Star Force: Evasion (Wayward Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  “That’s our best hope?”

  “I don’t know,” Rammak admitted. “I’m just holding this outpost and securing an evac route. The Archons will decide what to do, and if we lose all of them the more experienced Commandos will. They understand the contingency plans better than me.”

  “Riiight,” Esna said with a yawn. “Ok, I’ll get some sleep. Wake me up when the base gets hit. I want to see what happens, no matter how bad it is.”

  “I promise I’ll wake you. Don’t worry about anything other than rest right now.”

  “And food,” Esna added as she walked over and started digging into her pack. “How much extra water do we have?”

  Rammak’s helmet tilted to the side as he looked at her. “It’s an ice planet.”

  “Oh. Right,” she said, feeling stupid. Apparently her brain was already half asleep.

  Esna grabbed a couple food cubes and started chewing, deciding it was best to take the Calavari’s advice and not think about anything other than recovering her strength until her head cleared of fatigue as well.

  “Esna, wake up.”

  Jolting her with a finger to her ribcage, Esna woke up with a jerk and tried to clear her eyes of haze. She recognized Rammak’s voice, but little else for several seconds as her blissful sleep was interrupted.

  “What?” she mumbled.

  “The base assault has begun.”

  “The what?” she asked groggily, then the meaning of his words hit her like a lag delay. “How long…have I been asleep?”

  “11 hours,” he said, leaving her be and retreating to wherever he had come from.

  “11 hours!” Esna all but cursed, pulling her legs out of bed and feeling them flop on the floor. Her head rushed with a stress headache, but after a few seconds it cleared and she forced herself to stand up…then sat back down when she realized her shoes were off and sitting beside her bunk.

  “Ugh,” she moaned, bending over to reach them and slipping them back on, then she wobbled her way out of one of the outpost’s bunk rooms that had beds stacked on top of each other, some four high in places. She’d been using the lowest one, but Esna could have sworn she’d only been in it for 45 minutes, maybe an hour tops.

  With every step she took her body seemed to wake up more and the strength that such a long rest should have produced seemed to manifest itself out of nowhere, but she was still yawning when she reached the room where Rammak was sitting and watching a battlemap holo displayed over a small circular table that she sat down at on the far side.

  “They have to choose between targeting the Ultra or the smaller Viks,” Rammak said, pointing at the various icons as the map was zoomed out too far to make out the shapes save for the big one. “They can’t target both and accomplish much, so it looks like they’re trying to kill the smaller ones. Take out as many of them as they can with the big base defense batteries here.”

  Rammak pointed to a trio of icons located in the ice wall near the hangar where she’d first arrived and zoomed in the map, eliminating most of the mechs and Viks from view but leaving the Ultra its flanking units, the latter of which were getting hard hit by energy orbs flying out from behind heavily shielded emplacements. The Viks were pounding on them with weaponsfire from the Ultra and the escorts, most of which were Wass’mat and Hjar’at, and all were firing their mechanical and biological weapons at the targets.

  The big Ultra wasn’t getting hit at all as it continued to walk forward with the others trying to take some cover behind it when they got hit, but several Star Force mechs in the area wouldn’t let them. The Viks weren’t targeting them either, knowing they had to pour their full firepower into the…

  Suddenly one of the icons winked out and the biggest of the base defense guns were now down to two. Smaller ones equivalent to what the mechs had were still peppering the Viks, but the largest kill power had been reduced by a third.

  Esna watched in silence as more of the smaller Viks fell, littering the field behind the Ultra as it and the survivors took out the other two big guns, then the giant Deo’mat turned its attention to the lesser base defense weaponry as its remaining escorts turned to fight the mechs that were putting additional shots into the fallen Hjar’at to insure they could not be revived later.

  Their efforts were halted as they now had to fight the others, but Esna could see it was already a lost cause…and the Vik reinforcements hadn’t even arrived yet. They’d attacked without them and had gotten all the way up to the base, and as soon as the Ultra finished off the defenses around the hangar tunnel it could join the others in cleaning up the mechs.

  But that wasn’t to happen, because the remaining base defenses helped the nearby mechs to finish off the escorts just before the last wall turret was destroyed, but by the time the Ultra turned its attention to them the Star Force mechs had run off to join the others battle sites around the perimeter where most of the fighting was going down.

  “Why didn’t they all fight here?”

  “The less firepower the Viks had to throw against the base defenses the longer they would last and the more damage they would do,” Rammak explained. “The mechs circled around and would have attacked from the Viks rear had they not gone out to engage them.”

  “Why would that matter?” she asked, then got an education as the ice field in front of the hangar exploded across a wide swath that caught the Ultra as it tried to run off towards the other battles. Esna hoped it had died, but when the frosty clouds cleared she saw it walking slowly over the now jagged ice, but without any visible damage.

  “What just happened?”

  “The approach was mined. If Star Force could have pinned all the V’kit’no’sat there it would have done a lot of damage. They probably detected them and knew not to bring everyone across that path.”

  “And they couldn’t do it with our mechs there?”

  “Right.”

  “But they didn’t hurt the Ultra.”

