Star Force: Nexus (SF57) Read online

  That was a new version of an old tactic, with the new det packs being upgraded and placed in the infrastructure or even buried just under the ground to ambush troops or mechs with. The yield was clearly designed for the mechs, but given their armored cockpits the mechwarriors had survived even when their four-armed monstrosities had a leg blown off…along with a huge amount of dirt and infrastructure, making it look like a rail gun impact in the aftermath.

  The mechs he had repositioning to the mountain range were going to sniff out traps like that before the infantry came in, and had sensor equipment added to them to assist in the task. The range was low, but it’d give them some warning and allow them to shoot the traps before they were sprung if they were cautious enough. Another tactic was having the Calavari Valeries fly low and scan the ground, though if the det packs were mounted on walls of ruined infrastructure there was a chance they could get caught in a proximity blast. Some of the triggers were pressure sensitive, others were heat, and still more were either movement related or remote controlled. The lizards had a full bag of tricks in play, and if the Calavari weren’t careful they’d needlessly take casualties.

  Same went for the Protovic, yet the Archons weren’t commanding them. They worked well together, but without direct operational command Vlad worried about their safety. They were seasoned warriors, but again, these were the lizards. They adapted to everything you threw at them and would spend 1000 lives to get one of yours if necessary. They had to be hunted down and removed from this planet, but when Vlad had the choice between pushing an offensive and biding his time he’d always do the latter. The lizards weren’t going to get reinforcements, so time was on Star Force’s side and he intended to use it.

  When Vlad got to the roof of the building he took off his helmet and took in a deep breath of the dry air, feeling it on his skin as a light breeze blew in from the southwest. He looked around, seeing his troops in motion, including a few stars of mechs to the north coming back from patrol. The spaceport had been the first thing permanently constructed, and even now there was an almost constant flow of dropships coming down from orbit bringing additional supplies for the work crews to build with.

  Slowly he spun around, looking in all directions and seeing nothing but barren, dirty plains around his little nest of activity. Very far off to the south he could just barely make out a bit of variation on the horizon that was the ruins of a Calavari city. It was scheduled to begin disassembly within the month, but until then Vlad had troops stationed to patrol it to make sure none of the lizards slipped in and took up residence.

  The nearby mechbay, which was little more than an open field with a few support structures at this point, began showing considerable activity as the units he’d ordered to get moving towards the target began walking over to the dropships in the spaceport and loading up for the flight out. They’d land well away from the base and walk the rest of the distance, but it would take far too long to cross on foot from here. In fact he had so many dropships at his disposal he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to fight a war without them. They were literally the glue that held Star Force’s military together, and he didn’t have a clue how many millions there were in service, but from his experience he knew he could never have too many in play.

  Most of the people he saw outside were workers, with the Calavari troops waiting inside of prefab buildings or transports. There was nothing for them to do outside other than make nice targets, so they bided their time in various ways indoors and left the thousands of Kiritak free to roam without interference as they quickly put together new infrastructure for Vlad to use.

  Up in the sky there were constant Valerie patrols, both the original version that the Protovic used and the Star Force upgraded model that he Calavari preferred. He knew they’d keep his base safe, and the lizards had long since lost the last of their cruisers. All they had left were wisps and kirbies, and there was no way even a suicide run was going to get them past his air cover.

  Everything was buttoned up tight here and proceeding smoothly, with Vlad about to go the opposite direction and head up the expedition into the unknown. Where there was danger an Archon would be, if only to shield others from it, but to be honest Vlad could never just sit by and watch, even if he wasn’t needed. He was warrior and warriors fought, which put the Archons at odds with almost every other military philosophy in the galaxy that had their valuable leaders well protected and hidden from the enemy.

  Archons dove straight in, for they weren’t just the leaders, they were also the strongest…and the place of the strong was in the front taking the worst of assignments and finding a way to carry the others to victory, or at least survival when things went bad. That was one reason why Vlad hated the game of chess, because it had the weak pawns up front as sacrificial minions.

  The ranger put his helmet back on and sealed it in place, still tasting the outside air but with a bit of a twinge as it passed through the filters. Time to get moving so he could arrive on site with the mechs and make sure everything was suitable for the ground troops to come in.

  The Archon walked to the edge of the roof and stepped off, falling several stories and cushioning his landing with his jump pack while scaring the crap out of a nearby Kiritak.

  “Sorry,” he offered, heading off towards the spaceport.

  9

  The Calavari mechs ceased firing on the main doors of the lizard base, having burnt a good-sized hole in them that was now beginning to cool and lose its trim glow, then repositioned off to other locations leaving one of the four-armed machines in place to cover the entrance as the infantry began to move forward. Vlad was ahead of them, looking inside with his psionics as he moved up to the doors and the opening that was a meter up from the ground.

