Star Force: Origin Series (17-20) Read online

  May 8, 2262

  Epsilon Eridani System

  Corneria

  Rafa stepped over another charred piece of lizard ship armor, only to hear his boot crunch on some type of solidified goo. It looked like glass, but he was unsure of what it actually was. What had once been the forest floor at alpha point was now a junkyard. The lizards had removed all the trees in the area before Paul had finished pounding them from orbit, driving off two and destroying one of the grounded cruisers. That one lay in pieces everywhere, but now that they were on the ground searching for and eradicating any survivors, they saw there was more than just the ship remains on site.

  Rafa, like the other three trailblazers, had been hesitant to put out hunt to kill orders on lizard survivors, but after their brief experience with their previous captives they’d decided they were too intractable to try and contain. If and when they were ever able to communicate with them they would try again. They would not hold all members of their race to stereotypes, but until then if the lizards wanted to attack without mercy then they were going to return the favor.

  There had been several who’d attempted to ambush them just after the first Mantis landed. The skeet squadrons circling above and around alpha point couldn’t spot individuals in the forest or make out much from the debris field, so when the first transport unloaded a scattering of lizards came out of whatever holes they’d been hiding in and flung themselves at the Humans.

  Fortunately the first Mantis on ground had an Archon team aboard, otherwise there would have been casualties. They took a few plasma blasts to their armor but quickly eliminated the ambushers. Rafa had come in with a later team of security force snipers, who set up on site for both fire support and surveillance in the trees and some of the higher debris. More of the lizards, apparently having retreated into the tree line after the bombardment, moved back in to engage the Humans seemingly at random, attacking in such a way as to do whatever damage they could rather than try and preserve their own lives.

  Rafa got the feeling that the lizards preferred death to defeat, which meant they were going to be far more dangerous than the any Human foe they’d faced previously.

  If they had been Star Force personnel a group of Mantises would have flown in under the cover of night and extracted the survivors…but the lizards had had more than a day to come pick up their people and hadn’t. Rafa was also getting the feeling that the lizards considered their own people expendable, an attitude that Star Force would never reciprocate.

  Rafa ducked under an upside down ‘V’ shaped piece of debris as he approached the remains of the destroyed cruiser. It had been broken into pieces by the orbital rail guns, then dropped to the ground beneath it, crushing part of a structure the lizards had apparently been constructing. That explained why they had been so reluctant to retreat from the location, but after Paul had kicked their ass in space they had no way to blunt the orbital bombardment so they’d been forced to pull back.

  The two wounded cruisers were now visible on sensors, albeit dim contacts. They had stuck to the atmosphere for their initial escape, then one of them had headed up into space and broke orbit, heading elsewhere in the system. The other had remained on Corneria, bouncing around from point to point on the surface while Star Force watched to see if their movements led to any other lizard forces.

  Rafa looked up as he stepped underneath a high ledge of broken hull, wondering just how stable it all was before sliding down on his heels into a gash in the ground that had begun accumulating ground water. His silver acolyte armor punched through the tiny pond without effort, muddying the otherwise clear liquid with a tint of brownish blue as he circuitously followed the route others had made leading to the half crushed remains of the construction site directly underneath the downed cruiser.

  “Over here,” Mara said, waving him forward as she picked at a lizard control board made up of various nubs. They were dimly glowing in the dark shadows created by the overhead debris, but Rafa couldn’t make out any sort of markings on the oddly shaped buttons.

  “Is this it?” Rafa asked as she and two other Archons picked through what looked like half a command post.

  Mara pointed to another of the red-clad Archons.

  Rafa walked over to the helmeted figure, seeing the identification tag on his helmet’s heads up display read ‘Pryce-1361.’ Just under the ID floated the Arwing symbol of Clan Star Fox.

  “What have you got, Pryce?” Rafa asked, kneeling down next to the Archon as he sorted through various pieces of technological rubble, arranged into neat rows on a bit of tan bulkhead that lay stretched out on the ground.

  “I think it’s a communication device, or what’s left of it. Mobile. Something they could wear in their backpacks,” he said, pointing to one of the shoulder strapped containers off to his left. “I found this one mostly intact and got a bit of use out of it before it conked out. I’m disassembling it and a few others, trying to swap out functional pieces for the damaged ones.”

  He held up a half melted chunk for emphasis.

  “What kind of use?” Rafa asked, sensing an opportunity as his own comm unit activated.

  “Ground team heads up, incoming kirbies,” one of the skeet pilots reported. “Make out at least two dozen on a direct line to alpha point. They’re not stopping to engage us.”

  “Pack it up,” Rafa said, slipping his rifle off his back and heading outside but keeping under enough of the debris that he wouldn’t be target practice from the air. He flicked on his comm to Star Force broadcast. “Mantises get the hell out of here, don’t wait for us. Coordinate with the skeets for cover.”

  Pryce walked up beside him as the trailblazer searched the part of the sky visible to him. “Teamcomm, I think. It was picking up the locations of the other packs, a pair of which looked to be out in the forest.”

  “We missed a few?”

  “Far out.”

  “Outposts?”

