Star Force: Empire (SF58) Read online

  That incursion was doomed to failure…or was that the point and the whole thing just a test of the ADZ defenses?

  Arvil didn’t know, for while he followed the activities of his Clan closely military matters weren’t his specialty. He stuck around long enough to see if there were any kill counts given, with a stats sheet popping up a few minutes later. A murmur of approval whispered through the crowd as they saw that the Saiyan fleet had a 19/1 kill count against the lizards, though with varying ship sizes that wasn’t always an accurate measure, but it was enough to get the point across that it had been a major beatdown.

  The two Axius fleets were marked with a 13/1 and a 15/1 count, which garnered a sense of pride in Arvil that he left the status boards with. The Clans were better than the rest of Star Force, maybe not by much in some cases, but their accused ‘obsession’ with training and rank had pressed them to a higher level, from warriors down to techs, making the Clans superior across the board.

  Now granted, it had been Axius troops and not the mainline fleets involved in the battle, and a lot of Clan personnel made up the mainline fleets, or rather ex-Clan, but Arvil took it as a positive regardless that the Saiyan fleet had outperformed the two Axius ones, and he wasn’t alone in that analysis, as most of the rest of his Clan, spread across the Core Region, would utter similar sentiments in the coming days.

  When Arvil arrived at the theater he spread the word, with the recent news consuming the chatter until the lights dropped and the vid began.

  Just beyond the edge of Beta Region Clan Meteor had an even larger fleet of warships, with some of their best naval crews hammering the Skarron defenses over one of their strongholds left isolated by the Voku’s semi-blockade of the region around Achkor. It wasn’t the first Skarron-conquered world that Star Force was taking back from them, but it was one of the largest ones they’d tried to assault and required a significant force above and beyond what the Meteors could field alone.

  No other Clans were with them, nor were there any mainline troops, instead this was the first real test of the Bsidd military. Clan Meteor was taking the lead in the assault and doing the heavy hitting, both in orbit and soon to be on the surface as well, but given that this was a ‘safe’ assault and it was highly unlikely that the Skarrons were going to get any sizeable reinforcements past the Voku, especially when all available ships were being diverted to counter the knife blade that the lizards were thrusting into Skarron territory, it had been deemed the best opportunity for the Bsidd to get their feet wet…or whatever you wanted to call the ends of their various appendages.

  Their military was new and green, but it was large. They had 5 times as many ships here as the Meteors did, and even more so in the way of ground troops. Larissa had even come out to personally lead this assault and make sure everything went smoothly, for it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. They’d brought sufficient force with them to take the planet, but it was going to be a hard fought victory like everything else, for they didn’t have enough available ships and troops to just spam the enemy out of existence…not yet anyway.

  Larissa knew the Bsidd had to get combat experience so they could pass it on to those coming up in the ranks behind them. A huge yet green military was a really bad idea, and so long as they had a mostly predictable assault like this available for them to fight and genuinely contribute to without risking the entire operation, Larissa was going to make use of it and deployed herself here to counter any unforeseen surprises.

  She was not going to take the Bsidd up against the lizards yet, for they were too devious and her Bsidd too inexperienced. While they could still win, no doubt, she could end up losing thousands of them and that wasn’t a risk she was going to take. Her Clan Meteor was going to take it to the Skarrons and the Bsidd were going to play backup, with her channeling as much responsibility their way as she thought viable, with an ongoing reassessment taking place in her mind starting as soon as the first Bsidd-controlled drone entered combat.

  Larissa knew her Clan could handle this on their own, though it would be tight and stretch out much longer than wise. Give the Skarrons too much time and they might sneak a supply convoy through or find a way to make her life hell through sheer resistance if she didn’t have a large amount of troops to work with. The trailblazer knew she could get the job done without the Bsidd, and always had that as a backup plan if something went wrong and they suddenly showed they weren’t ready, but they weren’t just here to watch and she needed them if they were going to efficiently and cleanly kick the crap out of the Skarrons and take the planet…and she intended to personally make sure that happened.

  With the orbital battle heating up she began throwing a few Bsidd warships into the fight, testing and evaluating them on the fly then gradually bringing in more and more over the coming days with their performance being satisfactory for a first outing. Had it been her Clan troops she would have been irate over the sloppiness, but the Bsidd were green and needed time to learn, and so long as it was only equipment being lost it was an acceptable price to pay for the lesson…especially since she knew what kind of industrial powerbase the Bsidd were building, with a few hundred drones being a small order in the near future as their growth rate continued to snowball.

  When Larissa sent troops to ground they were all Clan, with the Bsidd being reserved for cleanup operations and kept far from the enemy’s big walkers. The Bsidd’s own mechs didn’t see their counterparts on the battlefield until well past the halfway point in the campaign, with a few of their best being added to some Clan formations where they could protect them if things went very bad…but they didn’t, with the Bsidd mechwarriors faring better than their naval counterparts.

