Star Force: Initiation (SF61) (4 page)

Once the swarm of enemy infantry was turned into a
floating corpse field they moved down on the priority target and broke their
way in through the available hatches before calling for support. The Elarioni
held the entrances until Human infantry arrived and they let the more heavily
armored troops take the lead, given that the tighter confines didn’t allow the
Elarioni as much of an agility advantage.

That said, a few stayed with the Humans as they
entered the facility while Jeimae and the others swam back up to a higher level
and raced across the submerged cityscape with the battle between the Star Force
battleship and the lizard fleet still ongoing overhead. The battlemap had
another location for her and her sisters to go and secure, with multiple units,
both friendly and enemy, moving about everywhere Jeimae looked.

This was no small-scale engagement, and the mix of
adrenaline and fear inside the Elarioni made her feel more alive than she’d
ever been before. Trusting in her skill and training, she swam on with her
sisters, confident that if they kept their wits about them they’d win out and
rid this planet of the lizards…but right now it was clear that a single misstep
could get her killed. She was superior to the lizards, but that didn’t make her
safe.

With one final glance at the huge ships overhead
battling it out and the rain of debris slowly sinking all around her, Jeimae
swam in information with four other Elarioni as they were just getting within
vision range of the next lizard infantry group already engaged with a Human
assault force. It looked to be more or less an even fight…but that wasn’t going
to last for long.

4

March 19, 2692

Jafat
System (lizard
territory)

Ulmed

Trevor-52118 twisted aside, dodging the thrust of a
lizard plasma rod towards his face. His movement was slower than it would have
been on land, but he managed to get enough of a head start that the glowing
green bulb of plasma missed his faceplate by an inch. As it passed he reached
out with his right hand and grabbed the rod just below the tip, locking it in
place so he could then spin the opposite direction, pressing his armored back
against the exposed shoulder of the lizard and whacking it in the back of the
neck with his left elbow.

That momentary blow was enough to stun it in place
sufficient for Trevor to get spun completely around so he could jab his right
gauntlet into its back and fire off his own plasma nub. When physical contact
was made with the thin armor vest it wore the shield bubble containing the
plasma breached and the superheated krypton burnt through the armor and into
the lizard under enough pressure to carve out a hollow inside the enemy
infantry while causing a flurry of bubbles to shoot up around the impact point
where the water leaked in through the crude seam.

That made for a 1-hit kill, with Trevor leaving the
isolated lizard where it floated in the hallway as it died over the next few
seconds, stunned from the pain and destruction of its internal organs but
taking some time for the blood loss to render its brain inoperable. The Archon
moved on through the facility, not having expected to find this one here but
patrolling none the less with his Ikrid stretched out to look for more ahead
and through the walls.

His troops were back near the main entrance, with
Elarioni skirmishers outside watching the other exits. The majority of the
fighting was over, but there were handfuls of lizards moving about with
considerable skill at evasion. Out in the open water they were vulnerable, but
moving within the buildings or hopping from one dome to another across the
seafloor they were being evasive and trying to stay ahead of the sweeper teams.
The one he’d just killed had tried to ambush him as he swam by one of the
rooms, coming down from above given that the hallways connected via both sides
and from above and below.

Trevor had known he was coming at him and had been
prepared, but he hadn’t expected such a forceful jab that had covered more
distance than expected. The lizard hadn’t had sight on him, but had known
exactly where to jut towards coming around the blind corner. It could have been
luck, but based on the actions of a few others he was starting to think they
were getting some kind of
intel
from security
monitors. Each of the lizards had an earpiece
comm
,
but there was no way to know if they were getting active
intel
or not.

The Archon arched his back and rolled over, forcing
his line of movement down into a floor doorway as his armor’s jets trolled him
along at a slow pace. Once inside the room he saw that it was another large hangar
filled with workstations. These were industrial ones, similar to the others
they’d been seeing in other domes, but the configurations were slightly
altered. Techs would sort out exactly what it all did later, but Trevor got the
feeling these were prefabricated domes specifically set up for mass production.
The lizard colony wasn’t that old, so it made sense for these to be standard
package for a startup.

