Star Force: Intransigent (SF100) (Star Force Origin Series) Read online

  But for Rio that distinction didn’t matter, for he suddenly had the advantage in the hand to hand fight and started driving him back as the Zen’zat struggled just to defend himself. Ethan reversed directions and pulled Sara’s pistol to him, shooting Kaalo in the back several times before he awkwardly twirled around to use his arms to block some shots as his armor tried to soak away the stun energy and return his body to normal.

  Before that could happen Rio flew up a meter into the air and did a spin kick into the Zen’zat’s head that sent him into the wall so disoriented he fell on impact, then Ethan stood over him pouring shots into his armor and opening up a wound on his back that shocked the Zen’zat into a mad dash. He rammed into Rio and dragged him to the ground, then straddled the Archon’s torso punching him in the face and chest repeatedly while throwing Dre’mo’don blasts after each hit.

  Rio was caught and tried to wiggle free, then both he and Ethan combined what little strength they had and put a bioshield over Rio’s head while letting the rest of his armor absorb the shots as it melted with each. The trailblazer readied another Jumat blast to knock him off, but waited a split second as Ethan just unloaded into Kaalo’s back with the Zen’zat not even seeming to care. Rio could even feel his rage spilling out through his telepathy as he pounded Rio relentlessly.

  Had Ethan not been there Rio would have been in trouble, not knowing if he could have peeled him off or not, but just before he was going to have to resort to that in order to keep his chest armor from being penetrated the Zen’zat threw his last punch/shot and tipped forward, falling onto Rio…but without any muscle behind him the trailblazer easily rolled him to the side and extricated himself from the heavy body that was smoking from the hole Ethan had shot through his armor and eventually his heart.

  “That was close,” Ethan said as he ran past Rio and over to where Sara was still laying on the ground, but they could both feel her mind still there.

  Rio looked down at his chest armor, feeling the residual heat as nearly all of it had been melted away, leaving him with a very thin protective layer that wouldn’t hold up to more than a couple Dre’mo’don shots.

  Go, Sara said telepathically while she was still laying on the ground with Ethan now kneeling over her. I’m healing. Just make sure these two are dead, then go help the others.

  “Rio?”

  “I got them,” the trailblazer said, stepping over to the first Zen’zat while removing his left glove. He knelt down and put another stream of plasma through the hole in the armor while touching a bit of the gore inside. It took him a moment to make a connection, from which he confirmed the Zen’zat was dead and not coming back on his own merits.

  Rio got up and ran over to where Kaalo was laying as Ethan took off back in the direction of the main fight that was still ongoing. He rolled the Zen’zat over and saw the piece of work Ethan had done to his back, then touched inside the cavity to connect to what was left of that Zen’zat as well. He could have tried to heal him, but with literally no heart remaining it would have been a tall order to save the Zen’zat…not that Ethan even thought about trying, but it meant that there was no way this one was going to get back up and potentially hurt Sara.

  “Told you I’d kill you with friends,” Rio said to the still smoking corpse as he didn’t waste any time and took off running past Sara and back towards the fight where he could feel hundreds of minds involved, though a few less than there had been before the trio of trailblazers had split off to take these two down.

  As he approached he got a battlemeld prompt from Ethan and two other ViLords, linking up with them and realizing from their senses that another very powerful set of Zen’zat were still in play, but they hadn’t paired up with each other and were instead working with their own escorts as Vermaire was tangling with one of them.

  The quartet of Archons decided to let him play with his new friend while they went after the closest badass they could find, knowing that both trailblazers had weakened armor and fatigued psionics, and that it was going to take a team effort to take the rest of these guys down, but what Rio quickly realized was the fact that the Arc Knights could stand up against the Zen’zat well enough on their own and especially in groups, but if they took the brunt of the attack then the Archons could kill the Zen’zat much easier.