  “That’d be my guess, but it looks like we’ve got more important things to worry about at the moment,” he said as a pair of the Mantises rose up into the air and spread out their retractable wings as they angled off over the edge of the forest and away from the approaching transports.

  “Mara, get your Clan to the forest. Targets of opportunity,” Rafa ordered.

  “What about you?” she asked, coming up behind the pair.

  “Meet and greet.”

  “Keeping all the fun for yourself,” she said, tagging Pryce on the shoulder to get him to follow her off through the rubble. Rafa stuck to cover but repositioned to give himself a better view of the incoming threat.

  “Skeets, report direction of incoming kirbies.”

  “North northwest,” one of the Saber pilots replied.

  Rafa glanced around, looking for a good ambush position and guessing where the kirbies would set down to offload. He really wished he had more than just his plasma rifle to fight with, but he’d have to make do.

  Running across the busted up landscape, he veered around the base of the building the lizards had been constructing, which had been crushed as the cruiser fell down atop it. Further away there were more buildings that had been protected by the other two cruisers that had fled. Most of those had taken rail gun rounds, but enough of the structures were left to offer good firing positions.

  Rafa headed to the one nearest the forest, offering him an escape route should things get too hot. As he did he saw Saber and Star Fox security forces scrambling for cover. The latter were heading for the forest edge some distance away while the Sabers were splitting up, some heading for the edges while others were digging into cover under rubble and setting up to ambush the kirbies when they landed.

  Some of them had heavy weapons, which would be useful against the incoming transports in the air, but Rafa was going to have to wait for their troops to hit the ground before getting into the fight so he chose an overhang within the broken walls of a cluster of three buildings and waited.

  Several minutes later
the first sounds of the approaching kirbies could be heard, then suddenly two of them buzzed the site without attempting to drop off any troops. They passed by quickly, disappearing over the forest edge before circling around out of sight and coming back in at half speed. They immediately opened fire into the rubble field, throwing tiny orbs of green plasma down at unseen targets.

  Rafa frowned. They were targeting the downed cruiser, and he didn’t think they’d left any troops there.

  “Who are they shooting at?” he asked on broadcast.

  Silence answered him before Mara finally responded. “All my men are clear.”

  “Any Sabers getting shot at?” Rafa asked again. “Anyone with eyes on what they’re hitting?”

  “Something in the wreckage under the cruiser,” a Saber sniper reported from the forest edge, positioned high up in one of the trees.

  “Not here for us then,” Rafa said to himself as he watched the two kirbies slow to a hover and pound at something from high up in the air. Soon more of the transports arrived, some joining the aerial assault while others circled around to the landing ‘zone’ in front of Rafa where there was the least rubble and began setting down.

  When the side door of one of them opened and lizards began spilling out a streak of smoke stretched out from a piece of rubble and tracked directly to it, entering the open bay and detonating inside. A dozen or more lizards were blown out of the hold and the kirby was knocked askew, but it didn’t go down. Its gun ports opened up and a return salvo of plasma bolts tracked towards the forest edge where the smoke trail from the missile led.

  Two more kirbies zoomed across the debris field, tracking the source of the missile and lit up that section of forest, cutting down two of the larger trees with repeated plasma hits to the trunks while the rest shredded the local vegetation, some setting off small fires in pockets of dry underbrush.

  A pair of missiles arced up from another location and hit one of the transports, exploding against the shields with the first hit and penetrating with the second, leaving a nasty black smear on the yellow/tan ship. Three more missiles came at it from varying positions inside the perimeter, one of which hit the bridge bump on the bottom of the nose, cracking the glass and probably killing the pilot. Rafa couldn’t tell for sure because the ship started spinning wildly as its rear end dipped when the gravity drive in that portion was blown off by another missile.

  The kirby spun about erratically, gradually coming down to the ground while another hastily pulled out of its path. It hit tail first and flipped over, whacking the nose down into the ground and spraying dirt up like a water fountain, a few bits of which made it all the way over to Rafa’s position, bouncing harmlessly off his armor. He watched the crashed ship settle in, then saw a previously unidentified hatch pop open and start spilling out troops who slid across the smooth hull before dropping off the edge down to the ground.

  Eight more kirbies zoomed in to track down the missile launchers, blasting at every bit of movement they saw while the rest continued to destroy strategic components of rubble, as if uninterested in the Human presence. Half of the hunters set down and began spilling out more troops, with several of the lizards falling to the ground from sniper fire the moment they left the transport.

  One set down less than 150 meters from Rafa, its main door on the far side. He could see under it from his crouched position as dozens of tiny legs emerged and spread out. Guessing as to how many were there Rafa took off sprinting towards the ship, hoping its pilots were too busy looking at the battle happening on the far side to see the lone Archon approaching them from behind.

  He got halfway up to it before one of the gun ports rotated about to track him, with Rafa immediately beginning a zigzag, which made him run further to get to his destination while making it harder for the ship to track him.

  A large gout of soil and metallic debris blew out to his left as the ship fired on him. Bits bounced off his armor as he was buffeted to the right by the blast, then he cut back left for three steps before jerking back again to the right. The ship got one more shot off before Rafa slid up next to the hull and began running around the aft end, cautious to keep his head below the gun ports and as close to the ship as possible to stay below their firing arcs.

