Star Force: Probe (SF42) Read online

“Depends. Movo, how you doing?”

  “If it means getting out of here, I can run. Don’t know how far.”

  “Alright, we start out running the first kilometer, then walk from there and alternate as needed. I’ll carry a sack of weapons and foodstuffs, you guys just move yourselves. The rest of our gear stays here. Grab a snack and some water now, then we stay on the move until we get to the LZ.”

  The Kiritak got armored up and gobbled down a few foodstuffs, with Ben eating as well, then the group headed out through the forest, using their battlemap memory to navigate by. The terrain was mostly flat, but it got rolly enough that keeping a straight line was difficult. Ben knew their 17 kilometers was going to end up being more than that as they zigzagged their way across the forest, so he kept the Kiritak moving and ahead of pace at all times.

  As promised they ran, or in Ben’s case jogged, the first kilometer, then walked the second. From there on out they ran half a kilometer, walked a full, until they eventually came to their LZ, which was little more than a dry riverbed, but devoid of trees that would otherwise hamper a dropship landing.

  They got there with an hour and a half to spare, then camped out under cover while Ben scouted the area. There shouldn’t have been any Skarron activity nearby, but his spidey senses were tingling…whether from a real threat or just anxiety he didn’t know.

  Maintaining a perimeter around the Kiritak, he patrolled in a repetitive circle, spiraling out and then in to keep an irregular pattern, up until he got Star Force contacts on his battlemap. Two skeets at first, followed by a Falcon-class dropship, then four more skeets coming in at various angles that suggested they hadn’t been flying in formation, possibly having to fight off some Skarron fighters on the way here.

  Didn’t matter at the moment, getting onboard was the only priority, then he could worry about the tactical situation in the air.

  When he got back to the Kiritak they were already aware of the incoming ships via their own battlemaps, and were waiting anxiously where he’d left them. The seven of them stayed under cover until the dropship was nearly over them, then inched up to the edge of the riverbed as it set down and lowered its boarding ramp.

  The little Kiritak ran forward eagerly, with Ben letting them go ahead of him as he watched the surrounding area, half expecting an ambush, but none came. He followed a ways behind, then caught up just as the last of them were getting onboard and accepted a handshake from an Archon acolyte waiting just inside the doors with a plasma rifle, also ready for trouble.

  “Thanks for the lift,” Ben said, feeling better the moment he stepped off the dirt and onto the artificial floor.

  “Thanks for still being around to pick up,” the acolyte differed. “We’re extremely shorthanded.”

  “What’s the situation?” Ben asked as the boarding ramp raised and he walked through the fairly large dropship’s cargo bay and up towards the passenger area where the Kiritak were already headed at the behest of several techs, one of which was having Movo pull off his armor so she could examine and treat his plasma burns.

  “We lost,” Fenson-45332 said bluntly. “Every Kiritak colony has either been destroyed or taken over by the Skarrons. The only thing we have left is the Alpha Site.”

  Ben pulled off his helmet as a tech walked up to him with a box of cookies…and from the markings in the icing he could tell they were ambrosia doses. He pulled out two of the medium doses and took a bite, relishing the taste after having to eat Kiritak food for so many weeks.

  “Alpha Site?” Ben asked in between bites, for he was unfamiliar with the term.

  “Randy had Clan Star Fox build at least one hidden base on each Kiritak world without their knowledge, subterranean, to act as a fallback position in the case of attack. The Skarrons couldn’t find it, and we’ve been gathering up what survivors we can find and consolidating them there. We’ve got several enemy walkers patrolling in the area trying to pin down us down, so our approach is going to be awkward, but as of yet they haven’t been able to pinpoint the location. We’ve maintained air superiority, but the closer those walkers get…before long we won’t be able to cover our comings and goings and we’ll either have to turtle up or fight it out. And fighting it out isn’t a good matchup for us.”

  “How are we fixed for supplies?” Ben asked, taking one more smaller dose cookie and dismissing the tech with a ‘thank you’ nod.

