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  Half an hour later the Zen’zat were leaving, either in drop pods or on speeders, with the largest building in the landing zone being the only one visibly intact…at least until the power cells overloaded and the whole thing blew with a mushroom cloud that the warships could not have missed.

  Before they could have a chance to come after them Rajamal and the Zen’zat were gone, but as they got time to digest what was going on elsewhere they realized that the Oso’lon and J’gar probably didn’t care, for they were racking up so many shield generator takedowns that it didn’t matter, though Rajamal was surprised they had let one of their own die without support.

  Maybe they were that desperate for a victory here, but even with these heavy losses they were a long way from the planetary defense station with a lot more shield generators to take between here and there…but in the meantime there was fighting still going on everywhere, and Rajamal intended to diminish the Rit’ko’sor count as much as possible, for they were by far the most effective ground troops in play, and even the Ter’nat in vehicles had little chance to defend themselves against their lethal swiftness.

  As Rajamal flew his speeder towards the fight with a second Zen’zat perched behind him, he mentally added another Oso’lon kill to his lifetime tally, bringing it up to 4, but he didn’t feel any pride here. There were too many enemies for him to kill, and both Zen’zat and especially Ter’nat were dying rapidly. He knew he couldn’t save them all, but if victory was to be had here it was going to be in whether or not they held the planet. For no matter how many Oso’lon he killed here, if the warships were able to sit up in the sky and bombard everything, what would be the point?

  At the very end of this campaign would be the planetary defense station, and the enemy did not have anywhere near enough ships to tackle it. They’d have to go over ground and hope to get some massive troop reinforcements, otherwise they didn’t have a chance. But then again they might just kill all the Ter’nat on the planet elsewhere and call their mission complete, for the planetary defense station couldn’t shelter even a small fraction of their numbers beneath its strong shield generator, let alone inside the pyramid itself.

  Rajamal didn’t intend to let it go that far. They needed to hold them far from the pyramid to preserve a large amount of Ter’nat, and the enemy had them at a disadvantage now with the Rit’ko’sor and the subsurface tunnels. The tunnels he could handle in time personally, but if more enemy troops kept arriving…

  He just hoped more Zen’zat would arrive to help their brothers. If not, and the enemy kept getting sporadic reinforcements…then this was going to be a very long and bloody campaign. And one that might ultimately end in failure.

  Rajamal didn’t know what was going to happen, but he was determined to fight it out here. For if they couldn’t hold a Ter’nat colony with a planetary defense station, how could they hope to hold any of the others? If the Ter’nat were to survive, if the Zen’zat were to survive, then they had to hold this planet…or run out to the Rim like the Oso’lon had suggested.

  8

  March 19, 128821

  Iom System (Midzan Region)

  Puvvcor (Ter’nat colony)

  Rajamal was on a sleep cycle, recovering from another battle to hold a shield generator that had cost him two Zen’zat, but he’d killed 16 Rit’ko’sor and more Bo’ja than he could count. Still, it wasn’t worth the Zen’zat, one of which he’d known for more than 300,000 years. This attrition was destroying the Zen’zat as much as the Ter’nat eradication. If they couldn’t get replacements, and the veterans were gradually knocked off, then the Zen’zat were going to end up nothing more than a memory with a few survivors scattered across the galaxy.

  He woke to another alarm, barely getting 3 hours and feeling drained. With so many battles to fight he was involving himself personally in as many as he could, and the enemy was sending out constant harassment attacks between their major pushes to keep him and the Zen’zat where they wanted them while setting up for attacks elsewhere with their mile deep tunnels that the warships were having a hard time detecting until they came back up near the surface…and sometimes not even then.

  Rajamal assumed another one had broken through, for his Zen’zat would not have woke him for a skirmish so early into a sleep cycle. They knew his Jumat tissues, not to mention his other psionics, needed recharge and without it he wasn’t going to be able to fight to his fullest. The alarm would not have sounded in his quarters within the pyramid unless something significant was underway.