  “Its shields are probably low, but no, they didn’t hurt it. They just delayed it from getting to the others. Look,” he said as it turned around and headed back towards the base. “It’s going to start blasting into the ice or try to get into the hangar because it knows it can’t get to the others in time and they can’t run to it with all that jagged terrain.”

  “Where are their flying ones?”

  “All dead or down. We took them out, but only have a few skeets left,” Rammak said, pointing to the furthest of the battle sites that were still mostly broken up by V’kit’no’sat races. “They’re doing what they can to help, but they can’t slug it out with the bigger ones and they’ve got little chance of doing any damage to the Ultra even if it didn’t fire back.”

  “Where are the Zen’zat?”

  “Here,” Rammak said, zooming out and indicating a position of vehicles holding back out of the fight, though two were showing damage. “The skeets hit them briefly, but other than that they haven’t been involved in the fighting. My guess is that the Ultra is going to pound an entrance inside one way or another and try to trigger any traps before they bring the Zen’zat in.”

  “And the shield generator?”

  “There are multiple sites, all buried under the ice on the upper plain and with defenses of their own. If we can kill enough of the others, the Ultra will have to take damage to eliminate them. That’s why I think the Archons are forcing the fight here. To peel away and permanently kill as many Viks as they can before the reinforcements arrive. They want them to come inside with the Zen’zat.”

  “That’s good for us?”

  “It’s less bad and will keep the shield up longer,” Rammak said as a comm prompt popped up next to the battlemap.

  Esna read it, for it was a simple message with no visuals or voice, and it gave her a chill that wasn’t coming from the air or surrounding ice.

  Base evacuation beginning. Prepare to shield and shelter evacuees.

  8

  June 18, 4812

  Orlero System (Devastat
ion Zone)

  Tauntaun

  Over the following 2 days Rammak and Esna had little to do but watch the battlemap vids coming in from the base. Star Force put up one hell of a defense outside with the mechs popping in and out of subterranean access points and actually using hidden tunnels to move from one area to another where the Viks couldn’t track them. The few remaining skeets held the air and were a persistent nuisance, flying so low to the ground sometimes that Esna thought they would crash for sure going through the various ravines, but they never did of their own accord. Two she saw shot down, but the mechs were able to get to the pilots and retrieve them before the Viks could finish them off.

  The remaining mechs harassed and engaged in places of their choosing, with the Viks seeming to be content to chase after them and ignore the base and the Ultra smashing around the exterior. Star Force never fully engaged the armored behemoths unless they had an advantage and kept trying to draw the Viks into still intact turret defenses further around the perimeter. They got them so far off once that the mechs ducked into their concealed tunnels and disappeared…only to pop up again near the Ultra.

  They attacked it from range while it was nearly stuck in an ice cave of its own making as it avoided the defenses in the approach to the hangar and worked to make its own route through the ice wall to the base interior where Star Force wouldn’t have any surprises waiting. The mechs came at it tail-side where it had the least weapons all the while knowing not to engage it with the neos or Voltrons hand to hand, for the hard club on the tail could knock them over with one swing…and then smash them into the ground with repetitive hits.

  So the mechs fired with ranged weapons as the Deo’mat backed out, firing some leg cannons but not doing much damage until it came out into the funnel-like entrance it had knocked down into the ice wall and swung around, firing with weapons placed all over its body and in particular four larger weapons on its head. Each of those was a Sat’chi and fired teal orbs that exploded massive chunks of ice when they missed the mechs, but not so much damage when they hit their shields.

  The problem was the weapons, while deadly enough, were set in a cluster of four and had a rapid rate of fire. That made them a chewing attack rather than a one hit wonder and the mechs had to fight an organized retreat to keep those being targeted behind the few Voltrons left. Altogether there were some 53 mechs assaulting the Deo’mat Ultra, and even by catching it in an awkward position they weren’t able to do more than take its mechanical shields down and scratch up a little of its armor before the incoming reinforcements dropped their null shield and sent a column of Tavi’lo through the sky towards them.

  The rest of the hidden reinforcements turned out to be little more than additional troops from all 7 races, but when they got to the base the mechs weren’t going to be able to do more than harass from extreme range. So once they retreated to their underground tunnels the Ultra was safe with air cover now protecting it and continued to pound its way through the ice.

  The Tavi’lo then went off to chase the few remaining skeets who led them on a long chase beyond the base, apparently trying to stall the attackers as much as they could. Then the mechs reappeared up top on the ice plain and Esna thought they were going to try to shoot down into the crevice the Ultra was expanding upon, but that wasn’t the plan at all. Rather the long necked biped Vivokat had been scaling another portion of the cliffs that allowed them to get precarious footholds. Combined with their natural jumping ability, the mech-sized Viks hopped up the side in spurts until they were at the top, but the mechs got to them before they could all make it up.

  They fought a hard battle there against the Vivokat and the Tavi’lo that returned to help, in addition to a few Zen’zat carriers that brought the tiny troops up to assist with going after the pilots inside the broken and limping mechs that were eventually forced to retreat. Esna saw some of the pilots get rescued, but others had little Zen’zat dots sprinting across the ice and onto their fallen machines, then digging down inside them until they got to the pilots and killed them.

