Star Force: Headstrong (SF72) Read online

  Kill them as they come out, the Archon said as he turned around and protected the Bsidd’s flank.

  Nephit trusted in his judgement and faced directly into the crevice that was barely wide enough for two Betas to stand side by side, but he had just enough room to stretch out his appendages and swing freely as he bullied his way into the line of lizards coming up out of a small hole in the rock wall on the left. He cut down two with plasma rods and shot the rest as he moved his way up to the hole as another quickly climbed out and tried to roll away from him. The Bsidd reached out and jabbed it in the chest with a plasma rod as another climbed out and tried to get away, firing a shot into his chest section as it scurried to clear the hole.

  Nephit understood what he had to do and backed up a step so they couldn’t shoot out the lateral tunnel at him, then he used one of his two rifles to shoot the lizards that had come out while he jabbed the next one crawling out of the tunnel. He remained them, fighting furiously to knock them all down and not let any through while the Archon covered the entrance to the crevice…though he couldn’t see him. The lizards were climbing out so fast he couldn’t pay attention to anything else, trusting that the Archon would know what he was doing and Nephit understanding that he had to be the mauler taking down this line of reinforcements as they were vulnerable coming out single file.

  It was a sweet spot for an ambush and required him to rack up an insanely high kill count, which is exactly what he did up until he ran out of ammo, but by then there were other Bsidd standing behind him ready to take his place, for they’d already advanced this far and secured their foothold…with the lizards below ground apparently unaware and still sending a string of reinforcements out to a quick death as the crevice filled up with bodies.

  Jenran dove into a group of four lizards, hitting one in the chest with his helmeted head. Rather than rolling to either side he just let him momentum carry him into and over the lizard as it went down. He rolled through a rough somersault and kicked out his armored left leg to catch a third lizard, for a second had been bowled down by the first as it was knocked backwards.

  The Protovic didn’t even bother to try and fire his rifle, clinging to it with one hand as he kicked and rolled, knocking down as many lizards as he could until blue plasma streaks filled the air directly over him and the surrounding lizards went down from the hits. Red/grey suits of armor ran up to and past him as Jenran got to his feet and fell into line behind them.

  They didn’t have far to go to get to the next group of lizards, with someone else pulling the same maneuver he just had. Using his rifle, Jenran moved forward and shot one of the lizards that had been knocked down while the others engaged a group of 50 or so situated in a circular enclosure within the rocks. It was an ambush position but the Protovic didn’t care, they just pushed their way in, knocking down the leading edge of the lizards and ramming a shield carrier into the worst of it. That bit of tech was one of Brad’s unique additions to the Protovic, which essentially put a heavy cradle over top of the commando armor that made the carrier extremely unagile and incapable of most hand to hand combat…but the tradeoff was worth it when paired with a fighting unit.

  He’d said the Protovic were ‘headstrong,’ hence the signature battle song he’d given them, and had crafted their ground combat tactics accordingly. They carried more armor than Human commandos, making their suits slightly more stiff while needing less internal padding given their exoskeletal segments. And while they were trained to be agile, their ability to simply ram their opponents and not get disoriented by the collision gave them an advantage that Brad had told them to use often in group combat while still training them to be conventional commandos with a full range of evasive combat techniques.

  This was the first invasion that the Protovic army was involved in and Jenran’s fifth battle. He and the others knew they were being evaluated, as well as the fact that this fight was live and people were in jeopardy if they screwed it up…but so far everyone had been doing their job and they’d been mowing down the lizards they’d been assigned to go against, though he suspected they were being given the easy assignments since they were newbs to this sort of fighting, while the Bsidd armies were taking on the heaviest areas of resistance.

  Didn’t matter to him. There were lizards here to be fought and the bulk of the currently small Protovic army was finally getting a chance to contribute…and he was realizing just how small and weak the lizards were. These were standard varieties they were coming up against, no maulers, and every time he collided with one it did little to stop his higher mass. They were easy takedowns if they could get to them, especially considering that they were wearing no armor aside from some pathetic vests. Those might stop a shot, or half of one, but otherwise they were useless against Star Force’s weapons.

  Jenran fought from the back of his unit while his shields recharged, only taking a few additional hits while the others soaked up most of the incoming fire. When he was nearly full and ready to take on the next diving assignment he got a battlemap prompt and immediately ran over to the nearby waypoint, finding the Archon that had summoned him and feeling his telepathy in his head.

  He’d done this before and returned a ‘ready’ thought while getting the approximate direction the Archon wanted to throw him. He ran on that trajectory then felt himself tip forward and be lifted off the ground, accelerated by an invisible force as he was shot through the air like a slow missile past the Archon and the other Protovic, then hit headfirst into a wall of lizards. He kept his arms tucked around his rifle until he felt the telekinetic hold let go and gravity returned to normal.

