Star Force: Backdoor (SF53) (8 page)

Once the Skarron city was shredded he sent down
fighter squadrons to secure the local airspace against the enemy’s own fighter
squadrons which were hovering around the edges of the bombardment zone, not
wanting to accidentally get caught up in the downpour. With those fighter
engagements paving the way he deployed ground troops, first through direct
orbital drops for a number of his mechs, then through full transports that had
been brought inside the conglomerates and now freed to fly free.

Those transports landed in the ‘safe’ zone and began
offloading more troops and temporary infrastructure, allowing Cal-com to
quickly set up a number of surface bases of his own, complete with shield
generators and defense towers. Those guarded and created LZs for an even larger
flow of troops and supplies to the surface, for the Voku commander was going to
have to wage a ground war to secure the planet and he’d brought enough material
and resources to make sure he got the job done. Last thing he wanted to do was
come up short and have to try and stretch his resources.

He could do it, and had many times before, but he
needed to quickly take the planet before the Skarrons in other systems could
become the wiser…which was why he had ships stationed near the star to
hopefully intercept any couriers they tried to send out, as well as ambush any
incoming reinforcements or transports that would have no way of knowing the
system had suddenly changed hands.

Information was critical in interstellar warfare, as
well as knowing how to exploit the blind spots. The Skarrons didn’t have any
known transmission capability between stars and operated explicitly off of
couriers. That meant so long as Cal-com could keep any ships from leaving the
system he would have a very large timespan to work with here, but let so much
as even one ship through and it would just be a matter of time before an even
larger Skarron fleet showed up to evict them.

He knew they would come eventually and was already
planning for that battle, but the ultimate goal here was to take pressure off
the Humans and buy them time…with the more days this system’s change of hands
remained a secret meaning the more time he could give them.

And he was confident that if he gave Warlord Paul the
time he needed that he would secure their territory. He was young, and didn’t
have the wealth of experience that Cal-com had in his 3,832 years of military
deployment, but he was smart and innovative and largely responsible for the
creation and design of the Human’s navy which, while inferior to the Voku, had
an interesting makeup, especially their use of pilot-less drone warships.

Cal-com knew that there was a serious risk of jamming
that the Voku would never tolerate, but against the Skarrons and the Cajdital
he didn’t think it would be a problem, given the type of comm system that Paul
had hinted they were using. Obviously he wasn’t going to give the details of it
to the Voku or anyone else, nor should he, given how much the Humans and their
Star Force relied upon it. Also, the inclusion of other races into wings of
their military was something Cal-com was studying with interest. Typically
multi-racial organizations were doomed to self-destruct, but what Paul and his
kin had set up seemed to be functional…all the while maintaining an all-Human
core, which Cal-com found to be both wise and insightful.

Still, different races gave them different combat
options. He could see it in the Skarrons and how they used a smaller race to
supplement their own movement and size weaknesses. The Voku were strong in all
areas and had never bothered to experiment with bringing in others for a
variety of reasons, so Cal-com was very interested in seeing how it played out
for the Humans over the long term.

And he intended to give them the time necessary to
find out. Achkor was the Skarron’s main supply base to their invasion of the
ADZ and as of now it was no longer operational…not to mention the Voku had just
destroyed many of the ships slated to reinforce their assault fleets. Give Paul
that bit of an assist and Cal-com was confident that he could finish up the
rest of them.

That said, it meant that Cal-com had just put the
target squarely on his newly captive system…which is exactly the way he
preferred it. It was the place of the strong to be in the center of the storm
in order to shield the weak, and in this war the Voku were the strong…though
personally he didn’t consider the Humans to be weak, just young and needing
some time to catch up. The Elders obviously saw merit in them, and even without
that incredibly important edict Cal-com would have eventually come to the same
conclusion on his own after seeing them fight in their curiously reserved, yet
aggressive style of warfare.

8

September 1, 2549

Achkor System

Zenniza

Cal-com set foot on the surface of
Zenniza
for the first time, landing in their primary LZ that was now safe from enemy
interference. Their overland push had consumed nearly half the planet with the
Skarrons unable to hold them back. The lack of mobility of their walkers made for
easy targets when the Voku could drop more from orbit on a whim, and whenever
the enemy’s transports tried to pick up and relocate theirs the Voku fighters
would harass them to the point that it was safer to leave the walkers on the
ground where their anti-air weaponry could be effective in keeping the fighters
back.

They still managed some movement, but mostly it was the
Voku on the offensive, hunting down isolated walker groups and hitting cities
when they later bunched them up to avoid such poaching. Slowly and efficiently
the Voku took out more and more of the surface missile launchers, often
attacking a city to destroy those very batteries then pulling back and leaving
its conquest for later. Right now the key to the invasion was to get their navy
into bombardment position. Once that happened, it was practically game over.

So far as he knew, no enemy ships had managed to leave
the system. Many had come in to the star and been subsequently destroyed, but
the blockade and the resulting surveillance provided by it had shown no further
attempts to get out, meaning that with any luck the rest of the Skarron Empire
still didn’t know that the Voku were here. And if they didn’t know they
couldn’t send the forces necessary to reclaim it.

