Star Force: Probe (SF42) Page 9

  Those pads were now off limits to aerial insertion, given the Type-4 nearby, but Skarron transports had occasionally been coming to the outpost to pick up select containers. The others they either hadn’t gotten around to transporting or didn’t want, but unlike most other facilities there appeared to be no demolition occurring on the exterior. The Skarrons had simply moved in and set up shop.

  As the Archons got near to the outpost they circled around so they could approach on the opposite side from the walker, putting the outpost between them and its cannons. As a group they sprinted out of the trees and scaled the low boundary wall, dropping over the far side with a pair of scouts being taken out by precision plasma rifle fire.

  The shots didn’t go unnoticed, but within a few seconds the Archons were moving inside the building and fanning out, with Ben getting his own hallway and section of the facility to himself. He ran off and started mowing down every Hobbit and Engineer he came across, much as he’d wanted to do weeks ago, but couldn’t because of the risk of exposing the Kiritak.

  Well, now there were no Kiritak, just Archons, and being exposed wasn’t a concern, so he ran down the hall, shooting those that came into view while checking every room that he passed. Those with enemies inside he cleared before moving on, but a lot were empty and ransacked as they’d been at the other mining site.

  Running through ammo quickly, Ben slung his empty rifle onto his back rack and pulled out a rare shotgun, taking down a few more Hobbits before getting a room to himself. He stayed inside where he could still see the hall and make sure no one got past him, then began to reload his rifle using spare rounds in an ammo pack on the small of his back. He dumped the empty shells on the ground and filled the rifle up, then headed back out, saving the shotgun as his backup, for he didn’t have any replacement ammunition for it.

  Ben worked his way through his assigned section before meeting up with two of the others in the vehicle garage. He wasn’t the first one there, evidenced by the firefight that he ran out into. There were Hobbits everywhere, of which he shot several before one of the huge Skarrons turned and fired at him with two of its arm guns. Ducking to the side he returned fire as he ran over to cover behind a half blasted crate, then instead of hunkering down he ran around behind it, out of view for a moment, and came across the bay from a different angle…seeing that the Skarrons had turned this larger room into their living quarters.

  It looked more like a nest, but there were some 19 in here by his count, with two of them already dead. The other two Archons were elsewhere in the bay, shooting away at the big beasts while Ben tried to pick off the Hobbits and eliminate their small, but lethal plasma fire from the battlefield.

  Soon another Archon joined them, then another. By dodging the Skarrons’ plasma fire the Humans bought time for them to rack up plasma shots on the larger creatures who couldn’t dodge theirs. Ben took one hit to his shields, nearly losing them entirely on his left leg before getting out of the line of fire and letting them momentarily recharge. Then, one by one, the Archons cut down the unarmored Skarrons, with two finally fleeing and running outside as all 10 of the Archon team were finally reunited and combining fire on the enemy.

  Ben hesitated from going out the wide open doors after them, for he could feel the light thuds of Skarron walker feet nearby. He couldn’t see where it was, but all of a sudden a flurry of white plasma orbs far larger than what the Hobbits, or even the Skarrons, had been firing flooded the bay doors and blasted into the concrete just inside. All the Archons pulled back immediately, with some getting a considerable wash over their shields from the ricochets of plasma and rubble…then the roof started to come down as the walker decided to target the facility itself.

  “Fall back!” the team leader yelled as he put a waypoint on a different exit from where they entered…one opposite from where the walker now was.

  Ben and the others ran back through the hallways as the plasma torrent tore through the vehicle bay, then started to penetrate other portions of the facility. For a while Ben thought they were out of it, for the upper levels near the center were shielding them from direct fire and it would take quite a while for the walker to burn through, but as they were getting to the far side he heard a wicked screech of twisting metal, then a few seconds later he was knocked off his feet by a tremor that was quickly followed by a wave of debris.

  “Anyone down?” the team leader asked.

  Ben was covered in tiny bits of debris, his shields gone, but his arms, legs, and torso were still free so he didn’t respond and picked himself up as he continued towards the exit point.

  “I am,” a voice said over the comm. “I could use some help.”

  Ben saw the ID marker in his HUD and redirected back a hallway and crossed over to a collapsed section of the building, under which Viken-98320 was buried. He got to him a step behind another set of red armor and together they pulled a piece of bulkhead up half a foot, exposing a lean-to sort of mess of improvised tunnel underneath.

  “Hold that,” the team leader said, diving under it in his silver armor.

  Another adept came up and added his strength to the pair’s, setting his back underneath and using his legs to reinforce what they were holding with their arms as Ben heard repetitive plasma blasts from underneath, then eventually the silver boots returned, dragging a broken set of red armor out.

  “Clear.”

  Ben held his leverage until the adept underneath extricated himself, then he and the other let the beam down…only then did he turn around to see the broken legs of the pinned adept. But to his dismay the man stood up on them, with the armor crunching and flaking off in spots.

  “Can you walk?” he heard the team leader ask over the teamcomm.

  “I got a little pinched, but my armor took the pressure. So long as it doesn’t lock up on me I can run out.”

  “How are we on the wall?”

