Star Force: Augmentation (SF22) Page 8

  “Then my suggestion is to continue building standard Valeries, maybe with a few modifications here and there, and supplement your squadrons with specialized versions. You mass produce the standard ones, then add a Valerie specifically designed to hunt lizard fighters en mass to a squadron engaging that foe. Meanwhile you add a Valerie bomber to a squadron attacking surface targets or warships. Make a third to chew apart the kirbies, predators, and whatever else they come up with to throw at us.”

  “And then, just to be on the safe side,” Mark said, lowering his voice, “you make an anti-Valerie Valerie, just in case the lizards develop a stronger fighter or one of your allies turns the technology back around against you.”

  There was silence for a long moment, then a third Calavari finally spoke. “The Human speaks wisdom. The Valerie must be able to accomplish a wide variety of missions, but it cannot excel at all of them. Reserve the radial blast for other craft and put the lachar on the standard model, that way at least a pilot has a small chance of taking down a larger craft, as Boen has just demonstrated.”

  Procarva glanced at the older Calavari. “You want to build variants?”

  Tibeerva nodded. “For ourselves only…and our Human friends if we can ever convince them to use the craft,” the four-armed giant said with a bit of humor. “Utilizing these special craft will take a tactical understanding that I do not trust the other races to wield, and I will not trust them with a fighter than can supersede Valeries.”

  He looked down at Mark. “Now, what changes would you suggest we make to create a Valerie killer…I’m sure you’ve been considering that since the day you got here, in order to upgrade your own craft in place of using ours.”

  Mark didn’t hesitate. “No scattergun. No lachar. Modified death blossom to cover the aft arc only. Add a shield depletion weapon and retain two standard plasma cannons. Lose most of the space thrusters and increase in-atmosphere maneuverability. That’s where the majority of the battles will be fought, and you need to be able to outturn the other Valeries or similar enemy ships. You can create a space-based version if you feel the need and give it extra maneuverability by sacrificing the aerial combat aspect.”

  “You seem to be well ahead of us,” Vornac suggested, “yet your own craft suffer in comparison. Why?”

  “To put it simply, our craft have other design considerations factored in aside from fighting the lizards and we do not want to sacrifice those. If we need to produce anti-lizard specialist craft, we won’t have to. We can just buy the Valeries from you.”

  “But there is something else you want from us?” Tibeerva asked, resting his lower hands on the tabletop as he stared down at Mark. “You will help us improve the Valeries, which will also improve your odds against the lizards, but you wish another trade. Am I correct?”

  Mark also leaned on the table, his smaller arms looking almost comical compared to the others. “I have something to ask of you, yes, though I wouldn’t consider it a trade. As you know, we do not use fighters in space. We do have some attack drones which are piloted remotely, but they are little more than mobile weapon platforms and useless in anti-fighter combat. While Star Force is not going to change our battle tactics…they work well for us…there is another faction of Humans that live primarily in space. For them I would ask your help in developing a remotely flown starfighter to defend their homes with.”

  “These Humans live in your orbital station?” Vornac guessed.

  “Yes. They are called Canderous. We created them as a military civilization and they take orders from Star Force, but their procedures are a bit different from ours. They have been wanting to develop starfighters for a long time and we’ve been refusing to let them do so because of the low survivability rate. I also want our pilots accustomed to atmospheric flying and not splitting their time with spaceflight, so Star Force won’t be using them, just Canderous. Think that’s something you could help us with, because we have almost no experience in that type of combat.”

  “With no pilot?” Procarva asked to make sure he heard right.

  “No, just a comm control system that we already know how to produce. It’s one of our most guarded secrets, so we won’t be sharing the dynamics of that, but it does take up far less space than a pilot and environmental controls.”

  “What if the enemy jams your communications?”

  “Let us worry about that,” the trailblazer answered ambiguously.

  “Risky,” Tibeerva warned. “With a single weapon the enemy could render all your fighters inert.”

  “We use the system on our warships. Most of our fleet is unmanned and remotely controlled. We’re aware of the risks and have found ways around them, which allows us to fight even more aggressively when we don’t have a crew to be concerned about.”

  All the Calavari within earshot took on a perplexed look, as if they couldn’t believe what they were hearing, but it was Vornac that finally expressed their combined sentiments.

  “The lizards adapt extremely well. They will find a way to neutralize your warships, and when they do your worlds will lie helpless to them.”

  “I know it may appear that way to you, but there are secrets that we have, secrets that I cannot reveal to your or anyone else, secrets that most of our own population are not aware of that make this tactic far less risky than it sounds. The lizards know of our broadcasting signal, and have targeted our transmitters numerous times. They have failed to disable all of them, allowing our fleet to pick them apart while they overcommit themselves. This too they have learned, and now hold back to fight conventionally unless they see an opening to exploit.”

  “Why have we not heard of this?” Vornac asked.

  “It’s not something that we advertise,” Mark explained, “and the signals we use are somewhat…exotic.”

  “Do you have interstellar comm capability?” Procarva asked.

  “Unfortunately no. That’s something we’re still waiting for the Bsidd to hook us up with.”