  But it was the infantry that stood out the most, with the larger Bsidd variants, armored in typical Star Force style, owning their Skarron counterparts. The Hobbits could barely scratch them, and the muscle behind the otherwise looking ‘spindly’ Bsidd was enough to be able to wrestle the Skarrons to the ground, even when they were wearing their own elite armor.

  Larissa fed them into the combat formations gently, not wanting to take any great risk, but even she was surprised by their effectiveness, for the original Bsidd troops had never been anything close to this strong in combat. They’d always been lightly used as cannon fodder with their numbers being their primary strength, but now that each of them was being treated as a valuable component and armored/armed as such, the future applications were literally mouthwatering with Larissa putting them in more and more combat situations against the Skarrons to get a better test of their capabilities.

  Their strategic sense was lacking, she discovered, but that was just due to them being green and would be something they’d have to work through like everyone else, but their hand to hand effectiveness was nothing short of amazing, and even their smaller infantry units were proving to be more than competent once she let them wade into combat.

  The entire campaign took some 9 months to complete, which was fast in terms of a planetary takeover, and a large part of that was due to the Bsidd being able to take on more duties than Larissa had expected and freeing up her Clan troops to make quicker and more forceful advances without having to spread out into defensive arrangements that the Bsidd were now capable of maintaining.

  At the end of it all Larissa was genuinely impressed and already making plans for tweaks to the Bsidd military structure…along with a message to the rest of the trailblazers indicating what a gem she’d stumbled across and how down the road the Bsidd were going to add so much firepower to Star Force that she didn’t even want to try and estimate the impact they’d have.

  But it was going to be huge.

  8

  August 30, 2652

  Typhis System (lizard territory)

  Hashfa

  Uxtral sat in his Valerie cockpit, waiting in standby mode as his fighter was tucked away safely inside an armored transport waiting to head down to the surface when the order was given. He’d been sitting in his angular
ship for more than 2 hours, but for some reason they were being held up with his transport sitting in middle orbit along with the rest of the non-warships as the Calavari navy continued to clean up the orbital clutter.

  The major battle had been won, and won convincingly, some three weeks ago with the Calavari breaking through the lizard defense fleet and taking out their orbital battle stations, but instead of stay and fight to the death, the surviving lizard cruisers had broken up and fled around the system. The ground offensive had been held off until they could be hunted down and killed, for their ability to aid surface troops was well known, and Uxtral and the others waiting to get into the action did not want to see one of their silhouettes approaching on the horizon once they’d entered battle.

  Their Wisp-class fighters were bad enough, not that the craft was any match for the Valerie. Star Force tech had made them even more potent than their original designs and the Calavari prided themselves on the effectiveness of the tiny craft and their being used by many allies and other factions within Star Force. The mainline and Clan aerial divisions still preferred their skeets, with a never ending conversation over which was superior, but both were far better craft than the lizard fighters, which didn’t even bother to come equipped with shields.

  Their advantage was in their numbers, for the tiny craft were agile, had decent firepower, and almost no defense. That made them easier to produce and the lizards were doing so in vast numbers. Uxtral hadn’t fought them many times to date, but when he had they were always outnumbering the Calavari at least 10 to 1 and fighting in packs, as if 5 or more of their fighters were a single unit that you had to contend with. They flanked as often as they could and whittled away at your shields and armor until one eventually broke through…and unlike going up against a single opponent, when you killed one of the wisps you only diminished the incoming firepower against you slightly, making for battles that seemed to never have a pause.

  But that was their only advantage. The lizards had even tried adding shields to their fighters once, but after several horrific encounters the heavier wisps were never seen again, for the reduction in their agility made them so much easier to kill. It was clear that the lizards were experimenting and adapting, as they always did, but more so in recent years as they tried to crack the puzzle that Star Force had become. It was true there were other races involved in the defense of the ADZ, but Star Force was the skeleton on which all others were fixed, both in terms of defenses and technology.

  The Calavari were Star Force through and through now, but they retained their individuality as a race and even Uxtral felt the debt they owed the Humans weigh on his shoulders, despite the fact he had been born well after the fall of the original Calavari empire. Star Force had rescued the survivors, preserving a few of their worlds and bringing them back into the ADZ to train on others, reshaping and enhancing the Calavari military and overall civilization into what it was now.

  Or so the stories went. Uxtral had to take their word for it, for he had never known life outside of Star Force, but he felt the urge to prove the Calavari worthy and to take on a greater share of the combat duties. The Humans had more than done their part, and many other races in the ADZ were sitting on their fat assess doing nothing. All those in Star Force were contributing in some way, and he didn’t fault any of them, but the freeloaders that sat in safety and complained about the very empire keeping them alive and prosperous irritated Uxtral and most other Calavari to no end.

  But more than that they didn’t like playing a support role. They viewed the Humans as their brothers, and the other races within Star Force as the same, only lesser so, as if they were younglings whereas the Humans were elder siblings. The Calavari wanted to rise up on par with their brothers and share the load they’d more or less been single handedly carrying while everyone else licked their wounds and used the time given to them to retool and grow.