  After getting a quick glimpse he hopped through, sidestepping to the left and finding a deserted hangar. There were several tanks sitting nearby, but Vlad knew they were empty and no threat. He didn’t like there not being anyone here, for it wasn’t like the lizards to just give up and run, and his spidey sense began tingling. With a quick comm to the troops outside he told them to hold off for the moment, then he moved further inside to scout out the area.

  He pulled heavily on his limited Ikrid and Pefbar, sensing a trap and not sure where it would come from. The tanks alone should have been put to use strafing whatever troops would come in, and the fact that the lizards were abandoning them was totally wrong. The Archon ran over to one, looking inside it with his Pefbar and expecting explosives…but he found none. He transitioned to the other tanks and likewise found them clean.

  It wasn’t until he moved to the exits of the hangar did he finally find the traps he feared. The narrow hallway entrances had det packs inside the walls, completely invisible to anyone passing through, but Vlad could see them with his Pefbar. There were also links to proximity detectors, tiny pinprick devices in the walls that wouldn’t be noticed without scrutiny…and the type of scrutiny that would put you in the blast radius before you saw them.

  Vlad retreated back to one of the tanks and went inside, grabbing the first loose item he could find and bringing the hand-sized thingamajig with him over to one of the hallways. He wasn’t sure what the yield was on these det packs, but he made sure to stay well back as he chucked the object into the entrance. He guided it as much as he could telekinetically until it was out of range, then it dropped towards the floor but never made. The left side of the hallway blew out and shot debris all the way back to Vlad with some small bits and pieces bouncing off his shields.

  “Sneaky bastards,” he commented, getting on the comm and calling the infantry in as he picked up a small chunk of wall and headed over to another of the hangar exits. He detonated that one and three others as the first of the Calavari Knights came through the now mostly cool hole in the main doors. Each of them wore the telltale orange, four-armed armor and was carrying an array of weapons on their back racks, along with some that had physical shields made famous by the mainline Knights.


  They moved in quickly and held back as Vlad commanded, then he began to probe deeper into the base, sniffing out more traps and detonating them. The Calavari knew well how dangerous the lizards could be so they heeded his warnings and kept back, even as some lizards came out to engage them then ran, trying to draw them back into ambushes. When that didn’t work small groups of them ran out, obscuring a single individual carrying a det pack that was trying to get to the Calavari.

  Vlad hit them with Fornax and toppled the suicide bomber far enough that when he did detonate a few moments later none of the energy shields on his infantry were taken down…though a few meters more and that wouldn’t have been the case.

  With plasma fire the Calavari suppressed others running out at them, some of which tried ambushes out of side doors as they moved further and further into the subsurface facility. As they did Vlad began picking up more and more minds nearby, with them eventually getting the telltale horde rush once they were three levels down. Vlad tried not to fight too much, worrying about det packs in the mix and trying to pick them out, and getting one early enough that he was able to snipe him down before he detonated.

  The Calavari meanwhile took to the standard variant lizards like they were toys, shooting them at range then knocking them around almost effortlessly in hand to hand. Their size, strength, extra arms, and the thickness of armor they were able to carry were over powering, with only the det packs a true threat. Vlad kept his troops with him rather than having them spread out, but as they took levels he had to leave some behind to hold regions they’d taken, with some of the suicide bombers getting through in places where Vlad wasn’t.

  Fortunately the Calavari took them down before they got within touching range, diminishing the intensity of the blasts enough that their shields and armor protected them, though several had to be evacuated with injuries. Had they been Human troops they would have been dead, but the extra armor had been enough to save them, and for that Vlad was grateful as he pressed on, knowing that the faster he killed these bastards the less opportunity they would have to be devious.

  But he couldn’t move too fast, for he had to scan all the walls in front of him, both for det packs and minds, for there were also hidden compartments with troops in them. Had he not been there the Calavari would have walked right by, then the lizards would have popped out behind them and in front, catching them from both sides. He still would have put credits on the Calavari winning out, but the more armor damage they took the greater the chance that others would deliver the finishing blows later.

  The det pack threat didn’t disappear early, with Vlad having to deal with them up until the very end, but after some 7 hours of fighting and him thoroughly searching the facility with his psionics the task was done and the base was now in Calavari hands. He met up with the Protovic on the far side, with them having come in only a few levels and engaged in a brutal firefight. Apparently they hadn’t had any explosives in the walls around the hidden base entrances, but they’d been committed to doing whatever damage they could, with the last few stragglers making useless attack runs, sometimes solo, which the Protovic easily mowed down after taking a few injuries.

  With their allies pulling out of the base and leaving, Vlad ordered some of his troops to remain to babysit the facility to make sure the lizards didn’t sneak back in, then took the rest and headed back to base where he would begin planning the next attack and readjusting his troop disposition accordingly. He had more than enough assets to do the job, but his primary task was to safeguard the Calavari while retaking the planet. So far he’d managed to do that, putting aside the injuries, but there had been a few deaths in other areas of the planet, and more so with the Protovic than the Calavari.

