Star Force: Shiva (SF98) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  Ian let himself recover for a few seconds, then kicked and punched at any part of the dark green armor he could…but that only resulted in another beating that left him seeing stars. By the time he came to he realized he was back on the surface, then was dumped to the ground a short while later. He stood up, looking around to see the two prongs of a Triceratops pointed at him from only a few meters away, but they weren’t sparking with energy. Rather, his Rentar power charge was being assaulted and he could see the bar dropping rapidly on his HUD.

  Ian took off to the left, but only made it a few steps before another Zen’zat stepped out through a broken doorway and clotheslined him with one quick arm flick, knocking him on the ground as his Rentar bar went to zero.

  Suddenly his body tightened up and he felt himself lifted off the ground. He was spun around and floated back in front of the Brat’mar, then after about a minute of mechanical screeches and groans his helmet broke apart from the rest of his armor at the neck and his face was exposed to the outside air.

  The gleaming silver armor on the face of the Brat’mar peeled back like a retreating wave of water across its skin, revealing a blue/grey thick hide with clear horns. His face was floated over next to the tiny one on its snout, then was smashed against the side of its head…and as soon as skin contact was made his entire body went limp, betraying his command, as he sensed a looming presence within his mind. It was a pressure, but barely that of a ghost to his perspective. What it was doing he didn’t know from his senses, but he’d been told that the V’kit’no’sat could read minds if they could touch your skin…and this one was probably sucking out all his secrets right now, with Ian unable to even move a muscle as his body hung limp inside his armor.

  He knew he was as good as dead, but without even being able to speak there was nothing he could do but wait.

  And the wait lasted several minutes before his body returned to his control and he dropped to the ground, then an invisible wave knocked him to the side and into the hands of two Zen’zat. He swung at them, knocking the legs out from under one with a follow-up scissor kick, then a punch to his head sent him reeling. The next thing he knew there was some sort of cutting tool tearing apart his armor as the Zen’zat peeled him out of it. Before he could throw another punch one of their pale hands emerged and touched a pair of fingers to his bloody forehead...

  The pain numbed out, but he also lost control of his body again until the armor had been fully removed, then he was dragged to his feet and given to one Zen’zat that took him by the wrist with the mechanical gauntlet constricting so firmly that it might as well have been handcuffs. He was pulled for several steps until he started walking with the Zen’zat, knowing that outside his armor all it would take was a few good punches and he’d be dead, and his head was still throbbing from the one he’d taken earlier, so he didn’t put up any more fight, deciding to play this out and see what they were going to do with him. Maybe there would be a chance for him to get away later…or maybe they were going to rip him apart for fun somewhere else.

  Eventually he was shoved inside a room with other Humans…some civilians, some Commandos, and even a pair of lower ranking Archons based off their uniforms, all of which were out of armor.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  “Holding,” the ranger said. “They’re taking turns interrogating us. I don’t know what they’re after, but I don’t think they’re finding it too quickly or we’d already be dead.”

  “I saw them kill others,” Ian pointed out. “What are they looking for?”

  “I don’t know. Fight back if you want, but at this point I see no way of surviving this. I’d rather go down swinging, but without armor we stand zero chance.”

  “How many are outside?”

  “Two Zen’zat are guarding us. One there,” he said, pointing to a wall that Ian couldn’t see through, “and there.”

  Ian saw him point to the hallway that ran parallel to the room.

  “Where are they taking us to be interrogated?”

  “Down here,” the ranger said, pointing the opposite way. “There’s a couple of the small ones. Kar’ka, I think. They’ve had me in there three times already. Never said a word.”

  “Did you lose control of your body?”

  “Mostly. I’ve had some training how to resist, but their minds are too powerful for me. I could keep the Zen’zat out for the most part…until they knocked me unconscious.”

  “I couldn’t do anything,” Ian said, swiping a trickle of blood off his forehead and rubbing it on the wall instead of his light blue uniform. “Anyone know the condition of the fleet?”