  As he crashed into the lizards he let his legs and one arm fly wide to catch as many of them as he could, acting like a snowplow that mowed down a line of them, leaving him the prime target now as multiple phaser blasts hit him, though a few missed and actually hit other lizards as he scrambled around on the ground, knowing that standing up immediately was a bad idea. He needed to buy a few seconds and then…

  Two more Protovic came running up and head-butted lizards aside as a wave of blue plasma fire followed them along with the padawan that had thrown him. A group of lizards just dropped to the ground in front of him and Jenran shot them as quickly as he could while the Archon jumped over their bodies and punched another so hard he flew back as another projectile and knocked four more down.

  Soon Jenran was surrounded by other Protovic and out of danger, finding his shields had gone down and he had a slightly melted gash across his right leg but no other damage. He held back and shot a few downed lizards that he wasn’t sure were totally dead as his shield bar reformed at minimal strength.

  Tucking in behind others with more shield than him, he followed the group forward as they continued their cyclical push that, by design, was never supposed to end and give the lizards a chance to regroup. Once a Protovic formation started the charge forward they would continue until the enemy gave them too much resistance and they had to fall back, or until they’d won the battle.

  8

  July 18, 2888

  Chepmet System (lizard territory)

  Inner Zone

  The Excalibur came out of its deceleration jump into view of the white star that stood at the center of the lizard-occupied system head of the line. It’d pulled extra heavy on the gravity drives to position them further out than normal, for they expected immediate resistance. Chepmet was a key system on the primary shipping route connecting the lizard core worlds and their expansion zone into Skarron territory. They used multiple paths to link the two, but the bulk of their ship and cargo transfer was occurring on one line…one very heavily defended line as they attempted to reduce the amount of raids that Star Force and the Voku were exacting on them.

  The Preema invasion corridor had already eaten out a chunk of lizard territory on the Voku side of the midline and Star Force continued to creep their border in from the opposite side. That meant the vast expanse of territory in the ‘middle’ of lizard space was shrinkin
g. Not so much that they were in jeopardy of getting cut off anytime soon, but the lizards could see the writing on the wall and had been reinforcing this particular line of systems, both in terms of planetary defenses and ship count.

  So it didn’t surprise Paul when his command ship’s sensors began to pick up warship contacts in orbit around the star by the thousands. They were there to make sure any lizard ships coming through were protected as they made the transition from one jumppoint to another, for intercepting a ship mid jump was virtually unheard of. The weak points in the traffic flow were around the stars, so that’s where the lizards were pooling their ships and adding more to them as the months passed by.

  There were too many for Paul to take out with his small Clan Saber fleet, which exited behind the Excalibur six in count. Four were standard warships and began deploying drones immediately upon arrival, but the other two were the main reason they were here. They were jumpship-sized drones that had no internal living space whatsoever, not even for maintenance access. Normally Star Force wouldn’t build anything that big in that manner, but these were prototypes that Clan Saber had developed and Paul had brought them here for a field test…as well as to diminish the number of ships the lizards had in the system.

  Both mammoth warships were Ravager-class and had the distinction of carrying the first ‘holy’ weapon Star Force had managed to produce, which was the V’kit’no’sat’s Dre’mo’don. It was crude as hell right now and too large to fit on any normal sized drone, but each ravager had 12 Dre’mo’dons on them, a lot of armor and shields, and some backup Ta’lin’yi and mauler cannons with a sprinkling of Sammy anti-air turrets.

  They were beasts with more kill power than the rest of the fleet combined, most of which was due to the Dre’mo’dons. They were the same type of weapon that Kara had in her armor, which compressed down into a tiny jewel set into her wrist. The one’s Star Force had built were monstrosities, and not due to their destructive power. What the V’kit’no’sat could condense down into a square meter, Star Force’s techs were only accomplishing the same with a battery the size of a dropship.

  That meant they were hugely inefficient, but the end result was same when the condensed energy packet was launched. It wasn’t a beam, nor could reach even close to beam speeds, making it a medium/short range weapon, but it tore apart shields and armor alike in a way that made all the rest of Star Force’s weapons look like mere toys…which was why Paul and Roger had been pressing the techs to rush the design even if it took something huge to carry them.

  The weapon schematics had been a Star Force project, but it was Clan Saber that had gone ahead and incorporated them into the ravager design while others factions were waiting for them to be tinkered with and reduced in size first. Paul wasn’t waiting, for this weapon put them ahead of the Voku, the Preema, and the Nexus in terms of raw firepower. He was here to take the pair of ravagers against an overwhelming lizard fleet, with the rest of his ships there to protect the prototypes. He knew he’d have to withdraw at some point, but intended to get a lot of data and ship kills before that and did not want to risk losing one of the very expensive ships.

  Credits weren’t the issue, but the number of arc elements and solari required to construct the Dre’mo’don were insane compared to everything else they were using. Paul had only been able to afford it because Clan Saber had built a small Star Forge-class mining station of their own now that the main facilities were out of prototype stage and they had a limited, but firm handle on the technology. Mainline had 3 of the massive stations up and running with another two under construction, while Paul had spent a significant amount of his Clan’s resources to build his own baby version that he’d named the Pocket Knife.

