Star Force: Ascension (SF27) Read online

  “Ambrosia,” she reminded herself, pulling one of a stack of wafers out and chewing it slowly. She washed it down with a bit of water and started on another, slowly making her way through the entire stack.

  Within 60 seconds of eating the first she began to feel her head clear ever so slightly, and with each additional wafer she ingested her head cleared more and more, so much so that it shocked her.

  “Damn it, this…power does feed off ambrosia. And food,” she added, feeling her stomach rumble. Whatever those little nodules were, they definitely required a lot of fuel…fortunately Archons didn’t have trouble sucking down the calories when needed. After getting a bit of her balance back from the wafers Morgan got up and fixed herself a heaping plate of foodstuffs, all carb-heavy, ranging from breadsticks to noodles to cookies, all of which were premade or quick fix meals, though some did have to be quick cooked in the flash oven, such as the noodles.

  Five minutes later she sat down and began to chow down, along with sucking in a couple liters of water. When she finished her head had cleared up for the most part, though she did still feel drained.

  Morgan stood up experimentally, finding that her legs felt almost…strong. Wary of making her headache worse, Morgan cringed and jumped in place, rising up more than 2 feet before landing back down on the balls of her feet lithely.

  “Ok, so I’ve got strength. It was just my control that was lacking?” she asked herself, trying to puzzle this out. “Two separate bodily functions, both routed through my brain. One gets fatigued and zaps my head, interfering with the other. My head clears, then I’m free to…train normally?” she wondered.

  Morgan belched, suddenly remembering how much food she had in her stomach.

  “Just a mile then,” she told herself. “Now, where are my clothes?”

  A day later the Red Ranger and her three twin warships jumped out from Sri’ka in towards the system’s central star, abandoning their stewardship of planetary orbit with their drone warships tucked safely inside their racks. There they waited for several hours, falling lazily towards the star in the inner zone of the system until they received a signal from the Hycre, telling them it was time to make their entrance, along with a preferred deceleration zone.

  “Let’s go,” Morgan said to herself, standing in the command nexus as she ordered all four ships to make the microjump. One by one they blinked out of view heading for Ra’sa, the 4th planet, and the enemy fleet stationed there. Minutes later, when the Star Force strikeforce decelerated at the point the Hycre had requested, Morgan’s tracking data showed the fish-like Hycre warships darting in and out of a huge formation of Nestafar warships, more than 400 strong, surrounding the damaged command ship.

  Those 400 were split, with a main group engaging a Kvash fleet. One of their battleships and seven other smaller, yet still huge vessels were slugging it out with the Nestafar as they moved around orbit, having jumped to the 4th planet from another in the system. On the opposite side there was a small cluster of Hycre warships, much smaller in size but stronger in bite, taking on a cluster of heavy Nestafar capitol ships. Both conflicts had stretched out the Nestafar formation, leaving the command ship and about a quarter of its escorts situated in between guarding the primary jump line to the planet.

  Like the third point on a triangle, Morgan’s fleet came in along that jumpline and immediately began unpacking its warships. As they did the Nestafar dispatched most of the command ship’s escorts towards them while the roving Hycre destroyers and frigates zipped in and out, hitting them on the flanks and harassing the command ship, forcing some of the Nestafar warships to stay behind to protect it.

  As planned, some of the Hycre warships were zipping around the command ship in very tight, synchronized orbits, keeping their masses in the way of the ship to discourage it from jumping out…though it might not have even been necessary. As Morgan’s data on the enemy updated further she saw huge chunks of the command ship missing from the hull where it had rammed her ships previously. Apparently the Nestafar had managed to extrude the Star Force wreckage, leaving the huge ship looking half dead.

  But only half…weaponsfire was still showing from its hull, though not any of the primary weapons which Morgan was sure they’d thoroughly trashed.