  Muscle and mass did count for a lot, and the strategies flowing through the battlemeld and telepathy between all those involved allowed for latecomers like Rio to learn very fast how to effectively fight these guys…and having a backup secret psionic that the V’kit’no’sat had probably never seen before didn’t hurt either.

  With his quartet they made their way past a sparring Zen’zat and Arc Knight and helped him kill his opponent, then Rio conscripted the big guy into their battlemeld, making it a 5-way and bringing him up to speed on the tactics they wanted to use…after which the Zen’zat took the lead and the group pushed their way through the widespread brawl, throwing a little help in here and there as they went hunting for the biggest threats left in the fight.

  10

  When Rio’s group got back into the fight they used a combination of telepathy and battlemap to identify where the strongest Zen’zat were and went after arguable the strongest first. Both trailblazers had partial shields back when they came across a trio of Zen’zat and a pile of Star Force bodies as the enemy added another Arc Knight to their count, but a Jumatran from Rio’s group knocked all three down as their Arc Knight ran forward and dove onto the one in the middle, pinning him to the ground for a couple of extra seconds and giving the others time to get up to them.

  No one had much left in the way of weaponry, but reinforcements were arriving constantly and those Regulars that were no match for the Zen’zat were passing weapons to those fighting while establishing and strengthening a very wide perimeter around the combat, blocking off corridors and ringing the Zen’zat in. If one tried to flee they’d have to push through a wall of weaponsfire, but the Commandos, Knights, and lower ranking Archons didn’t close in, wisely allowing those with the high skills to handle the fight and, honestly, so they didn’t get in the way.

  But some of their weapons eventually got passed up to Rio’s group, with the two ViLords having taken fresh rifles that they used to attack one of the three Zen’zat exclusively while Ethan and Rio dove past the trio on the sides dragging a Lew conduit through them and hitting the heads of the two standing up. Both of them wobbled as the mental disruption took place, then the trailblazers warned the Knight as they used their Hapra and emitted such a strong combined Fornax field that it caught all six of them in it.

  Had the Knight participated he would have been immune, but he was too busy throwing punches and wresting with the Zen’zat on the ground and got hit by it too. All four of them dropped twitching for a moment, but then the Arc Knight was tossed aside as a wobbly Zen’zat rose up and shot Rio with both Dre’mo’don’s.

  He’s got Snu, Ethan commented as the trailblazer threw a weak Jumat into the Zen’zat, knocking his arms askew and causing a few shots to miss Rio as they both scrambled out of the way as the two ViLords continued pouring rifle shots into the Zen’zat on the left.

  The standing Zen’zat reached down and picked up the Arc Knight by the leg, throwing him back into the line of fire towards the ViLords, who ceased their shots until their line of sight cleared, but the Zen’zat followed the flying body and sprinted towards them. He weathered a few more shots with his bioshield, then when he was only a step away he threw his own Jumat blast out either side of his body, knocking both Archons away from him and into the walls. He turned and attacked the one on the left, delivering body blows so fast that he broke through the ViLord’s shields in less than two seconds.

  The armor damage that followed was targeted to melted points from previous fights and the Zen’zat managed to get two shots through into his chest before he turned and punched Rio out of the air as he flew towards him. The ViLord dropped to the ground as the other shot him at close range, then
the Zen’zat took after her, spinning around twice in a familiar twirl that would have ended with a wicked cross if Rio hadn’t throw him off with a Jumat blast that led to a fist in the wall, denting it as the ViLord scrambled out of the way.

  Two more Archons and an Arc Knight came running down the corridor towards them, but a Zen’zat jumped into the middle Archon from a side corridor and knocked him out of view. The other Archon went to help but the Arc Knight continued forward and headed straight for the monster Zen’zat that was shooting Rio as the trailblazer dove into his legs, catching a kick to the face and holding on as he flew backwards and dragged it out from under the Zen’zat.

  To his credit the Zen’zat hopped forward, staying on his feet long enough to pound through Rio’s shields and land a good hit to his helmet before the Arc Knight came in and tackled him as he entered their battlemeld, replacing the downed ViLord and bringing them back up to 5.