  “The walker is repositioning…we need to go now,” an Archon outside in scout position said.

  “Move people!”

  Ben ran out, letting the team leader deal with Viken, and quickly got himself to the wall and over top of it, hearing the thud, thud, thud of the walker on the other side of the outpost. He ran up and into the tree line, then turned around behind cover and looked back…only to see the entire central tower section of the outpost had been toppled over onto the facility.

  A few large plasma orbs shot across the top of the rubble into the trees, causing Ben to flinch, but most of the walker was still behind the edge of the outpost, with only a few topside cannons visible as Viken got over the wall with some help, but was visibly limping as he dropped to ground on the near side. He jogged forward, with the team leader staying a step behind him the entire way, then the group of Archons was reunited and they all disappeared off into the forest where the plasma couldn’t follow.

  10

  August 18, 2467

  Ghanis System

  Ettiana

  Ben woke up in his bunk to an alarm, sitting up underneath his covers as his mind instantly realized that it wasn’t his chrono talking to him, but a base-wide alarm. Whether it was just for the pilots or not he didn’t know, but in recent days he’d been getting more flying time in as the Skarrons inched their way closer to Alpha Site, though as yet they hadn’t stumbled upon any of the entrances.

  His armor was standing beside his bed in the tiny quarters he’d been assigned, and after slipping on a pair of casual shoes nearby he stepped into the boots and began securing himself inside, finishing off with his helmet. It clicked into the neck latches and secured the atmospheric seal, though the small cage over his nose and mouth was still exposed to the outside air and would only lock up when necessary to prevent decompression or toxins from getting inside.

  Ben flicked the power switch and immediately his HUD lit up with a battlemap warning, calling him to the hangar for immediate flight duty.

  He didn’t bother using the comm, but left his quarters and went straight to his assign
ed skeet, seeing that most of them were alright maneuvering out of the hangar into the short tunnel that led to the ring around the base, into which all the large tunnel entrances connected.

  “What’s going on?” he asked a nearby tech, belatedly realizing that the mechs were missing from the bay.

  “We caught a Type-4 by itself and are taking it down, but the Skarrons are sending aerial support. Knock them down before they get to the mechs.”

  “Happy to,” Ben said, climbing into the skeet and pulling as quick of a startup as he could, knowing that he could finish the rest enroute. With the anti-grav enabled he ‘drove’ across the bay and out into the tunnel spur, accessing the battlemap for navigational instructions. The engagement was occurring only 73 miles away, with the walker in question having strayed off from the others. Normally the mechs couldn’t fight them in the forest, for while the Skarrons could walk over the treetops the same couldn’t be said of the shorter mechs, but this walker had ventured out into a clearing…making it open for target practice.

  Ben got himself into the tunnel assigned for departure, which was coordinated by the command center to bring him up away from the other walkers searching the area around Alpha Site, and accelerated up to speed as much as he dared in the close confines as he brought the rest of his skeet’s systems up to standby readiness, including weapons and shields.

  The trip out to the exit took several minutes, then he shot up into the sky underneath the forest camouflaged tunnel cap and activated his comm. “Talk to me guys.”

  “Nice of you to join the party,” Ken-39111 said from his skeet, miles away. “Double up with Amber and see if you can break up their incoming lines. Delay them as much as possible, the mechs have their hands full at the moment.”

  “Where’s their dropship?”

  “Safely away. It’ll come back for them when the air is clear…which is up to us.”

  “Copy that,” Ben said, finding Amber-49288’s ID tag and seeing that she was only slightly ahead of him, heading towards a stretched out formation of Skarron fighters, some 43 strong, that were heading towards the mechs. Judging from the distances involved he could easily get to them first, but if they didn’t want to play tag there was no way they were going to be able to stop them from getting to their walker in time…and with their mobility and firepower they’d eat up the mechs without trouble.

  “Am, I’m following you in. Don’t wait up, and see if you can draw some of them off. I’ll link up as soon as I can.”

  “Hurry,” she prompted. “The mechs weren’t expecting fighters this close.”

  “Where’d they come from?”

  “Someplace in the forest that we didn’t know about. Probably a makeshift airfield to keep them closer to Alpha Site.”

  “Don’t suppose they’d turn around if we started to blow it up?”

  “I wish, but it’s too far off anyway. They’ll be at the mechs before we could get to it. Something to put on the to-do list though.”

  “What’s your game plan?” Ben asked, transitioning to super pursuit mode, in lower speeds given that he was still in the thicker atmosphere. There was no time to climb to thinner air, so he got what he could out of the craft skimming above the treetops.

  “Last first. If they others want to turn around and help they’ll have to slow down. If not, we pick them off one at a time moving up the line.”

  “I’m down with that,” Ben said, seeing that a dozen or so other skeets were already buzzing around the enemy walker at low altitude, trying to give supporting fire without getting lit up by its topside lachar, but a few of them were already moving off to intercept the incoming fighters, and he assumed the rest would be soon. If they could kill the walker before the lightning bugs got to them the mechs would be in a much better defensive position, which was why they weren’t all moving out to intercept the fighters.

