Star Force: Headstrong (SF72) (8 page)

This was the first invasion that the Protovic army was
involved in and
Jenran’s
fifth battle. He and the
others knew they were being evaluated, as well as the fact that this fight was
live and people were in jeopardy if they screwed it up…but so far everyone had
been doing their job and they’d been mowing down the lizards they’d been
assigned to go against, though he suspected they were being given the easy
assignments since they were
newbs
to this sort of
fighting, while the Bsidd armies were taking on the heaviest areas of
resistance.

Didn’t matter to him. There were lizards here to be
fought and the bulk of the currently small Protovic army was finally getting a
chance to contribute…and he was realizing just how small and weak the lizards were.
These were standard varieties they were coming up against, no maulers, and
every time he collided with one it did little to stop his higher mass. They
were easy takedowns if they could get to them, especially considering that they
were wearing no armor aside from some pathetic vests. Those might stop a shot,
or half of one, but otherwise they were useless against Star Force’s weapons.

Jenran fought from the back of his unit while his
shields recharged, only taking a few additional hits while the others soaked up
most of the incoming fire. When he was nearly full and ready to take on the
next diving assignment he got a battlemap prompt and immediately ran over to
the nearby waypoint, finding the Archon that had summoned him and feeling his
telepathy in his head.

He’d done this before and returned a ‘ready’ thought
while getting the approximate direction the Archon wanted to throw him. He ran
on that trajectory then felt himself tip forward and be lifted off the ground,
accelerated by an invisible force as he was shot through the air like a slow
missile past the Archon and the other Protovic, then hit headfirst into a wall
of lizards. He kept his arms tucked around his rifle until he felt the
telekinetic hold let go and gravity returned to normal.

As he crashed into the lizards he let his legs and one
arm fly wide to catch as many of them as he could, acting like a snowplow that
mowed down a line of them, leaving him the prime target now as multiple phaser
blasts hit him, though a few missed and actually hit other lizards as he
scrambled around on the ground, knowing that standing up immediately was a bad
idea. He needed to buy a few seconds and then…

Two more Protovic came running up and head-butted
lizards aside as a wave of blue plasma fire followed them along with the
padawan that had thrown him. A group of lizards just dropped to the ground in
front of him and Jenran shot them as quickly as he could while the Archon
jumped over their bodies and punched another so hard he flew back as another
projectile and knocked four more down.

Soon Jenran was surrounded by other Protovic and out
of danger, finding his shields had gone down and he had a slightly melted gash
across his right leg but no other damage. He held back and shot a few downed
lizards that he wasn’t sure were totally dead as his shield bar reformed at
minimal strength.

Tucking in behind others with more shield than him, he
followed the group forward as they continued their cyclical push that, by
design, was never supposed to end and give the lizards a chance to regroup.
Once a Protovic formation started the charge forward they would continue until
the enemy gave them too much resistance and they had to fall back, or until
they’d won the battle.

8

July 18, 2888

Chepmet
System
(lizard territory)

Inner Zone

The
Excalibur
came out of its deceleration jump into view of the white star that stood at the
center of the lizard-occupied system head of the line. It’d pulled extra heavy
on the gravity drives to position them further out than normal, for they expected
immediate resistance.
Chepmet
was a key system on the
primary shipping route connecting the lizard core worlds and their expansion
zone into Skarron territory. They used multiple paths to link the two, but the
bulk of their ship and cargo transfer was occurring on one line…one very
heavily defended line as they attempted to reduce the amount of raids that Star
Force and the Voku were exacting on them.

The Preema invasion corridor had already eaten out a
chunk of lizard territory on the Voku side of the midline and Star Force continued
to creep their border in from the opposite side. That meant the vast expanse of
territory in the ‘middle’ of lizard space was shrinking. Not so much that they
were in jeopardy of getting cut off anytime soon, but the lizards could see the
writing on the wall and had been reinforcing this particular line of systems,
both in terms of planetary defenses and ship count.

So it didn’t surprise Paul when his command ship’s
sensors began to pick up warship contacts in orbit around the star by the
thousands. They were there to make sure any lizard ships coming through were
protected as they made the transition from one jumppoint to another, for
intercepting a ship mid jump was virtually unheard of. The weak points in the traffic
flow were around the stars, so that’s where the lizards were pooling their
ships and adding more to them as the months passed by.

There were too many for Paul to take out with his
small Clan Saber fleet, which exited behind the
Excalibur
six in count. Four were standard warships and began
deploying drones immediately upon arrival, but the other two were the main
reason they were here. They were jumpship-sized drones that had no internal
living space whatsoever, not even for maintenance access. Normally Star Force
wouldn’t build anything that big in that manner, but these were prototypes that
Clan Saber had developed and Paul had brought them here for a field test…as
well as to diminish the number of ships the lizards had in the system.

