Star Force: Backstab (SF23) Read online

  “So much for magical technology.”

  “Doesn’t mean it can’t be of use to us…and it would probably go a long way for the Nestafar.”

  “You think there’s anything down here we can put to use, like now?”

  “I’m kind of hoping so, otherwise we’re wasting our time. Our comms aren’t reaching back topside either, so we…I can’t stay down here too long.”

  “Shielded, huh?” Boen said, checking and confirming that he couldn’t reach anyone else aside from those Archons in the ‘cave.’

  “Got an alcove, Mark,” Kara’s voice broke in.

  Mark readjusted his comm settings. “Where at?”

  “Stick to your left and you’ll come to it,” she said from much further ahead. He had her and a couple others out exploring ahead of them where the cave branched while he stayed with the Alliance’s main group.

  “Find any goodies?”

  “Yes, but you need to see this yourself.”

  Mark exchanged glances with Boen. “Can I get a hint?”

  “I think I found the reason for the caverns in the mountain…and the sensor shielding.”

  “On our way, twit.”

  “Twit?” Kara asked.

  “Yeah, you could just answer my question without playing games.”

  “Alright fine,” she answered back, a little mock-miffed but loaded with sarcasm. “There’s a Nestafar research platform where they’ve been disassembling some of what looks like battle droids next to an egg chamber and a very large dinosaur-ish creature held in some sort of stasis.”

  Mark took that all in for a moment. “You’re right, I need to see that for myself.”

  “Thank you,” she said as her voice trailed off satisfied.

  “Boss, did she just say dinosaur?”

  “She said ‘dinosaur-ish.’”

  “Please don’t wake it up,” Boen pleaded.

  “What, you don’t want to say hi?” the trailblazer kidded, hopping over yet another ridge as he moved left and picked up the pace. He turned back, half looking over his shoulder without taking his eyes off the irregular floor in front of him. “Fellas, we found something. This way.”

  “What is it?” Dre’for asked.

  “Ah…you’ll just have to see it for yourself. I’m told it’s a ways up on our left,” he said, hearing Boen snicker beside him. “Shut up,” he whispered.

  It took them several minutes to reach the alcove, which was halfway down a steeper section of tunnel but no less ridged. The opening was narrow but the interior spread out with the same grippy terrain covering floor, ceiling, and walls with not so much as a single corner or crevice in sight. In the middle of the alcove was the Nestafar tech, including a flat workspace they’d brought in over top of the floor ridges to allow them to work more normally with three other exits surrounding it that led into other chambers.

  “They’ve been busy,” one of the Protovic said, walking up next to Mark.

  “That’s not the impressive part,” he told him. “Kara, where are you?”

  “Middle doorway.”

  Mark pointed across the Nestafar workspace. “That way.”

  “I assume the Alliance is going to work out an agreement to share the findings here,” Dre’for asked, addressing both Mark and the Protovic.

  “Probably,” he answered as he stepped up onto the metallic plates and walked across, “but we have to keep it away from the Nestafar first…and find some way to get reinforcements here.”

  “A message was sent prior to the destruction of the communications array,” the Protovic said, “or so the Calavari informed us.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Mark said, crossing to the other side and stepping back off onto the ridged floor. “A signal was sent up to the relay satellite and the system transmitted it, but it appears the Nestafar had previously disabled the transmitter.”

  “How do you know this?” the Scionate asked.

  “Our station in orbit gets a wash of residual energy from the transmitter when it’s active. We went back and checked the records for the time that the signal was supposed to have been sent, and none was recorded.”

  “So no one knows we’ve been attacked?” the Protovic repeated unnecessarily.

  “And won’t until another transport comes through.”

  “Didn’t some of the ships escape the syst…” Dre’for began to ask as they walked into the next chamber, coming out of a tiny S-shaped connection. Before them was a beast of a lifeform sleeping within a clear containment chamber that appeared to be kept chilled, due to the light amount of frost on the inside. Kara was standing before it, with the creature’s head nearly as tall as her body.

  “Icra’nefor,” Dre’for said, visibly shrinking back half a step. The Protovic, likewise, were completely stunned.

  Mark, even with forewarning found himself a bit froze in place.

  “More like dragon,” Boen said. “Is this them?”

  “I think so, though I didn’t think they were this big,” he said, then turned back to address the others. “Is this a Keeper?”

  “We have never seen one to know,” the Protovic answered. “Only small bits of their technology.”

  “If this one lives still,” the other Scionate, Kel’sad, asked, “will it be friend or foe? The Nestafar seemed more interesting in stealing the secrets of the Keepers’ technology rather than reviving their former masters. Perhaps they fear them. And perhaps so should we.”

  “We’ll let it sleep for now,” Mark said, turning around to look at the others. “Agreed? At least until we have the base secured.”

  “Agreed,” the Protovic said, and both Scionate bowed their heads in confirmation.

  “Kara, you’ve got exploration team,” Mark said, making a snap decision. “The rest of you can stay down here and look around, so long as you don’t touch anything, but our comms are being blocked by this structure and we’ve still got a war to fight, so I’m heading back topside.”

