Star Force: Bloodlust (SF54) Read online

  They were ahead of schedule by a good 2 minutes and it had nearly cost them, but fortunately Morgan had been ahead of schedule too and it looked like the battery hadn’t got a single shot off for the ships were showing no damage or shield depletion, though there were a swarm of fighters moving about picking at them where they could. An Axius squadron was up there was well, eating through them with regularity but still outnumbered. This was going to be a tough fight, but so long as there were no Skarron surprises in store they should own them…if there weren’t any more snafus like this timing issue.

  Morgan would deal with that later, if she remembered. Right now she had a million things to kill and not enough ammo for all of them, for the enemy barracks were emptying in a nearby facility in light of the incoming attack and she wanted to get to and whittle them down before they met the Scionate and Canderous troops on the ground.

  There was a turtle coming down with them to handle the single Type-5 walker nearby, with everything else being infantry…but a lot of infantry. The other walkers were engaged in other locations on the planet, leaving the door open for this main strike if one was bold enough, for there really was a lot of infantry present, plus a horde of workers that probably weren’t going to up and surrender.

  But for a trailblazer ‘infantry’ was basically free kills, especially one with Jumat. Morgan stayed in the outpost for a while, killing as many as she could come across as she zigzagged her way from turret to turret and over to the main barracks, then crunched an ambrosia senzu beam that she telekinetically pulled out of a rack of the potent doses inside her helmet. There were 12 different concealed slots tucked away wherever there was room and Morgan had 12 beans there for future use. It took some wiggling to get it around to her mouth, but when she did it went in and the trailblazer started the mental countdown to overdose, making sure she’d get to the mass of troops pouring out and heading towards the LZ before the negative effects began to hit her.

  She was still in the Skarron infrastructure, now working her way across the lower rooftops with several long jumps across the streets when she saw the first elements of the enemy infantry begin to engage the Canderous scouts in the forest on her battlemap. She couldn’t visually see them because they were below the canopy, but she could see the carpet of Hobbits sprinkled with Skarrons disappearing underneath it like a line of rabid fans bunched up to get the first copies of Halo on release day.

  Morgan couldn’t get ahead of them, so she opted for a rear attack, maybe make them hesitate a bit and buy her troops more time to unload and get into position. She knew the Canderians had rocket launchers that could pop the Skarrons in one hit, so it was just a matter of them chewing up the Hobbits and that would come down to numbers, position, and patience…for they were each worth at least 5 of the little jerks in a firefight. Trouble was, there were literally tens of thousands of them coming out of the barracks, which wasn’t a building but an entire complex.

  That didn’t discourage Morgan, rather it enhanced her determination as she came to the last building and did as big of a jump as she could off it, maxing out the jump pack to send her several hundred meters ahead where she dropped down like a bomb into the edge of their swarm in the gathering plaza outside the barracks.

  She crunched one Hobbit on landing then sent out a Fornax pulse that toppled more than a hundred of them around her like bowling pins with her shooting as fast as she could pull the trigger on her rifle and not aiming at any specific one. There were so many that so long as she aimed level to the ground she would hit someone, so she fired over the heads of the downed ones and killed/wounded those beyond the circle of disoriented enemies…who then began standing back up and blocking the return shots starting to come at her.

  Those shots hit and missed, with the misses in turn hitting other enemies as an added bonus. Morgan turned the shields on her arms and legs off and began punching/kicking the Hobbits around her as they stood up, pausing for split seconds to fire plasma shots before she was back to hand to hand. She did that for some twenty seconds, getting adjusted to the combat situation and smiling inside her helmet as she began to work up a bit of a sweat and the first twinges of ambrosia overload began to hit her.

  She let it build a bit more then ran through the mass of Hobbits, knocking several aside to get her further into the midst of the group but nowhere near to the center, then she dropped her rifle and extended both hands out to her sides, summoning the Jumat into her limbs then throwing it out like invisible punches that knocked two or three enemies down with each rapid fire blast.

  White plasma was everywhere, and the more Morgan batted the Hobbits around the more friendly fire hit them…and those that didn’t were usually shell-shocked enough that they didn’t immediately get up. Others were injured or sometimes killed if they were close enough to Morgan when she released the concussive energy, with it hitting them like a brick wall and snapping their small bones in some cases.

  When she got to one of the Skarrons she paused a brief moment to get a larger concentration, then in theatrical mode pulled both hands back and did a Kamehameha as she took several plasma blasts to her shields…with one of them not making it all the way to her, for the plasma orb actually was thrown backwards as she released the Jumat. It dissipated before it hit anything, but the residue washed over a Hobbit near the Skarron that she knocked upside down, flipping it backwards and onto its arms with its thick legs kicking around like a crab trying to right itself.

  “Morgan, get out of there now!” a voice yelled in her helmet.

  “Wha…” she said, caught off guard and getting whacked in the face with a Hobbit plasma orb. She pulled herself back into the moment and threw off a few more Jumat blasts while telekinetically picking up her rifle and bringing it into her left hand while continuing to use her right to knock enemies aside and cause continuous confusion.

