Star Force: Intimidation (SF17) Read online

  The Excalibur, however, was stationed in orbit around Dxun, giving it something to push off against as it raced towards the curve of the planet. The moon wasn’t directly overhead, but it was near enough that if this engagement lasted very long the battleship would be able to join in the attack. Regardless, the closer it was to the battle the less lag time there would be for the remote pilots to deal with.

  After giving the orders Paul waited and watched. Either the lizards would break from the surface, let his bombarding ships go, or launch the attack they’d been planning for more than a week.

  At first it seemed as if they’d successfully gotten away after delivering significant hull damage to one of the cruisers on the surface. On a side monitor that floated in space off his right shoulder he could see a faint trail of smoke rising from alpha point, courtesy of the spotters, visually marking the position of the damaged ship mostly hidden by the tall trees. It didn’t move, even after taking 8 of the 10 additional slugs, making Paul worry a bit more.

  During the Saber cruiser’s retreat up to the rendezvous point the icon for the ship began to flash red, indicating that it had come under attack, but no enemy targets were visible on sensors. Paul’s jaw clenched as he realized he’d guessed right and he quickly typed up a ‘fighting retreat’ order to the pilot in the next room and sent it via the console rather than yelling it out or walking over to him.

  Paul pulled up another holographic panel containing the cruiser’s sensor data and visuals. He flipped through the various camera angles as the ship began firing every weapon it possessed at the lizard cruiser trailing it. The Archon could clearly make out its tiny figure at range as it fired gouts of plasma that impacted the aft shields of the remote-controlled warship, but they didn’t go down as quickly as the others had in previous engagements, for this was a much larger ship with stronger shield generators.

  An order to the destroyer came next and it reversed its course, or rather slowed its ascent so the cruiser could catch up, then picked up the laser lock the cruiser had on the enemy and added a long range missile salvo of its own as the gap narrowed.

  The Saber cruiser was hammering away with missiles as well, thanks to the painting lasers that had been recalibrated to pick up the disruption in the enemy’s shields on contact. That little upgrade had been due to the Star Force scientists on planet and a little quality time with a captured kirby from early on in the fighting. The laser wouldn’t show up against the hull armor, which sucked up most of the excessive reflectability needed for range finding, but the slight disruption it caused in the shields had been amplified enough that they could track the enemy when their defenses were raised…if they knew where to point the laser.

  The destroyer’s missiles didn’t pick up the lock until they were already halfway to target, traveling on a predetermined flight path until they came within range. Most of them were shot down by the lizard’s anti-missile defenses but some did get through, along with some from the Clan cruiser and peppered the enemy’s shields enough that the ship momentarily showed up on conventional sensors.

  When it did the destroyer fired a rail gun slug at it, passing by the friendly cruiser at less than a kilometer to starboard. The slug hit a few moments before the incoming green plasma orbs were countered by the light blue streaks now firing back from the Saber cruiser as the enemy closed its range, accelerating faster than the Clan ship was capable of.

  Finally the lizard plasma broke through the cruiser’s shields, beginning to eat into the hull armor as the destroyer fired more rail gun rounds down on the pair of equally massed ships from range, doing what it could to counter the mismatch. The Clan cruiser was much more compact, thus needing a smaller shield area for cover, but the lizard’s tech was so far ahead of Star Force’s that that little caveat didn’t matter. The lizard cruiser kept closing in, its plasma blasts becoming more deadly with every meter it approached, and hammered the cruiser as flight after flight of short range missiles began pouring in from the destroyer, too many for the lizards to shoot down.

  The Clan cruiser also emptied its missile bays, sensing its impending death. The lizard ship was overwhelmed with explosions, forming a visible sheath around its hull that eventually was penetrated when its shields fell shortly before it delivered a fatal blow to the Clan cruiser with a nearly point blank salvo of plasma…three specifically placed orbs that expanded upon a breach in the Herculium armor and gutted the internal workings of the ship aft of the midline.

  Its gravity drive cut out and the lizard cruiser had to go evasive to avoid being hit as its engines were still forcing it to climb up the orbital track. One plasma cannon remained operational on the Clan cruiser and took the opportunity to hit the unshielded portion of the lizard’s hull as it passed by, then the battery was targeted and taken out, leaving the cruiser no more than floating debris in space.

  With the destroyer approaching within plasma range and still firing off rail gun slugs, targeting the small hull breaches in the lizards’ hull, a second wave of green plasma orbs came at it from a different angle as another lizard cruiser made its appearance.

  Paul ground his teeth together, seeing the trap for what it was. The lizards wanted a ground base and were prepared to defend it, having stationed ships within striking capability of his orbiting fleet should they come low enough for bombardment…but they hadn’t struck until the rail guns had opened fire, though they’d been in position to do so for some time.

  A quick order via his console told the destroyer to break off and run for the rendezvous point, which it did but the speed of the enemy cruisers were nearly its equal, leaving it within the enemy’s plasma range while still being out of its own…and with no more missiles left to fire all it had to work with was its rail gun against their two cruisers worth of plasma cannons.