  Those military in the room shook their heads in the negative, while the civilians were so freaked out they didn’t care to supply him with any information, wrapped up in repeating memories of the horrors they’d witnessed and the expectation of more to come in short order.

  The V’kit’no’sat had blown their own entry holes into the Ribbon then secured all the natural boarding points in order to keep the remaining civilians from fleeing before they could be captured or killed, so when Rio’s assault team tried to board they had to go about cutting themselves a new entry point as well, though they were much more efficient at it. Once they had a surface conduit established down into the internal atmosphere and shield generators holding it inside, they sent down several dropships that were unmanned ahead of those that were, drawing firing from the I’rar’et circling in the air around the entry point and getting blown into bits by the concentrated weaponsfire.

  But what came in behind that diversion started shooting back as two madcats fell through pulsing their jumpjets to slow their fall down to the surface, launching scores of missiles at the lightly armored I’rar’et flyers and knocking many of them out of the sky. Most didn’t die, merely falling down and recovering or hitting the surface still alive, but their limited armor was no match for the firepower in the compact missiles and they were left with holes in their wings or missing wings altogether as they rapidly backtracked from the entry corridor as the two madcats continued to empty their racks on the hundreds of the Pterodactyls above.

  There was no resistance on the ground, for Rio had chosen a region in the Ribbon that the V’kit’no’sat had not claimed yet, though the I’rar’et could fly just about anywhere they wanted…that was until a few squadrons of skeets came down through the hole in the sky and began chasing after them. About equal size, the skeets had far less biology inside them than the I’rar’et did, making for a pretty even match when factoring in the tech advantage the V’kit’no’sat had…save for the few missiles that the Star Force aerial craft also carried.

  Either the I’rar’et hadn’t been expecting that or they just didn’t know about Star Force enough to be prepared for it, because many of them died in the first few minutes until several K’lak’tal showed up in their battle suits and downed a few skeets, but even they had to back off as more and more missiles and energy weapon hits came from the growing number of mechs on the ground, for they were coming down through the opening like drops of water then fanning out on the cityscape below as Star Force immediately began setting up a safe zone and putting out a call to any survivors nearby to come here for evac.

  Rio came down through the opening mid stream in a neo, dropping lightly to the ground on a city street before running up to the periphery with several other mechs in tight formation behind him. They had to get to one of the natural spaceports and secure it in order to get the big transports inside, otherwise it would take forever to evacuate the remaining people…and the longer they waited, the less of them there would be to rescue, for the automated systems on the Ribbon that still remained under their control were recording the waves of carnage taking place.

  Knowing approximately where the front lines of the slaughter were, he took his 4 binaries of mechs out at point, shooting at whatever I’rar’et was bold enough to come in close, while they hunted the closest of the Brat’mar, which was some 43 miles away, meaning t
hey were going to be there in a little over half an hour.

  10

  The energy blast coming off the Brat’mar’s horns was different than what the Hjar’at used. Their Saroto’kanse’vam had a range of operations, but the Brat’mar’s Doh’gon had a single use. Each of the two forward-pointing horns could fire individually in a narrow arc forward, not in all directions like the Hjar’at, or they could link the two together to produce a stronger blast that was held between them in a gathering point shortly before release in a plasma-like beam that was both energy and a bit of matter thrown in.

  The matter contingent was unstable and decaying as soon as it left the containment of the horns, producing a burning effect on anything it touched that would linger shortly after contact, but the biggest damage the Brat’mar could do outscaled even the Hjar’at. One versus one the Hjar’at would win easily, but as far as unloading a single shot went, when the Brat’mat included their nose horn the trio of Doh’gon emitters would produce a cannon-like shot in the form of a very short beam that was very powerful but low to cycle. They could even amp it up more if they wanted by including the head fin, which acted as a containment device that allowed them to accept even more charge from their armor in the air above of their eyes…as well as giving them a huge bioshield in front of their bodies whenever they wished.