  Ben watched as Amber got to rear end of the Skarron line and crisscrossed over the last fighter, drawing flashes of plasma from the five ahead of it. He watched the battlemap closely, wondering if they were going to redeploy, but they didn’t…meaning that the two skeets were going to have easy pickings so long as the opening remained.

  “They’re not taking the bait,” Amber reported. “They must want the mechs pretty bad.”

  “Watch your shield strength,” Ben reminded her. “I’ll be there in a moment.”

  “I’m not that reckless,” she joked, but didn’t take much time off between attack runs as she looped in multiple times before Ben caught up with her, having the honor of finishing the Skarron fighter off on his first strike, gutting the thing with three slow approach mauler blasts that dropped it out of the air to crash into the forest below.

  “One down,” Amber said, already hitting the second and taking a scattering of plasma fire from it and the ones ahead, but none of them turned around or grouped together…they were all making top speed for the small grassy plain ahead that the mechs were fighting in.

  Ben couldn’t watch, busy as he was with the fighters, but there were 6 mechs in two trios, each flanking the Type-4 walker and staying out of its forward prime firing zone. Already its shields were down and its armor pot marked, but it was still spraying plasma quite well, and was far from dead. One of the braver skeet pilots flew in at grass level and shot it from the left flank, passing between a neo and a raven and hitting one of its legs with plasma and a mauler round, expanding on damage already done to it as the skeet turned hard left to avoid hitting the legs.

  It flew so fast that only one of the plasma orbs hit it, and that was more by luck than skill. It arced back up into the air before it hit the tree line nearby that the Skarron was walking towards, knowing that the mechs couldn’t follow.

  The mechs knew it too and kept hammering on that leg, eventually melting it off at the elbow joint and reducing the walker down to 5 functioning legs. It fell over when the leg broke, pinning it in place as it continued to flood the mechs with plasma, but each trio kept rotating in and out and blocking for each other to share the shield load, though 4 of the six mechs had already lost shields and were taking armor impacts.

  They could have moved off, being far faster than the Type-4, but they had to stop it from getting out of the grass and into the trees…and they also knew the fighters were coming. They’d been lucky enough to catch it in the open in the first place, and now they had to press their advantage before it evaporated.

  In truth the Archons were so pissed that they wanted the kill, even if they were being a bit reckless given the circumstances…but they were all of the same temperament, and they were going to make this happen no matter what.

  Ben and Amber were no different, pushing their diminishing shields near the breaking point as they took slower and slower attack runs, allowing them to pour more firepower into the Skarron fighters and down them faster, but with the speed the lightning bugs were moving they had to get even closer, for the atmosphere was interfering with the plasma and flaring it out more than normal, as well as moving it off target when they fired from a lateral trajectory.

  The pair of skeets kept swinging back and forth, going wide to avoid the Skarrons’ return fire when their shields dipped low, and staying directly being them in line when they weren’t, getting into mauler range more often than not, and working their way up the line. They killed 7 of the fighters before the trees underneath them transitioned over to grass, leaving them 20 seconds out from the walker and mechs.

  By that time all the skeets were in the air harassing the fighters, and their line of transit suddenly broke up into a more traditional fur ball…with Ben realizing that the mechs had succeeded in disabling the walker. It was still shooting out waves of tiny white plasma orbs, but it was on the ground and not moving, with the mechs having dispersed into more distant firing positions, recharging their shields when they could and turning to fight the enemy aircraft, knowing that they could come back to the walker later.

  With the mechs turning their weapons up to the air
they coordinated with the fighters, as they’d practiced many times in simulators, and used the largely immobile mechs as a hard point to maneuver the Skarron fighters around, setting up attacks from the skeets. When the Skarrons adjusted and pursued the skeets, they set up passes that brought the fighters around to prime firing positions of the mechs.

  Neither approach worked quickly, for the Skarrons weren’t stupid enough to let the mechs get them with their heavy weapons, so the entire engagement began a game of movement, with the six mechs taking the majority of the beating. But as the engagement progressed the skeets increased their kill count, losing only one of their own in the process as the Skarron walker threw a lucky swath of plasma up into its path.

  Amber went down hard into the forest, shredding the skeet in the process, but her cockpit armor held and she activated her beacon for pickup, indicating that she’d survived the crash…but Ben couldn’t dwell on that, for while the lightning bugs were thinning they were still peppering the mechs, who by now had lost their shields and a lot of their armor. They had, as a group, run off down the length of the plain to where the walker’s plasma was turning into spit, and with that tactical maneuver the mechs became more aggressive in their anti-air efforts.

  They began grouping together and thickening their firing lines, which the skeets drove the Skarrons to as often as possible. One of the lightning bugs got caught by a plasma orb from a neo, which shattered its armor and left a smoking hole in the left side as it veered off from the others and headed off across the plain on its own. Ben went after it and swung around to target the damaged side, running up close to it enough that he nearly rammed the thing to deliver a mauler blast that matched the hole with 95% overlap.

  He spun off, doing a skeet slide, and visually followed the lightning bug down to the ground where it plowed out a short trench before it came to a smoking halt. Confident that it was out of the fight, Ben accelerated to catch back up with the others…then suddenly his comm activated on the all-Star Force channel.