Star Force: Revulsion (SF70) (8 page)

As it did a flurry of
behatis and even a skeet zipped in underneath it and began strafing the lizard
infantry with Klakten breathing a sigh of relief as he and the other Beta
returned to fighting without the worry of being killed in a single shot from
above.

“Admiral, where did
that cruiser come from?” Mike asked as he pulled up out of a strafing run,
having killed dozens of the lizards on that single pass now that they’d exposed
themselves to rush his ground troops.

“Battlemap replay
indicates it originated in one of the canyons beneath a camouflage canopy.
Probably a forward operating base put into play during the initial invasion,
which was why we didn’t detect it with our orbital scans.”

“Damn it. If there are
others out there find them.”

“Already working on it.
At the moment the skies are clear near your position. Not even any wisps in
play.”

“If they can hide a
cruiser they can hide a hangar,” Mike said warily. “This is exactly why not
being able to talk to your ally sucks. How many infantry did we lose?”

“18 transponders are
gone and two mechs are down. Both mechwarriors are intact.”

Mike bit his lip.
“Score one for the bad guys. Status of the outpost?”

“Holding, but barely.
The other attack groups are swarming them while this one slows you down.”

“Distractions,
distractions. What’s the status of that drone?”

“Mostly intact.”

“Send it to the outpost
to distract them.”

“There are still
anti-air batteries in play,” the Admiral warned him.

“I know. We’re going to
lose it. Do a lot of damage and buy the Protovic some time with it…and make
sure it crash lands on those bastards.”

“Should we target the
batteries themselves?”

“No, go for the troops.
We’ll get the batteries from the ground.”

“Dispatching now.”

Mike cut the
comm
and wheeled his skeet around, zipping over the
treetops and reversing course as he spotted the glint of something lizard in
the sidewalls and intended to slag it before heading over the ridgeline and
sneaking his way forward as close as he could to the mobile anti-warship phaser
batteries set up near the outpost perimeter, another new trick the lizards had
come up with in recent years. They also had plenty of point defense anti-air
that would take him down if he got within sight of them, but he needed to poach
what troops he could and buy his ground troops some time to get up to the
Protovic and save them before they were overrun.

8

April 12, 2826

Aphat
System

Jmry

Mike sat on a Protovic
rooftop, taking the first bit of rest he’d had in over 36 hours of fighting.
The city he was currently in had been hit by the lizards with overwhelming
force, enough to defeat the local defenses and pull in numerous Protovic army
units from the surrounding area in a hasty defense. Even then they couldn’t
hold until Mike had rushed a few Bsidd units over, along with himself, to give
them an added boost while everyone else he’d brought down to the planet was
tied up in assaults elsewhere.

Even with Mike and the
240 Bsidd they should have lost the city, but they hadn’t given up and fought
round the clock as more Protovic reinforcements gradually arrived and, in most
cases, were utterly destroyed by the lizards. Mike hadn’t had his troops try
and hold a secure location, for that would have been to the lizards’ advantage.
Instead he let the locals try that pointless approach while he and the Bsidd
roamed in hunter teams not interested in protecting infrastructure but in
killing the enemy.

And they’d had to kill
a lot of them before the city was at peace again. He hadn’t looked at any of
the official estimates that were routinely compiled by the crews in orbit
monitoring everything happening on the planet, but personally he guessed there
had been at least a quarter million lizards, and as usual they had fought to
the last man rather than retreat, doing what damage they could before they
died.

And they’d done a lot.
The streets were full of lizard corpses, but along with them were the fading
glows of the Protovic, both soldiers and civilians. Lots of civilians had been
caught unawares here and been mowed down. He’d had to jump over lots of them
when on foot, but fortunately he’d come in with a jump pack and had done most
of his long range movement over the rooftops and away from the gore.

There had been no
trouble from the locals when they’d arrived. In fact they’d seemed
overwhelmingly supportive and grateful…too much so in a few cases where a
hidden civilian would run out and tackle one of the lizards near the Bsidd in
an effort to help them and more than likely get themselves killed in the
effort. Mike had caught one and used his Ikrid to make him stay put while he
jumped in and fought a group of 30+ lizards in what probably looked like an
unwinnable battle, but to the heavily armored, psionically laden Archon it was
a piece of cake and he didn’t need help, let alone from an unarmed, unarmored
civilian.

It was morning again, a
few hours in, and the glows from the dead Protovic had mostly dissipated by
now. Their bioluminescence would linger a while after they were killed,
eventually fading down to white skin that had a scaly texture to it. That made
the corpses looked even more disturbing, but at least they were no longer
glowing like beacons marking the site of an atrocity. Many had been buried
beneath piles of lizard corpses with only small holes that left glowing
indicators of where they’d initially fallen before the snowstorm of dead
enemies had covered them.

The Protovic had hover
tanks that could float over the streets and buildings so only the infantry had
been forced to trample the dead and blood slicks that had been accumulating.
The smell had been getting constantly worse, but Mike had seen a collection
team start to remove the bodies and clean the streets before he’d parked
himself here so he expected the city to start to right itself, though he kept
his helmet on to diminish the scent of the dead.