  The Brat’mat were ferocious when facing an opponent. It was their flanks that were their ‘weak’ point, though in truth they were strong from all sides. It was just their forward arc that was their sweet spot, both for offense and defense, and it was that that Rio jumped over in his neo as the Brat’mar fired on a madcat and punched through its shields, melting the leg armor and seizing up the knee joint a moment later so that it couldn’t walk.

  Rio’s mech came down on top of the Brat’mar, metallic knees first, and knocked it flat to the ground. He recovered his own footing then began punching the silver-armored flank with both hands while firing off mauler and Dre’mo’don blasts into the Brat’mar’s shields while taking a few hits from its secondary weaponry.

  A wall of Lachka hit his mech, trying to push it off, but it only managed to allow the quadruped to slide away briefly, for the neo was too heavy for it to pick up. It tried to spin around but the mech was too fast, charging forward and firing into its side again as the stationary madcat fired mauler blasts of its own into the face that was charging up another shot and trying to spin around to deliver it against Rio while delivering secondary Chi’parat shots from its hip mounted weaponry.

  Old as the mauler weapon was, Star Force had kept it around for a reason…and that reason was its ability to weaken shields. A mauler blast today was some 200 times more destructive than it had been when the weapon had first arrived in mech form, though that still didn’t match the Dre’mo’dons they now used. However, using both weapons meant the V’kit’no’sat or others couldn’t tune their shields to resist just the Dre’mo’dons or the maulers, and with every hit the madcat laid into the Brat’mar its shields went down far more than from the destructive effect alone.

  Unable to get to Rio with its main weapon as fast as it liked, the Brat’mar turned back and unloaded on the madcat. With its shields mostly down, it took the Doh’gon beam straight in the body and the forward armor plates exploded so hard that it rocked the entire mech back. Unable to bend the one knee to compensate it started to fall down, then some agile maneuvering on the other leg and with the two stubby arms had it leaning over at an angle and looking towards the ground as the pilot wresting the damaged mech back up into standing position…but then another Brat’mar came in and physically rammed it, unloading another blast into the forward, damaged section once it was on the ground, and all but killing the mech. The protective cockpit cocoon took damage, but the pilot still lived and had enough control left to unload the left shoulder missile box into the flank of the Brat’mar.

  The explosions damaged the mech too, tearing off the missile box as well as the left arm, but the shields on the V’kit’no’sat went down and a good chunk of its armor went with it as Rio kept wrangling with the other while getting bits of incoming Chi’parat damage from nearby Kar’ka weaponry. It was more potent than Dre’mo’dons and the V’kit’no’sat’s primary weapon for small scale conflicts where sufficient armor space was available…and the Kar’ka were about as small as you could get and still wield one, though on occasion Zen’zat would carry large independent weapons of the same make.

  Right now it was the Kar’ka that were sniping at the mechs alongside the Brat’mar, with the Zen’zat staying out of the way so they didn’t get stepped on. Their weaponry was infantry only and not up to snuff for this kind of a fight, and really the Kar’ka were at a disadvantage too against the neos. The other mechs were a different story, but the Kar’ka had to operate in groups to take them down, for one on one they didn’t have the firepower to do it.

  The Brat’mar were more than a match for the mechs, but Rio was using the agility of the neo and the quadruped limitations of his opponent to his advantage as he finally beat through the shielding on the Brat’mar and began to score armor hits…then a very skillful faint got him momentarily off balance as the Brat’mar looking to be spinning its head towards him then suddenly redirected and whipped its giant tale around from the opposite direction.

  Rio’s neo was knocked backward, and as the Brat’mar reversed its spin he saw the blue energy charging over its head, knowing he couldn’t get to his feet fast enough, so while he fired a Dre’mo’don into the forward bioshields covering the Brat’mar he reached out with his mind and unleashed the largest Fornax blast he could straight into the thing’s big head.

  The Brat’mar twitched uncontrollably and the beam shot high, missing the neo and traveling a couple of kilometers to where it hit the top of a building, blowing it apart and causing the upper few stories to tip over and eventually fall crumbling to the ground, crushing whatever was beneath it.