  The Kvash were thoroughly bottled up, but their drift rate was still bringing them closer to the command ship. That was the faint, at least, because they weren’t here for it. Taking it out fell to Star Force. The Kvash were targeting the Nestafar battleships, including a dreadnaught that was leading their segment of the battle. Taking out the larger ships was key to the battle plan, and while the Hycre were certainly capable of taking them down with numbers, their fleet of mostly smaller ships couldn’t stand toe to toe with the cluster of heavy capitol ships…whereas the Kvash with their greater size and stronger shields could.

  As Morgan’s fleet deployed more ships jumped in behind them. Calavari warships, cruisers down through frigates, assembled from throughout the system came pouring in, bringing their elongated, pointy hulls to the fight and spreading out in attack groups of 3-5 heading for the Nestafar ships coming into the battle from other planet’s in the system. Now that the giant melee had begun the enemy was calling in all the support it had to bolster their numbers, and it was the Calavari’s job to intercept and destroy them piecemeal as they came in…or at least delay and damage them before they could engage the other three fleets.

  Morgan began amending the battle formation the four warship Captains were deploying into, assigning a few individual ships onto separate missions, tagging wounded ships to finish off or points on the command ship to target. Thanks to the Elarioni they now had detailed blueprints of ALL the Nestafar’s combat equipment, from capitol ships on down to their infantry weapons…including the precise location of the gravity drives within the command ship, or more importantly, the location of the two primary generators that supplied them power.

  She assigned numerous heavy cruisers to target those locations with their cleansing beams, and started to feel a tingle of energy as the first of them opened fired at range. The Archon frowned, her ire rising and her unpredictable ability seeming to respond to it. Angry at the distraction, she forced the tingle on her spine down her left arm, surprised that she was able to accomplish that much. She pushed it further, feeling it pool in her wrist and outside the perimeter of her clothes, then she flicked her hand to the left, hoping to expel it.

  She succeeded, but not in the way that she suspected. The tingle transferred down into her hand and formed a solid knot of energy that rushed out in a single vector towards the wall. She heard a small thud, but no damage was done. Feeling a twinge of fatigue she raised an eyebrow, then turned her attention back to the battle just in time to see one of the Nestafar battleships break in half from the combination of 6 different Kvash plasma streamers impacting the ship and at least one of them succeeding in coring its way into a power generator.

  A holographic signal appeared on Morgan’s right, citing a notice from the Hycre that the next phase of the plan was taking effect. From several of the Hycre warships engaging in the battle, Morgan didn’t know which, a specially crafted signal, created by the Elarioni after studying the comm traffic in use within the system, began transmitting continuously. If it worked as told, it should seriously interfere with the Nestafar’s battle coordination, blocking their ability to squawk when…

  And there it was. Morgan smirked as a new contact emerged on the battlefield in a slightly higher orbit from the Kvash engagement. It was their third battleship, having been sensor stealthed and waiting patiently, though now it was bearing down on its sister ships and soon to come within weapons range.

  With not one, but two Kvash battleships, not to mention their other heavy warships in play, the Nestafar dreadnaught and support ships were heavily outgunned. The logical response would be to withdrawal and rendezvous with the fleet engaging the Hycre or the reinforcements coming in from elsewhere in the system.

  M
organ waited for a response as her own warships began to slug it out with a superior number of Nestafar ships in a nasty plasma fight, but with her heavy cruisers giving them an advantage by being able to penetrate their shields prior to engagement and all ships being released to use rail guns and missiles without restraint. Still, if events continued they were going to lose more than half their fleet, assuming they came out on top at all. Star Force’s purpose was to hit the command ship, and in doing so keep a large portion of the Nestafar fleet engaged there while the Kvash and Hycre cut up the rest of them.

  More and more contacts kept appearing on the widespread battlemap, indicating more Nestafar ships coming into play…far more than Morgan had expected them to be able to whistle up so quickly. Their placement was poor, delaying their arrival at the actual fighting, but most of them were coming from the star jumpline, meaning they were popping up near her fleet rather than the others.

