Star Force: Shiva (SF98) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  Then came the hard part. His move was mostly a bluff, but the I’rar’et were calling it, choosing to go in hard and risk getting themselves killed in order to take his ship out. Rio could either try to run through the drones and let them peel off, or he could try and delay the ships inside the inferno long enough for the drones to make the kills…and the I’rar’et ships were so big it was going to take a lot of pounding to do it while most of the weaponsfire was focused ahead at the rest of the V’kit’no’sat fleet.

  Rio did the mental calculations several times…then brought in a wall of drones around his command ship and dug in, ready to take massive hull damage as he unleashed hell on the I’rar’et.

  Taking command of hundreds of weapons batteries nearest him, Rio coordinated strikes on the I’rar’et ships, knowing better than the other gunners where exactly to hit and when. One of the Shiva ships slid into position partially obscuring the command ship when its shields went down, but allowed it to also return fire while regenerating at least a section of shields. The I’rar’et were split about which vessel to target, then opted to try and run up alongside the command ship at pointblank range ignoring everything else.

  The Shiva ship moved out, coming head to head with one of the I’rar’et Dak’bri that was easily 3 times its size and made out of more advanced technology, but the advantage the Shiva had in addition to its specialized shields was the fact that it held no crew…with no huge chunks of hull space taken up by air and living quarters. It was a 100% pure ass-kicking machine, and wasn’t going to budge from its position as the ships exchanged weaponsfire at less than 3 kilometers distance…with as much of the I’rar’et weaponry targeting the command ship around the Shiva as possible.

  Meanwhile the smaller drones were firing at the I’rar’et vessels, all 18 of them, as they tried to work into other flanking positions. Rio backed his command ship up slowly, with his drone swarm moving to accommodate every move he made and blocking the I’rar’et in order to buy time without causing them to flee. The V’kit’no’sat shields were coming down in places, allowing Rio to target weaponry but they didn’t care. Already there were large gashes in the command ship and some of the transmitters that connected Rio to the drones were going offline…intentionally he thought…but there was so much redundancy packed into the giant donut that it was going to take a hell of a lot more pounding before he couldn’t control the ships right next to him.

  Two I’rar’et Ti’mat, of similar size to some of the Shiva, tried to push through the smaller drones and flank Rio’s position from behind, but either they miscalculated the damage from the drone swarm or didn’t expect the Shiva ahead to double back, for they suddenly found themselves within firing range of the command ship but having their lines of fire blocked almost entirely as 12 Shiva of varying sizes moved up upon them and blasted away with their short range weaponry.

  The I’rar’et had nowhere to run to, so they tried to ram their way to the command ship only to find so many drones ramming them back that they couldn’t make much headway…then one went totally kamikaze and blew through three cruisers and two destroyers, shredding itself in the process only to impact the dampening shields on the backside of the command ship, which stopped the debris cold at the cost of a huge amount of energy.

  But that energy wasn’t being taxed because the I’rar’et weren’t attacking on that side of the ship, so the I’rar’et’s final desperation maneuver was blocked entirely…then when the second Ti’mat saw its impending doom and tried to follow up before the dampening shields were fully rengerated, hoping to get some damage through, it made a microjump that sent it…nowhere, for a trio of support interdictors had made their way through the drone swarm and up next to it, generating an IDF field so large it covered the entire 4 mile wide Ti’mat, neutralizing its engines while other drones put themselves in front of the shield ships as Var’ko cut through them, trying to sever the impediments to the I’rar’et.

  The Ti’mat managed to get two of the support ships destroyed before its own gravity drives were hit by Ardent beams coring into areas of hull that had already had their armor burnt off, so when the third ship was finally destroyed there wasn’t enough engine power left to make a kamikaze jump and the I’rar’et were left to die surrounded by enemy ships with no recourse other than to take out as many of the drones as they could before their vessel finally broke up into inert fragments.

  Rio continued to lead the frantic battle, taking heavy advantage of the jumpships outside as they came in closer and continued to pound the reverse side of the other I’rar’et ships with bloon strikes that heavily damaged their shields, but his command ship and those guarding it suffered heavy losses as they kept him and his crew of remote pilots alive and operational, taunting the I’rar’et into staying and fighting and, ultimately, dying. All but 5 of their ships clawed at his vessel until they were reduced to junk, with the remainder realizing they weren’t going to be able to finish it off and trying to make their way clear.

  Two of them were so badly damaged they didn’t make it out, with the other three pushing their way into clear space and getting hammered by the jumpships as they made emergency microjumps away from the battle, shields down and hull glowing where their armor had been hit, along with numerous deep craters where it had been fully penetrated.

  Rio breathed a sigh of relief, entombed in a ship that was half destroyed but with the interior core still intact and operational, sending out guiding signals to the sea of ships around him as the main fight was continuing to take place further below, with both sides taking heavy losses. Star Force was losing far more, but they had numbers on their side and eventually forced the V’kit’no’sat to retreat before all of their ships were destroyed…and with incoming reinforcements still hours away. They would probably regroup and hit them again, but Rio also had more drones coming his way from other planets to counter them.

