Star Force: Ringworld (SF80) Read online

  After more than an hour of watching Riona finally sent out a command, a mere thought, and a group of ships further out in the system were given a waypoint to move to. It wasn’t an attack, merely a repositioning that would allow her to gage the reaction, if any, of the lizards. They were fairly sure of their sensor range by now but they didn’t have access to their technology to know for sure. There were dead spaces where they couldn’t sense and right now the Excalibur sat within one of them, out of the enemy’s range but not their own, giving them eyes out and the ‘high ground’ as Riona watched and waited, planning the next hit from her ship group.

  Right now there were two others ongoing that she was watching. They’d learned over time not to give the lizards too much respite, for their refueling rates were far inferior to Star Force’s and if you kept them bouncing around from place to place you’d eventually cause them to have to either stop, which would create an opening to exploit, or trigger them to reposition to a supply pickup that could accomplish the same.

  And that’s what happened while Riona was watching. It wasn’t a large alteration, but a group of ships were heading out of one of their border positions and moving in towards the largest planet to meet up with a supply depot.

  The titan’s eyes opened as she double checked what she was seeing. Megan, tell me this isn’t a trap?

  Where?

  Riona sent her a few waypoints and waited.

  Move quickly. I don’t think they see the weakness.

  With a thought she activated not only the Excalibur’s gravity drives, but those of the flanking warships and fed all of their navigational computers coordinates, forcing an almost instantaneous microjump at extreme power to get the acceleration necessary from their null orbit. The Captains of all the vessels barely had time to register what was happening before the stars behind them disappeared and they were suddenly in motion, with Riona sending them a text update as to what was happening, including to the Admiral just on the other side of the wall from her.

  A moment later she triggered a ship-wide alarm, with the repetitive klaxon indicating that the command ship was about to come under attack.

  Paul was so disconnected from everything else that it took him a moment to recognize what was happening when he sat up in bed at the sound of the alarm…then he realized what it meant and got to his feet, not rushing out the door, but heading over to his information terminal so he could get a situation report to know what was happening.

  He pulled up the battlemap data and saw that it was dated, for they were currently mid jump and headed towards one of the lizard battlestations.

  Paul activated a direct comm line to the command nexus. “Riona, is this something I need to worry about or can I go back to sleep without fear of a hull breach?” he said sarcastically.

  “They blinked, so we had to move. Sorry to wake you.”

  “What exactly are you…” Paul said as he looked over the holographic map, then saw the flaw for himself. “Nice catch. I think you got us moving in time too.”

  “You want first chair?”

  “You’re going to be engaged before I can get to one, so take the lead and I’ll assist when I’m able. Just don’t hold back. This has to be a gut punch.”

  “I know what to do, but feel free to chime in when you like.”

  “I’m gonna be dark for a few minutes.”

  “Then get moving, cause I ain’t waitin for ya.”

  Paul smiled, flicking off his console and heading for the door. His shoes flew onto his feet as he jogged out, then he ran through the corridors enroute to the bridge knowing he was going to be late getting to the party.

  The battlestation in question was the rendezvous point for a sizeable lizard cruiser fleet, one that was doing little more than covering for part of the convoys coming in and out of the system. So far Star Force had kept clear of all the battlestations and the lizards had been banking on that, using them as little islands of safety to retreat to but always keeping sufficient cruiser numbers in support.

  A chunk of those had just left along with even more cruisers from a number of locations, all headed to the supply depot for what was probably a refueling/supply transfer. But what they didn’t realize was that it took the cruiser count around this particular battlestation too low. It didn’t look like that to anyone who had been watching this invasion from the get go, for it wasn’t weak enough for one of their hit and run attacks…at least not to get more than a handful of ships.

  But that was also part of the ‘rope a dope’ strategy. Paul and his fleet had been waiting for the right opportunity to really go on the offensive, but without trying to force the issue they’d been patient. The lizards had either gotten used to that or didn’t realize the full capabilities of the ships Riona was about to ram down their throat.

  The Excalibur came out of its jump a few seconds ahead of the warships, already having reconfigured its shields into a wide dampening field. It added to this by tipping up on its side so it faced the enemy top on like a pie pan being flung at the swarm of ships floating planetside of the battlestation. They weren’t tightly clustered, but were all in approximately the same position with the cargo ships in between them and the battlestation, leaving the station with clean lines of fire around it for the most part.

  Riona had aimed the command ship at the cruisers, allowing some of the jump momentum to remain so that the Excalibur slammed into the center of the formation and put a visible dent in it, dragging a few hundred cruisers with it caught on the dampening shields just as if they had tried to ram the ship and were stopped…for momentum in space was a point of view. Ship hitting shield was exactly the same as shield hitting ship.

  That left the Excalibur with only a thin backup shield covering its hull but the ship was tanky enough to be able to take some hits, which it did as soon as the cruisers that hadn’t been pancaked into each other turned and fired on it…but for the moment the cruisers around the hole in their formation were somewhat isolated, enough that the warships that followed could fire into them and fight their way out into those tendrils as they loosed their drones.