  The Calavari were bravely jumping into the gaps and delaying their approach, as well as outright killing several, but their warships were weaker than the Nestafar’s and they hadn’t brought any Valeries into the battle, leaving those behind to cover the planets they’d just abandoned to land the hammer blow here.

  “Ok, work your magic, Archon,” she whispered to herself, flexing her fingers in anticipation, then taking to the controls like she was playing an RTS videogame. If the Nestafar comms were jammed, then she should be able to hit them with some complicated strategies that their commanders, even if they could see and analyze the situation, wouldn’t be able to organize a counter response for.

  Morgan sectioned off a group of ships and tagged Wilkinson for command, with orders to deal with the command ship, then Morgan turned her full attention on the brawl, knowing that how many ships they lost here would have a significant impact on battles yet to come, meaning that if she could even preserve a handful, those handful would be around to use on future missions. This was to be Star Force’s last battle within the system, for the Hycre knew the toll it would take on them and had only reluctantly asked for their additional assistance this time, and not for when the reinforcements would eventually arrive.

  Morgan had agreed, knowing how important this system was to the Calavari, even before the Elarioni had explained the Nestafar’s plans for it in detail during their summit meeting. Morgan had also volunteered to take the hardest assignment, knowing that her drone warships were unmanned and she could spend them as she liked…whereas their allies’ warships were all manned, and any lost meant hundreds, if not thousands of deaths.

  As they’d expected, the scattered reinforcements coming into the system were focused on rescuing the command ship, meaning her fourth of the enemy fleet was growing rapidly in number. The Calavari had insisted on aiding them, and Morgan was glad that the Nestafar were more keen on breaking through to get to the command ship than engaging them directly, because they were taking a lot of damage as they passed by and destroying only a few of the Calavari when they deigned to stop and engage their rivals.

  The Calavari had hoped to encourage that, but the Nestafar’s need to get to their crippled command ship was overriding their hatred and giving Morgan more and more warships to contend with.

  As she worked her forces around, moving them through various formations far more than the Nestafar were, who were mostly drifting around and slugging it out with anything in range, the trailblazer smiled as the kill counts began to rack up. She’d gone through thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of naval simulations in challenges over the past 400 years, many of this size, but never before had she been thrust into this type of command position in a live naval engagement where Star Force did not have the advantage.

  Her skill, her painstakingly trained and developed skill, was making a real difference above and beyond even what her skilled Captains were organizing. Her presence mattered, navally, which was a new experience for her. Paul, Liam, and Roger had always been the ones to take the heavy naval battles on their shoulders, and Morgan was both proud and relieved to see that she could step up to the challenge and work the ‘Admiral’ magic in their absence.

  9

  “We’ll begin recovery operations here,” Morgan told the holographic symbol representing the Hycre on the other end of the transmission. “Go get the bastards.”

  ARE YOU CERTAIN?

  “Yes. We’ve got enough ships left for defensive operations, and our jumpships are armed. We can handle a few strays and you need to press your advantage while you have it. Don’t forget they’ve still got a few jumpships lurking around the system.”

  WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN. THE WARSHIPS ARE THE GREATER THREAT WHILE WE CONTROL ORBIT. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE.

  “Our pleasure,” Morgan said, ending the transmission. She rubbed her eyes and glanced at the battlemap again, seeing the Hycre warships begin to move off the massive debris field in search of the Nestafar warships stationed elsewhere in the system and those that had fled the battle during the later stages. There weren’t many in comparison to how many had been destroyed, but with reinforcements on the way the more they could hunt down now while they were isolated the better…and the Hycre fleet was the best equipped to do so.

  The Kvash had already retreated from the battlefield, having lost a pair of cruisers. Both battleships remained, their hulls unblemished, while their other ships showed some wear and tear. Thinking defensively they immediately redeployed their assets to the other planets in the system whose defenders had been stripped from orbit to mount this assault. They didn’t like leaving ground forces exposed, theirs or their allies, and sought to get at least some orbital cover back in place as soon as possible.