  The mechs continued to decline in number and tried to delay the Viks as much as possible, but just before the Ultra busted through into a random wall of the base, the Vivokat group made their way over the upper ice plain to the anti-orbital guns and attacked them directly while the Zen’zat broke their way into the mech tunnels and began scouting them out.

  The shield generators were not so exposed, buried deep under the ice, but the weapons necessarily had to be and were only protected by armor plating and some secondary shielding and defense turrets that the Viks broke through eventually. They didn’t get so reckless as to attack hard enough to lose many of their own, rather attacking long enough to take a turret or two down then backing off, recharging shields, and going back in again. They weren’t able to remain untouched, however, but the few Vivokat that did go down either revived themselves or responded to Zen’zat assistance soon thereafter with all walking or at least crawling away.

  Then when the Ultra broke through, the base invasion began but not just with Zen’zat, who poured through the gap in the thousands, but also the smaller Per’tal. The quadrupeds were bigger than the Zen’zat, but what awkwardness they might experience in the Star Force hallways they would make up for with armor and shielding, for the quadrupeds were longer than they were narrow, and the Archons, Commandos, and Knights quickly used that against them by almost always attacking them from the rear and making them find a way to turn around.

  Meanwhile the other Viks outside had resupply bases set up that expanded out of the Zen’zat craft, allowing them to repair armor, eat, and even sleep…with the Ultra laying down on a giant ‘blanket’ as far as Esna could tell along with a lot of other larger Viks while the smaller ones guarded the perimeter and tried to hunt down the remaining mech tunnel exits and destroy them.

  The fighting inside the base was much more even, with Star Force having the advantage of terrain and the V’kit’no’sat having the numbers…not to mention mass, for the Per’tal were so strong. They looked a little bit like Nor’far had, only larger, and none of the Zen’zat were riding them. Star Force had numerous shields blocking hallways and armored doors slamming shut, most of which the Per’tal were tasked with breaking through, many times in the face of explosive traps Star Force had set up, but as Rammak pointed out a few times the Viks could see them and avoid them, for they had the ability to look through walls the same way the Archons and Mavericks did.

  But they didn’t see all of them, for the parts of the base that the Viks were taking were chewed up with blast craters, some of which destroyed entire rooms and in a few places let ice chunks fall in from above, but as Esna watched the areas visible to her on the battlemap slowly diminished as cameras were destroyed in the fighting and the Zen’zat behind the front lines moved around, found, and eliminated the others.

  By the time the first evacuees made it to Esna and Rammak, the Viks had already darkened a fifth of the base on the battlemap, but Star Force seemed intent on making them pay dearly for every corridor and chamber they took.

  Esna knew the techs were coming before they got to the outpost thanks to the security systems surrounding it, so she had the door open and was waiting for them while Rammak continued to monitor all four tunnels just in case a Zen’zat or other threat had slipped through somehow. She watched the techs approach in their armor-like envirosuits that kept them safe from the cold and jagged objects, but wouldn’t offer much protection in a firefight. All of them were running in the slow leaps of low gravity, but when they got to her and stepped inside two of them also fell to the ground briefly, making Esna feel a little better, for they appeared to be as exhausted as she had been.

  She stepped aside, giving them room to get in but they didn’t stagger around or start talking. As soon as they were into normal gravity and beyond the atmospheric shield keeping the warm air inside they began taking off their envirosuits which retracted down into nothing but a pair of really tall boots for t
he Humans and other small garments for the others.

  Esna saw a couple of Protovic, who added extra lighting to the outpost with their bioluminescent skin, many Kiritas who were hop/walking further in and immediately went to the supply crates, and a pair of female Calavari that were much smaller than Rammak, but who were carrying backpacks over their envirosuits.

  Out of those backpacks leapt a contingent of Irondel, who were only a handful of inches tall. They fell to the ground without harm then began running off through the outpost to do what Esna didn’t know, but they weren’t wasting any time about it.

  Behind them came more Humans, a tall but thin Critel, and a mix of others. Esna counted 48 plus however many Irondel there were being smuggled in before the Bsidd arrived. They came in an organized train of skittering mandibles wearing envirosuits that covered over most of their torso gaps, making them look the most normal she’d seen until they started peeling them back into tiny pouches attached to various rib/tube things. Their anatomy was still a mystery to her, but she recognized the pair of soldiers that followed them in, after which there were no more people coming within sight.

  “Close up,” one of the Bsidd said, with Esna hitting the door controls and sealing them all in, then the soldiers headed for the control room where Rammak was and Esna followed them as everyone else was a combination of busy and sucking air, for they’d made the trip out here in less than a day.

  Esna retracted her helmet, which pooled itself as a cluster of parts behind her neck, rather than disconnecting it entirely and walked up next to Rammak who had his similarly retracted.

  “Orders?” the Calavari asked.

  “Hold here until the base falls, then we’ll evaluate,” one of the Bsidd said, with Esna having to tilt her chin up to look at the three heads that towered above her, though she could see the female Calavari walk into the room through the gaps in the nearest Bsidd.