waste any shots on the Mach’nel. The only way we can kill it is to mass fire, and we’re not going to try that now. Our objective is to kill or damage as many of the escort ships as we can. All control ships will stay outside of Mach’nel range no matter what. One shot from that thing and you can kiss your jumpship goodbye. I expect them to send something to take us out, so this is going to be a mobile fight and that’s why I want us spread. If the Mach’nel comes your way, set the drones to auto and run. Don’t wait for me to tell you.”

  “The Mach’nel is currently surrounded by mostly
aquatics vessels, so any hull penetrating shots are going to hurt them worse than others. Water isn’t so easy to replace as air is, so even a single breach will have a disproportional effect. Concentrate fire on the smallest vessels then work your way up. We need kills people, and don’t expect them to just sit still and let us take them. They’re going to cycle, so we gotta be smart about this. Remember to keep your drones in between the Mach’nel and your target if possible so they have a friendly fire situation to work around. Keep it tight and hot, otherwise you’ll make easy target practice.”

  And with that, Ethan gave the order for the microjumps and 8 different fleet groups began accelerating towards the remaining V’kit’no’sat fleet in stellar orbit while the other enemy sections were out doing whatever across the system. That wasn’t Ethan’s concern now and there were plenty of ships elsewhere to deal with them. His focus was the big one picking off the Sentinels, which he also ordered to start repositioning. They couldn’t move fast, but there was no need for them to stay on the jumpline anymore for the Mach’nel to shoot down at the same time. If Ethan spread them out it’d delay their destruction or might even invite the other V’kit’no’sat ships to come in and eliminate them…in which case they could at least do a little damage before they were destroyed. Right now they were a total waste so long as the Mach’nel could outdistance them.

  Ethan’s command ship followed the drones in, traveling with six other jumpships that stuck in close proximity as the others in his fleet broke off and headed to different points on the perimeter. The other fleets did likewise, leaving clusters of jumpships at 270,000 miles from the Mach’nel and what should be outside its effective range. That added up to about a second or so of lag, but Ethan’s pilots knew how to handle that by targeting points on the enemy ships and letting the drones pull the trigger. Unfortunately that was the best they had to work with, for putting manned ships within range of the Mach’nel would be literal suicide.