Stretching out his Ikrid into spotlight mode he
ignored the area behind and around him and used the wide beam to search the
area section by section, eventually finding no minds present. He swam around a
bit to have a further look at what was here, but with no enemy troops in the
chamber there was no reason to stick around. He spotted another circular
entryway on the floor and swam down, entering a horizontal hallway and swimming
on until he came to a dead end.

There he found cutting gear and exposed bedrock, with
this looking to be as deep as this dome’s structure went. Apparently they’d
just begun cutting out the entryway when the attack arrived for the mostly
handheld equipment was strewn over the floor as if it had just been dropped and
left to float down to the ground.

Trevor backtracked to a different junction and moved
on, with his battlemap logging and updating the structural map as he went,
showing him and others where he had been as well as the blank areas that had
yet to be searched. His connection to the grid was in and out, for the signals
would only pass so far through the infrastructure, so it wasn’t surprising when
a dot suddenly popped up ahead of him along with a whole new section of map
filling in as one of his Elarioni swam towards him.

“Any trouble?” he asked over the
comm
,
with the computerized translation happening in realtime. The difference between
Human and Elarioni vocal cords didn’t allow either one to mimic the other’s
language so they either had to talk through translation or the backup hand
signals they’d learned in case of equipment failure. The same was true of a few
other races, most notably the Hycre, but the Elarioni were the only ones in
Star Force who could not speak English…excluding a number of varied individuals
within Axius.

“No casualties. 17 targets neutralized,”
Kameena
said within her own helmet. The mixture of high
pitched warbles sounded like the aquatic version of R2D2, but Trevor didn’t
hear them, only the synthesized voice…which ironically was still the Disney
version from ‘The Little Mermaid,’ though Trevor and most others never caught
the inside joke for they were too young to be familiar with the source
material.

Trevor reached out a finger and pointed to a scorch
mark on her tail armor. “How’d you get that?”

“I never said they went down without a fight.”

“Ambush?”

“They were near to triggering a large explosive. I had
to act quickly before a section of the dome was destroyed. One of them got a
hit in on me before I killed him.”

“Define ‘large,’” Trevor said, concerned.

“Look,”
Kameena
said,
picturing it in her mind so the Archon ranger could easily see it. The pair had
worked together for so long they’d established this type of shorthand, knowing
that it’d be quicker than verbal explanation. Also, the
Elarioni’s
subconscious, primitive telepathy acted as a booster to let Trevor access her
thoughts more easily than other races, given his limited skills in that
department.

“They didn’t put that together from scratch. There’s
got to be an armory or production facility nearby.”

“My thoughts as well, but I have not encountered any
such placements within this dome and the search is nearly complete.”

Trevor thought quickly, floating mid hallway in front
of the Elarioni who, in battle armor, didn’t glow with bioluminescence…a look
that made her appear as formidable as the Archon knew her and the others to be.
Many of the Elarioni were on the pacifistic side, or more accurately the
‘gentle’ side as far as their personalities, but there was a whole slew of them
that were both active and eager to fight…and a lot of those had crossed over
from the independent Elarioni to join Star Force for just that purpose.

“Come with me,” the Archon said, activating his jets
to shoot him down the hallway towards the few unmapped sections of the dome.
Kameena
flicked her armored tail rhythmically beside him,
not needing her booster jets to keep up. Her arms were tucked in closer to her
sides and her whole body undulated, making her look like a metallic snake as
she paced him unquestioningly.

Trevor led them into new hallways, skipping the few
rooms adjacent to them when he scanned them with Ikrid. He was looking for
something in particular and it wasn’t going to be in a room if he guessed
right.

The pair came across another floor doorway…save that
it and most of the others had no doors…and they swam down to another hallway
that ran parallel some 10 meters lower, at the end of which he picked up a few
lizard minds.

“Contacts.”

“Permission?” the Elarioni asked.

“Careful,” he said, with her sprinting ahead of him
with a wicked tail kick. Trevor increased the speed of his jets a bit, but
there was no catching her as she zoomed down the long hallway. There were tiny,
dim lights built into the walls but suddenly there were additional green orbs
lighting up in the distance just before
Kameena
got
to them.

Careful with his aim, Trevor sent a Fornax blast low
and sniped it past his friend, hitting a lizard a bit further down. The Archon
didn’t even bother to pop out his gauntlet’s weapon, for by the time he arrived
the Elarioni had already killed all 8 lizards that were guarding a vertical
hallway that led down into the bedrock.