  Between it and the two ravagers, he’d devoted an enormous amount of his Clan’s resources into a very small amount of equipment, but both ventures were going to put the Sabers far ahead of the curve. The Dre’mo’don wasn’t the V’kit’no’sat’s most advanced weapon by far, but it was a staple of their smaller ships and the batteries on the ravagers were equivalent in yield to what the Rit’ko’sor had on their Frigate analogs. Small by V’kit’no’sat standards, but still naval yield and far more powerful than anything Kara could produce.

  To put it in simpler terms, the weapons should be able to 1-hit lizard cruisers, though to date that theory hadn’t been tested, which was one of the reasons why Paul was here.

  The trailblazer linked into the nexus and took personal command of both ravagers while leaving the drone fleet under the control of the remote pilots. They knew their job and he probably wouldn’t have to give any additional orders, leaving him free to focus on the new tech and using it to maximum advantage while simultaneously safeguarding it.

  As the lizard sensors finally caught the echoes from the incoming ships their fleets began to reposition to come after the invaders, and those were just the ones already in orbit around the star. Paul knew there were at least 2 inhabited planets in the system, but how many more ships they had around them was a question mark. They’d only been able to get a brief scouting report that was some 60 years old from the Voku, plus updates from ships passing through that could not stay around long enough to take a fresh look.

  As Paul’s fleet began to move towards the star and approach the swarm of lizard ships, three of his own drones broke off and made microjumps that would take them through a very fast scouting run of the other planets. That wasn’t their purpose here, but he might as well have a look while they were in the neighborhood. Those drones were operating on limited remote control and Paul had told his Admiral previously that he wanted them out and back quickly, for he didn’t know how long they’d be able to stand up against the lizard fleet and he didn’t want them left behind for the lizards to potentially disable and study.

  As the four jumpships spread out into compass points around the Excalibur and the drones filled in the gaps while pushing the formation out even further, Paul kept the two ravagers in close to the command ship before sending them on out ahead when the fat donut started shooting bloons at the enemy. He wanted to keep well clear of their firing radius and let them fight the enemy, with the rest of the fleet holding position nearby to react as necessary. They were all going to shoot any and all lizard ships that came within firing range, but he wanted the ravagers to go in first and have their choice of targets.

  Paul watched with considerable interest as the first 100+ ship tendril of cruisers came in towards the port ravager firing their phaser beams at a slightly greater range than the Dre’mo’dons could handle. Their energy packet was only momentarily cohesive, and once that cloyingness ran its course they’d pop like fireworks and dissipate their energy. Anything near the ‘pop’ would take damage, but it would be minimal compared to what the bolt would have accomplished on a proper hit.

  When Paul felt the first of the cruisers come within the reliable range he fired the first Dre’mo’don, which while on V’kit’no’sat weapons was green, a color alteration hadn’t been a big technological issue so Paul had these built standard Star Force blue. What looked like a tiny pinprick of light glowed so brightly it might as well have been a piece of a star. It shot out almost too fast for the eye to track and impacted one of the fresh lizard cruisers that had full armor and shields, while a handful of the others had already been hit by bloons and weakened.

  The Dre’mo’don hit the lizard shields and punched right through, overloading their matrix on impact then partially melting through the armor plates as the energy packet destabilized, turning from a tiny mote into a miniature nova. The hole in the armor expanded on the inside into a destructive cone that blew out the opposite side of the ship and nearly severed the entire thing in half. Sensor tags of weapons batteries winked out across the hull leaving only two still operational, but the rest of the cruiser was either junk or unpowered.

  Pretty damn close to a 1-hit kill.

  Paul didn’t waste a second shot on it and targeted a different cruiser with his second ba
ttery while the first went on an 18-second recharge. He hated that it was that ponderously slow but he had 12 batteries to work with, so as the lizard fleets swarmed around the ravagers with even more ships only minutes away, he was able to fire a shot every 1.5 seconds and use the secondary weaponry to clean up his kills and take them completely out of the fight.

  And Paul had two ships to work with, so there was a constant repetition of the tiny blue sparks flying out and knocking down cruisers as the rest of the Star Force fleet became heavily engaged and positioned to keep themselves bracketing the ravagers so the enemy couldn’t fully surround them and fire from all angles simultaneously. Paul had brought two shield ship drones per ravager and had them waiting nearby to swoop in and aid them if necessary, but the confusion of the lizards prevented any serious threat to the deadly ships.

  The titan knew it would take time for the enemy to calculate the destructive potential and adjust their attack patterns accordingly. Until that happened he was more than happy to just sit there racking up easy kills, all the while monitoring the long range sensors and the growing number of ships heading their way.

  It took 12 minutes before Paul realized the lizards were not adapting to the new threat. Almost giddy with the opportunity he expanded his mind out to the rest of the fleet and grabbed some remote pilots to man the secondary weapons on the ravagers while he assumed full fleet control and took them on the offensive. He split up the ravagers and sent them into different areas while the Excalibur did the same. The lizards weren’t running, but they weren’t adjusting to the firepower the ravagers were throwing down…perhaps because it was so extreme they didn’t know what to do about it.