  He added to it by summoning another Shiva cluster, knowing it would take a lot more time to get here but he needed to lock down naval superiority around the Ribbon if he was going to deal with the troops onboard…and the problem was that the giant Star Force construct had not been fully evacuated prior to the attack. Most of the evacuation ships, ranging from large transports to dropships, had been sent to Earth orbit and successfully cleared it of the thick bands of artificial habitation that were presumed to be easy targets for the V’kit’no’sat. Earth had been their colony, and thus should have been their focus for the invasion, leaving the other worlds as secondary priority with regards to evacuating the orbital population down beneath the planetary shields.

  The Ribbon had been low on that priority, but Star Force had been ferrying people off it since the initial order had been given. The problem was there were so many people here that they didn’t have the ships necessary to get them all off in time. Its surface area was equivalent to a small moon, but unfortunately it was spread out flat rather than in a sphere that was more defendable. It had never been designed for combat, but rather civilian use, and right now there were still millions of people on it along with V’kit’no’sat troops doing what he wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t anything good.

  Another command ship came into the battle/debris field and pulled him off the damaged ship, giving him a fresh steed to command from while the rest of the crew remained onboard the damaged one controlling the drones around them as they targeted and further destroyed the remains of the V’kit’no’sat ships, unable to even attempt any rescue efforts with their own people actively in danger. It had been long said that mercy was a luxury of the dominant, and right now Star Force wasn’t. Rio needed every asset he had to retake the Ribbon and wasn’t going to waste boarding parties onto V’kit’no’sat ships that could very well get themselves killed trying to take prisoners.

  The V’kit’no’sat had come here to kill them, and the most leniency he was going to show them while the status quo remained was to eliminate them quickly rather than let them slowly suffocate to death. Had circumsta
nces been different and he had more assets and time he might have tried to rescue at least a few, but given how dangerous they were he’d have to do it in a way that didn’t jeopardize any of his people, and right now he was starting to mentally sift through reports coming from the Ribbon detailing the internal combat there that was completely one sided. The V’kit’no’sat had not only Zen’zat inside, but also Brat’mar on the streets and I’rar’et flying over the buildings in the short internal atmosphere. Two major V’kit’no’sat races along with the Kar’ka, which were known as Gallimimus to ignorant Humans on Earth. They were not the equal of the other two, but were smaller, fast, and agile…not to mention great jumpers.

  All three were in the ships that Rio had just destroyed as well as down inside the Ribbon…and they were both capturing and killing every Human in sight, along with destroying whatever buildings they needed to make adequate room for themselves to set up shop.

  “Vex, I need you to take command of the fleet and keep the Ribbon safe. There’s another Shiva cluster enroute along with a lot of drone fleets, but we can’t wait. I have to get down there.”

  “Go,” Vex-761 said between clenched teeth, for he knew the stakes and could see the horrors occurring below on the recording devices within the city that hadn’t yet been jammed or destroyed by the V’kit’no’sat. The few Archons and other troops down there were too few in number and totally outmatched, able to do little more than poke and distract long enough to buy the civilians a few more minutes, often at the cost of their own lives.

  Rio left the command nexus after he’d summoned all the available ground troops in Saturn orbit to his location with calls out to other planets to send what they had…which was a lot, considering this was Sol. He’d have an army here soon, but the people down there didn’t have the luxury of waiting. Some would survive, given how many of them there were, but Rio wasn’t going to wait. He was the most powerful Archon in Star Force and had more psionics than any Zen’zat in recorded history.

  Now it was time to see how much that was worth.

  9

  “Oh my god,” Haley said as she slammed the door shut on her quarters, leaning on it heavily as she and her best friend hid behind it as they sucked in air, for they’d ran all the way back here from the spaceport.

  “That was a Triceratops,” Brittney said, sitting down in a chair as her hands shook from the residual adrenaline. “A fucking Triceratops!”

  “A what?”

  “A Dinosaur!” she yelled, then both girls flinched as a large explosion rippled through the building from somewhere nearby. They’d been in line to evacuate along with everyone else when the Ribbon had been boarded by the invaders, then when the shooting began and people started blowing up they’d ran away along with everyone else, eventually coming back to their residential quarters…for lack of anywhere else to go.

  “I don’t care what it is. What are we going to do?”

  “Stay here for now.”

  “And what if they blow up this building too?”

  “I don’t know!” Brittney screamed, the recent memories of exploding and scorched body parts flying every which way was so horrific her nerves were on the verge of permanently snapping. “I don’t know,” she repeated, this time seeming to lose all energy and just slumping back in the chair while her lungs fought to catch up on the oxygen she needed.

  “Where is the military at?” Haley demanded. “What are they doing? We’ve got the biggest fleet in the galaxy and they let them just walk in here? And where the Archons?”