  “We’re good for more than a year with what we had in the base, and we’ve managed to scrounge up some more from various locations. How fit are you?”

  “Weak, but eager for some activity. I’ve had to babysit them, otherwise I would have worked on racking up a kill count. I couldn’t take the risk of leading the Skarrons back after they’d forgotten about us.”

  “How soon until you’re ready for a firefight?”

  “Now if necessary. Though I’d appreciate at least a shower first.”

  “We’re running hunter/killer ops around the perimeter of their encampments. Unfortunately we don’t have anything capable of taking down their big walkers, but we can still kill their infantry if we can get to them. We’re having to set down at distance and hoof it to our targets, but we’re bleeding them of troops and we’ve got plenty of ammunition. The real question is if you’re up to that much running?”

  “How long are these ops?”

  “Shortest ones are 8 hours, longest 72.”

  “Sign me up for a short one. I probably don’t have enough stamina now for the others, but a couple weeks of training should change that.”

  Fenson nodded. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

  “How many people do we have left?”

  “174 Archons, 132 Regulars, 2 Knights and around 500 Kiritak, but most of them are techs.”

  “Do we have any support personnel?”

  “We have a skeleton base staff plus a handful of administrators, engineers, and medics that we pulled out of the combat zones…though to be more accurate they were slaughter ranges. How much did you see?”

  “Enough…though most was from the air,” Ben said as the numbers sank in. The planet hadn’t been heavily defended, but there had been at least 2,000 Archons overseeing Kiritak security forces that numbered well over 200,000. After that, there were better than a billion of the little guys here as workers. “How many facilities have you managed to contact?”

  “Most of them, unfortunately. Yours was one of the last few.”

  “I saw the Hobbits eating the Kiritak corpses…”

  Fenson was silent for a moment. “From what we’ve seen, they’re killing everything in sight and trashing our cities. There just aren’t very many survivors to rescue at this point, which was why we were glad we found you seven.”

  “We’re glad to be found,” Ben said with a depressing tone. “Do we have any ships in orbit?”

  “A few harassing the Skarron fleet that make contact occasionally. We’ve replied from auxiliary facilities so they know we’re still alive, but we can’t risk communication from the Alpha Site. I don’t know how well the Skarrons are monitoring transmissions, but we’re not going to give them a signal to follow back to us.”

  “I thought help would have come by now.”

  “So did we,” Fenson admitted. “Makes me wonder who else is getting hit out there. If they took Iona, we could be on our own for a very long time.”

  “Relays?”

  “I don’t know. If they are still up there we can’t risk trying to link in, and the starships haven’t passed on any information, one way or the other. I’m guessing the Skarrons toasted them along with the orbital defenses. I do know that several jumpships got out as the attack began.”

  “Did we get a signal out?”

  “The people who know the answer to that didn’t make it.”

  Ben closed his eyes for a moment, realizing just how tired he was, which was surprising, considering he’d been sitting around on his ass most of the time.

  “Come on,” Fenson said, nudging his armor
ed elbow. “It’ll be a few hours before we get back to base. Sit down and catch a nap on the way, then we can get to work later.”

  “Is it safe enough to go armor off?”

  Fenson thought for a moment, then nodded. “Keep it handy, but I don’t expect to get shot down. Our pilot has gotten experienced at evading their patrols, and our escorts can kill just about anything that comes at us.”

  “They come at you in packs and try to isolate you, I know. Learned that the hard way,” Ben said, stopping shy of the personnel section of the jumpship where everyone else was. “Don’t suppose you have any spare skeets left around?”

  “No, but we rotate as needed. What’s your aerial rank?”

  “72.”

  “You’ll get your seat time then, I promise.”

  Ben spotted an empty row of padded seats near the back and gestured to the spot as he set his helmet down and began to unfasten his armor around the neck.

  “Think I’ll be camping out here.”

  “Rest up, we’ll get the full debrief later.”