Cal-com expected more warships to arrive enroute to
battling the Humans, so he knew there would be naval fights to come and there
had already been 5 separate battles when small warship groups had arrived. He’d
lost a few ships in those ambushes but the Skarrons had been totally wiped out
jumping into a system they thought was secure. With his fleet deployed properly
in orbit and the land fronts far from the LZ, it was time for the Voku
commander to come down and officially lay claim to the planet in a ceremony
he’d conducted numerous times before.

Within the conglomerates were also cargo ships
carrying all kinds of equipment, some of which had now landed on the planet to
deliver specific pieces necessary for a long term occupation. It was those pieces
that required activation though they weren’t at the LZ, but rather at a
specific site some
distance away but still close
enough that there was no threat of enemy counterattacks or sabotage.

Cal-com could have flown to the site but he preferred
taking a Stranom instead and there were many situated here in reserve so they
could be called upon for support or replacement as necessary. The Renimar
walked up to one of the egg-shaped material constructs and placed a hand on the
activation panel…which quickly caused a dent to form in the material as it
reconstructed itself into a small pod. Cal-com stepped inside and turned
around, facing out, and pressed another panel that sealed him inside with a
flow of moving parts covering him.

From the exterior the giant egg began to transform
into a tall bipedal mech with a head that, unlike the Voku’s pointy craniums,
was flared out more like a Jackal from ancient Egypt and with a stocky body to
match. The exterior armor plating was the last to form, with the tiny segments
migrating to the exterior and locking into place forming a smooth, lineless
mechanical construct that moved as if it was made of muscle as opposed to the
obvious joints in the Human mechs.

Cal-com stood in his pod, with several restriction
bands coming out to encircle his body. One wrapped around his head, giving him
direct neural access to the Stranom that allowed him to operate it completely
by thought. His eye piece registered the mech’s external sensors and fed the
information directly into his visual processing matrix while machinery
monitored his neural output, linking him to the machine in such a way that he
saw, felt, and fought as the giant device…including light pain stimuli when it
was damaged so he could instantly be aware of what was happening to it without
looking on a display screen.

That was necessary to fight at speed, and as Cal-com
brought the mech online he began accelerating up into a run that he held across
the landscape with three other Stranoms encircling him in escort. His people
knew better than to ever let him go off alone, even in secured territory, and
the constant bodyguards were something that he’d simply adjusted to. He no
longer even had to give them
orders,
they simply went
wherever he went when outside a warship. Renimars were rare in the Voku and had
to be protected, for losing even one of them would seriously hurt their
Empire’s military efficiency.

Cal-com was one of only 29 at present, though that
number wasn’t set. The most there had ever been simultaneously in their history
was 34, with 7 having since been killed in a variety of ways, two of which had
been accidents. Another had chosen to retire from the military and pursue other
endeavors, which made him effectively dead to them. To relinquish the
responsibilities of a Renimar was equivalent to treason, but that Voku had made
his choice and Cal-com chose not to comment on it. He’d been one of his mentors
early on and an individual he’d patterned his early years after…but no longer.

With only 29 Renimars for the entire Empire his being
sent away from it on this mission was highly irregular. There were always wars
being fought, on some level, with the Skarrons being a newer threat arising, so
there was always work to do, not to mention dealing with internal matters and
advancing their military through training, recruitment, and experimentation.

But the Elders had deemed this a priority so Cal-com
had been sent. Keeping him alive was of such importance to the Voku that the
light escort was to be expected, though both he and his bodyguards knew he
could handle himself in the Stranom…it was the unexpected ambushes they wanted
to guard him against, and for those there was no preparation available.

Today that wasn’t an issue for he made his cross
country trek at decent speed and without enemy contact, even eventually
arriving at the secondary LZ where the precious cargo had already been unpacked
and spread out into the necessary arrangement. Being linked in to the Stranom,
Cal-com decided to remain inside and let his biotelemetry
be
transmitted through it rather than going down on foot and doing it the normal
way. This was still a battlefield, after all, plus it looked much more imposing
to perform the activation ceremony from a mech.

Cal-com walked the mech up to one of the pieces that
stood more than twice the
Stranom’s
height and
reached out his giant mechanical hand towards it, placing it palm flat against
the device. He opened a comm channel and recited several lines from a story,
which also doubled as activation code in addition to his genetic
identification. The ‘seed’ piece he was activating could only be done so by a
Renimar or, in some limited cases, a
Gahmorn
, which
was the equivalent of a fleet Admiral.

Once Cal-com finished speaking and his genetic ID was
transmitted through the physical contact between him and the mech, then the
mech and the device, it began to transform. As it did so he walked the Stranom
over to the next piece and did the same palm press, but with different
activation lines as he continued to recite the story of creation, detailing in
metaphor what they were about to do to the planet they were still in the
process of invading.