  Keema and bloon launchers hit them immediately, with more and more warships coming into the gap the Excalibur had drilled into the formation. Its dampening field was now gone, almost entirely eaten up by the effort, but the ship itself was still holding position just inside the debris field it had created and that field was moving forward into the rest of the lizard ships, advancing the corridor of clear space the Star Force warships were entering.

  The pancaked lizard ships were damaged or destroyed, but a lot of them hadn’t been taken out of the fight. They were bumping into each other, with a few actually lodged together, but they weren’t too slow in recovering and joining the school-like flow of cruisers as they repositioned to get better firing lines on the attacking ships.

  Time was of the essence, for Riona could already see other cruiser swarms leaving position to come join the fight, but they were minutes or tens of minutes away at minimum, leaving her with time to take out a lot of these bastards.

  The Excalibur, being on the inside of the enemy formation and totally surrounded, opened up with all its weaponry and tore apart cruisers at all angles, immediately adding to the debris field it had already started to create as the warships’ drones spun out like angry bees from a hive and hit the nearest cruisers in overwhelming numbers…and when Star Force outnumbered lizards, the lizard ships died within seconds under the combined firepower of multiple Dre’mo’dons.

  Within 2 minutes a third of the cruiser swarm was junked, leaving them with too few numbers to seriously hurt the attackers. They still had cargo ships to protect and a command ship exposed with its shields down so they didn’t flee. They poured their entire attack against the Excalibur, ramming it from close range in some cases and getting through to imbed their flat ship hulls into the Star Force gray armored plates like playing cards, some of which continued to fire off a few batteries at point blank range.


  But the command ship had mass and a fleet of drones to help screen for it, with them blocking or blowing off the ships that had imbedded themselves into the hull while likewise hunting down and ganging up on the cruiser formations, taking them out so fast that they did little shield damage in return and what firepower they did have was directed against the Excalibur.

  It was a fair trade but Riona didn’t leave it there, sending flanking units around the cruisers to go after the cargo ships that were scrambling to get away from the fight. There were so many parked close together they were literally tripping over each other, but give them a few more minutes and they’d disperse.

  When she sent the drones and two warships after them the battlestation got into the fight, coring one of the drones with a brilliant white beam the width of a dropship. The shields held briefly, then the destroyer suffered hull damage that left a sizeable hole in the hull. A moment later another beam tracked it and burnt all the way through, with most ship functions going offline.

  “I saw that,” Paul said, causing Riona to jump.

  “Don’t spook me like that,” she said as his finger overlapped her hand on the control sphere they were now both sharing.

  “I’ve got the battlestation.”

  “All yours,” she said, with the pair of them standing side by side in the command nexus yet all but forgetting they had bodies. Their minds were occupied with the battle through the battlemap instrumentation and the live feeds they were getting. Riona felt Paul take command of a few of her assets, but he left the rest to her as she ignored the battlestation and went about hunting the remaining cruisers even as the ship they were both standing within was getting hammered…on the outer hull.

  They were safely inside the redundantly armored inner core with deck after deck of ship blocking for them outside that. The Excalibur would take an awful lot of damage to disable, let alone destroy, and right now the lizards were drawn to it like bugs to a zapper. Riona used that to her advantage, exchanging hull damage for taking out nearly all of the cruisers…in this group anyway, for there were more coming in to add to their numbers and assist the battlestation that was now under attack.

  Just then more incoming ships jumped into position nearby, all Star Force, as more of their fleet had been dispatched to the battle. That hadn’t been Riona’s order, for she didn’t think the Excalibur was truly in danger from the battlestation, but it soon became clear that Megan had different plans as another command ship came in leading even more ships and Riona took a moment to look at the bigger picture.

  One hole in the lizard lines had been exploited, but now there was a much bigger disruption. Either the lizards abandoned their battlestation or they moved to defend it. Scratch one station if they did nothing, or open up more opportunities for the attackers if they did move in to aid in its defense, for they were coming in in staggered groups rather than one solid mass.

  And staggered groups would basically feed Star Force more kills.

  “We sticking around?” she asked Paul.

  “They’re not adapting quickly enough. We have an advantage and we have to take it,” he said, even as she felt other Star Force ships in distant parts of the system maneuvering…and not to come here.

  “Full on?”

  “Until they wise up, yes. Don’t give them time to think…and don’t take out the battlestation too fast. It’s the bait right now.”

  “All yours,” she said, mentally reconfiguring the ships under her command and incorporating a few more warships that were close by and incoming. This fight wasn’t going to happen in just one spot, but as far as this one was concerned it was going to be a double sided formation, more interested in fighting off what was coming rather than the battlestation that it was arcing around to attack from multiple sides.

  9

  Jack was on the other side of the system when the move came, deep into a training session that he immediately abandoned. He ran onto the bridge of his command ship dripping sweat, which fortunately didn’t have a negative effect on the nexus equipment.