  He pulled himself out of the egg-like bunk feet first then pivoted up and over the edge, dropping down and jogging to the lavatory to empty out, then when he went to grab a set of armor someone finally arrived in the otherwise empty barracks to tell him what was going on.

  “We have help,” a rookie Zen’zat by the name of Argul said with uncertain look on his face.

  “Who has arrived?”

  “Star Force has. Three ships, one Warship-class, one troop transport, and one MCV-class. They are Meintre, one of their Knight races, and they are claiming that they are here to annex the Ter’nat. They ordered the J’gar and Oso’lon out of the system, but they aren’t leaving.”

  “Annex?” Rajamal asked, his groggy mind sharpening rapidly.

  “Apparently Director Davis pulled the entire Meintre fleet away from other duties, including the Hadarak front, and tasked them with safeguarding and annexing the Ter’nat into their empire.”

  “Only one warship?”

  “Yes, but it’s bigger than anything in the system.”

  “Where am I needed?”

  “The Meintre are in orbit and have launched dropships with troops aboard. They’re here to fight and they’re not suffering any delay. They’ve also instructed us that we are not to touch any prisoners they take, or there will be consequences.”

  “What class is the troop transport?”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t check, but it’s bigger than the warship.”

  “Where are their dropships headed?”

  “Everywhere the enemy is.”

  Rajamal walked over to a wall niche and pulled out a small vial of ambrosia and drank it all. His head was going to start buzzing with the overload, but he needed as much in his tissues as possible before he went into combat again. He chose the psionic-resistant armor and climbed into it, with the hard plates wrapping around his body and snugging up tightly while leaving his head uncovered.

  “I need transport.”

  “There’s one holding for you on the north pad, tier 3. Should I come with you?”

  “You can travel with me, but not into combat. Find somewhere you can contribute without getting killed. That won’t be where I’m going.”

  “Where are you going?” Argul asked as Rajamal ran out of the barracks with the younger Zen’zat following off his left shoulder.

  “Wherever the worst fighting breaks out. One troop transport isn’t going to be enough to overwhelm them and the Oso’lon know it.”

  “But why stay and risk getting into a war with Star Force?”

  “If they only sent one warship then Star Force probably doesn’t have the fleets to spare to fight a war with Itaru unless they abandon the Hadarak front. One warship sent here is either an attempt to preserve the planet or bluff them into retreat. The Oso’lon are calling that bluff, as would I.”

  “You think the dropships will turn around?”

  “No. I think they’re going to fight, but victory is not assured beyond the shield generators. The J’gar still have the warship advantage, but with the Meintre we now have the advantage on the ground and need to use it before they have a chance to get additional reinforcements…”

  By the time Rajamal got to the waiting gunship the Meintre already had some troops on the ground in 4 different locations across the planet, meaning he had to choose where to go. All were locations of the deepest incursions into Ter’nat territory, and the planetary shields were dropping momentarily to let them down while keepin
g the enemy warships out…but along with them came some naval drones slipping under the shields, and that was something the enemy would not tolerate.

  Their warships responded by leaving their waiting positions over the horizon and moved to assault the nearest of the locations where troops were going down in order to punch through the shields and take down the generator, after which they could deal with the drones underneath as well as the Ter’nat vessels beginning to rush there.

  The V’kit’no’sat warships were also moving to respond, but it was the Star Force warship and troopship that raced to get there first. The latter carried no drones but was still decently armed and, more importantly, over 30 miles long. Even if it didn’t have a single weapon on it, it could soak up so much damage from the other targets to be useful…but it did have weapons to defend itself with, heavy shields and thick armored plates beneath. It could take a pounding, and it was heading to one of the other 3 locations while the warship was going to the point where just about every other naval asset was heading for a massive throw down far from the firing range of the planetary defense station.