  Between him, the Arc Knight, and the ViLord that was shooting the Zen’zat at pointblank range, the three quickly summoned up a Trielo as Rio and the Arc Knight tried to hold him down. The invisible stun orb floated above and between them, then when the Zen’zat kicked Rio off and threw the Arc Knight to the side he stood up right into it, catching it on his right arm and having the limb go nearly dead.

  Rio flew back a couple meters and grabbed his wrist even as the Zen’zat shot the ViLord and got through her shields, then the trailblazer dragged the numb limb back down the corridor and spun him around several times, eventually throwing him back towards the other two and through a Lew conduit that drove a disabling balance spike into his brain, causing him to stumble and fall.

  The ViLord continued to shoot him in the chest as the Arc Knight dove onto the Zen’zat’s head and left arm, pinning both to the ground while his right was just beginning to regain feeling as the rifle shots finally got through his armor and hit flesh.

  A Lachka hold tore the rifle out of the ViLord’s arms and stopped the damage incoming, but Rio suddenly appeared and landed on the Zen’zat’s legs, half pinning them to the ground with another weak Ubven drop that also caught the Arc Knight, but like before he went for the penetrated points in the armor and placed a naked hand there, sending a steam of bioplasma through.

  A few seconds later and the Zen’zat stopped thrashing, but he didn’t have time to relish the victory for Ethan and the other Arc Knight had been buying them time and his peer was now lying on the ground with a hole in his back.

  Rio pulled his body back towards him as the three now free fighters took after the two damaged Zen’zat. The trailblazer took a knee over Ethan and pressed a hand down onto his wound as the other two bought him a few seconds. While his battlemeld link had broken, Ethan was unconscious but alive and Rio wanted to keep him that way, surging some flash healing to help stop the bleeding before he let him go and flew forward several meters into the fight that didn’t last long.

  Damaged as they all were, the 4v2 was just too much for these weaker Zen’zat to manage. They managed to finish off the first Arc Knight before the ViLord’s rifle last hit both of them, then Rio was busy reviving the Arc Knight as the ViLord suddenly sat down beside him. Rio didn’t ask why, for the battlemeld link told him all he needed. She’d been carrying a bad wound for the last few minutes and fighting through it, but the Archon had to start self-healing now before she lost too much blood and passed out.

  Once the Arc Knight revived, Rio spent just enough time to get him stabilized but still unconscious, then he took off down the corridor running past Ethan while telepathically checking on him and heading for the remaining fights still going down.

  Sara slowly stood up, trying to suppress the pain in her chest where she now had a deep hole. Fortunately her right breast had soaked up some of the damage, but her lung had been hit and she was finding it a bit hard to breath. The trailblazer, between her Sesspik, Uzti, and Haemra, had gotten the worst of the damage patched up enough that she was able to walk, but the motion twisted her body just enough to really dig into the wound that she didn’t have enough biomass to fully heal and she didn’t feel like sucking away muscle and other tissue from the rest of her body to partially fill it back in.

  She cannibalized enough fat tissue and the bit of muscle necessary to contain her injury, but that was it. Looking around at the dead Zen’zat, she probed them with Ikrid and Pefbar to make sure they were out of the fight, then she began walking towards where she felt a group of minds a few hundred meters away and out of sight behind the various emitter equipment that stood like buildings around them…some of which had been damaged in the fight, but that was nothing compared to the carnage of bodies.

  Limping forward due to a melted bit of her right knee that had locked up, Sara followed the last bits of battle as the remaining Zen’zat were outnumbered and getting overrun. She made sure not to get too close, but when the last of them fell she went ahead and limped on into view of the group.

  Zen’zat were laying dead everywhere, but so were just as many Archons and Arc Knights. Some were just injured like she’d been, but as many of the walking ones were running around to try and heal/revive the fallen while a few others were putting additional shots into the Zen’zat bodies to make sure they didn’t get back up.