  “But you fly your own fighters?” Vornac asked.

  “Yes we do, but only in atmosphere and with a protective shell around the pilot to maximize survivability. Machines are expendable, personnel are not.”

  “Perhaps that is so with such a long lived race,” Tibeerva said respectfully. “But many others do not share your philosophy. Especially not the Cajdital.”

  “It’s our training that allows us to live so long,” Mark explained, “not our physiology. You and others could live long as well, it is not just a Human thing.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Procarva said.

  “When your society treats you as expendable, very few live long enough to find out.”

  “Your thoughts are interesting, Human,” Tibeerva offered, “but your race is still new to the galaxy. To many what you say is sacrilege. Life is destined to die, therefore it is in how we die that matters. There is no greater honor than dying while defending your people against the enemy. Pity are those who die in their sleep a useless death.”

  “So many say to justify battlefield suicide,” Mark argued. “You can die today, gaining victory, or live in defeat only to return later and achieve 100 victories. Which then is of more value to your race?”

  “If you lose today, there might not be a tomorrow.”

  “Such are the concerns of a shortsighted race.”

  Tibeerva laughed a deep booming laugh. “Always spoiling for a fight, aren’t you? I’m amazed you’ve survived this long.”

  “Me or all of us?”

  “Both.”

  Boen put a hand on Mark’s shoulder. “We watch each other’s backs…and we’re just plain good at what we do.”

  Vornac smiled, showing off his intimidating teeth. “You’re not the best pilots here, despite your age.”

  Mark smiled back. “We’re catching up.”

  9

  December 18, 2399

  Jartul System

  Daka

  “Damn it,” Mark swore as he saw Boen get
shot down, then he pulled his skeet through a vertical loop as a pair of simulated lizard fighters dropped in behind him and began to light up his shields. As soon as he came out of the maneuver he had to dodge right to avoid running into another group of 5, but he snapped off a quick shotgun-like blast from the scattergun and hit two of them doing partial damage, but not knocking either out of the massive aerial battle.

  Mark couldn’t think ahead, much, as he was flying in and out of enemy fighters just trying to keep himself alive, but he did keep his situational awareness intact and was trying to divert to a specific section of the map to where the fighting was the thinnest. He and Boen had flown straight into the lizard formation to disrupt and distract their hundreds of fighters while the rest of the Star Force pilots nibbled away at the edges, but even that he couldn’t monitor, for there were so many fighters around he was literally bouncing between them like a pinball, snapping off shots where he could.

  If it wasn’t for the scattergun he likely wouldn’t have been able to hit any because he wasn’t getting an opportunity to aim. The lizard fighters were fast, nimble, and had small silhouettes, so all he could do was pull the trigger when one passed near his firing line and hope to make a hit. That said, he’d already killed 20 or more in his run through the swarm, but he didn’t dare look at the score board now for fear of actually colliding with one of the fighters.

  Dipping down on his anti-gravs and pulling his skeet through a skid turn, the trailblazer twirled around an invisible drain as he headed down towards the surface, hoping to make himself very hard to hit but likewise making it impossible for him to fight back. Right now though all he needed to do was run away and if he couldn’t do that directionally, then maybe he could cut low and catch a gap in their formation to exploit.

  He pulled several fighters in pursuit down with him, but when he bottomed out and rocketed off in a straight line over the simulated surface of Daka he managed to get away from the massive brawl overhead, though those tailing him were still occasionally peppering his shields with plasma hits. Fortunately they didn’t get too many in sequence and his matrix was able to partially recharge as he weaved his way off to the edges of the map and away from the beehive.

  Once he assumed he was far enough away he kicked in his anti-gravs and shot his skeet up into the sky, then skid-banked to bring his forward weaponry around to target one of the 7 fighters in pursuit. He nailed the first with a normal plasma cannon blast using his left trigger, then winged another pair with the scattergun before going evasive. He ducked, dived, skidded, twisted, and anything else he could think of to disrupt any easy firing angles for the enemy while taking brief moments of opportunity to down his pursuit, then when he had only 3 remaining he went on the offensive, trading plasma with the unarmed fighters.

  By the end he had only 7% shield energy left, but all 7 of the fighters were down and his hull hadn’t been scratched…but as he swung around and gained more elevation he got his first clear look at the ensuing battle, as well as their score tally, and saw that his 21 other fighters were nearly half gone as the beehive had collapsed around them.

  Accelerating up to dizzying speed he entered the skeet’s super-pursuit mode for a few seconds, stretching out his minimal shields to make the craft more aerodynamic, then he reverted back to normal and hit the brakes, flipping his engines over to reverse and coming down on the cluster of enemy fighters tracking a pair of his pilots from above.

  He used his scattergun to peel off two of them, then fired his plasma cannon to get another group to break off pursuit of Kara, giving her a moment of relief by drawing them to him. He killed another one before they could fully circle around, then he started his fighter dancing an evasive jig while Kara returned the favor and came around to clean one off his tail. The pair kept switching up the lizards, forcing them to focus on one while the other flanked them or split their numbers to pursue each individually.

