Star Force: Ringworld (SF80) Read online

  When the seda received Jack’s update it immediately sent a burst transmission to the first of the three distant points, then repeated it for the other two. So far no information about the cleansing beams had come in from either Liam or Roger, so it was going to be needed intel if they also had to deal with battlestations in their target systems. Along with the message was a request for modifications to the shields, which was tagged to go all the way to Earth along with any and all shipyards and research facilities within the ADZ.

  Someone would determine if it required a hardware rebuild, modification, or just some tinkering with the existing equipment, but when they did find a fix they’d not only be able to block the shield penetrating nature of these alternate cleansing beams, but actually make their shields stronger than normal against them. The raw power they were pumping out couldn’t be negated completely, so they’d still do some damage, but Jack guessed it would be less than the phasers would do, making it a degrade against Star Force while still a powerful new weapon against everyone else.

  Paul kept his fleet in the thick of the fight until the numbers began to fall off. They still had an advantage, but not as much of one as he wanted. They were starting to lose a high number of drones, so he called for a retreat and the Star Force ships scattered, leaving behind their drone debris but none of the manned warships.

  Immediately upon the withdrawal Paul sent his ships out to hit secondary targets and exploit tiny advantages they had, not giving the lizards an hour of rest after more than a day of pitched fighting. Paul was tired, but not physically. His mind was wore down from nonstop control operations while he’d insisted that the other Archons take periodic brakes and swap out to stay fresh. He was too valuable for that so he’d stuck it out, knowing that the lizards wouldn’t have the same luxury.

  How many masterminds were commanding those fleets he didn’t know, nor did he know where they were located. It was possible they were within the cruiser fleets but there were no command ships out there to find. Monitoring lizard transmission was doable, but only in hindsight. They were using encryption that couldn’t be hacked instantaneously and they were good about switching it up. Also, they used a lot of directional transmitters to keep Star Force in the dark completely when they weren’t in combat and had the luxury of pointing their equipment. During battle their transmissions were omnidirectional and able to be monitored, but through all the battles they’d fought thus far Paul’s analysts had failed to identify any commanding ship or signal.

  They were out there though. Paul could feel it in the way their ships moved and reacted. They were being guided by more than their standard variety, and the whiff of a mastermind was easy to detect nowadays after having so much experience fighting them in the past. Most planets did not have one, but when they did their ship movements took on a different profile, as did their ground forces. Why every world didn’t grow one Paul didn’t know, but they were definitely the elite commanders, the Grand Admirals of the lizard empire, and he knew for a fact that they had several here.

  One was in stellar orbit, another was planetary based, and the others he couldn’t be for sure, but given the reaction times to their own signal lag he had been able to isolate a few of them to specific regions. They could be on the move as well, but so far they were hiding them from him well, for if he knew what ship or station they were on Paul would take them out no matter how many drones he had to lose. Without them controlling the mega fleets he could take their entire cruiser force down within a week. They were what was melding the mass of ‘tiny’ ships into an effective fighting force, whereas normally they just snowballed their opponents with never ending weaponsfire.

  That wouldn’t work against the strength of Paul’s fleet, let alone his own tactical experience, and he was pretty sure the lizards knew it. They’d been fortifying their core systems ever since Star Force had cut their empire into two halves, and he was pretty sure that had included mastermind deployment as well as massive ship counts and battlestations.

  And the fact that they could hide their placements from him was both impressive and annoying. Too bad these bastards had to be bad guys, for they definitely had useful skills that could be put to better use.

  Paul saw the hit and run attacks resume, trying to gage some reaction times off of them and noticed one fleet segment lapse in its mastermind control for a good ten minutes before resuming the normal ‘feel.’ Paul tried to link it up with other ship movements but failed to do so. The lizards were having some type of lag issues, but he couldn’t identify them yet. That was frustrating, but just another problem to solve going forward. They’d bitten a significant chunk out of the lizard fleet this time and that gave them less ships to maneuver around against them. A few more bites like that and the invasion would snowball in their favor, but for now Paul needed rest and the other Archons could handle the standard poking of the enemy lines, so he abandoned the nexus and command of the ship to Admiral Hestin and headed straight to the closest cafeteria, downed a lot of food and liquids, then went back to his quarters and just crashed in bed without bothering to set an alarm.

  Liam was in the command nexus onboard his flagship when the interstellar transmission came through. It was routed to him immediately, with him reading Jack’s text message first off and finding it both curious and ominous. In all the years that Star Force had been in existence they’d been researching and building new tech thanks in large part to the V’kit’no’sat database. Even then it was a time consuming process, with him knowing that pure research was even more tedious. For the lizards to have created the phaser tech was a huge upgrade, but now to have also gained the cleansing beams, a completely different type of energy weapon, didn’t feel right.