  “Just get out, the LZ is compromised. We can’t wait for you.”

  “What…” she said, getting knocked down as a Hobbit tackled her from behind. She twisted on the ground and kicked him off before throwing up a wave of concussive energy that cleared the perimeter around her fallen body long enough for her to get up and start running towards the edge of the mass of troops back towards the buildings that she’d jumped in from. “…is going on?!”

  “The Scionate are pulling out…all of them. Every unit and ship across the planet is leaving.”

  “What the hell?” Morgan said, shooting some more as she got her mind into fleeing mode as she watched her shield strength closely. Fleeing was going to get her more hits, but it couldn’t be helped. Without the LZ pushing forward with troops there was no way she was going to be able to take on the whole Skarron army by herself.

  “They’re silent on the comms too, so I don’t know what they’re doing,” the naval specialist ranger in charge of the orbital fleet and overall mission organization said in dismay. “But they’re leaving us hanging in a very bad way, and not just where you’re at. I’m scrambling to make adjustments, but just get yourself out of there now!”

  “Going,” she said, forcing herself to stop running in a straight line as the shields covering her back began to get close to breaching…and if the shots got through to her jump pack she was going to be in real trouble.

  Morgan turned to the left and circled around, throwing off more Jumat and going aggressive again, tearing up and confusing the enemy enough to cover another quick sprint closer to the edge but not on a straight line. She stopped again and repeated, making small frog hops through the mass until she got to the edge and headed towards one of the building doors, stopping just in front of it and doing a Jedi jump up to the roof as she was covered with plasma hits.

  When her feet hit the rooftop edge she threw herself into a roll, getting out of the line of sight of those troops as her shields finally did breach. She rolled over her rifle and haphazardly got to her feet as the turtle shell of a jump pack rocked her sideways as she rotated around on top of it.

  “
Shit,” she said, getting a notice on her battlemap that a pair of fighters were breaking off from the main engagement and heading her way. She knew she had to get back down to street level or get roasted by them, so she ran across one building and jumped to the next, chancing one more before dropping off the edge and down out of sight…and landing on the back of a Skarron elite below.

  Morgan didn’t even try to kill it, she just sent an Ikrid pulse into its mind that rendered it into a zombie. She didn’t have time to concentrate enough to put it to sleep, so she just stunned it enough to jump off its back and Jumat blast her way through the Hobbits escorting it as they opened up on her weak shields with their plasma.

  Knocking them askew she ran off to the nearest corner, getting around it and out of firing range as she kicked in her powered setting and ran as fast as she could as more tiny soldiers and their ugly elephant-sized overlords kept popping up into view wherever she fled.

  7

  “Damn it,” Kev-10001 said, resisting the urge to punch the control sphere he was holding onto as he oversaw the planetary operations from orbit. He had 6 Warship-class jumpships contending with the Skarron fleet and guarding the cargo ships that had brought the troops in. He would have dismissed them to an obscure part of the system for safe keeping except that he couldn’t spare a single ship to go with them as escort plus some of them still had troops onboard.

  There were also Axius and Canderous warships in system but the bulk of their naval force, some 62%, were Scionate…all of which were pulling out of the fight to screen for their own transports that were picking up their ground troops and leaving the system. The Skarrons had obviously seen this and were pressing their attack, and the ranger didn’t have enough ships left to hold them back for long. As it was he was sacrificing some of his drones just to buy time to recall their own ground troops from the most dangerous planetary zones, with those in somewhat secure ones packing up to leave as well.

  They couldn’t continue the assault without the Scionate for they just didn’t have the numbers, and anyone left down on the planet was going to be in a world of hurt…meaning he had to get them out before they were overrun in orbit and the logistics weren’t in their favor. He knew he couldn’t get them all out and it was the Scionate’s damn fault. If they’d just given him a 10 minute heads up that would have been something, but they hadn’t offered a peep of warning or explanation over the comms. They just up and started to leave, without him or anyone else realizing what was going on until several of their positions on the ground started to collapse as the Skarrons poured through the positions the Scionate had been holding.

  The Scionate in Axius weren’t going with them, they were sticking with their units and they knew nothing about what was going on, but as glad as he was for them not abandoning ship it didn’t matter much at this point. Star Force was in full retreat now and losing men in the effort, which Kev was trying to minimize.

  Worse yet Morgan was still down there, but she’d ordered him not to waste a dropship on her. He knew he just couldn’t leave her down there, but when it came to picking up 50 some commandos or her, he gave the trailblazer better odds at surviving another hour. But it wasn’t just her. Pretty soon he was going to lose control of orbit and there would be no more dropships heading down to the surface…and they had tens of thousands of troops down there.

  Focusing on the task at hand he kept sending out Ikrid orders through the control sphere, taking personal control of the naval battle while tweaking ground movements…anything he could to make a difference, and there was no time to plan. They were already in over their heads and every second counted, so he didn’t waste time venting and worked the problem even as the dread in his gut began to grow as he noticed the casualty reports coming in on a side screen.