  Paul knew they were going to lose it, but the idea was to get the enemy up to his other ships which were now starting to assemble. Seeing some of their positions he began typing out new orders on the terminal to get them into the exact alignment he wanted…wandering as he did how many more enemy cruisers were lurking in wait.

  7

  The lizards didn’t take the bait. After the destroyer pulled them sufficiently far out away from the planet they turned off, leaving the wounded ship be and disappeared from Paul’s view again. The destroyer’s functioning camera saw them returning back down into the atmosphere, shrinking into tiny dots too small to track with the laser rangefinders. The slightly wounded cruiser remained on sensors for a while then it too disappeared as the range increased.

  That told Paul a bit more about their battle strategy. Whereas some of their raids might have appeared to be reckless, he was beginning to suspect that they were indeed all calculated attacks. These two lizard cruisers had driven off the orbital bombardment, destroyed one of his cruisers, then retreated back into anonymity. They were sticking to a scripted battle plan, which meant they were more organized than ruthlessly aggressive.

  With a whisk of keystrokes he sent out new orders. All those ships within his assembling armada with gravity drives capable of hover mode were directed to resume orbital bombardment position. The others were instructed to rendezvous with the Excalibur in a higher orbit, using the orbital drift to offset their engine limitations while holding position over the surface well in from the geosync point.

  Positioning the ships took time, but the lizards didn’t interfere. Wherever their ambushing ships were positioned he didn’t know, but this resumed attack was either going to draw them out again or allow them to dislodge the surface ships, one way or another.

  Once all 12 of his ships were aligned appropriately he issued the command to fire, first a ranging shot coordinating with the spotters on the ground, then a full hailstorm of metallic slugs coming down on the three grounded ships. Their shields didn’t hold up long, with multiple hull breaches appearing that tagged the ships on sensors, allowing for even more precise targeting.

  Paul waited for the ambushers to arrive
, and he wasn’t disappointed. In less than a minute one of the destroyers spotted one on approach and tagged it with a laser. As per his previously issued orders all bombardment ceased and the ships began to gain altitude while holding formation and gaining lateral speed using their ‘forward’ engines so as to keep all rail guns pointed behind them. The movement also forced the pursuing lizard ships to come at them from the same general direction, that being aft, rather than face an assault from multiple sides.

  Meanwhile the waiting fleet above began diving down towards the lower orbit that the bombardment fleet was rising up to. In half an hour or so the two would meet up, battleship included after a short delay. Paul knew the lizards could track their approach and he wondered how far they would press the attack before retreating again…in which case he would have his fleet move back in and restart the surface bombardment.

  Watching the position of his ships carefully he issued a few additional orders, mostly establishing lines of fire to the approaching ships. Three lizard cruisers were tagged before the first one came within plasma range, but Paul had the rail guns in his fleet all targeted on the first one’s approach, peppering its approach vector with slugs, most of which missed, but those that didn’t damaged its forward shields enough that they were in serious jeopardy by the time the cruiser launched its first plasma salvo.

  Another data point for Paul. The lizard’s plasma orbs had a longer range than his fleet’s plasma lances, but it seemed that the enemy didn’t possess any long range weaponry, meaning that their rail guns gave the Humans a tactical advantage. That was crucial, but Paul was also looking to see if the aliens had any weaponry other than plasma variants. So far they hadn’t shown any, and if that was the case it meant their orbital bombardment would go unchallenged, given that the ships on the surface couldn’t fire plasma up through 80 miles of atmosphere.

  As he watched, more and more rail gun slugs hit the approaching cruiser, given that its silhouette was increasing in size as it approached. A second cruiser opened fire as it came in range, but Paul kept all his ships targeting the first. They needed a kill in this engagement, otherwise the repeated assaults would work to the enemy’s advantage, costing the Humans ships each rotation while the lizards took hull damage only.

  By the time one of the Clan Samus destroyers had its shields battered down the rail gun slugs targeting the cruiser were doing significant damage, so much so that the forward edge was throwing off three separate plumes of smoke from where sections of the hull had been torn off. Paul kept fire on it, even as the other cruisers began to pound his ships, killing a corvette with little effort then moving on to another destroyer.

  The damaged lizard cruiser didn’t veer off and try to retreat, instead it charged directly into the Star Force formation, cutting across the firing lines and taking several of the rail guns out of position, for the ships would have had to maneuver to reposition their guns. New orders were coming into them to reposition for an attack on another cruiser anyway, so the hail of metallic shards suddenly ceased as the blocky ships rotated around slightly and began launching on another ship, the fourth coming in and the most distant away, making for the best firing lines.

  The first cruiser wasn’t let be, however. The plasma cannons on the drone warships had a much greater firing angle and every ship within the small armada pounded the shieldless cruiser. Several of the docked kirbies detached and began attacking on their own, but the gunners kept their aim on the knife-like cruiser, hammering it until all return fire ceased and the ship drifted out the back of the formation, its engines no longer functioning.

