Star Force: Backstab (SF23) Read online

  A Protovic transport came next, dragging a large mashed up bulk of dead aircraft across the deck and dropped it as a stopper a little way out from the walkers, then more of the other races started piling debris between it and the door, making sure nothing was going to push its way through.

  They’d been planning on using that tactic if the nuke attack on the mega walker had succeeded, he just hadn’t expected such a big hole being blown in the doors by whatever that was that followed it. Maybe the thing had a reactor that was damaged and then went nuke on its own.

  Mark hung around the doors as the debris was being assembled, waiting to see if any more of the protomechs would shoot through. That hole was too high up to block, unless they were going to make a really big pile, but after a while with nothing further coming in he finally turned his mech around and headed back over to their nearest command center where he parked it and climbed out.

  “Did you lose comms?” Sandra asked when he got to the ground.

  “Yeah I did. How’s things look outside?” he asked, referring to the base’s external sensors.

  “They took out half their army and most of their infantry, but there were plenty outside the blast radius that moved up. We do now have comms with the seda, so either you or they knocked out the jamming device.”

  “They? What caused that second explosion?”

  “Kamikaze cargo ship.”

  “What!?”

  “They dropped a gargantuan right on top of their army. Made our nuke look like a spitball.”

  “Really…how many do they have left?” he asked sarcastically.

  Sandra, however, took him to be serious. “No go. The Nestafar have repositioned their fleet to avoid that happening again…or what’s left of it. They attacked the seda and got their asses kicked.”

  “Good…what about the Hycre?”

  “They’re gone…as are most of the other warships. The Calavari orbital stations are dust too…and the Nestafar have jumpships in orbit, so who knows how much more ground game they have.”

  “Has the Legat launched his own ground op yet? Please say no.”

  “No.”

  “Good. Those walkers are heavily armored. Our mechs aren’t going to be as effective as they are against the lizards.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Sandra said, glancing over him. He had put his armor back on before getting out of the neo, but apparently she still saw something. “How bad did you get knocked around in there?”

  “I’ll be sore for a few days,” he admitted, “but nothing broken.”

  “How’s the head?”

  “Got my bell rung pretty good. How long was I on the floor?”

  “A while. We thought your mech was toast.”

  “Nearly, and the only replacement panels we have are on the seda. Other than heavy lifting don’t let anyone pilot it in combat.”

  “Gotcha. Where you heading?”

  “To suck some ambrosia and have a chat with Orion…before he decides to play snowball with any more of our ships.”

  “You disapprove?”

  “No, just wish I’d thought of it sooner.”

  After a dropship picked him up near the doors and brought him back over to their column complex, Mark got out of his armor and into their medical area, knowing he could trust the others to handle the defenses without him for a little bit, though he did snag an earpiece on the way in so he could stay in contact if needed. He self-administered some healing patches to the cuts on his arms, legs, head, and torso then grabbed a new set of clothes, tossing the blood-soaked ones away as he headed over to their kitchen and snagged several ration bars and two bottles of water. He hadn’t eaten in 13 hours, nor slept in 28, and was feeling a big ragged now that the adrenaline was starting to wear off.

  He opened the first ration bar and started chewing as he activated the datapad he’d brought with him that detailed the destruction outside, along with a live feed function that allowed him to see what the enemy was currently up to. The analysis had numerous points highlighted by the Bsidd, offering their summary of the Nestafar casualties as well as the operational nature of their damaged assets. It was meticulous, as if they were trying to make up for their lack of martial contributions, given that the Humans were essentially leading the defensive effort.

  That was due to their not being seen as a significant threat by the Nestafar during the initial ambush, a mistake he assumed the enemy would not be making again. The sacrifice of their cargo ship and the resulting destruction, which was significant due to the placement of the impact crater, had also gained Star Force instant credibility as the rest of the races were desperately doing everything they could to support their mutual survival.

  Add in the fact that the seda in orbit was the only naval military asset keeping the Nestafar at bay and protecting the Alliance’s remaining ships. All in all, the Humans had quickly proved their worth to their previous naysayers, the Gnar included.

  Mark got up, carrying the datapad with him over to a cabinet and pulled out a rack of wafers, counting out 14 of them, then heading back to the table grabbing a breadstick the size of his forearm on the way. He stuffed one of the 2-dose wafers into his mouth and pulled up the live feed on the datapad, seeing that a few more walkers were heading their way from the enemy LZ. They were Giraffe-class, as Boen had already nicknamed them, and medium among the lot. They had four pointy legs with high spider-joints that came up over the level of their backs along with a high arching neck that had a head with a powerful plasma cannon that the Bsidd data indicated was an orb launcher.

  There were also 17 Spider-class walkers milling about outside the door, though they were split up by the debris that was littering the surrounding area and preventing any large scale assault on the base from that direction. As it was, three of them were picking their way through the lines and heading up and over the mountain to the far side bay doors with an ever growing number of units assembling there, though the bulk of the units were still being dropped in the main LZ on the south side.