  Neo knew it would take time for another Doh’gon to charge, so he rushed the face of the Brat’mar and attacked the bioshields, weakening them with punches and shots while staying directly ahead of the Brat’mar and out of range of the hip cannons, though the knee-mounted ones continued to chip away at his shields.

  A moment before the Brat’mar’s bioshields eventually collapsed the silver armor on its face rippled and flowed up over its horns, protecting them as the armor’s shields breached a few seconds later and the neo started making body blows…up until he had to pull back as another Doh’gon shot through the space he had been in from another flanking Brat’mar.

  A trio of skeets flew in and strafed it, unloading into its side and streaking past ahead of a pair of I’rar’et chasing them just before a huge salvo of missiles from a pair of madcats slammed into the Brat’mar, taking it down so hard that Rio knew it must have already had weakened shields prior to the attack. A pair of neos jumped out from behind a low building on spaceport grounds and went straight for it, leaving him to deal with his previous target as its horns became exposed again and charged up for another heavy cannon shot.

  Just then Rio got a battlemeld prompt from two other Archons approaching from the south, with him immediately accepting it and the trio reached out to the Brat’mar’s mind, using their combined Ikrid power to hammer against its incredibly large telepathic presence even as they peppered it with Dre’mo’don and mauler blasts. The battle went on for four more seconds, but just as the Doh’gon was about to fire against his neo again they finally broke through its mental defenses and froze it…with the blue energy dissipating as there was no longer any controlling force behind it.

  An umbrella of energy puffed from its head, lightly damaging anything around it as Rio and the others fought to keep a hold on the mind that was bucking their grip as much as possible. Meanwhile they continued to hammer it with mech shots, tearing through its armor until they started making flesh wounds. Once that happened their hold on its mind broke, for the pain was too much for them to suppress. It stagge
red to the side, firing back with its secondary weaponry as it tried to charge up another Doh’gon, but subsequent Fornax blasts caused it to trip and fall…though it didn’t get back up as more body shots were made and the Brat’mar finally died.

  Rio breathed heavily inside the mech, having stretched his Ikrid power to the limit to try and suppress that much brain mass, but then he noticed the disappeared Brat’mar’s mind return, though it wasn’t moving. As other fighting continued and the battlemeld link between the three broke, he zoomed in on the Brat’mar and saw its wounds healing over…knowing that the armor it wore contained a Kich’a’kat that was trying to bring it back to life.

  Rio didn’t like shooting people when they were down, but in this case he had no choice…and after the sight of other Brat’mar telekinetically ripping unarmored Humans apart he didn’t feel too bad about this one. He just hated that they were so outmatched that they couldn’t be taking prisoners. They had to kill as many of the V’kit’no’sat as they could, and the number of mechs littering the spaceport attested to the cost of the few kills they were getting. Rio couldn’t let this one get back up and limp off, only to return later in a new suit of armor or to go out with a final cannon blast that would kill or disable another mech.

  So he walked up and started unloading into the breach points in the armor until either the Kich’a’kat was destroyed or there wasn’t enough of the Brat’mar left to repair. Either way the healing stopped and Rio ran off towards the closest engagement he could find, though there were only a few remaining. The spaceport would soon be theirs again, but it had cost them a lot…

  Suddenly he got hit from behind as a pair of new Brat’mar entered the spaceport landing field, coming out from behind a building and apparently jamming sensors enough not to have gotten picked up on the battlemap prior to that. Both of them unloaded their Doh’gon at him, with Rio only managing to dodge one of the shots. The other hit and blew through his shields, then partially severed his right arm that dropped limp beside him as he ran off in his metallic body as fast as he could, but the smaller Kar’ka with the Brat’mar raced across the gap faster than his neo could move without the counterbalance of the arm, and even then the V’kit’no’sat might have turned out to be faster, because they were closing alarmingly fast.