Star Force: Mastermind (SF32) Read online

  It was a calculated strategy, sacrificing the arrowheads in exchange for disrupting the lizard strongpoints that otherwise would have taken hours to work through. The Archons knew better than to charge into overwhelming numbers, for they didn’t consider even so much as one of their own to be expendable. That meant nibbling away with raids and faints to break down the lizard lines into workable groups…which the arrowheads accomplished much quicker.

  That was, unless you were rangers.

  When the trailblazers finally came out into the main tunnel that led up to the city entrance they were more than 2 kilometers away, but the entire length of the none too narrow shaft was full of lizards waiting to go into battle, not only in the direction of the city, but out to their left as well for who knew how far down the tunnel.

  Normally that would have meant turning tail and trying to draw them back into the adjacent building where they could work through them piecemeal, but not today. Whether it be an overabundance of confidence or just plain fatigue, the rangers didn’t hesitate to jump into the fray. They swam out and gave each other some gaps, allowing the lizards to surround each one of them and attack from multiple angles like tiny piranhas going after a larger fish…not the best strategy in the world.

  Unless you had psionics, and you needed the extra gaps to keep from disabling your own teammates.

  The five trailblazers swam out like fingers extending from the side entrance in the tunnel, and once they’d accumulated enough lizards around them jabbing in at them with their glowing green plasma rods the Archons began unleashing Fornax disruption fields…not blasts. These extended out a few meters in all directions and held their intensity, essentially blinding the lizards’ nervous systems with white noise, allowing each of the rangers a few moments of impunity to swim up and kill the enemy without them even knowing what was happening.

  Each of the Archons could hold the Fornax for varying lengths of time, with Kyler being the weakest given how much mental energy he’d depleted earlier. They had a finite amount that gradually regenerated, but he’d never had time to fully recharge and had been operating off of the bottom half of the barrel while the others had come into this fight on full.

  That said, he still had enough to work his way through the center of their formation, giving him the cleanup work in the middle of the tunnel while the others spread out in either direction, meaning he’d have to use less than them. Within two minutes the section of tunnel directly outside the entrance to the building they’d come through was littered with lizard corpses, with Kyler swimming about the middle of it all hunting the few that had survived in the chaos.

  He used Fornax blasts to target them individually, conserving his energy and keeping them off the others, who were even now spreading out in either direction. Once he caught the last lizards and disposed of them he floated stationary for a moment, doing a quick mental perimeter check to make sure he hadn’t missed any, then he started putting waypoints in the tunnel for the others to work off of, essentially splitting up the lizard hoard and navigating a path through to the next building entrance, knowing they couldn’t fight in a corpse field that would get progressively more and more dense.

  Paul and Emily, doing their well practiced 2s tag team, reversed course and came back towards Kyler through the corpses as he headed out behind Rafa and Sara as they pushed into the lizards on the city side. Those were accumulating so thick you had trouble seeing past them down the tunnel. Hundreds of little glowing green orbs were spread amongst them like berries on a tree, making for a formidable wall of plasma and flesh, but the Archons didn’t hesitate.

  The wall suddenly buckled in two places as Rafa went low and Sara high, ‘detonating’ Fornax fields that caused the lizards within a few meters of them to go all twitchy, with half of them dropping their weapons when they could no longer control their fingers.

  From behind Paul and Emily reached out and touched some of the lizards’ minds in another manner, using their Ikrid to implant the image of an enemy on their flanks, causing some of the lizards to flinch or even jab at their fellow troops from the feint. Two of the hits succeeded, injuring one and killing another, but also resulting in spreading chaos as the lizards behind them saw what they thought were ‘traitors’ attacking each other.

  To their credit they didn’t swarm over each other in a killing frenzy, but the once solid line of bodies was now a mash of confusion with two Archon prongs digging deeper and deeper inside.

  Kyler followed them up by punching into the middle, then Paul and Emily jumped in on the flanks following the waypoints Kyler had set down earlier, all of which kept them spaced out from each other enough not to worry about interfering with each other’s psionics, for as good as they’d gotten with generating Fornax, they weren’t very good at defending against it, especially when they didn’t know it was incoming.

  Formation spacing was an old tactic, and not one that even the chaos of an underwater battle was going to shake them from, so, doing the seemingly impossible, the five trailblazers fought their way through the tunnel thick with living lizards leaving a trail of dead in their wake that the living from the opposite side were maneuvering their way through to try and catch up and cut off the Humans from behind…which they did.

  But that didn’t shake the rangers either, for they were intent on fighting mobile and didn’t care what was more than a few meters away from them. Block, punch, kick, Fornax, jab, and repeat was the trend, though not always in that order, with the waypoints their only other concern. Fighting their way from one to the other they pushed through the schools of lizards until they got to another building entrance on the length of the tunnel, but still far short of the main building. There they ducked inside, fighting through still more lizards on the interior but far thinner in numbers than outside.