  “Yes, battle first,” Dre’for said. “There are still Nestafar in the base. We must eliminate them before we turn our attention here.”

  “We will guard the entrance,” the Protovic offered.

  “If they break through to the surface the enemy troops are coming straight here,” Mark reminded him. “Set up barricades and whatever else you have to. My people will map out this place and see if there are any other entrances the Nestafar can slip in.”

  “What would you have us do?” the Scionate asked.

  “Make sure no one wakes that thing up.”

  Kel’sad growled. “Nor have people poking around where they don’t belong.”

  “We will provide security for search teams and make sure none of us try to take advantage of the situation,” Dre’for promised, turning to the Protovic. “And you will keep them out save for those we let in. A few from each race under supervision.”

  “I think that would be wise, though many will argue otherwise,” he said, turning to face Mark. “And they may not trust us or the other former allies of our now common enemy.”

  “You guard the door, the Scionate patrol the inside, and my people search and map the rest of the base. I’ll inform the Calavari personally and have them set up some additional checkpoints, both against nosey pilots and Nestafar incursions. Boen, work out a comm relay chain so we can stay in touch. Not sure what the range of their dampening is.”

  “We are in agreement. Go Human, the quicker the better for us all,” Dre’for urged. “The Nestafar cannot be permitted to possess this place.”

  Mark nodded and began to run back, hopping from one floor ridge to another with Boen in tow. Kel’sad passed both of them by with ease and raced on ahead, jumping across multiple ridges with each lengthy bound. He got so far ahead that the Archons lost sight of him, though a pair of the Protovic were keeping decent pace behind, with both incidents proving mildly surprising.

  “Are we getting soft?” he asked Boen as they climbed back out of the hole and into the Nesta
far-made tunnel.

  “Na, just been a long day,” the Archon said, doing a quick comm check. “Now I can’t get anyone from here, up top or below.”

  “Work on it,” Mark urged as he ran off on the now level ground that his legs thanked him for dearly, which also gave him his answer. He’d learned in the past that no matter how good of shape he was in, doing new things was always exhausting...though Boen was right too. He was starting to feel an insistent urge for sleep growing in the back of his mind like a numb spot. Right now though there was work to do. Sleep would have to wait a bit longer.

  10

  “Status report?” Mark asked when his comm options returned as he ran down the Nestafar tunnel back towards the hole they’d dropped down, figuring he could either climb up it or move on down the tunnel the other way and come up in the maintenance area. Last he heard the other team had nearly broken through.

  “Mark! Where have you been?” Sandra all but yelled.

  “The caverns are shielded, we lost comms as soon as we went in. What’s happened?” he asked, knowing from her tone that something was wrong.

  “What’s happened?” she asked incredulously. “The Nestafar are hitting the front doors, the back doors, and trying to dig their way into the tunnel that we stopped them from finishing. It’s like they all just went into berserk mode.”

  “Oh crap,” Mark said, getting to the tunnel’s end and starting to claw his way up the loose gravel. “They know we found it.”

  “Found what?”

  “The reason they backstabbed the Alliance in the first place,” he said, trying to find applicable handholds. The opening wasn’t very far up, but he was going to have to pick his way up carefully. The Scionate probably just jumped all the way up, and for once he was jealous of their four-legged physique. “There’s an alien base underneath this one, full of advanced tech the Nestafar want really bad.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Afraid so, right down to the frozen dragon. What’s the status of the main doors?”

  “Did you say frozen dragon?”

  “Later…the doors?”

  “More protomechs coming in while their walkers are trying to push through the debris pile. They’re not getting very far with it, but the mechs are scattering and the skeets are having a hard time chasing them all down, but so far we’re holding.”

  “What’s the story with the tunnel?”

  “Not good. The digger almost got to the surface before Ashley’s team knocked it out, but the Nestafar figured it out and started digging from the other side. Fortunately they’d established a barricade of rocks on the inside, which is slowing the enemy down, and the Calavari are trying to seal the breach but they can’t fight and build at the same time, not without sacrificing men by leaving them on the wrong side to die.”

  “Do not let them do that…” Mark said with a huff as he pulled himself out of the hole and back into the lowest level of the Alliance base. “What are they trying to seal it with?”

  “Some kind of concrete, fast drying I’m told, but they can dig back through it or move around unless we take out their digging machine. Ashley said they damaged it, but the Nestafar recovered it and pulled it outside where she thinks they’re working to repair it. At the moment they’re trying to break through the blockade by hand.”

  “What about the other entrances?”

  “Heavy fighting, but holding. They’re hitting them all, though, so we’re spreading people thin. The Calavari are organizing those lines with a sprinkling of Archon support.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Main doors. If they get in here we’re toast.”

  “Are they still sitting outside the north doors?”

  “Some are, but a lot of those units redeployed to the auxiliary exits and tunnel head.”

  “How many are left?”

  “Too many to fight our way through to get into the skies, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Have they reestablished fighter cover on the base?”

  “Limited, but there is some. I think we could handle them if we could only get out.”

  “Oh, we’re getting out,” Mark said, running through the bowels of the Nestafar complex towards the elevator shaft that would take him back up to the hangar. “Patch me through to Orion.”