  Either their tech curve was greater than other races or they were getting help, and the nature of this new weapon suggested the latter. Liam’s fleet wasn’t engaged in any heavy action at the moment, just blockading a flew jumplines and poking around the perimeter of a pair of planets, so he dug into the files along with his personal research notes concerning the cleansing beam tech.

  His conclusion was simple…this was not a prototype weapon, but rather a fully functional model that had gone through numerous revisions. Knowing the lizards, he didn’t think they’d sit on something this long to put out, which meant they’d gotten it from somewhere. Stealing the blueprints was possible, reverse engineering wreckage was less likely but still feasible, but the fact that these weapons were on the battlestations…which his fleet hadn’t attacked yet…and not on the cruisers suggested to him that they were designed as planetary defense weapons and were gradually being scaled down.

  That meant whoever they’d gotten them from had used them in that capacity, and no known race on Star Force’s map was attributed with these cleansing beams. The versions they’d given to the Hycre and Protovic were considerably different, so it hadn’t come from them. Someone else out there had cleansing beams and they were off the radar. Whether they were allied with the lizards or one of their conquests Liam didn’t know, but this was definitely not lizard-inspired tech.

  The trailblazer wondered what actually was, or did they get most of their toys from the races they conquered. They definitely had a motif to their equipment, but he wondered what their fleet had looked like thousands of years ago. He’d have to put in a request to the H’kar to see if they had any ancient records, maybe with those he might be able to pinpoint where this ‘help’ had began, though at this point it was irrelevant. They were here, now, and equipped with a new weapon that Star Force had to contend with…and Liam found it very ironic that with a little adjustment their shields could actually make it less effective than the phasers.

  To that end he informed the techs he had onboard to start working on the modifications and to get him an estimate on what it would take to implement them.

  10

  January 31, 3101

  Menchet System (lizard core)

  Middle Zone

  The Excalibur sat side b
y side with six other command ships as they all targeted a distant battlestation cluster with their Keema batteries, absorbing the firepower coming from some 14 of the lizard stations that had four cleansing beams each, though most of those were not aimed at the command ships. They were covering other angles of attack, which was why Paul had them situated along a single vector. The battlestations, as it turned out, were in fact mobile, and after the defense fleet had eventually been ground down to nothing but a scattering of cruisers running around the system pulling recon the Star Force fleet had begun targeting the battlestations.

  A few had been picked off in isolation, then the others had begun redeploying into clusters. They didn’t move fast, but they were the only mobile attack assets left to the lizards…until the shipyard ring pumped out enough new ships. They were pulling off resources stockpiled there and new shipments coming up from the planet below now that their convoys were being intercepted when they arrived in system, but that hadn’t put them out of business entirely.

  So far Paul had left the giant ring alone, preferring to pick off the battlestations and wait to see if reinforcements would be arriving now that they’d finished killing the 5.2 million cruisers that had been defending the system. His own force of some 80,149 drones had been reduced down to 62,611 with no warship or personnel losses, which looked like a humongous victory for Star Force, but 17,538 drones was not something you replaced lightly. Still, it was resources well spent to expose this system, assuming they were able to continue here without interference.

  Rather than lose more drones Paul was using the command ships to assault the various clusters of battlestations. Their shields could hold up to the pounding of the cleansing beams even without the new rework. Had they the time they could have gone back to a shipyard to get the upgrade, but Paul wasn’t going to waste a single day now that he had their fleet down. Give the lizards time and they’d rebuild, with his first priority being to get the shipyard ring eliminated. To do that he needed to get the battlestations out of the way first then go about tackling the defenses on the ring itself, which were considerable but nothing his fleet couldn’t handle. The trick was to go forward without losing more drones, for they’d need them in the other core systems.

  He also hadn’t split up his fleet, sending task groups to aid Liam and Roger. He had to eliminate this ring first, then he could get around to helping them. They weren’t nearly as far along but were chipping away at their own defending lizard fleets with mixed results. Neither trailblazer was pushing the issue, knowing better than to waste resources when it was just a matter of time before Paul broke through here and came to double up with them.

  So far none of the three systems had seen reinforcement from the others. Why that was was still a guess, but it looked to Paul like the lizards were just buying time rather than trying to stop the invasion. Fight here and they’d leave their other systems exposed if they lost this engagement. Typically the lizards would have gone for that, putting all their strength into one killing blow that they could then snowball off of later, risky as it was, but they’d learned not to underestimate Star Force and Paul got the distinct feeling that this entire system had been tasked to do nothing more than stall his invasion and do as much damage as possible before they died…hoping to whittle down his fleet enough that he wouldn’t be able to make effective assaults at the other core worlds, at least not for a while.

  That was fine as far as he was concerned, for these systems had to fall and them not supporting each other was going to make it easier initially so long as he didn’t let his fleet get beat down. He wasn’t going to straight to the their homeworld with it, but with these ring shipyards the lizards were able to build ships a lot faster than Star Force could and until they got knocked down there was still a slim chance the lizards could build their way out of this mismatch.