  A few days later when there was a lull in activity he took a dropship back up to orbit and one of the Star Force jumpships so he could get a few decent workouts in its sanctum, for while the combat on the ground was intense at times it was no substitute for training and Vlad was already feeling squishy after so many days missed. He knew he had to get a few workouts in here and there to minimize the damage, so he took the opportunity now, not knowing when he’d get another chance in the future.

  The dropship shot him up to orbit, passing by the Calavari drone fleet. Unlike the standard Star Force drones these were elongated in typical Calavari design, looking like fat spears and docking with specialized jumpships that accommodated their shapes into a crate-like lattice that would expand out from the jumpship hull rather than having a cut out section premade. It was a variation that allowed the jumpships to be more compact when empty, but it made them overly fat when full.

  The jumpship he went to was one of three varieties and the largest, with all Calavari ships being built with a small segment of their training facilities as Archon sanctums on the off chance that they might be needed, and this was one such occasion given that there were no mainline ships in the system, only Calavari and Protovic.

  It was still a Star Force ship though, and he felt at home inside it when he finally arrived. The hallways were a bit bigger, but all Star Force ships were designed to accommodate all the Star Force races, including the quarters Vlad had been assigned, not to mention the food. He had to have his own ambrosia stores, for the backup supplies for all the other races wouldn’t be enough for him and the others over the long haul of this campaign, but about half of what the Calavari ate he could also digest…with a few other Human items added to the cargo stores prior to his coming on this assignment.

  As of now there were three races that had specialized ambrosia within Star Force, the Calavari, the Kiritak, and the Elarioni. The latter was originally designed for Ariel, and easily applied to the newer Star Force members. Most of the Elarioni population was still independent, such as the Kiritas were, but a good faction of them had crossed over and joined Star Force, establishing their own colonies while maintaining close ties with the other Elarioni.

  Ambrosia research was currently in play for the Bsidd and the recently annexed Scionate, but those wouldn’t be widely available for at least another couple of decades, for Star Force didn’t take any chance with the concoction that was still lightyears ahead of their current tech level. Copying the original Zen’zat formula was one thing, but modifying it for other races was quite another and it required a lot of work to just make feasible, but like with everything else Star Force did they chipped away at the problem until they finally got a solution, with it serving the Calavari and Kiritak well to date.

  All of Vlad’s troops were on ambrosia, though most of the civilian Calavari were not, just like the Human population. The Kiritak all were, given that they were workers and anyone born into the Kiritak that did not want to be such went back to the Kiritas or into Axius, leaving the entire Kiritak population as energetic little busybodies, made all the more so with their ambrosia that was geared more towards endurance and stamina than the general balance than the Zen’zat variety, which had the same with considerable ‘burst’ added that allowed it to be depleted quite quickly with activity or specialized psionics that directly consumed it.

  The Kiritak didn’t have psionics and they weren’t physically strong combat troops, with their strength being in their workload and aversion to sedation. The ambrosia amped that up even more, with the Kiritak always being assigned to doing something and their personal training filling up the balance of their time.

  The Calavari were the reverse, with great physical strength that their ambrosia heavily amped up along with a speed burst, giving their muscles compounds to increase contraction speed and endurance, letting the big guys overcome some of their clumsiness, though they were still no match against a Human when it came to agility.

  The Elarioni were the most radical, given that they were swimmers. Ariel’s compound had simply been a standard transition from the Zen’zat compound to fit her physiology without Star Force trying to meddle with it. Now that the Elarioni as a race were part of Star Force that hadn’t changed, with their ambrosi
a formula most notably upping their self-sufficiency rates heavily simply by making it easier to attain.

  That boost was also the reason why the Kiritak were growing by leaps and bounds…for their death rate was almost non-existent.

  The Calavari’s sluggishness was a hindrance to self-sufficiency, making it harder for them to attain but still feasible with proper training. Some races were simply more energetic than others by default, which got them closer without trying, but all could attain self-sufficiency if they wanted to work at it…but unfortunately a lot didn’t.

  Vlad’s troops were all self-sufficient, but the Calavari civilians were not. At present it was estimated that some 12% were, based on those reaching an age that those without typically would not. Aside from the medical devices in the pyramid there was no way to test for self-sufficiency, other than to keep living and not growing old.

  Then there were some who attained self-sufficiency early on and grew tired of the training and chose not to continue. The body adapted to everything you did and did not do, meaning that if you wanted greater strength you had to keep using it. It wasn’t an attainment that would last forever, and necessarily so for that ‘loss’ allowed you to customize your body in new ways by undoing what you’d previously done.

  That’s why stagnation was so dangerous, for you were undoing your strength but not building up any new ones. Granted, it would take Vlad a very long time to lose the amount of strength he’d gained from centuries of training, but getting in a good workout now would start to reverse the downward slide he was already experiencing, which was why he headed straight to the tiny sanctum and got to work right away with a good long run.