  If Itaru’s forces wanted to assault the shield generator, they’d have to pound it while giving the V’kit’no’sat and Star Force free shots at them…which they couldn’t allow. That meant the naval fight had to be resolved first, giving the ground forces their own time to settle things face to face, and it looked like the Meintre were not giving the enemy time to stall. They were dropping in perilously close to the Oso’lon tunnel heads, but they had aerial craft with them providing cover as the dropships skimmed the ground delivering infantry and the larger Meintre troops, each of which was a hexped far smaller than an Oso’lon, but still huge compared to the Zen’zat and Bo’ja.

  “Take me there, then head east and link up with the Ter’nat column,” Rajamal ordered the pilot, then he moved to the boarding hatch and commanded the door to open as he waited. When his tactical grid said he was over the approximate area he jumped out, using his limited anti-grav to slow his descent to one of the rooftops 100 meters below.

  Rajamal hit, rolled, and came up running…then he jumped off the roof and reversed his body so he could drag a hand on the wall and, using his grip pad on it, ride the wall all the way to the ground as if he was dropping down a rope.

  The area where he hit was long deserted of Ter’nat civilians, and a quick check with his Pefbar confirmed that, but the sounds of combat ahead were intensifying and he needed to get there as quickly as he could, though his legs were still fatigued and his head buzzing. The latter would go away as he fought, but the fatigue would not. He’d have to deal with it, for even at half strength he was more powerful than any of the Zen’zat on the planet.

  He ran at a decent pace, using his armor to help increase his stride, then came up on the rear formation of Ter’nat assault vehicles moving forward in the direction he was heading. Rajamal ran up to, then hopped on top of one as he passed them by, for they could not move too fast on the city streets with all the 60 degree turns, for this area had been laid out in a triangle grid.

  Rajamal hopped from one vehicle to another until he got past them, then cut across the alleys where the vehicles could not go. He ran and ran until he finally came up on a Star Force landing zone just as a dropship was taking off, having emptied its hold of a variety of biped infantry, some of which were four-armed Calavari, a lot of two-armed bipeds of various races, and a pair of others that he had not expected to find here.

  The Star Force troops saw him coming up on them but didn’t turn around, save for the pair. They ran over to Rajamal and matched stride with him, doing a quick rework of their comm systems so they could talk to each other while still encoded.

  “Holy shit, Rajamal. I had no idea it was you,” one of the Star Force Zen’zat said once his ID popped up on the battlemap. “Why are you running so slow?”

  “Not enough sleep,” he said, recognizing the voice of an old acquaintance as they continued to run together towards the sounds of battle ahead. “How are you with Star Force?”

  “We switched sides back with Tamprani and have been fighting Hadarak until the Meintre were recalled. Most of us volunteered to go with them, so we’ve got a decent Zen’zat force mixed in here. No way in hell we’re letting them take this planet, or any other. The Ter’nat are our responsibility now, and we’re going to protect our own.”

  “How do the Meintre compare to the Oso’lon?”

  “Don’t worry about them, just don’t kill any of their targets unless necessary. They want to kick the bastards out rather than kill them, and unless our lives are in jeopardy we’ve got stun orders that we have to follow.”

  “This is not a lopsided fight,” Rajamal protested as a Meintre ahead of them came into view around a building corner. He was running forward as well, but beginning to take lobbing fire from some target ahead, though his shields protected him from it as if it were no more than a light rain.

  “Yeah it is. I know you’re stronger than us, but we’ve been upgraded heavily. Follow us in and pile on, you’re not going to be able to link in, so when we give you directional orders follow them. A lot of our attacks are energy bands stretching between us.”

  “Additional psionics?” Rajamal asked, finally seeing the fixed emplacements ahead that the Oso’lon had added around the tunnel entrance.

  “Pa’no’semak, Rajamal. They’re psionics we all have in our genome that were buried deep and never discovered. The V’kit’no’sat put them there and Star Force found them. Now we all have them unlocked, but for the tier 3s we’re on our own to earn, either the normal route or through leveling up enough to warrant a medical unlock. I don’t have your Jumat, but in groups we’re far superior to the original Zen’zat…just not you. But let us make first strike so you can see before you throw down.”