“More down there,” Trevor said, sensing hundreds of
them within his limited range. “I think they wanted to collapse the dome to
conceal them.”

“To what end?”

“Not sure, but I think we’ll get our answer down
there.”

“Ready,” she said, twisting over and facing straight
down.

“Not alone. There are a lot down there and I’m
scanning first. Who knows what they might have waiting for us.”

“Your caution is admirable,” she said, with Trevor
knowing that it was sarcasm. He tried to connect to the battlemap to send a
signal but after three tries the only contact he could get was her.

“Go whistle up some support, I can’t get through.”

Without a word she spun about and swam by him so close
he could have
swore
she’d touched him…but knowing her
she’d done it on purpose just for the near miss.

With her petite form disappearing with distance Trevor
swam down a meter and grabbed hold of the rim of the vertical shaft, keeping
his body out of view but leaving his head where he could look down. There were
no lights below, so all he could see with was his Pefbar. It didn’t reach very
far, and the minds he was sensing were below it, meaning he’d just have to wait
on this one. In order to take this planet they had to root out all lizard
installations, and whatever was down there probably was something that could
sustain a resistance group if allowed to go unnoticed.

It was a good thing
Kameena
had got to those explosives when she did…and not just because it would have
brought a chunk of the dome down on top of them.

Two hours later Trevor swam up from the seafloor,
having completed the destruction of the lizard growth pods that had contained
thousands of new problems at varying stages of development. Back in the open
ocean again he felt very tiny, especially with the giant markers on his HUD
indicating the no go zone further to the south. Between that and him was his
destination, a Star Force destroyer that had been dropped from orbit along with
several other smaller aquatics warships.

The battleships were still nearby, with two visible in
the distance. He wasn’t going to swim back all the way to them, plus he needed
a more mobile vessel to move around the area in hence he was about to board the
destroyer. Unlike the whale-inspired battleship design the destroyer had flat
hulls and mathematically crisp angles ending in a blunt, but knife-like nose
that the rest of the ship fanned out behind.

Trevor headed towards it like a tiny missile, his jets
propelling him at speeds he could never have swam with only his arms and legs,
no matter what size of fins he might have. The distance across the submerged
city, now partly rubble beneath him, was disconcerting for while he was moving
it looked like he wasn’t, with the destroyer floating midway between surface
and seafloor appearing to be getting no closer.

But that was just a reality of aquatics, with Trevor
reminding himself to be patient as the distance was gradually diminishing and
the image of the destroyer slowly grew larger in front of him…but not before
the giant no-go zone beyond suddenly was hit with an object from above. The
Archon had seen it coming down on his battlemap before it hit the waves, but it
was no less an impressive sight.

Moving slowly so to diminish disruptive currents from
its bulk moving the water out of the way, the aquatics MCV easily outmassed all
four battleships combined and made for an almost perfect rectangular footprint
as it slowly eased down into the water. Trevor kept jetting forward as it sank
in, feeling the small shock wave hit him just prior to him reaching the
destroyer. Its shields were down and the one of the entry ports glowed with
ringing lights to help direct him to it. Swimming like a missile to target he
hit the bullseye head first, passing through the energy shield and into the
conditioned water inside.

The pressure was lower, but he could only feel that
through the lessening of resistance to his movement. The temperature and
molecular content he couldn’t detect with his armor covering him, but the
Elarioni inside most definitely could. Two of them were waiting for him inside
the
waterlock
, neither of which wore armor. They were
ship’s crew and glowed with bioluminescence on various parts of their naked
bodies, but it was their eyes that stood out the most for they were glowing a
Thrawn-esk
gold.

“I need an air recharge,” he said, using his armor’s
external speakers.

“Follow me,” one of them said, with his helmet doing
the translating. The second Elarioni swam out of the way and let the clumsy
armored Human jet past, then followed him with her tri-finned tail only lightly
flapping to provide propulsion. That third fin was part of the reason why they
were so mobile, with all three able to bend and twist into various
configurations. Working out armor to accommodate that had been a headache for
the techs, but now that they had it was more than worth the effort, with every
additional upgrade making the Elarioni even more lethal in combat.