  That left the Calavari and Star Force in orbit, both of whose fleets had been decimated. The Calavari were remaining to hold orbit while the Hycre went off hunting, all the while the ground war raged on beneath them…but at least the enemy wouldn’t be getting resupplied in the near future.

  Star Force was therefore left to pick up the pieces, roaming the debris and destroying what partially operational ships remained. A destroyer whose gravity drive had been damaged had surrendered to them, unable to flee, but the rest of the survivors refused any such offers and Morgan had them obliterated with what was left of their ships, having neither the manpower nor the disposition to save the lives of their enemies if they were going to be uncooperative.

  That said, there wasn’t much left alive out there to negotiate with. They had managed to rescue some of the Calavari from damaged vessels while the Hycre had seen to their own survivors. Star Force couldn’t have helped them anyway, given the life support requirements for the race, and the Kvash, having suffered the least damage thanks to their tactical ploy, had already cleaned up what they could then left the wreckage of their destroyed ships to float as so much more debris in the ever expanding rubble that marked the orbital battlefield.

  Morgan had 35 operational drone warships left, half of which were damaged to some extent. That equated to about half of what the Red Ranger alone could carry. The rest of her impressive fleet was now junk floating nearby, but they’d come out the victors and given the Brokal System a chance of survival once the Nestafar reinforcements arrived. Morgan hoped to be gone by then, and she felt a ticking clock inside her head urging her to depart soon for fear of being caught up in the next massive engagement.

  Calavari reinforcements were also on the way, she’d been told, and even the Protovic were sending a fleet, though there was no way of knowing how soon they’d arrive. If this system was as critical to the Nestafar’s plans as the Elarioni had stated, then Morgan knew the Alliance would keep sending assets in to secure it, even as the enemy did the same…and she didn’t have the resources to stick around for that type of prolonged, heavy fighting. All four of her warships had survived undamaged, and she wanted to get them and their few remaining drones out of the combat area before they could be wasted by being in the wrong place at the wrong time when the enemy arrived.

  With the rem
aining drones encircling the warships in a thin defensive halo, Morgan ordered recovery efforts to begin on the wreckage, with a flurry of support vehicles moving out of the warships’ hangar bays to start chewing apart the salvageable technology from their dead ships. The Archon knew she needed to recycle as much as possible, for even one repaired warship could make a difference in the smaller engagements her armada was dealing with, and she intended to pick the Nestafar apart as much as possible on the flanks while they continued devoting the bulk of their resources here.

  The question was how long to stick around chewing on the debris. When she finally left the command nexus she told Wilkinson they had 48 hours to get what they could, then they were pulling out regardless…if not sooner, then she left him and the other Captains to handle their work and Morgan retreated back into the Red Ranger’s sanctum, feeling like they were nearly past the worst of it, but could lose everything if they made a misstep over the next hours. With her luck the Nestafar would arrive today, at this planet, with no forewarning, and they’d get annihilated before the Hycre and Kvash could get back to assist them.

  That creeping feeling aside, she was relieved to have the star system at least nominally back in Alliance hands. The ground wars on all 7 planets were still continuing, oblivious to the naval engagements above them save for how it affected their resupply. Morgan had wanted to at least pound a few more surface bases before they left, but the recent battle had expended their full supply of rail gun rounds, save for those in the batteries on the jumpships…and part of the recovery efforts getting underway were aimed at salvaging unused rounds from the wreckage.

  Star Force had managed to turn the tide of this micro-war, but at a cost. A lesson Morgan wasn’t going to forget. The more data from the V’kit’no’sat pyramid that they unlocked and learned how to use the stronger their ships would be, but this recent engagement showed her that, in the near future at least, Star Force had to have numbers on its side, against the Nestafar and the lizards, otherwise they were doomed. The other races were throwing around warships and their crews like they were expendable commodities, and when opponents were willing to play that type of game an inferior enemy could succeed in defeating a superior one through attrition alone.