Both mammoth warships were
Ravager
-class and had the distinction of carrying the first ‘holy’
weapon Star Force had managed to produce, which was the
V’kit’no’sat’s
Dre’mo’don. It was crude as hell right now and too large to fit on any normal
sized drone, but each ravager had 12 Dre’mo’dons on them, a lot of armor and
shields, and some backup Ta’lin’yi and mauler cannons with a sprinkling of Sammy
anti-air turrets.

They were beasts with more kill power than the rest of
the fleet combined, most of which was due to the Dre’mo’dons. They were the
same type of weapon that Kara had in her armor, which compressed down into a
tiny jewel set into her wrist. The one’s Star Force had built were
monstrosities, and not due to their destructive power. What the V’kit’no’sat
could condense down into a square meter, Star Force’s techs were only accomplishing
the same with a battery the size of a dropship.

That meant they were hugely inefficient, but the end
result was same when the condensed energy packet was launched. It wasn’t a beam,
nor could reach even close to beam speeds, making it a medium/short range
weapon, but it tore apart shields and armor alike in a way that made all the
rest of Star Force’s weapons look like mere toys…which was why Paul and Roger
had been pressing the techs to rush the design even if it took something huge
to carry them.

The weapon schematics had been a Star Force project,
but it was Clan Saber that had gone ahead and incorporated them into the
ravager design while others factions were waiting for them to be tinkered with
and reduced in size first. Paul wasn’t waiting, for this weapon put them ahead
of the Voku, the Preema, and the Nexus in terms of raw firepower. He was here
to take the pair of ravagers against an overwhelming lizard fleet, with the
rest of his ships there to protect the prototypes. He knew he’d have to
withdraw at some point, but intended to get a lot of data and ship kills before
that and did not want to risk losing one of the very expensive ships.

Credits weren’t the issue, but the number of arc
elements and solari required to construct the Dre’mo’don were insane compared
to everything else they were using. Paul had only been able to afford it
because Clan Saber had built a small
Star
Forge
-class mining station of their own now that the main facilities were
out of prototype stage and they had a limited, but firm handle on the
technology. Mainline had 3 of the massive stations up and running with another
two under construction, while Paul had spent a significant amount of his Clan’s
resources to build his own baby version that he’d named the
Pocket Knife
.

Between it and the two ravagers, he’d devoted an
enormous amount of his Clan’s resources into a very small amount of equipment,
but both ventures were going to put the Sabers far ahead of the curve. The
Dre’mo’don wasn’t the
V’kit’no’sat’s
most advanced
weapon by far, but it was a staple of their smaller ships and the batteries on
the ravagers were equivalent in yield to what the Rit’ko’sor had on their
Frigate analogs. Small by V’kit’no’sat standards, but still naval yield and far
more powerful than anything Kara could produce.

To put it in simpler terms, the weapons should be able
to 1-hit lizard cruisers, though to date that theory hadn’t been tested, which
was one of the reasons why Paul was here.

The trailblazer linked into the nexus and took
personal command of both ravagers while leaving the drone fleet under the
control of the remote pilots. They knew their job and he probably wouldn’t have
to give any additional orders, leaving him free to focus on the new tech and
using it to maximum advantage while simultaneously safeguarding it.

As the lizard sensors finally caught the echoes from
the incoming ships their fleets began to reposition to come after the invaders,
and those were just the ones already in orbit around the star. Paul knew there
were at least 2 inhabited planets in the system, but how many more ships they
had around them was a question mark. They’d only been able to get a brief
scouting report that was some 60 years old from the Voku, plus updates from
ships passing through that could not stay around long enough to take a fresh
look.

As Paul’s fleet began to move towards the star and
approach the swarm of lizard ships, three of his own drones broke off and made
microjumps that would take them through a very fast scouting run of the other
planets. That wasn’t their purpose here, but he might as well have a look while
they were in the neighborhood. Those drones were operating on limited remote
control and Paul had told his Admiral previously that he wanted them out and
back quickly, for he didn’t know how long they’d be able to stand up against
the lizard fleet and he didn’t want them left behind for the lizards to
potentially disable and study.

As the four jumpships spread out into compass points
around the
Excalibur
and the drones
filled in the gaps while pushing the formation out even further, Paul kept the
two ravagers in close to the command ship before sending them on out ahead when
the fat donut started shooting bloons at the enemy. He wanted to keep well
clear of their firing radius and let them fight the enemy, with the rest of the
fleet holding position nearby to react as necessary. They were all going to
shoot any and all lizard ships that came within firing range, but he wanted the
ravagers to go in first and have their choice of targets.