  Ben nodded and continued to pull open his armor, eventually stepping out of the boot sections and laying down across the seats. It took less than a minute for him to settle in and nod off in the bliss of cushioned furniture.

  8

  Several hours later the dropship flew an evasive route around the Skarron army formations probing the area around the Alpha Site and headed off to one of 28 different entrances spread out over 150 square miles of untouched forest. 18 of those entrances were large enough to admit dropships, and though the Skarron fleet in orbit could monitor their position, the enemy had yet to realize how the Humans were disappearing.

  One moment the dropship was flying across the treetops…the next moment it vanished, and with no fighter presence in the area, for the skeets were preventing that, there was no way for the Skarrons to laterally see the huge section of dirt and trees that had leveraged itself out of the ground and risen up on a thick platform, underneath which was a tunnel entrance.

  The dropship flew inside at speed, then the piece of forest lowered back down into the ground, with the trees and rocks returning to much how they’d once been, with only a slight dirt line to show for the maneuver, and one that couldn’t be seen through the thick canopy from above where the walkers traveled. One would have to be on the ground, and as of yet none of their Hobbit troops had stumbled upon the little dirt lines.

  How long that would last no one knew, but the dropship ducked into the tunnel that quickly descended down through the bedrock before leveling out, after which the craft ‘flew’ through the tight confines several miles before coming to the subsurface hangar bay with the claustrophobic tunnel spreading out into a large chamber that held multiple dropships and fighters, along with several mechs, some of which were still battle damaged from the initial invasion.

  A handful of people were about, but otherwise the hangar was mostly deserted. Ben walked out with Fenson and the others onboard the dropship, with the Kiritak being led off to a different location by some of the on base little aliens while the Archons headed for the small sanctum that had been built into the base. Ben took a shower and got a fresh set of clothes, then Fenson started running him through a series of drills to reawaken his sluggish body, all the while assessing his current fitness.

  Even with ambrosia back in his body Ben was constantly fatigued…the result of so much time off. When one’s biology adjusted to everything you did, or in this case didn’t do, getting back into the training flow was the equivalent of turning a gigantic boat around and heading the opposite direction. It was doable, but took some time and effort.

  That said, all those years of training weren’t lost to him, his body had just gotten really rusty, so he went through a ‘derusting’ series of light workouts designed to give his body the taste of full workouts and to get it back on track before attempting anything near normal volume or intensity. Three hours later and he was feeling much better, but very drained and his muscles were hot with inefficient burn…but the light pain felt good, because it and the headache he had meant his body was readjusting. He didn’t have much experience is coming back from non-training spells, for Archons didn’t take time off, but he could feel changes happening already, which put an end to his mind’s limitless cycling.

  Fenson left him after the first hour of workouts, satisfied that he wasn’t injured or overly weakened, so Ben hit the cafeteria afterwards alone, finding only two other people there. Normally Star Force cafeterias were busy round the clock, which underscored how few people had survived the Skarron invasion.

  The Archon ate up…a lot. More so than normal, considering he wasn’t going to get a second training session in today. He was going get a good, long sleep in, so he left the cafeteria thoroughly stuffed, then headed up to the control room to get a quick sitrep before heading to the quarters he’d been assigned on the 7th level where the majority of the Archons were bunked.

  By the time he got to his bed he knew the full extent of their defeat. There were still a few areas that the Alpha Site team thought might contain survivors, but the vast cities that had been churning out the resources Star Force needed to fight the lizards and Nestafar, and expand Beta Region’s infrastructure even further, now lay in rubble. Though they were far from finished, the Skarrons were knocking down every building that they didn’t feel like using, with them mowing down the tower fields that had housed the Kiritak workers with their larger walkers, steadily and painstakingly remaking the landscape into what, he didn’t know, but they were working, and working hard towards some goal.