  That eventually happened, but Mark was able to make quick work of the 3 that came after him, then before he could get back to Kara another 6 flew in from elsewhere and made his next few minutes hell as he took a shot to the tail of his skeet, which fortunately didn’t penetrate the fighter’s thin armor.

  A tone sounded in his pod, indicating that they’d passed the prerequisite score to advance into the next round, but he didn’t let up. Beating half the other race’s involved in the annual combat tournament and solidifying themselves in the upper half using their skeets and not the Valeries had been the goal, and this was their 7th run out of 10 attempts, but that wasn’t good enough for Mark, because he knew they were among the best pilots on the planet and he wanted to set a first round score that would indicate as much.

  This would be their last run, though. He’d promised as much to his pilots. Most of the other races had already used up their 10 attempts, so their top scores were locked in. Mark had held off on their attempts, stretching them out so they could see how the others were performing, knowing that Star Force pilots worked better when they had a benchmark to hit. Some other races had the same idea, so the Humans weren’t the last to still be making their runs, but according to the tone he’d preprogrammed into their simulation they’d mathematically secured their slot in the second round and any score beyond this point was purely for sport.

  By the time he had shaken off and killed two of his trailers Kara had already gone down, as had all but three of his pilots left in the simulation. The remaining lizard fighters, still numbering in the hundreds, began to reposition and overwhelm the last of the skeets so Mark knew his time was just about up.

  He pulled up hard and shot his fighter straight up, using both conventional and anti-grav engines to gain as much altitude as possible, then tipped over near the peak of the map and came charging back down firing away with his scattergun and killing the closest fighter. After that he only did damage as his shots spread out too far for a concentrated kill while he was weaving his way back down to the surface at crazy speed.

  Three of the lizard fighters had managed to stay with him a few hundred meters back, but they were having trouble shooting him as he evaded, and he had the distinct feeling that one of them had collided with another, but he wasn’t paying close enough attention to the sensor screen to be sure. All of his attention was focused forward at the fighters between him and the ground.

  He pulled up on the nose of the fighter, faking that he was going to angle off along the ground, then pulled down and executed a reverse loop that shot him out the other way inverted, skimming across the grassy plain of the planet. Before he could flip back over he took a shot to the underside, knocking out his streamer cannon…but he wasn’t using that weapon anyway, so it wasn’t a loss.

  Another tone sounded in his pod, indicating that he was the ‘last of the Mohicans,’ so to speak, and that the rest of the Star Force fighters had gone down…and that now every lizard fighter out there was coming after him and that he wasn’t going to have anywhere to run to.

  Having been in a similar situation before, he knew that the only thing he could do was to keep moving erratically, bouncing around and trying to take as many of the enemy fighters as he could down with him. The trailblazer lasted another 1:12 before a green plasma blast hit his skeet in the nose and send it careening down to the ground where his simulation suddenly ended.

  Mark blew out a breath like it was a projectile, ticked at having died. He hadn’t expected to survive the run, nobody ever did, but there was a part of him that always resented getting shot down. In his mind that was still a failure, and had this been real he would either be dead or stranded on the surface of the planet in his skeet’s armored pod.

  He triggered the release on the simulator after running through the post-mission stats, resulting in a crack of white light around the base that quickly grew to encompass the interior as the pod cockpit lifted off him. Outside Boen and the others were standing around, waiting for him to come out.

  “116 kills?” his fellow Archon asked. “You’re ma
king us look bad.”

  “The longer you survive the more you can kill,” he reminded him as his eyes were drawn to the central hologram in the simulation room. It should have been showing what was going on in the simulators, but as far as he knew only the Humans were currently using this room. “What’s that?”

  “Nestafar 5th run. We’re piping it in from another chamber,” Sandra said from a few meters away. “We are done, right?”

  “Yeah, that one did it,” Mark confirmed, walking over to Kara and giving her a friendly jab in the ribs. “Thanks for the rescue.”

  “Sabers call it teamwork, but you’re welcome anyway.”

  A pair of heavy lands landed on Mark’s shoulders, then another ran through his hair. “You did well, Human,” Vornac said mirthfully. “That’s the second highest score yet. Why did it take you 7 runs?”

  Mark pried the hand off his head, then the other two off his shoulders so he could spin around and look up at the Calavari. “A change of tactics this time. Did we prompt you to have another go at it?”

  Vornac laughed. “You may have surpassed us this time, but this is only the first round. You may have the credit, if it stands up to the others, but be aware that some of us are only trying to qualify. How you only do so on a run this good is confusing to me. Almost as if it were luck.”

  “Please don’t say that,” Boen begged. “He’ll make us do it over again.”

  “Luck or not we’re through for the first time,” Kara added as a few of the pilots began to mingle their way out of the chamber while most remained to watch the Nestafar.

  “A surprise to most, but not us,” Vornac said approvingly. “We have trained you well,” he joked.

  The Calavari glanced around, seeing that no one was heading back into the pods. “If you truly are done for the day, I’ll see you up in the main lounge in a bit?”

  “Me, no,” Marks said. “I’ve got a workout to get in.”