  “Go,” he said simply, letting them get a few steps ahead as the Meintre was doing a good job of being hard to catch as it ran to catch up with some others…then the first of the Oso’lon came into view, or rather it’s head, over the top of a side building…which was when Rajamal began picking up Bo’ja on his Pefbar.

  He followed the two Zen’zat in Star Force armor around a curve right into the middle of a firefight between Star Force infantry and Bo’ja, the latter of which were behind several alley-way obstructions while the Calavari were fighting behind a number of physical personal shields the leading group was carrying in addition to their armor.

  Nym and Derox went over them, but they didn’t jump. Somehow they climbed invisible stairs up into the air that Rajamal could not see with his sensors or psionics, but a solid jump took him up and over as well, though he had to do a second hop inside the Star Force lines to get all the way to the front where the two Zen’zat were coming down and taking almost all the fire behind a mutual bioshield that he could see.

  Rajamal followed in their wake, taking a few hits of his own, then he got a telepathic boundary warning to stay back from. He slowed to let them get farther ahead, then they launched themselves over the nearest obstruction and dropped down directly inside the Bo’ja lines…releasing a Fornax field so large Rajamal had never seen anything like it.

  Dozens of Bo’ja went down as others further back fired on the two Zen’zat…which was when Rajamal ran forward and jumped as high as he could, passing over top the field and signaling his fellow Zen’zat of his approach trajectory. They dropped the field just as he fell into it on the far side, then he came up in a flurry of punches and kicks, along with a few Jumat blasts, but no Dre’me’don shots other than to weaken shields. If the new help wanted to take them alive, he’d play along so long as victory wasn’t compromised by it.

  The Calavari didn’t stand still either, with them coming up and fully stunning the Bo’ja that had been knocked down, then Nym and Derox moved ahead again, letting their new empire’s infantry clean up and hold the prisoners as they passed on by and into the clear where the real fighting was going on.

  There were four Oso�
�lon out there going at it with over a dozen Meintre, but the two Zen’zat didn’t hesitate to go after them, and Rajamal stayed tucked right in behind them despite his tired legs. They got orders over the battlemap and passed them on to Rajamal telepathically, with the trio following up on one Meintre that had dove in and got a trunk lock on an Oso’lon’s front leg.

  The four different trunks on the face of the Meintre acted like tentacles, and all were fully armored and shielded, with them low looped around the Oso’lon’s leg with him and the Meintre firing their energy weapons at each other at point blank range as the hexped held the quadruped in place, using his own body as a giant weighted leg shackle.

  The Oso’lon panicked as others began to move towards him, summoning up a huge Jumat blast, trying to throw the Oso’lon off, but he only managed to lift him off his feet. The Meintre came crashing back down, his hold unbroken, but the wave continued out elsewhere, knocking over abandoned Ter’nat vehicles and heading for the Zen’zat trio.

  Rajamal sprinted in front of the other two as they fell back, then he sent his own Jumat directly ahead with the two waves canceling out in a small area. He got pushed back a little, but not knocked over, as did the others as they continued running forward.

  Two more Meintre got in close and grabbed other legs on the Oso’lon, and once all three had grips on him they all emitted some kind of lightning attack that drained his shields to the point of breaking as the Oso’lon finally managed to knock the first one off with a headbutt/Jumat combo, then he delivered a heavy weapon blast directly onto his head, busting through the Meintre’s shields and scorching the armor underneath.

  “We’re going for his head. Come with us,” Nym said, telepathically linking with Rajamal so he could show him the Qwe’kal footsteps to hit. The pair held them longer than normal so he could stair step up into the air as well, and the three quickly climbed up to long neck head height before jumping over the back of the Oso’lon’s swaying neck.