  Morgan dropped from the rooftop, falling through a few meters of clean air before landing in the vegetation at the outpost’s edge. She hit hard, her jump pack now gone and discarded as it had been shot and damaged. Her feet twisted as they hit the straw-like stalks and she came down on her shoulder, jarring herself as she bounced around a bit inside her armor, but between the thin gel layer and the squishy ground she didn’t injure herself.

  Rolling onto her feet she got up into a run as the nearest exterior entrance opened up and Hobbits flooded out into the forest chasing after her. She got four steps into her run before a geyser of dirt and steam blew up in front of her as a plasma blast from a strafing fighter burst through the canopy and hit two meters away.

  The trailblazer jerked and juked but kept running, knowing her speed was her best defense as she put distance between herself and the outpost, but heading in a zigzag around the perimeter rather than running a straight line away that the enemy could anticipate and follow with or without seeing her. She didn’t know how well the sensors on the fighters would penetrate the foliage, but if she could lose them then she was going to do her best to do so…and if not she was going to make herself as hard a target to hit as possible.

  She knew she could outrun their infantry, so long as they didn’t have any outside the perimeter already to collapse back down on her. It was the fighters that were the problem, and given the little demonstration she’d just made of her combat prowess the Skarrons knew she was a high value target and they weren’t just going to let her slip away.

  Morgan pressed hard, covering 4 kilometers in just under 10 minutes but unable to lose their fighters that were stitching the forest around her with plasma. However they were tracking her it wasn’t precise, for they were missing most of the time but every now and then she’d get a wash of plasma that would take her shields down and melt a touch of armor. Fortunately the material had corovon flakes in it that resisted the high heat well, leaving her with the ability to take several direct hits, but while her shields would regenerate her armor would not, leaving every nick the Skarrons made a permanent victory for them.

  Eventually she came to a break in the canopy and had to turn to her right, running along the side of a lazy river to avoid direct visual contact with the fighters. Wondering where she was going to go next as another plume of fiery foliage burst out in a spherical ‘pop’ to her right, she made a rash decision and veered left, jumping into the river and submerging herself as far as she could, down about two meters and digging her hands into the silt on the bottom to pull herself down the rest of the way.

  The filter on her helmet locked up, keeping the water out and engaging her backup oxygen supply. It wouldn’t last long, but she should have a few minutes without holding her breath and the water would block the plasma. Question was, could they track her under water?

  Not staying in place so their infantry could get to her last known position, Morgan pulled herself upstream against the light current, clawing her way across the riverbed and glad that it was muddy water. She could see where she was going thanks to the battlemap sensors that gave her a crude proximity map, but she one upped that and clicked on her Pefbar, getting a much more detailed visual. Once she got about 20 meters upstream a cascade of plasma came down where she had been, churning up the river and tracking up and down it…both ways.

  One of the fat fighters came to a hover over the river, close enough for Morgan to make Ikrid contact though she resisted the urge to bring it down. She hacked into the pilot’s mind and observed what it was seeing, and with a bit of translation work got the feeling that they were tracking her shields.

  That was odd, because to date they’d never shown an ability to do that. When she’d hit the water she’d turned them off so they didn’t waste power against the physical pressure. Pulling herself further upstream she got some more distance as the fighter began moving along the narrow riverbank, with the foliage on either side only a meter or two away from the craft as it moved downstream searching while others zipped by overhead.

  Keeping her shields in standby mode Morgan continued to move underwater, but finding it taking too long she risked a bit of disruption ripple and formed two pillars of concussive en
ergy outside of her legs, pooling the energy on the outside of her armor before releasing it slowly down towards her feet. The light pressure pushed against the water and moved her forward, with the trailblazer reaching her hands out in front of her and forming a guide fine to adjust her depth and direction as she moved further up river.

  She kept going up until her oxygen ran out, then trolled over to the riverbank and poked her head up inside some of the overhanging blue leaves. The filters unlocked and began to pull small amounts of oxygen from the air to recharge her backup as she breathed normally, sitting and waiting as she extended her Ikrid out to its limits in search of nearby minds.

  She immediately noticed a creepy little six-legged lizard a couple meters above her head, but other than him and several others along the river bank and some smaller stuff up in the trees she was alone, now that the fighter had gone back up to altitude. Keeping her shields turned off, Morgan slowly crawled her way up out of the water and through the foliage on the edge, then disappeared off into the forest intent on putting some distance on her last known position as far as the Skarrons were concerned.

  Ella-2109BB-17 twitched, sending a spike a pain through her abdomen that cut through the sleepy haze swallowing her head. She fought it further, bringing herself back to consciousness enough for her to open her eyes…seeing the inside of her battle helmet and half a visor full of mud as she lay on the swampy ground with something obscuring her vision a meter away. She tried to roll her head over but the pain exploded again as she tried to move, with her briefly remembering getting hit with plasma before she’d blacked out.

  Gritting her teeth the Canderian forced herself up a few inches, raising her helmet out of the ground where it had been half buried. She didn’t have a chance to swipe the mud off for as soon as she got some elevation she realized the thing blocking her vision was a body…along with several others around her. She was laying on the battlefield they’d just fought on along with the dead.