  When he came around the far side the lizards were already dispersing. He held fire and sprinted up to the door behind them, reattached his rifle on his back, and jumped up, catching his waist on the elevated foot of the door and pulled himself in.

  The dimly lit hold was large and empty, with a forklift and several other pieces of equipment jammed into wall niches. Rafa rolled up onto his feet and drew his weapon, then glanced out the door. The other lizards still had their attention on the fighting and hadn’t seen him slip behind them.

  Smiling inside his helmet, he ran ahead and slipped into the bridge, finding three pilots on their curious seats. Their tails were sticking out of a section of the backrest that was deliberately missing so they wouldn’t have to sit on them. While that offered him a decent target he knew a tail shot alone wouldn’t kill them so he walked forward and kicked one of the chairs around on its swivel and shot the surprised lizard in the head.

  The other two immediately turned and Rafa hit them both with head shots…the second of which took three tries to connect as the creature ducked to the side and tried to draw a sidearm. With them dead he retreated back into the hold and made a quick search of the area, insuring there were no other lizards. The lavatory and engine compartment in the back were clear, so Rafa ran back out to the open bay door and took up a sniper position along the edge and began shooting the departing lizards in the back that were still in range.

  He nailed four, but the rest had already gotten out of his effective range. He could have tried for the longer shots but instead chose to drop out of the hold and run off towards the nearest cover on the right, content with taking one of the kirbies out of action.

  As he did he saw a streak flash by overhead as a skeet made a strafing run on one of the kirbies still in the air bombarding the debris. A flash of blue plasma, barely visible long enough to be recognized hit one of their shields and broke through as three other kirbies attempted return fire that missed badly. By the time Rafa ducked behind half a wall some 200 meters away another skeet flew over and targeted the same ship, followed by a third. The Archon knew that given enough time their aircraft would pick the slower transports apart, so he wasn’t sure what their end game was…unless they had a cruiser en route.

  Rafa couldn’t do anything about that now, so he focused on following the group of lizards that had come off the kirby. He had to take an evasive route through the rubble to keep from making too good a target for the orbiting kirbies overhead firing down on any resistance they detected. As he got close to a group of three of the lizards taking cover he noticed others picking through some of the rubble.

  He frowned and redirected their way, watching them as he snuck up and opened fire on the closest one.

  The others all jumped into action when the first one fell, hefting their plasma rifles and covering the piece of lizard concrete that Rafa jumped behind with holes as the plasma blew out tiny craters. The bits of rubble acted like fragmentation grenades, stalling the lizards from advancing on his position.

  Suddenly he poked out at a random position some 20 meters down to their right firing, hitting one in the armored vest before disappearing again. The lizard dropped to a knee, inspecting the damage and breathing heavily but still alive. Another shot appeared from a different angle and hit a second lizard in the unarmored arm, making it jump around in pain for a few seconds as Rafa repositioned again.

  He kept up the hit and run movements until the lizards decided to come into the heavier rubble after him…which was a mistake. At close range the Archon’s shots became more accurate and his fists and feet allowed him extra weapons. He took down the lizards in twos and threes, using the terrain to his advantage before the stragglers finally got wise and retreated. Rafa got two
in the back on the way out then had to duck for cover as a kirby flew overhead and started blasting his position.

  Rafa held close to a wall with a bit of roof remaining in the corner to keep out of sight, but he quickly discovered he wasn’t the target…or at least not the only target. When he jumped across to another section of cover one of the kirbies’ gun ports fired on him, but the others were blasting away at something on the ground, probably whatever the lizards had been searching for.

  There was no way he was going to take down a kirby in the air, even if the shields weren’t up, so he crisscrossed his way between cover over to where the lizards were fighting his people holed up underneath a piece of the downed cruiser. He jumped three from behind and scared four more out of cover, then a sniper took them apart as Rafa dove under a small lean-to of rubble when two plasma blasts came his way.

  He helped the Sabers fight off the lizard assault until another shrill, mechanical whistle blistered the air and the creatures began to retreat en mass as more skeet strafing runs flew by overhead. Rafa hesitated for a moment to let them get moving and their backs turned away before he broke from cover and ran down as many of them as he could. He got four before a grounded kirby made him veer away as it covered its retreating troops, some of which Rafa noticed were carrying small bits of wreckage with them.

  Before he could find anyone else to shoot at the kirby lifted off in a hurry and vanished across the tree line with the others. Several downed transports remained behind, but 16 flew off intact with whatever it was they were here to recover, the skeets hounding them as they left until they gained enough speed to make strafing runs impossible. The pilots still nibbled at their heels a bit then let them go, coming up against too concentrated fire coming out of their combined aft arc to continue with the assault and their plasma fuel charges running low.

  Rafa picked his way out of the rubble and helped the others police the downed lizards, killing any who weren’t completely dead and recovering their weapons. Afterwards, after getting assurances from the orbiting skeets that there were no more contacts incoming, he toured the debris fields and examined the areas that the lizards had targeted, hoping to find something valuable remaining.