  Mark couldn’t figure their strategy there, and so far none of the mega walkers were visible on the battlefield, meaning they didn’t have a lock pick to use to get inside the north doors. They might have had another up in orbit on one of their jumpships, but if they did they hadn’t deployed it yet, making him wonder if they were rolling out some new strategy or just fumbling around after the debacle of the kamikaze attack…and his slam dunk nuke, if they even knew that had happened.

  Mark still had one nuke in his arsenal plus parts from two others, which as of yet hadn’t been fully assembled into a single device. The Kvash had requested that project and had spirited the components away to who knows where, but at least they had one big bomb left to work with, though he would have much preferred their own non-nuclear devices, of which they had none in the base.

  The seda would have some, he knew, but not the really big ones. It hadn’t been around long enough to have had time to fill its armory of most things and Orion had been insistent on getting their starfighters and mechs assembled first off…which, he now wondered, how had they fared in the attack on the seda?

  He thumbed through the datapad while chewing apart another ambrosia wafer, looking for the battle data that the seda should have had on file and accessible through their resumed comm link when his earpiece activated.

  “Trouble boss,” Boen said, his voice serious.

  “Go,” Mark said, then stuffed another wafer in his mouth and chewed fast.

  “Calavari found another group of Nestafar holed up in the base…and they’ve been busy digging a new access tunnel to the surface.”

  “Whaaat? Hhow?”

  “They had to have started weeks before the attack. The Calavari just found it doing a comprehensive scan of the mountain to look for structural damage after the big bang. The tunnel is several miles long and only a few hundred meters from completion.”

  “Tell me they don’t have a lizard planning all this for them,” h
e said, his mouth now clear of food. “Have the Calavari secured this side of the tunnel?”

  “No they haven’t. The Nestafar holding it are armed and well dug in. The tunnel begins directly under one of their columns.”

  “How wide is it?”

  “Too small for walkers.”

  “What about their protomechs?”

  “When they ball up, maybe…oh crap,” Boen said, realizing that the hallways in the base were just big enough for the damn machines to fit through, and the ones in the ceiling were wide enough for two side by side.

  Mark paused a moment, thinking it through. “Ok, so plan number 1 is to bust in through the main doors…no, check that. Plan number 1 is to take over the base from the inside using their pilots, hand blades, and the few plasma rifles they were able to smuggle in…or at least long enough to keep the bay doors open for their ground troops to enter. Plan number 2 was to break through the doors using the super dragon and let their ground troops inside.”

  “Super dragon…I like that.”

  “Plan number 3, which begins well before numbers 1 and 2, has them digging a tunnel to the outside of the mountain, creating their own entry point so the base can’t be completely sealed off to them. They didn’t try to assault any of the base’s smaller entrances with the initial ambush, but they dig one of their own…why?”

  “I would have said to bring in an assault team to get the hangar doors open, but now that doesn’t make sense, especially the fact that the tunnel isn’t finished yet.”

  “That’s because they couldn’t have someone spotting it from the outside,” Mark said, dismissing that worry. “They had to stop short.”

  “It would have been easier to just take one of the existing ones and hold it while their troops arrived. They’re closer to the door controls than the columns are anyway.”

  “They’re not after the door controls...they want something else.”

  “And the controls,” Boen added.

  “To get their army inside, but there’s something more going on here.”

  “Think it has to do with the Calavari?”

  “Get a team or three over to…wait, where is this breach point? I thought you said the tunnel originated in a Nestafar column?”

  “It apparently has another access point within the base. Maintenance area. Beyond the hangar wall.”

  “Get some Archons over there to help out, then meet me in here. We’re going to have a chat with the Calavari.”

  “Think they know something?”

  “My spidey senses say yes.”

  “On my way.”

  Mark tossed the datapad aside and shoved two more wafers in his mouth, grabbed the rest and a bottle of water in his hands, and jogged out the door on his way to get into another suit of armor.

  8

  “What are they after?” Mark asked Vornac and several other Calavari that had come over to the Human complex at his request.

  “They want to capture this base, obviously,” their liaison answered.

  “No, they only want to hold it. That tunnel isn’t a way in for their troops, though they may very well be using it for that soon. They were digging for something else. What is this base sitting on?”

  Vornac frowned. “It isn’t on anything. We carved it out of the mountain.”

  “Why did you choose this location? This particular mountain?”

  “That I do not know. I was assigned after its construction.”

  “Who would know?”

  “The original builders…but I don’t know if any of them are still insystem.”

  “A few are,” one of the other Calavari said.

  “Get them here,” Mark insisted. “Now.”

  Vornac nodded to one of his kin and the four-armed alien walked off to one of the communications consoles and sat down. “What are you looking for?”

  “A reason the Nestafar would turn on their own allies.”

  “We have been at odds with them for centuries.”

  Mark shook his head. “Not you. The Protovic and others they brought into the Alliance. They attacked their ships in orbit and their pilots here. If they wanted to start a war with you again, throwing away their allies makes no sense. There has to be something else going on and I have a feeling it is connected to that tunnel.”