  He logged into the system and saw that they were already moving, Admiral Menti’s orders. He assumed control and modified them, seeing a couple of other weak points in the lizard ship alignments form as they raced to reinforce one another. Jack split his ships to multiple tasks, sending several groups to the main battle while he took another back towards the two stars. A convoy was in the process of arriving and even if he couldn’t get to it he needed to keep the lizard ships pinned there so they couldn’t all flood in to pounce on Paul and Megan.

  The longer they could keep the mismatch going the more ships they would kill, and judging by the numbers they’d already taken out more in the past 10 minutes than they had the past month, so even a slight prolongment was going to be advantageous.

  The other thing he noticed was the fact that the battlestation had cleansing beams, and big ones at that. So far none of the ships in the system had those equipped, but they were a big step up from the phasers in terms of both range and sheer damage. Perhaps they hadn’t miniaturized them enough to put on the cruisers, but that upgrade alone was a game changer, not just for this invasion but for the overall war and especially for the Skarron region. The lizards were getting more and more technologically powerful as time moved on, making it all the more imperative that Star Force and their allies take them out now.

  Jack had a feeling that the coreward border line was going to come back and bite them, but he agreed that they couldn’t go chasing the lizards that direction indefinitely. With the way they spread they could end up following them all the way into V’kit’no’sat territory. In some respects it was ironic that the lizards hadn’t developed the cleansing beams earlier, taking them from either Star Force wreckage or, more than likely, from Hycre or Protovic ships.

  But as his command ship coasted through its microjump Jack studied the fresh battle recordings and realized the design wasn’t theirs. The firepower was off, scaled in a direction that Jack knew was one option they’d had in developing the weapon, yet they hadn’t chosen it, opting for a more reliable variety that would give them longevity rather than burstiness in combat.

  That meant this wasn’t a copy of their tech, then it also dawned on him that the coloration was wrong. Cleansing beams were invisible, with Star Force having added a visible tracer to it. This beam totally gleamed.

  Jack mentally pulled up the weapon files they had, sifting through them at lightning speed until he found a mention in the V’kit’no’sat database of a particular variation that did glow. It was still a cleansing beam, but one that didn’t have as much armor penetration. What it did have was a shield eating function manifesting from an unstable matrix. A binder was used that gave the glow, allowing for longer ranges but shorter than the stable version that Star Force used.

  This was definitely not a copy of Star Force or allied tech, and Jack was seriously wondering if the lizards didn’t have access to some sort of treasure trove of their own, for no other known race used that particular type of weapon and between The Nexus’s records and those of the Voku and Preema, they pretty much knew everyone on the block…unless it was a race they’d destroyed millennia ago and were only now figuring out the tech.

  Regardless, it meant they had a new weapon that was going to give them serious punching power in short to medium ranges and an upgrade to the phaser range if they adjusted the binder accordingly. Something told him they would, but then he smiled as he saw an addendum within the copy of the V’kit’no’sat files that had been copied and pasted into the Star Force database.

  There was a weakness in this version that could countered with a specific shield setting. It wasn’t one that Star Force used, but they’d developed their matrixes to be flexible and Jack knew it wouldn’t take much of a modification, he just didn’t know if they could do it on the fly.

  He had to wait for the microjump to end, but as he did he compiled a text message then sent a clear burst signal to the communications seda on the
outskirts of the system, then he made a good forward assault against the lizard cruiser swarms in stellar orbit, finding them somewhat out of position as they were feeding ships into the main battle in a long train of microjumps. Those there immediately repositioned, with Jack successfully cutting off that flow of reinforcements via threat alone, then he signaled a couple of his mages to make flanking runs to try and get to the backside of the jumppoint the lizard convoy was using as it rolled in.

  He didn’t know if they’d get through, but it was one more poke the lizard commanders would have to deal with and the more he kept them reacting the better. Star Force was organizing better than they were, especially in large scale battles, and get them moving around too much and the lizards’ formations would gap. Do that at the right moment and it’d open up a cascade of ship death if Jack’s fleet was close enough to exploit it…and right now he was getting very close, knowing he was going to lose some drones but comfortable with that so long as he was able to rack up a lot of ship kills and buy Paul and Megan time to do the same.

  The communications seda was not Canderian, but rather a Star Force mainline construct geared to be a mobile interstellar relay with enough armor and defenses to defend itself against fairly heavy attack…enough anyway to make a run for it if the lizards came en mass, but ever since arriving in this system it had been sitting so far outside the stars and planets that the lizards couldn’t get to it except at a crawl, with its own superior gravity drives ironically giving the small moon more maneuvering capability than the tiny cruisers.

  Being that far out from the stars also gave it better line of sight with the distant systems it was linking to. There were only three within range and it had lines on all of them, monitoring their occasional feeds as well as sending out periodic reports of their own. One of them was Liam’s fleet, with the other two being actual relay stations quietly placed on the danger side of the safe occupation zone border that linked to others in a breadcrumb line all the way back to the ADZ.