  “That’s not a good idea,” she warned.

  “I’m out of good ideas, you have any?”

  “They’ll get creamed.”

  “Put me through.”

  “Iren’s in the perch.”

  “Thanks,” he said, searching out the other Archon’s comm signature on his battlemap. “I need a patch through to the seda.”

  “Will do,” Iren responded. “Where have you been?”

  “Pissing off the enemy. We found their toy chest and apparently they want it back.”

  “You calling down the fire?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Go.”

  “Legat?” Mark asked as Iren connected the long range comm unit in the column to their suit to suit systems.

  “Here, Archon. I have a status report.”

  “Quickly,” Mark urged.

  “The Nestafar found some type of ruins linked to subsurface caverns. They explored them briefly then left. Our men went in and had a look around, but there wasn’t much there aside from a series of empty rooms. We didn’t observe the Nestafar removing anything, but the architecture is clearly not Calavari.”

  “Good,” Mark said, knowing that meant they probably had the mother lode beneath them and that the Nestafar were going to have to come through the Alliance to get it. Had they found items of value they could have taken them off planet and back to their territory for study…and eventually a massive tech upgrade if the stories of the Keepers were accurate, though Star Force above all others knew how difficult and time consuming it was to reverse engineer more advanced technology. “Now, I need a favor.”

  “Name it,” Orion said anxiously.

  “How are you set up for a hot drop?”

  “The Nestafar fleet is standing between us and the surface, but we can get past them. Ramming another ship into the surface is off the table though.”

  “Don’t need that much, just need you to open a door for us.”

  “Our pleasure,” the Canderian said, his voice dark and eager for more combat.

  Rena-AC-094-11 banked her dropship to the side, accelerating hard to slip by the Nestafar warships and their escorting Valeries along with dozens of other Basilisk-class dropships all taking individual tracks down to the surface at high speed to evade their pursuers. The first wisps of atmosphere began to pull on the stubby dropship and create a ripple effect in front of it as the heat of friction built against the powerful shields covering its nose as it shot past the destroyer on its port side.

  A few anti-air plasma blasts tried to cross the gap to the basilisk but they never got close. The high massed ships simply couldn’t maneuver to counter the dropships, which had been designed for extremely fast troop insertions onto a planet. Even Star Force didn’t have basilisks, preferring to rely on their conventional dropships for transport, but the Canderians knew space and the challenges it presented, and as such had developed the means to get from their sedas down to the surface of in short order, both to support their meager surface outposts as well as to counter lizard incursions near any of their homes.

  The Archons had held back their development initially, but like the wise warriors they were they eventually submitted to the strategic value of the craft, even if they hadn’t employed them in their own ranks as of yet.

  Rena watched as the pressure monitor rose on the basilisk’s shield statistics. She knew there was only so much they could take before they’d collapse and the hull would start to burn up from the suicidal friction it was undergoing…but risking it was the only way to penetrate the fighter screen and deliver her pair of mechs and their waiting pilots to the surface. For the first time in Canderous history an Archon had called for
their help, not in the form of assistance, but as in saving their asses…and Rena and the rest of the spaceborn soldiers were hell bent on answering that call.

  As the pressure built she began to kick in the basilisk’s anti-grav, pushing back against Daka and gently slowing the dropship’s descent as the atmosphere thickened. Already they have left the Nestafar fighters in their dust, but more remained below, circling above the Alliance base and waiting for them…so she had to keep her descent speed up.

  Using a modification to the shields she steered the falling, wingless dropship towards a specific spot on the surface to keep from potentially colliding with the others. All of them were spaced out widely, then would break towards their true destination at the last possible moment, distracting the enemy from their intended landing zone enough that they couldn’t reposition ahead of them and be waiting in ambush.

  “Prepare for landing,” she said over the intercom to the two modified thors when her altimeter told her it was time to pull up out of the meteor-like dive they were in. She ramped the anti-grav up to maximum power and banked the ship hard to the left as it decelerated, shooting it out towards the valley north of the base.

  The pressure on the shields dropped like a rock and the fiery nose cone the ship was creating dissipated enough for Rena to see the grass-covered mountains below. She’d been staring down at them from the seda for years, but this would be her first touchdown on the surface of the planet, let alone at the Alliance base, short as it would be.

  She started killing lateral momentum as the LZ approached, where several other basilisks were already setting down, then dialed back the anti-grav so it wouldn’t shoot the dropship back up into space. With the smooth touch of a professional pilot, the Canderian dropped the basilisk down into the valley like a slowly falling rock to kiss the surface on its six thick legs with the backwards facing cargo bay doors facing up the grassy incline. The protective hatch covering her cargo opened up within 4 seconds, exposing the tightly packed mechs.

  A mechanical arm pushed the leftmost one out first, dropping its box-like form onto the ground with the second one falling out just as the first one began to unfurl. The dropship’s hatch reclosed and the basilisk took off, rocketing back up into the sky now much lighter than it had been on descent, heading off away from the base and back towards orbit on a course that would take it well away from enemy’s ineffectual blockade.