  “How does knowing help us defend ourselves? One way or another they intend to take the base. Should we not focus our attention there?”

  “I can multi-task,” Mark said, a bit pithily.

  “They joined the Alliance,” Boen interjected, “because of the threat of the lizards. That threat hasn’t changed, and you know them better than us. What would be so important for them that they would risk doing this?”

  “A good question…but one that I cannot answer. They are, and have always been, a treacherous lot.”

  “Did this planet once belong to them?” Mark asked.

  “Not to my knowledge. It was unclaimed.”

  A comm prompt signaled from Mark’s helmet, which was setting on the table next to him. “Excuse me,” he said, sliding it on and beginning the private conversation with his external speakers shut off. “Go ahead.”

  “We found one,” Orion reported.

  Mark’s eyes narrowed. “Where?”

  “Other side of the planet, and only a small team. One transport, a few dozen infantry. I think they’re a scout team and have been unsuccessful as of yet. There’s nothing else within a hemisphere of their position.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Searching some caverns by the look of it. Do you want a more thorough reconnaissance?”

  “Covertly, if you can manage it.”

  “I already have a shuttle standing by.”

  “Send it…and keep searching for other surface activity.”

  “We will.”

  Mark cut off the comm link and pulled off his helmet, lightly slamming it down on the table and interrupting whatever Boen was saying.

  “It’s not the base they want, it’s something on this planet.”

  “What do you mean?” Vornac asked.

  “The Nestafar have a small search team on the other side of the planet. We’ve got no assets there, and as far as we can tell neither do you or anyone else. They’re looking for something. So I’ll ask again…why this mountain?”

  “May I?” Vornac asked, gesturing to the central holoprojector.

  Mark nodded and the Calavari brought up a map of the base and extended it outward so they could view the entirety of the mountain/mountains it was contained within.

  “I know we desired binary access to the hangar bay so that it would be difficult to block off. We wanted our fighters to have the cover of the mountain and easy access to the skies…now we have so few left the enemy has air superiority. The secondary entrances were to provide infantry access to the slopes should we need to fight outside to flank the Cajdital if they were assaulting the bay doors.”

  “What did you plan to hit them with?” Boen asked.

  Mark glanced up at the Calavari, thinking the same thing.

  “Items that have not yet been delivered to the planet. We did not expect the Cajdital to find this world quickly, if at all. This betrayal by the Nestafar caught us unprepared.”

  “Why no defense turrets on the hangars?” Mark asked.

  “We did not expect the Cajdital to be able to penetrate the doors. They were the only defense necessary assuming we could maintain control of the skies.”

  Mark stared down at the base design, shaking his head. How could you build such a large structure and not put defense guns covering the doors? This had been designed as a ‘cover your ass’ base rather than a fortress to fight out of. A pity, given how much work they’d put into it.

  He and Boen continued plying Vornac with questions, mostly without success, until one of the Calavari builders finally arrived to shed some light on the situation.

  “There was an extensive network of caverns running through the mountain that we
expanded upon,” the slightly shorter Calavari explained. “They made it easier to hollow out the mountain, which was why this location was chosen in addition to the geographic surroundings. We wanted cover but with enough room to maneuver the fighters about and not get them boxed in during an attack. The dome of the mountain is sufficiently thick to protect the base from orbital assaults, and to maintain that thickness we had to dig down very far into the bedrock, which the caverns allowed us to access immediately.”

  Mark suppressed a smile. Now they were getting somewhere. “Were all the caverns consumed during the construction?”

  “Most were, but some ran deeper than the foundations needed to be. We sealed them off when we built over them.”

  The Archon pointed a finger at Vornac. “I’ll bet you there’s something down in those caverns that the Nestafar want badly enough to sabotage the whole alliance, and that they dug down to confirm it before they launched the assault. The access shaft to the surface is just a bonus. Where are the sealed entrances?”

  The Calavari reached its lower left arm up and scratched its wide chin, grimacing as it thought, then it reached down and highlighted half a dozen areas on the underside of the base.

  “These are guesses, and I know there’s more than that, but I’m sure these are fairly accurate.”

  Mark traced the line of the Nestafar tunnel, dipping his armored finger into the hologram and stopping where it intersected with one of the points. “There’s our mark.”

  “Says Mark,” Boen added, immediately holding up his hands in apology, but he’d had to say it.

  “10 man team,” the trailblazer said, letting it go. “Boen, pick your seven and grab Kara. We’re going in through their base.”

  “It hasn’t been secured yet,” Vornac interjected. “The fighting has ground down into a stalemate.”

  “I know, I’ve already cycled two Archon teams through there,” Mark explained, standing up straight and grabbing his helmet. “Time for a bigger push.”

  Boen slid his helmet on and rushed out of the control room, leaving Mark alone with the Calavari. “The Nestafar want what’s in those caverns. Focus your men on the tunnel entrance in the maintenance areas. If we hit them hard they may call for reinforcements and give you an opening…or maybe the other way around.”