Paul watched with considerable interest as the first
100+ ship tendril of cruisers came in towards the port ravager firing their
phaser beams at a slightly greater range than the Dre’mo’dons could handle.
Their energy packet was only momentarily cohesive, and once that cloyingness
ran its course they’d pop like fireworks and dissipate their energy. Anything
near the ‘pop’ would take damage, but it would be minimal compared to what the
bolt would have accomplished on a proper hit.

When Paul felt the first of the cruisers come within
the reliable range he fired the first Dre’mo’don, which while on V’kit’no’sat
weapons was green, a color alteration hadn’t been a big technological issue so
Paul had these built standard Star Force blue. What looked like a tiny pinprick
of light glowed so brightly it might as well have been a piece of a star. It
shot out almost too fast for the eye to track and impacted one of the fresh
lizard cruisers that had full armor and shields, while a handful of the others
had already been hit by bloons and weakened.

The Dre’mo’don hit the lizard shields and punched
right through, overloading their matrix on impact then partially melting
through the armor plates as the energy packet destabilized, turning from a tiny
mote into a miniature nova. The hole in the armor expanded on the inside into a
destructive cone that blew out the opposite side of the ship and nearly severed
the entire thing in half. Sensor tags of weapons batteries winked out across
the hull leaving only two still operational, but the rest of the cruiser was
either junk or unpowered.

Pretty damn close to a 1-hit kill.

Paul didn’t waste a second shot on it and targeted a
different cruiser with his second battery while the first went on an 18-second
recharge. He hated that it was that ponderously slow but he had 12 batteries to
work with, so as the lizard fleets swarmed around the ravagers with even more
ships only minutes away, he was able to fire a shot every 1.5 seconds and use
the secondary weaponry to clean up his kills and take them completely out of
the fight.

And Paul had two ships to work with, so there was a
constant repetition of the tiny blue sparks flying out and knocking down
cruisers as the rest of the Star Force fleet became heavily engaged and
positioned to
 
keep themselves bracketing
the ravagers so the enemy couldn’t fully surround them and fire from all angles
simultaneously. Paul had brought two shield ship drones per ravager and had
them waiting nearby to swoop in and aid them if necessary, but the confusion of
the lizards prevented any serious threat to the deadly ships.

The titan knew it would take time for the enemy to
calculate the destructive potential and adjust their attack patterns accordingly.
Until that happened he was more than happy to just sit there racking up easy
kills, all the while monitoring the long range sensors and the growing number
of ships heading their way.

It took 12 minutes before Paul realized the lizards
were not adapting to the new threat. Almost giddy with the opportunity he
expanded his mind out to the rest of the fleet and grabbed some remote pilots
to man the secondary weapons on the ravagers while he assumed full fleet
control and took them on the offensive. He split up the ravagers and sent them
into different areas while the
Excalibur
did the same. The lizards weren’t running, but they weren’t adjusting to the
firepower the ravagers were throwing down…perhaps because it was so extreme
they didn’t know what to do about it.

Regardless of their thinking, or lack thereof, Paul
knew the opportunity he had and pressed the engagement to the point of risking
the loss of a significant portion of his drones. The spacing between his ships
spread out, taking on a much more aggressive posture and figuratively taunting
the lizards to come at them now that they weren’t turtled up into a defensive
alignment. When the enemy continued to press the attack Paul new it was game on
and that he had a chance of destroying the entire fleet now on sensors…though
discounting whatever else they had in the system.

That was a wild card right now and he’d keep an eye on
it, but so long as the lizards were going to take the bait he was going to make
them pay for their lack of vision. He frowned as the term ‘lack of vision’
stuck in his mind and he realized it was something the Emperor had said.

Whatever…the point was valid. The lizards would learn
what the ravagers could do going forward and adapt to it as they always did,
but in the next few minutes at least he had caught them by surprise and was
going to milk it for all he could.

15 days later…

Paul’s seven ship fleet flew into planetary orbit at
one of their frontline system naval outposts, which was comprised of a repair
yard and supply depot sitting near a Sentinel defense platform. The planet was
uninhabited as of now, with the facilities having been built specifically to
aid in the warfront expansion by giving Star Force a stepping stone forward
without having to put down another significant colonization effort.

Another warfleet, one much larger than Paul’s, was
already on station and he recognized Taryn’s flagship a couple of seconds
before her hologram appeared beside his command chair on the bridge.

“What the hell happened to you?” she asked, seeing the
armor damage across all of his ships and the onboard drone count being at 43%
capacity.

“Picked a fight and won,” Paul said pithily as he
motioned to the Admiral to go ahead and get the repair work ordered, which is
what he’d been on the bridge to do rather than being down in his sanctum trying
fruitlessly to find the trigger to the
Ubven
ability
that Rio had been continuously flaunting in their sparring sessions, preventing
Paul or anyone else from beating him even once in hand to hand when he could
essentially freeze his opponent for a few seconds whenever he wanted.