Star Force: Rescue (SF71) Read online

  This left them fighting a ghost war, trying to make reality bend into their expectations. This greatly restricted their adaptational ability, whereas Jason had no such hindrances. If he came up against Veliquesh that were fighting better than he was he’d pull back, regroup, and find a different way to beat them. When you fought a ghost war you had a battle plan that you believed would work, and you tried to make it work even when it was obvious that it wasn’t. You had to delude yourself rather than rationally evaluate what was going on, for your subconscious mind would start telling you something other than your beliefs held, and irrational people would never accept that.

  So it wasn’t surprising that these Veliquesh somehow convinced themselves that infantry weapons were going to give them a way to defeat the five mechs before them. Jason didn’t mind, for it just made these troops all the easier to capture, but there was the small problem of them getting in around the mechs’ feet. They wouldn’t slow them down…if they were willing to step on them, which was not the case. Had they been lizards the Archons would have taken care not to if possible, but ultimately would run them over if they had to. Here the objective was to capture the enemy troops, so mashing them into pulp wasn’t an option.

  Jason was going to make sure that didn’t happen, acting as minesweeper should any of them get bogged down with suicidal crazies swarming them like groupies. The neos had some options to deal with them, but the two sabers were a bit more ungainly. They were a special mech variant that Paul had developed independent of Cora’s genius and were only used by four Clans, Sangheili being one of them. They were a deviation from standard Star Force mech design in that they were quadruped and shaped like horses…with a spike coming out the top of their heads.

  That spike wouldn’t be used today, but fit in with the melee theme and was technically a form of sword more in line with some of the biological ones that the V’kit’no’sat had. The mechs were fast at straight line speed, but their maneuvering capabilities in engagements were subpar. That said, they were a solid mech that was geared more towards the future with many upgrades assumed to be forthcoming. Why the two mechwarriors piloting them had chosen them was a personal matter, for Jason hadn’t picked equipment for this mission. He preferred they piloted what they felt most comfortable with, so the two ‘unicorns’ were accompanying the three humanoid neos with Jason running between them in the middle right slot in the six-man line.

  While Jason hadn’t chosen what mechs they used, all the mechs in this invasion had been reconfigured with disabling weapons. They each still carried one lethal one, just in case it was needed, but when Jason finally gave the star the go ahead to engage, the neos fired huge orbs of pink stun energy into the tanks where normally they would have been firing maulers out of their wrist cannons. There was a risk in that, for if that amount of stun energy hit one of the infantry it might kill them. Humans were more resistant to stun energy than other races because they were descended from Zen’zat, not Ter’nat, and it had been part of the upgrades given to them.

  But in order to take down the crews inside the tanks they had to hit them with enough stun energy to soak through the armor and into the cockpit. That yield had been tuned during the first weeks of ground combat so now they knew how much they had to hit them with in order to take them down. Rather than load it all up into one shot they watered down the energy orbs with a binding agent that would amp up the persistency of the stun energy in the material it hit. That meant when the first orb hit a tank it would render its surface with the stun energy that would cling to it like static electricity. Subsequent hits would increase the saturation until it would penetrate into the cockpit and create a field through the tank that would knock out anyone inside.

  That left infantry hits less dangerous, but still potentially deadly…plus the misses from the mechs that hit the ground would leave a circle of invisible stun residue potent enough that for about 20 seconds would function as a stun mine for any infantry walking over top of it. That was a sweet side effect that hadn’t been planned, for his mechwarriors rarely missed their targets.

  Having to hit each tank with multiple hits wasn’t a problem, so as more and more yellow beams stretched across the sky marking the mechs and trying to burn through their shields one or two pink orbs would follow them back per second and hit a tank, with Jason knowing it was down only when it stopped firing, for it was mechanically undamaged from the attacks.

  Some of them kept moving, but thanks to the pancake flat terrain it wasn’t like they were going to run off a cliff or something. Jason had one pass him by, motoring on anti-grav and heading on a random heading past the mechs with its crew asleep at the wheel. Something about that seemed funny, but if one of those tank beams hit him he’d be in trouble. His shields were far less powerful than the mechs but he could still take one or two hits, in theory. He wasn’t interested in testing that, so as the mechs engaged the tanks and the ranges closed, they physically met up with each other and the trailblazer ran past one of the tanks and psionically knocked out its crew as he headed for the ranks of infantry behind them.

  They were approaching in columns and jogging in formation…which made them all the easier to target with area of effect weapons. They should have approached scattered, but it seemed like holding to formation was one part of their delusional plan to achieve victory.

  In reality it made it all the easier for Jason, for he was an area of effect weapon, and launched himself into a sprint and dove into the nearest column as they saw and fired at his armor. Most of their shots missed, with the few that hit being inconsequential. He knocked aside the first of the red and green-faced Protovic and pushed into their lines with the impacts with their armor draining his shields further. He let that persist as he emitted a Fornax field around him and knocked them down like a giant paintbrush from the sky had touched the front row and made a swath all the way to the back of their formation.