  The Archons fled through several rooms, drawing pursuit their way and encountering others enroute as they caught their collective breath, knowing that there was no way they’d have the strength to go all the way up the tunnel to the main entrance…at least not all at once.

  “What I wouldn’t give for a streak right now,” Rafa commented as they ducked into a storage area that was currently empty, with Sara and Paul floating out of sight beside the door to ambush any lizards that followed them in.

  “Tell me about it,” Kyler said, breathing hard inside his armor. That many lizards all lined up in a row. Even if the craft didn’t fire any weapons, it’d literally squish the lizards against the walls given how many of them there were, but there was no way to get one into these tunnels, and an arrowhead would get overwhelmed within meters, clogged up with bodies and pinned in place long enough to get skewered with plasma nubs.

  “Thank you,” Paul said as a lizard swam in and he leveraged the plasma rod out of its hand, replacing the one he’d been carrying that must have been low on power by now. Sara jabbed the lizard with hers and kicked the body aside, waiting for the next one to come through. “Where now, Kyler?”

  “Working on it,” the trailblazer said, setting new waypoints on the battlemap.

  10

  Weston Pratt stood on the inside of the blast doors along with dozens of other Regulars, all in aquatics armor more bulky than what the Archons wore. It was colored deep blue and had the same jet thruster system, but at the moment it was cumbersome to wear because Pratt and the others were waiting in atmosphere, not water, as the lizards continued to pound on the doors with occasional blasts.

  Two weak spots were visible, both of which had dime-sized holes in them that were leaking water. A containment shield set just inside the doors was holding it back, and by now an inch think wall had risen up to the level of the holes, with the atmosphere above it contained and compressed. Each subsequent det pack blast would vaporize the water, but so far the shield had held up, given that only a tiny bit of the compression wave was getting through, but each time more of the sturdy door material would be chipped away, enlarging the holes.

  Pratt and the other Regu
lars knew it would take a lot of time for them to chew out a hole big enough to come through, and then they’d be bottlenecked enough to turn the area into a shooting gallery. He and the other aquatics Regulars were armed with plasma rifles, stun sticks, and needlers as backup, hoping that since the shield generators were set on this side of the doors that they’d remain active, whereas the lizards had been destroying the others out in the tunnels by blasting into the hardware set into the walls.

  They couldn’t do that here, because there was no way they were going to be able to set up det packs on this side unless they could get through the defenders first. That meant that the shields, even when breached, would regenerate and keep most of the water out. That was the hope, anyway, for so long as their weapons stayed dry they could shoot the lizards from range with plasma and hold this position indefinitely…or at least until the number of bodies offered the lizards cover and they smuggled through a det pack.

  Which was why Pratt and several others had been tagged as ‘cleaning teams’ who would retrieve and remove the lizard corpses when there were lulls in the fighting, hoping to keep the firing lines clear. He figured as long as they kept to the walls they’d be relatively safe, but with what was said to be thousands of lizards on the other side, who knew what was about to happen, though he was confident they would be able to mow down a great number of them before they could overwhelm this position.

  Several fallback points had already been arranged within the city, and they were determined to bleed the lizards of infantry at all moments of opportunity. He didn’t know if he’d prefer to fight in the air or the water, but they were all wearing the aquatics armor just in case the city became flooded, otherwise they would have donned the standard security armor.

  Two more blasts occurred over the next 10 minutes, opening up one of the holes to the size of his fist, then there was a long lull during which the Regulars waited…and waited. They’d been stationed here for hours, with some rotating out occasionally to try and stay fresh. They didn’t know when the doors would go down, or which doors would go down first, but they knew they need to be on site when it happened to take maximum advantage of the partial breaks when they occurred.

  “Wake up guys, time to get wet,” his commander said over their teamcomm just before the doors began to retract into the walls. “Archons are moving up from the outside, we’re going to hit their rear. Squads 1, 4, and 7 stay put on this side of the shield, everyone else leave your plasmas behind. Empty your needlers then grab the enemy’s weapons. Let’s get to it.”

  Pratt was squad 6, so that meant he was going through. As the doors opened up a meter he set his plasma rifle down and pulled out his needler, then took another from one of the defense squad members who offered it to him. Dual wielding, he hopped over the barricades they’d set up and walked forward as the crack between the damaged doors widened.

  The commander jogged up to the shield holding back the water as the first of the lizards pushed their way through and were hit by plasma snipers in the back who’d stood up on the crates to get a better angle. Those lizards fell dead just before the commander got to the shield and stuck his needler through into the water. There he fired of a pointblank shot that detonated a meter ahead, killing a lizard and knocking back several more.

  One up high on the doors came through the shield, apparently not realizing it wasn’t flooded on the other side, and popped out 4 meters up only to fall down on top of the Regulars…but after receiving a plasma hit on the way down. Another of the Regulars got to it before Pratt could and stunned it unconscious, then the commander and several others spread out along the growing gap between the doors and fired off PDM after PDM into the water side of the shield, annihilating the lizards on the other side in a cascade of explosions that rippled the shield matrix with waves of static.