  And that’s why Paul still couldn’t kick the feeling that help was on the way to keep him from destroying this one, but for now he needed to take out these battlestations so they couldn’t interfere with either the ring takedown or the planetary invasions to come. The latter wouldn’t be accomplished by this fleet, for there were no ground troops in it, but there were units standing by back in the ADZ that could be loaded up and shipped here quickly if/when the time was right.

  Paul wasn’t ready to call for them yet because he wasn’t sure that they really controlled the naval situation in this system, but for the moment he was getting to shoot their battlestations down unopposed while the new cruisers coming off the slips were mostly staying put around the ring or headed down to the surface to avoid Paul’s fleet until they could group up again.

  The cleansing beams coming at the Excalibur and the other command ships were packing a punch, but at this range they were petering out a bit while the Keema batteries and bloon launchers were not. As for the launchers, they’d been upgraded enough over the years that they were nearing almost railgun range, in that they could be launched and let drift ballistically for several minutes before the energy shells cracked, but attacking with only them would have meant an unbearable waiting time against the heavily armored battlestations.

  As it was they were taking quite a pounding, allowing even the lesser powered cleansing beams to hammer the command ships with repetitive hits…the kind of damage the drones couldn’t take, and at this range pinpoint shots were out of the question. Both sides had huge targets to aim at, but picking off individual weapon systems was not possible even for Star Force’s Keema batteries, though Paul’s gunners were trying to disprove that assertion.

  Basically it was a grinding war, with the lizards having a lot more mass to play with. If Paul wanted the battlestations dead faster he could close range and take more damage in order to bring his short range weaponry into play but the numbers didn’t add up there. He’d have to use his drones and he’d lose a fair number of them in the assaults, and even if he swarmed the targets the lizards would be able to take down a fair number of them. He didn’t like the delay, but outranging their cleansing beams was the only way to take down the battlestations cleanly, though he had ships standing by to intercept them if they attempted a retreat.

  Right now they were just content to stay huddled up nearby each other and exchange fire, which suggested to Paul that they were buying time, possibly for reinforcements to come, but they’d already taken out 573 of the battlestations and no such fleets had arrived. Right now Paul had three different groups of command ships going after more stations while his warships and drone fleets held stellar orbit and continued to ambush incoming convoys. How long that would continue Paul didn’t know, for the message should have already been sent out to stop them from coming. There was a lag issue involved, but soon they should be diverted to other systems now that this one was not accessible.

  Maybe that was a reason why reinforcements weren’t coming as well, for they’d lose so many in transit that it wouldn’t be worth it in the long run. Just like Paul’s fleet had to fight their way into the system and hold the jumppoint for a long time so would the lizards. He’d caught a bit of bad luck at having the enemy fleet so nearby when that happened, but he was going to lose drones no matter what and if the lizards were going to make Star Force come to them then they’d have to fight their way into each of the other systems the same way…though there were slower ways to get a massive fleet into a system.

  As he let his gunners do their thing he watched as another cleansing beam went offline, hit by weaponsfire that was being thrown at the target battlestation that was not maneuvering around the others for cover. That was sloppy on the lizards’ part, for they could have prolonged this fight by using each other’s bulk to block for one another. Their shields weren’t all that great so it wouldn’t have saved them much damage, but when one was going to die without accepting the surrender offers that were continually going out, you’d think you’d want to get every cleansing beam hit in that you could.

  Right now they were just soaking up damage with their armor and ma
ss rather than using their maneuvering capability, but keeping all of the stations in position to attack simultaneously. They hadn’t let Paul come in at an angle to block out a few and had maneuvered around that attempt so they could all be firing at once. And while they were just sitting there throwing energy back and forth, Paul had ordered all firepower on one battlestation, grinding it down until its weaponry stopped returning fire.

  It would then rotate around to bring another side into play and the process would repeat until it was totally offline but still floating there more or less intact, for these huge constructs didn’t blow up from within, they had to be worn down over time and the shipyard was going to be even worse…which was why he’d decided not to destroy this one.

  Paul stayed at his post in the command nexus for several hours before taking a break and letting the bombardment continue at the hands of others, with the command ships rotating in and out to let their shields regenerate. He got a short workout in then some sleep before finally getting the word that all the stations in this group had had their cleansing beams knocked out.

  When that happened they moved in and started targeting the short range weaponry to make sure the stations were completely incapable of harming the fleet. Meanwhile Paul, Riona, and a few mages onboard the command ships got armored up and into dropships that were then sent over to one of the smoking and damaged stations after another surrender offer was ignored.

  Star Force might be killing all the lizards, but how they died mattered to Paul and the others. They weren’t going to just let them starve to death out here, so they were going to at least afford them a combat death while saving the excessive firepower that would be required to render each of these battlestations into rumble. To that end the Archons boarded the stations in teams of 6 and proceeded to clean them out personally even though there were thousands of lizards still alive inside each.