  “Didn’t you see the one?” Brittney said, tears flowing. “He floated up off the ground and was ripped apart. His arms and legs…” she said, clamping down on her lips as she couldn’t speak anymore.

  “What are we going to do?” Haley said as more explosions rippled their way across the cityscape from somewhere to the north. She walked over to the window and looked out, tilting her head as much as she could to see to the left as a winged monster flew by overhead, scaring her so bad she fell backwards in shock, but it passed by without seeing them.

  Brittney got up and ran to the wall, hitting the button to tint the windows so nothing could see through, then she knelt down and helped drag Haley to her feet and into the adjacent room where both of them felt onto the couch and held onto each other, crying, scared, and not knowing what to do…hoping desperately that these Dinosaurs or whatever they were wouldn’t find them here.

  Ian Draconi ran around a corner as fast as he could in his Commando armor, skidding as he tried to make the turn and having to bounce off the far wall on the narrow street in order to keep moving. The anti-psionics package readout in his HUD registered another Lachka attempt to grab him, but the suit had pulsed a Rentar field to neutralize it…draining the energy reserves further. If he kept getting the invisible grabs on him, his suit would run out of automated defenses and the Brat’mar chasing him would be able to pick him up off the ground and pull him back into easy shooting range…or worse.

  But thankfully this narrow street wasn’t big enough for the huge Triceratops to follow him down, though there was a flash of blue energy over his head as he dropped into a subterranean stairwell. The resounding boom from ahead was followed by pounding chunks of building rubble as they fell and hit the ground, but he was out and away from his pursuit and the deadly rain as he ran through an empty subsurface corridor trying to put as much distance as he could between him and the Brat’mar…whom he’d only learned about in the previous days since the alarm heard across the system had been triggered and the Commandos had been brought up to speed on Star Force’s true nemesis.

  Ian carried his plasma rifle on his back along with a couple of pistols, but the damn things couldn’t even scratch the Brat’mar. It was the size of a tank and heavily armored…and those two horns and dish-like backdrop on its head formed the equivalent of a canon that could take down building walls in a single hit. He’d seen two other Commandos get roasted on the spot, so he knew he couldn’t fight the thing or protect the people here. The best he could do was lead it away from them, though right now he wasn’t thinking about that or anything other than getting as far away from the damn dinosaur as he could.

  He ran down several more corridors, zigzagging in an attempt to throw off pursuit as he went down further and further. They’d been told the V’kit’no’sat could see through walls and Ian didn’t know what their range was. The thing could be following him above waiting for him to come up, so he needed to cover as much distance as possible and resurface somewhere that was small and away from the fighting. If he couldn’t fight them he could at least get some intel and relay to the fleet, otherwise he was tempted to run and hide wherever he could.

  Then again, if they could see through walls, he doubted there was anywhere he could truly hide.

  When he turned the next corner he skidded to a stop, for there was a dark green armored Human standing down the hallway facing him. He was Knight-sized but not moving, though Ian could see that he held a weapon of some sort on his back, but his hands were free at the moment as the two stared each other down silently.

  Ian broke the silence, pulling out one of his pistols as fast as he could and sending a bolt of blue plasma against the Zen’zat armor’s shields. The big figure took the first couple hits mockingly, then he accelerated into a run and came at the Commando without grabbing for his weapon.

  Ian kept firing until he was on him, then released his weapon to fall to the ground as he punched forward.

  The Zen’zat slipped to the side and rolled, making his punch miss as a hand came around and grabbed the back of Ian’s helmet. He responded instinctively by swinging the elbow of his overextended arm backwards through a circle and pried the hand free, knocking the arm aside and allowing him to punch with his other hand that came around a split second later.

  The Zen’zat took the hit on the chest and was knocked back half a meter, then there was a furious exchange of blows that ended with Ian landing on his butt and the Ze
n’zat looking down at him. He stepped back three strides and motioned with is hand for the Commando to try again.

  Ian stood, but instead of running towards him he pulled out his rifle and got a shot into his shields before the Zen’zat swiped the weapon away, but in doing so opened himself up to an Archon punch from the Commando with his left elbow coming forward and up into a battering ram that knocked the bigger Zen’zat back and onto his butt.

  Rather than standing there and taunting him back, Ian turned and sprinted away, leaving both his pistol and rifle behind as he pulled out his spare. Wielding it in his left hand he spun around at the next intersection and put a couple more shots into the Zen’zat as he followed, with the second one finally popping his shields in addition to the physical blows that had been landed earlier, but that only seemed to anger the Zen’zat, increasing his speed as he got up on Ian and smashed him to the ground.

  Body blows fell into his armor as he found himself face down on the ground, but no matter how much he tried to get up the Zen’zat kept hammering him until he was so shell shocked he couldn’t have found his balance even if he’d been allowed to stand up.

  The next thing he knew there were hands on his helmet trying to remove it, but Ian used the override and locked out the external controls, keeping himself inside the protective cocoon no matter how much physical abuse he took, and after a few minutes of wrenching he felt himself be picked up by the Zen’zat…who started carrying him off.