  Occasionally some survivors were located within those cities, and they’d been making regular dropship runs out to them so they could plant a few scouts to organize an extraction of personnel or leftover resources, or to look for more, but with every day that passed the odds of Star Force personnel surviving diminished, with most of the raids now being for equipment or to kill a few hundred of the enemy’s infantry.

  Alpha Site might have been a hidden hole in the ground, but it was a hole that the Archons were striking out of, little as they could, but there was nothing they could do to counter the enemy walkers…at least not while the Skarrons controlled orbit.

  “Captain, they’re on the move again.”

  Leona Daverson looked up from her datapad and reached over to hit the comm switch near her bed, enabling the return mic. “What have we got this time?”

  “Looks like another attempt to bait us out. Four destroyers and a cruiser bouncing from moon to moon on patrol around the 4th planet. Hercules says they’ve got an intercept fleet stationed in Ettiana orbit on a jumpline for the planet.”

  “How do the numbers look?” she said, sitting up and putting her book aside.

  “Good enough to poke a few holes.”

  “I’m on my way up. Hold position until I get there.”

  “Copy that.”

  Leona pulled herself out of bed and slipped into her Captain’s uniform in under 30 seconds, then was out the door and enroute to the jumpship’s bridge. The Wildfire and Hercules were all that was left of the system’s defense fleet, with the other Warship-class jumpship having been severely damaged during the initial attack, with hull breaches compromising a third of the ship. Those areas had been sealed off and contained, as they were unable to make significant repairs without access to Star Force infrastructure…which had already been destroyed in orbit by the Skarron fleet.

  The Wildfire hadn’t received any hull damage, but they had lost 2/3rds of their drones. Recalling others from the battle that had been permanently assigned to orbit, Leona had pulled out of the direct fire zone with 54% capacity, while the Hercules had none remaining. Currently that jumpship was stationed high over Ettiana operating as a scout, while Leona kept her warship elsewhere in the system, waiting for an opportunity to take out another of the enemy ships…but without losing any of her own, which was the tricky part.

  Had she stayed in orbit until all of thei
r drones were depleted, then her ship would have been next to useless when it jumped out of planetary orbit. The Wildfire was an older version warship, a Mk. 15, and while it had weapons, they were designed for defensive operations only, and if she tried to use the ship to attack even a handful of Skarrons they’d be all over her before she could do much damage. Jumpships just didn’t have the speed to chase down and kill other ships, but the drones did.

  Ever since the initial battle, she’d been sniping at the Skarrons whenever and wherever possible, and had succeeded in killing two destroyers and heavily damaging a cruiser. Since then the Skarrons, unable to intercept the Star Force ships given that they had binary gravity drives that allowed them to travel on jumplines that the enemy couldn’t, had been deploying small groups of ships around the system, trying to draw them out. Leona had obliged several times, but had lost a frigate in the process…though in exchange for the damage done to the enemy cruiser.

  After that she’d held back, knowing that with superior maneuverability she had to wait for opportunities to hit the enemy that didn’t involve losing any of her own ships. If they just traded off she’d run out well before the Skarron fleet did, meaning she had to get devious.

  How many people were left alive on Ettiana she didn’t know, but it was her duty to cause the enemy as much trouble as possible until help arrived…and to be in a position to assist those on the surface if the opportunity arose. Her last communication with them, or rather to them, had been a handful of days ago detailing the reinforcements that had arrived to the Skarrons, which had been a pair of cargo ships and a destroyer in escort. She’d wished they had detected their arrival soon enough to intercept them, but the sensor grid they’d established in the system had been one of the Skarrons first targets…including the interstellar relay, though it had taken some time for them to get to it in null orbit twice again as far out from the star as Ettiana was.

  The Wildfire was currently sitting in its own null orbit between the 3rd and 4th planets in the system, which were currently orbiting close to one another. It wasn’t on the jumpline between the two, and was probably visible to Skarron sensors, but only as a small blot, much as the Skarron ships were to them. The enemy could jump towards their position, but would never be able to slow down in time, effectively putting them out of reach, meaning the Skarrons had to lure them out.