  “Go,” Pratt heard over the teamcomm, then as one four of the Regulars pushed through the shield, firing off more PDMs as they went. Once inside, they jetted up a couple of meters in the water, clearing room for another four to come through beneath them.

  Pratt didn’t get wet until several more groups went through, fanning out to five wide, then six. When he did get in he had a clear shot at hoards of lizards ahead of him, but he only got off a few needler shots before the commander ordered them to change tactics.

  “Cease fire with the needlers. We have Archons on the other side. Engage hand to hand.”

  Pratt hooked both needlers onto the hooks on the back of his armor and picked up one of the lizards’ weapons near his feet while the Regulars above him jetted forward with stun sticks. He followed underneath their feet and traded jabs with a lizard. His blue armor bubbled and burnt, but the plasma nub didn’t get through, whereas the lizard had no armor and suffered a plasma blast directly to its scaly chest.

  Pratt kicked it back and jabbed at the shoulder of another that was engaging the Regular beside him. Their plasma rods were crossed, giving him a good opportunity to break the stalemate. With its shoulder charred, the other Regular was able to get the leverage he needed and finished it off with a touch to the head.

  That sort of close quarters combat went on for several minutes before Pratt finally saw one of the Archons. He almost got caught off guard when he saw that there were not one, but five trailblazers on the other side, based on their ID tags, and took a partial hit to his left arm before he wrestled the lizard around enough to expose its back to another Regular that jabbed it for him.

  Then the pressure from the lizards subsided. In front of him Paul was knocking them down left and right and Pratt had to start looking for more targets to attack. Two minutes later and the commander ordered them into hunting mode for stunned or injured lizards to make sure there wouldn’t be any surprises later, given how many bodies were clogging the tunnel. Pratt was shocked when he literally couldn’t see more than 70-80 meters down the tunnel. There was that many corpses floating from top to bottom, most of which were due to the Archons’ handiwork.

  Kyler worked his way up to the shield and down to the floor, then walked through the barrier to the air side and gratefully pulled his helmet off and sucked in a fresh breath. Paul and Rafa came through next, followed by Emily and Sara, all of whom likewise removed their helmets as they walked forward awkwardly, both from fatigue and being in neutral buoyancy for hours on end.

  “That was fun,” Emily said, hopping over the barricades and getting behind the defense squads in case a lizard popped through and they needed to shoot it.

  “Is it over?” one of the Regulars asked as the trailblazers worked their way through the defenders.

  “Stay sharp,” Kyler warned. “There are so many bodies out there some live ones could ambush you, but the heavy fighting is done…here. The other entrances are still under assault.”

  “Should we redeploy there?” the regular asked.

  “Clean up here for now,” Kyler said as the trailblazers quietly walked past and headed towards the second line of barricades and began hopping over them.

  “Holy shit,” one of the Regulars whispered once they were gone. “Did the five of them just clear out that?” he asked, pointing through the now completely open blast doors at the junkyard of lizard bodies clogging the tunnel.

  “That’s why they’re wearing green,” another said, throwing one last glance at their retreating forms before turning his attention back to the shield and their now considerably easier job of holding this position.

  8 hours later…

  Paul brought a tray of warm, sugar-filled pastries out of the kitchen and set them down on the table the other four trailblazers had claimed in the otherwise empty cafeteria. The cooks, along with all other noncombat personnel, had been evacuated from the facility, leaving the Archons with prepackaged foodstuffs to gnaw on unless they wanted to cook for themselves. Fortunately there wasn’t much ‘cooking’ involved with Star Force food, and warming up the already baked pastries wasn’t something that required an excessive amount of intelligence.


  The others had all brought out trays of their own. Rafa’s had plain pasta. Emily had brought out a stack of various cookies. Sara had a tray of breadsticks. And Kyler had a much smaller tray filled with ambrosia wafers, cookies, and all the other forms of laced foodstuffs they’d invented over the years to help them measure their intake without having to actually measure anything out.

  Dozens of water bottles littered the table, some of which were already empty. One problem of fighting in pressurized water was the inability to remove your helmet and ingest anything, food or liquid, even if you found an air pocket, so the Archons had got thoroughly dehydrated during their fighting, something that Kyler intended to fix with an upgrade to the armor to carry a small water reserve inside, possibly one that could draw from the exterior like the oxygen generation system did.

  When Paul’s tray hit the table the pastries began to vanish in a flurry of hands as each of the trailblazers added at least one to their individual plates. He sat down and bit one open himself, finding chocolate inside. He sat back in his seat and nibbled on it for a while, then worked his way up to larger mouthfuls until it disappeared from his fingers. He reached out and grabbed another one, not bothering to try his Lachka, given his state of mental fatigue and the size of the pastry.

  The telekinesis might have drawn on a different pool of energy than his Fornax, but overall his head felt fried, as if he’d overworked his mental trigger to the point where it had pulverized and he had nothing but a stub left to work with.