  The Humans were still in command, or their elites were anyway, and they’d been holding the Calavari back for some time. Uxtral grudgingly agreed that it had been necessary in the past, but now was different. The Calavari race was resurgent and taking back worlds from the lizards…a few small ones here and there, but they were taking and holding them, with few reprisals coming their way. Some said it was because of the Skarron war the lizards were fighting, but Uxtral knew their enemy hadn’t been ignoring them. All along the border there were raids and full blown battles going on. No, the lizards just hadn’t found a way to deal with Star Force yet, and they weren’t committed to sending the numbers of troops and ships it would take to make for a sloppy overrun.

  And even if they did, they’d only get a few systems. Star Force had been reinforcing the border worlds for decades and now had so many Sentinels in place that there was no way the lizards could take them all out. The simply didn’t have enough ships to do so, which was why Uxtral assumed no large scale invasion had taken place. It was a stalemate, with Star Force unable to kill the lizards due to their huge territory, and the lizards unable to kill Star Force due to their Sentinel defense line and density of well-defended systems.

  Without much room to expand, Star Force had been colonizing planets that no one in their right mind would have wanted previously, but by doing so they had thickened the inhabited band of systems within the ADZ to the point where if one system were hit it wouldn’t be very long before reinforcements would arrive from the next. Given that fact, no matter how hard the lizards attacked they couldn’t get very far, and until they found a better way to fight Star Force, Uxtral assumed the enemy wasn’t going to waste resources.

  The Calavari didn’t feel like maintaining the stalemate and had been urging for a larger assault, which they now had. Hashfa was one of three inhabited planets in the system and not lightly so, for the lizards had poured more resources here than the surrounding systems, with documented supply convoys coming in on a regular basis rather than building and growing everything they needed locally. The system was a central hub of lizard activity in their territory near the Rimward Calavari cluster, and from it a mass of new lizard colonies were attempting to spread out.

  Those systems had been the targets of raids and ‘weeding’ expeditions, but Hashfa hadn’t been touched due to its stronger defenses and distance from the border. The Calavari had urged the Archons to let them hit it, knowing that it would weaken the surrounding area if it fell and set up the possibility to sweep away a dozen other systems in the following years, systems that mostly belonged to the Calavari before the fall.

  It had taken a long time, Uxtral had learned, before the Archons had granted the Calavari permission to hit it solo, though there was one caveat they had insisted upon. Right now there were two Sentinels sitting in orbit around Hashfa, one of which had only been assembled yesterday after being brought into the system in large segments. If the Calavari were going to take the system then they had to be able to hold it afterwards, and without the Sentinels that would be very hard to do when the lizards responded, as everyone assumed they would.

  This wasn’t a small target Star Force was taking away from them, and he wondered if the delay in landing ground troops was to get the Sentinels up and operational or to wait and see what kind of reinforcements the lizards sent before potentially stranding them on the ground if they were forced to flee orbit.

  Uxtral didn’t care right now, he just wanted to get into the fight and all he could do was sit and watch the battlemap as the navy did their thing. Frustration aside, it was good to see his people kicking ass in space, for rumor had it that pre-Star Force the Calavari navy sucked hard. He couldn’t understand how that was possible, but right now his brothers were hunting down and kicking the crap out of the surviving lizard fleets as they tried to ambush the cargo ships and others as the Calavari were beginning to spread out across the system to go after varying targets.

  This was by far the largest assembly of Calavari fleets to date, with them devoting a significant chunk of their overall naval forces to be able to take thi
s system without needing mainline fleet help. That had been the main emphasis when they pleaded their case to the Archons, for they knew ships were scarce with so many needs across the ADZ. They didn’t want to weaken any other positions, but felt they had enough to make this assault happen on their own.

  Uxtral had heard there had been some wrangling over that point, but eventually they’d been given the green light and here he was, all set to do his part but stuck inside a transport waiting for a release that felt like it would never come.

  After another ten minutes he began wondering if they were going to get called out of their fighters and back to their quarters, for they couldn’t stay in their cockpits all day, but then the battlemap began registering incoming jumps into planetary orbit and he realized that their arrival near the system’s star must have been detected earlier and that’s why their planetary assault had been delayed, for scores of lizard cruisers were popping up in escort of several larger battleships and dreadnaughts…enough to be a concern as the Calavari fleet was somewhat spread out between the various planets.

  But the Sentinels were here and one opened fire immediately, with the nearby Calavari ships moving aside to give them clear firing lines. The lizards didn’t hesitate and went after the Calavari warships, completely ignoring the pair of Sentinels, of which only one was currently in range of the jumppoint.

  Uxtral really wanted to get out there and fight, but his Valerie wasn’t designed for space combat. None of theirs were, as was standard Star Force military philosophy. Fighters were too small to be effective in space given the risk of the pilot, with similar sized drones being more effective, though the Calavari used none, nor did most of Star Force save for Canderous who fielded a lot of them. No, the Calavari aerial core was strictly planetary, though they did fight on airless worlds a few times.