  They didn’t stay down long, for as soon as his disabling aura passed them they regained their bodily control and got to their feet, but Jason had delayed them from getting to the mechs. When he got to the back and saw clean air ahead of him all the way up to the facility a few kilometers off he wheeled around and pulled out a rack of stun grenades, cradling it in his left hand as he ran back into the now chaotic mess of troops and started chucking them at the densest clusters of enemy troops.

  Each of the little grenades glowed when activated and had a light adhesion surface, so that when he hit one of their armored suits it would stick like a weak magnet and detonate per its programming based off point of contact. Jason had set these to one second, so as he ran through the troops doing a fair impression of the Master Chief from Halo he stuck grenades to troops with just enough time for him to run out of range, then they’d physically blow apart releasing the stun energy within in what looked like water balloon pops.

  When he finished his crate he chucked the container aside and pulled out a pair of stun pistols from his back rack and got to work with individual shots up until the other infantry columns got near the mechs, then he diverted to start clearing the idiots away from the walking machines while they methodically took down the tanks.

  On another part of the planet Kip was invading one of their cities with a few hundred Archons operating in battlemeld pairings that were making good use of their Lew abilities and mowing down dozens, even hundreds, of civilians in a single pass. The area of effect stun ‘lines’ were far more useful than infantry weapons and were allowing the Archons to knock out the Veliquesh faster than the retrieval teams could pick them up.

  Originally those capable of the Lew and Jini abilities had been spread out across multiple missions, but after seeing how ridiculously effective it was at knocking out the civilians and even the stupid soldiers who chose to fight them hand to hand in the streets rather than taking advantage of the urban terrain, he’d reorganized most of them into one team that was tearing across this city in front of cleanup crews of commandos and a few other Arch
ons that were hunting down and stunning those that were missed.

  At present Kip’s troops were assaulting 6 different cities simultaneously and cleaning up 4 others, but by pooling this group together it was making this assault so much easier and he planned to continue with the tactic against the largest cities. Had Humans not had the Ikrid blocks in place he’d have been horrified to think what the V’kit’no’sat could have done to them in a similar manner. This wasn’t even a fight, merely a dance off with the enemy dropping to the ground unconscious after a few choreographed tandem moves.

  Kip was there on the ground, but rather than helping with the sweeps he was perched atop one of the Veliquesh buildings and watching everything happening via battlemap. This was going so smoothly he expected something bad was going to happen to compensate for their good fortune and he was going to be in position to respond to it personally. Not only did he have a jump pack layered onto his armor he also had an eagle flight exoskeleton standing beside him so he could cross kilometers of city when needed. It wasn’t something he could fight in, merely a little aerial motorcycle that he could strap on for travel here and there, but it was more efficient for this type of mission than using a skeet.

  After half the city was clear his guess proved correct, though not in the way he suspected. He got a report from aerial reconnaissance of an assembly of Veliquesh in one of the unsecured sections of the city prepping another sacrificial ceremony, but this one had hundreds of pedestals being assembled.

  “Oh no you don’t,” the trailblazer said, jumping up from his seated position and crossing to his eagle in a few steps. He strapped in and flew off the building and kept low to the rooftops to avoid the few anti-air batteries that were still in play. His skeets were finding and taking them out, but since this ceremony was going down in an area still controlled by the enemy he wasn’t going to risk getting hit by playing aerial fighter. Instead he even ducked down in between some of the taller buildings and navigated the artificial terrain, drawing several rifle shots from below but they missed as he zipped across the cityscape at considerable speed.

  It took him 3 minutes to get to the plaza where there were already 2 green pyres lit and people being strapped onto others six at a time. It seemed they were trying to up the number of sacrifices in order to gain a blessing from their fictitious Nash, probably to stem the ‘magical’ methods his Archons were using to take control of the city, but Kip was going to have none of it.

  He flew out over top of the assembly of what looked to be at least 10,000 people and set his eagle to fly to a predetermined rooftop nearby before dropping out of it and falling into the savage horde. Feathering his jump pack he angled his fall and landed near one of the lit pyres. With a telekinetic jerk he severed the internal components and extinguished the flame…revealing the half destroyed bodies of those who had been alive less than a minute ago.

  Kip sent out a huge Fornax field and held the effort, blanketing some 18 of the pyres as he killed the other active one then worked his way around to three more. After that he had to release the effort to allow his mental tissues to recharge, during which time he made good use of his other psionics and stun weapons. The Veliquesh still tried to stop him, not by attacking him, which many did, but by delaying him long enough for them to burn at least a few more people before he could stop them.

  But the trailblazer could sense their thoughts, for they were literally all screaming with rage in the same insane mental voice. The ceremony had to be completed, no matter what they had to do to stop the ‘demon.’

  It wasn’t the exact word, but it was close enough that Kip took the slander as a compliment as he made use of several Ikrid inquiries as he moved about, fighting as little as necessary, to head off the attempts to activate other pyres, including some that were still being hauled in via transport. Those they set up in the streets nearby and dragged their unwilling prisoners out there to try and avoid him, but he knew what was happening before most of the crowd did and successfully killed every pyre before they could be lit…aside from the two that had been active when he arrived.