  Sara walked through everyone, ready to try and help if absolutely necessary, but she was in no condition to focus on someone else’s wound with hers still paining her badly. Soon though additional troops arrived in the form of Regulars that helped police the Zen’zat bodies and carry off the most badly wounded, then some additional medics finally arrived, one of which came up to Sara and stared at her chest wide-eyed.

  “We need to get you to a med bay now,” he insisted. “I swear, I don’t know how you guys can walk these off.”

  “Later,” Sara said with an appreciative smile. “I assume we’re all done here?”

  “I hope so,” the medic said, glancing to his left. “You called us in.”

  “Not me,” she said, pointing to her head that no longer held her helmet, but a lot of it was visible crunched up behind her head in too large a mass to be normal. “My comm is out.”

  “I was told the area was clear of hostiles.”

  “I thought so, just wanted to check,” she said as her armor began to split apart. Sara yelped as it did so, rubbing into her chest wound with jagged edges that cut her thinly regrown skin and started it bleeding again as the trailblazer stepped out of her broken armor and left behind the mechanical limp as her burnt white uniform underneath began getting a bit redder than it already was.

  “Damn,” the medic said, pulling out a Star Force regenerator from his pack, but Sara held up a hand.

  “I don’t have the biomass left…and I don’t want it cannibalizing anything else. I’ll manage.”

  “Let me get you some foam then,” he said, pulling out a small canister.

  Sara nodded and he sprayed it into her wound, filling it up and applying the same numbing/healing agent as a patch would, but because of the cavity such a flat item wouldn’t be as effective. When he pulled out a patch later to try and put it over top Sara stopped him, with a sign of relief on her face as the numbing effect began to kick in.

  “Thank you, that’ll do.”

  “You’re not coming to a med bay, are you?”

  “I will soon, right now I have things to do. Attend to the others.”

  “I think they’re all covered, but I’ll roam and check,” he said, taking a step away from her then turning back in admiration. “Glad you guys are on our side.”

  Sara let him go without another word, then without the hindrance of her armor she walked slowly but smoothly through the battleground as the Zen’zat bodies were being picked up and removed. An army of techs replaced them as they began cleaning up all the blood and gore while others took to the damage done to the emitters, passing her by with a myriad of odd looks but none of them interrupted her as she moved about watching the last of the wounded walk or be carried off.

&n
bsp; Eventually she came across Rio and saw Ethan laying on a hover plank as two medics pulled him along with a Star Force regenerator attached to his chest.

  “How bad?” she asked as Rio left them and headed towards her, though he was still wearing his armor that had a few small holes in it, but not as big as the one Sara had suffered.

  “Bad, but he’s out of danger now. How are you still walking?” he asked, looking at and into the hole in her chest using his Pefbar to see through the foam poking out in a way that looked like the tip of an ice cream cone.

  “Last man standing,” she insisted. “How many did we lose?”

  “18 unrevivable, another 46 hurt so bad they can’t walk out. If we didn’t have numbers on them we would have got our asses kicked even worse.”

  “We did plenty of damage of our own,” Sara insisted. “Now I can understand why the psionics are such a threat to them. Most of those Zen’zat outranked us.”

  “Some by a lot,” Rio agreed. “Our friend from the Ribbon wasn’t the strongest.”

  “Glad we got him. Are we all done?”

  “Teams are still searching the area to make sure some of them didn’t split off, but all indications are that this was the last of them. You need to get to a med bay.”

  “Later. Did Vermaire make it?”

  “Yeah, and he took out two of the badasses…with help.”

  “Figures. Was he hurt?”

  “He walked it off, same as you.”

  “We need the security cam footage analyzed and genetic samples taken from the Zen’zat. If there’s been any upgrades we need to know, and potentially steal. As much as we’ve been preparing for this, they fought harder than I expected.”