  Paul stared at the holographic display, tagging the ship’s location and dispatching another ship, far out of range of the battle, to intercept the debris and ensure that it was truly dead. Based on the calculated trajectory it had a dozen or so orbits until it fell into the atmosphere, but Paul wanted to ensure that their first capital ship kill remained dead. He didn’t know what their repair rate was, nor how many of them were still alive on the fractured ship, and he didn’t want to take chances.

  With two more lizard cruisers now coming straight in towards the formation Paul diverted two frigates off rail gun duty and had them fly across the top of the formation…which was still accelerating up to a higher orbit…and gain some additional altitude. From this upper vantage point out and away from the bigger ships the frigates could target the topsides of the cruisers, offering a much better angle and giving the lizards a choice…let them pick at their broadsides or chase them up, momentarily leaving the rest of the ships alone.

  The lizards chose the former, heading straight in towards the larger ships, offering Paul yet another data point. He ordered the frigates to fall even further back and target the ships with their rail guns, minimizing the effective range of the enemy’s plasma while insuring good target profiles as the rest of the fleet continued to hammer the more distant cruiser.

  Paul lost another destroyer before they succeeded in breaching the shields on their current target, further diminishing his fleet’s kill power. The remaining 6 ships kept their firing lines on the distant cruiser while their plasma guns targeted one of the nearer ships, hammering away at its shields while the pair of frigates hit it with rail guns from above. The intercept with their reinforcements was minutes away, and Paul wondered how long the lizards were going to keep this up before retreating.

  Smoke began billowing out of the 4th cruiser as the slugs began hitting more frequently as it approached and added its intact plasma batteries to the fight, targeting the leading destroyer with several long range bolts of green that splashed over the Star Force warship’s shields, having been partially dispersed by the range involved. Meanwhile that destroyer was pouring all of its plasma fire and missile barrages into the nearest cruiser along with the other ships, bringing its shields down and allowing one of the rail gun slugs from above to blast a new crater in the top, knocking free one of the docked kirbies while the others suddenly broke off from the mothership and joined the others flying around the engagement zone picking at the Paul’s ships’ shields or hull armor where it’d been exposed.

  The Archon input a new command into the terminal and waited intently, wondering how the lizards would respond. From above one of the two frigates cut out its gravity drives and hammered its plasma engines, building up speed as it crossed the few kilometers between itself and the cruiser with its forward shields down. Aiming for that section of the enemy ship, the frigate fired its rail gun, plasma cannons, and missiles absentmindedly as the pilot on the surface of Corneria paid close attention to its flight path.

  From his vantage point mid fleet, looking out at the battle from a conglomeration of sensor data from all the ships involved, he saw his frigate come down nose first on top of the cruiser. Its speed wasn’t what he’d consider ballistic, but that much mass couldn’t be ignored and the two ships deformed around the impact point. The blunt end of the frigate cut into the prow of the cruiser, crumpling the rest of the box-like ship as it sank into the yellow/tan hull…with debris blowing out the bottom side.

  The cruiser tilted down, having been knocked askew by the impact with what was left of the frigate now lodged firmly into its hull and protruding out of both sides. All weapons fire against the ship immediately shifted to the other cruiser, while the lizard’s own batteries stopped firing save for two along the aft end.

  Now outgunned, with Star Force reinforcements less than thirty seconds away from reliable rail gun range, the lizard cruiser accelerated hard against the planet’s gravity well, pushing it up into an even higher altitude, bringing it ironically closer to the approaching ships for a few seconds before its acceleration made any rail gun shots untenable. It continued the panicked acceleration up and away from the battle while the surviving five ships turned their attention on the damaged cruiser as it also tried to turn and run.

  The other frigate, however, moved in close and blocked its path, firing away at point blank range with its plasma cannons and missile
s while taking a return salvo right in the face. Its shields didn’t last long, but it kept the high altitude escape route blocked, forcing the ship to instead try and head back down to the surface.

  Suddenly an impact on the top of the cruisers hull blew a narrow hole in the hull with daylight visible on the opposite side. One of the remaining plasma cannon batteries suddenly cut out, having lost power, as did the ship’s engines. Its attempted retreat stalled before it could gain much momentum, leaving the ship to drift as another superheavy rail gun slug hit it from above, courtesy of the Excalibur.

  Plasma blasts from the armada finished off the cruiser before the reinforcements could close within plasma range, with Paul quickly informing them to stop firing rail guns to conserve ammunition. They were to use only their plasma cannons on arrival to help sweep up the kirbies still buzzing around his ships like flies, doing what damage they could with their small weapons.

  Thinking ahead, he sent out a recovery order for their warship debris, which the local SRs would get to quickly enough. He assigned a warship escort along with the order, then began pulling in more ships from elsewhere in planetary orbit, needing to reset the playing board before the lizards took advantage of the situation.

  He’d hoped to get 1 kill out of the engagement, in addition to valuable data on how the enemy fought. Instead he’d gotten 3, along with their first sizeable victory. Proud as he was for that, he knew from past records that the lizards didn’t take defeat lightly and the possibility of a reprisal was high.

  In the meantime he had an orbital bombardment to resume and three damage ships on the surface to kill, if they hadn’t already gotten wise and retreated.

  8

  May 8, 2262

  Epsilon Eridani System