Cal-com went around did the same on all six pieces,
then backed away as the final transformation began and the pylons the seed
pieces had extruded sought each other out and locked all the segments together,
forming one giant mining machine that continued to transform even as it began
digging down into the ground beneath it in search of the raw materials that
would fuel its growth.

Not everything could be got from one location,
however, but there was a tiered hierarchy of seed planting. This location held
all of the necessary components
for tier one equipment
that the giant machine would construct. Those machines would then be taken to
other sites to harvest additional resources that would then be brought back to
the seed. Those materials would then begin to be incorporated with the others
and the creation of tier two machines would begin.

Likewise those would be sent out to find and harvest
even more varied compounds, eventually escalating to the point where the seed
would have all the necessary requirements for fueling its own growth, becoming
bigger and bigger until it was essentially its own city. From there more
preplanned stages would occur, with the Hatomek eventually sprouting more
secondary seeds of its own that would be taken to distant regions of the planet
or nearby planets to begin their growth. The secondary seeds wouldn’t require a
Renimar for activation, only the primary, with the lesser ones being activated
by high ranked, yet lower personnel in the command structure.

Cal-com had only been given a fixed number of ships
and supplies, but in order to buy the Humans the time they needed he was going
to have to hold the Achkor System and draw the Skarrons attention away from his
allies for an extended period of time. In order to do that he needed to not
just bust up
Zenniza’s
Skarron fleets and
infrastructure but actually take possession of it and establish a full Voku
presence.

Once he did that and could begin building more ships,
mechs, aircraft,
etc
he could requisition personnel
to man them from the Empire, drawing on reserve units and such. It would take
time for them to get here, but likewise it would take time for the Skarrons to bring
in their reinforcements as well, meaning he had a time game to be played on the
supply front and this seed would allow him to build faster than the Skarrons
could ever hope to do so.

Cal-com stayed and watched the seed continue to change
shape until it finally settled on its necessary form and began pouring dirt and
rock out of exterior ports into large piles around it that would eventually
form a crater-like ring of material that would double as a defensive barrier.
Already there were numerous mechs circling the site with defense turrets and
shield generators in place on a wide perimeter to ensure that nothing
interfered with the seed’s growth, but having a mass of material to block
incoming weaponsfire was always a help.

That wasn’t the purpose of it though, for the seed
was having
to dig large shafts down into the planet’s crush
to get at the resources it needed and that material had to go somewhere. Internal
sifting machines sorted through what was being dug out, maintaining the
valuable components and discarding the rest, all with a very small onboard
control staff that wasn’t technically necessary. The seed could be operated by
remote, but Cal-com always preferred to have people inside so they could
troubleshoot as necessary.

Once the seed’s final transformation took place that
crew boarded and began monitoring the automated process, sending Cal-com a
message indicating the initial resource collection rates with a level 3
efficiency rating out of a possible 5. That indicated that this wasn’t the most
rich site in natural resources but it was more than adequate for their needs.
It also gave Cal-com a generic time estimate to the next phase of the operation.

Satisfied that all was getting underway properly
Cal-com signaled his escorts to merge with his Stranom and the three other
mechs walked over to his and melted into it. Internally the four pilots’ pods
came together and the walls separating them disappeared. Each was still latched
into place but the air was open between them allowing them to speak to each
other without the use of comms, though there was no chatter here.

Cal-com took priority command of the now larger mech
while the other three went into support/observation mode. During combat they
would be useful, but right now they were simply extraneous passengers.

Cal-com waited for the much larger version to finish
transformation then he looked out through the
Stranom’s
sensor ‘eyes’ from a much higher vantage point on the seed than he had had
before, nearly seeing over the top of it as he raised the mechs arms up over
his head in a clenched fist pose and opened the comm and external speakers on
the mech and finished the ceremony with the last bit of the story, told in
short segments of words with a rhythm intoning the importance of the moment.

When he finished a log amendment was made, indicating
that this planet was now part of the Voku Empire, despite the fact that the
enemy still controlled most of it, with nearly all the Skarron cities needing
to be dealt with. Clipping their orbital weaponry was one thing, but there were
troops and workers in them that could still fight and they would have to be
dealt with when the time came.

Those cities closest to the seed and the primary LZ
had been hit already, with the Skarrons being driven out and allowed to
evacuate…or run, to be exact. Some had stayed and fought to the death, while
others, especially the Aronsic, and eventually abandoned their posts and fled,
many running outside the city with nowhere to go.

Cal-com hadn’t ordered hunting teams to go after them,
preferring simply to take the city and eliminate the threat of it while they
established their perimeter and their assault teams pushed on to more distant
ones, clipping their defenses and leaving the house cleaning for other units to
accomplish. That house cleaning was a matter that Cal-com had to deal with
next, for they weren’t simply going to slaughter the enemy. Such things were a
matter of necessity when your back was to the wall, but here, with the Voku
predictably gaining dominance, offering
a surrender
was protocol and some of the fleeing troops had already submitted when a comm
call over their own equipment had made the offer.