  Then in an equally horrific act, the bunches of bound prisoners were turned on and began to be hacked apart and sometimes decapitated with knives and other bladed weapons. It seemed that if they couldn’t complete the ritual through fire they’d do it through lesser means. Unfortunately Kip couldn’t get to all of them in time, but those he did he stopped cold with so many psionic abilities it looked from the air like some kind of bomb hit the crowd and mowed down hundreds of people within a matter of seconds.

  That invisible bomb kept popping up at location after location until the crowds finally decided to scatter when there was no longer any prisoners to execute. Some were dead, the rest were unconscious and now out of reach across a sea of equally silent bodies.

  Kip stayed there and chased off or knocked out the rest of the bastards, then patrolled his prisoners both visually and with Ikrid to ensure there were none active hiding amongst the rest. He spotted two and headed to them directly, finding that they were both prisoners that hadn’t been entirely killed.

  “Damn,” he whispered, dropping to a knee next to one and mentally linking with the other across a short distance. Their bodies were slashed so badly that there was no way he could save them and he knew it, which was why he didn’t call for an emergency dropship flight. They were both awake but still bound by the hands and feet, so Kip numbed the pain and telekinetically snapped the corded cuffs as the one 20 meters off slipped from his mental grip.

  The one just in front of him persisted and looked up at him, shivering from the horror that had just been silenced as much as from the blood loss. Both were female and looked to be from the prime cattle they raised in seclusion and ignorance for these sick occasions. This one didn’t understand what was going on, but as she looked at his gold armor she mouthed a word that Kip didn’t recognize vocally, but mentally he interpreted the sentiment as ‘thank you.’

  A moment later her eyelids closed and her head collapsed to the ground, resting in the pool of her own blood…but her life didn’t fade as fast as the other one, persistently hanging on despite her gruesome injuries.

  “Shit,” Kip said, taking one quick look around him with Ikrid before pulling the gauntlet off his right hand and pressing his flesh against her forehead…one of the few places where she wasn’t cut. If she was going to fight to hang on then he’d do what he could, even if it was futile. He called for a dropship with a medic, knowing it would take at least half an hour to get here and that she didn’t have that kind of time, but if he didn’t then there was really no hope for her.

  An urge in him built as he connected to her through physical contact to enhance his control over her body as he manually tried to lock down the damage, using a combination of Ikrid hacking and telekinetic patches to reduce her bleeding and put her body into a semblance of recovery mode. He wasn’t sure what he was doing, but by taking away some of the randomness of her panic mode he could maybe help her body heal a bit quicker. It was just a crazy idea but he felt like doing something rather than just waiting for her to die.

  His hatred for what they’d done boiled over in him and he didn’t recognize the instability surging beneath it until it nearly overwhelmed him…at which point the ascension forced itself to prominence. He resisted it at first, not wanting to let go of his hold on the woman, but finding a way to do both he let it creep its way into what would have been four red flashing lights had he been wearing a biomonitor, but he knew the feeling regardless.

  When the tissue growth activated it was full body…but far less intense than what he’d gone through to get bioshield. Still he had to fight to keep his hold on the woman and the rest of her blood from spilling out onto the plaza’s ornamental paving stones. When the ascension finished his hold on her morphed into a new sense, in which he could ‘see’ her body from a new perspective. Working on instinct or genetic memory or whatever it was, he pushed several new avenues available to him and
her cellular regeneration spiked…not enough to even compare to a regenerator, but it was enough for her wounds to start patching and the internal organ damage to start closing off and engaging emergency healing options equivalent to closing blast doors on a starship with a hull breach.

  Kip didn’t know what he was doing but he just went with it, every now and then taking a peek around the area with Pefbar but fighting the internal battle nonstop to the point where he had to manually force her respiratory systems to keep functioning when they tried to shut down. As he goosed her healing along he essentially acted like a second brain giving her body orders and keeping her alive while unconscious and unaware of what was going on.

  Somehow he managed to keep her clinging to life until the dropship with skeet escort flew directly over him and hovered above the unconscious crowd, for there were no good spots to land nearby. A team of commandos dropped out, followed by a pair of armored medics who came over to him.

  “I can’t release her. I’m all that’s keeping her alive. I’ll move her inside then work with me enroute to the command ship. We’re going straight to the regenerator on Greg’s flagship,” he said as he telekinetically lifted her body while he maintained his touch on her forehead. One of the medics told the pilot to fly lower and he brought it down with only a meter of clearance over the unconscious bodies. Kip set a collection ping on the battlemap, knowing that others would follow it up and take these people prisoner before they could wake or be killed by others in the city. He added a hazardous tag to it then let it be, focusing all of his energy on the woman as he walked her into the dropship with the medics while the commandos stayed behind to begin the collection effort and temporarily secure the site.

  9

  “Archon, we have it,” the medic said holding a V’kit’no’sat regenerator in his hand. “Let go of her.”