His Bsidd were waiting
nearby in a couple of locations for pickup, equally exhausted but all still
alive. Keeping on the move and not letting the lizards know where they were to
mass against them had been a defensive decision as well. Both he and the Bsidd
were chewed up with multiple dings in their armor and a few breaches. Mike even
had a spot on his right arm that had gotten burned. Right now he could see the
inner gel layer that had hardened over the spot and he was taking the moment to
use a bit of Sesspik to goose the healing along while they were waiting for the
dropships to arrive from orbit.

There weren’t a lot
available, given that he’d deployed all his troops in order to make as much of
a dent in the planetary invasion as possible, but it was just a matter of time
until they rotated into availability and were sent down to him. He could have
expedited the process and called for priority over other assignments, but since
there were no longer any lizards in play here, for they’d searched the city
thoroughly along with the Protovic units, there was no reason to make someone
else wait when all they had to do was sit here and rest a bit.

“Archon.”

“Yes,” Mike answered
the
comm
call from one of the Bsidd in the group
behind his back to the north about 2 kilometers off.

“There’s something
wrong here.”

Mike’s head came up a
bit. “Wrong how?”

“The Protovic are…doing
something. I think they have lizard prisoners.”

“That’s a very bad
idea,” Mike said as he stood up and turned around, looking in the direction of
the ID marker on his battlemap. “Where are they?”

The Bsidd answered with
a waypoint another kilometer to the northwest of their position.

“Stay put, I’ll handle
this,” he said as he forced his tired legs to launch him into a run across the
mostly flat roof. When he got to the edge he goosed his jump pack and leapt
across to the next building, continuing his run over the canyons of corpses below
as he made his way directly to the virtual marker and bypassed the Bsidd
evac
point.

When he got close he
could see a wide plaza that he’d done a considerable amount of fighting in over
the previous day but gone were the corpses, replaced by a growing crowd of
civilians and soldiers alike along with five pedestals that stood at least 10
meters tall. On top of them were, as the Bsidd had indicated, lizard prisoners.
It looked like three each per pedestal and they were bound to central poles on
the outer four platforms. The fifth was in the center and empty, with a group
of Protovic walking up a circular staircase around the perimeter.

Mike leapt across to
the last building on the perimeter of the plaza when that group stripped down
and tied a female Protovic to the pole, with his gut suddenly telling him
something was very wrong here. He stopped on the edge of the building, giving
him the best vantage point as he reached out with his mind and sampled some of
the thoughts in the crowd.

Some of them noticed
him on the rooftop, with their reactions being one of welcome and thanks as the
five pedestals suddenly lit on fire and began to burn the lizards and Protovic woman
alive.

Mike immediately jumped
off the building and drifted down into a gap in the crowd, at which point he
began running forward bumping people out of the way. When they got the idea
that he wasn’t here to observe the ritual they began blocking his path and
trying to grab hold of his arms and legs, to which the mage lividly let loose a
Fornax field and dropped everyone around him to the ground as he sprinted over
the crumpled and twitching bodies.

When he got close
enough he reached out to the lizards on the nearest pyre and hacked into their
minds, dulling their senses and blocking out their pain as their bodies were
rapidly disintegrating. Enemies or not, no one deserved this. The more he ran
the more minds he accessed, stretching his multitasking abilities to their max
to get them all while maintaining the Fornax field while he ran towards the
central pedestal, making one huge jump pack-aided leapt up to it just as he
felt the
Protovic’s
mind disappear from his grasp.

Mike landed in the
column of green fire that extended some 8 meters up into the air, turning the
elevated pedestal into a candle visible to all the thousands of Protovic
standing around watching. Inside he saw the quickly shrinking remains of the
Protovic, now stripped of flesh and with the muscle and blood boiling off the
skeleton rapidly. She was dead and there was no way he could save her, likewise
the lizard minds quickly slipped from his grasp as they too were killed.

Mike stood in the flames
as his shields were quickly dropping in power. Before they could breach he used
his Pefbar to look down inside the Pedestal and found something to
telekinetically grab. He twisted the metal tube, wadding it up and choking off
the fuel to the flame. It disappeared and left Mike standing next to the
charred skeletal remains of the woman as the four other pyres continued to burn
the lizard prisoners.

The crowd just stood
and watched, with a handful of soldiers moving towards the base of the central
pedestal to get to Mike. They were outraged, he could sense, at him having
interrupted their ceremony. The others just watched. They watched as people
were burnt to death and no one had bothered to stop them. They had all gathered
here to watch this sickness, which made them part of it.

Mike had pulled his
invasion fleet off mission to come here to save these people, but now he
realized they weren’t the Protovic he knew, nor were they victims in need.

They were another
enemy.

With an anger flooding
through him greater than he’d ever known before, Mike stepped off the pedestal
and dropped to the ground just as the guards were climbing the stairs to get to
him. They backtracked and joined in with others as they swarmed him, but he
didn’t care. His mind was focused on the handful of Protovic that had escorted
the woman up and tied her to the pole. They were nearby, with an ornately
dressed one backtracking into the crowd.

Mike took down the
guards around him with another Fornax field and dashed ahead, chasing the one
Protovic into the crowd and picking him up from afar with his telekinesis and
jerking him back through the air towards him. Mike jumped forward and hit him
with one very hard punch in the chest, breaking bones and internal organs alike
before he released him to drop to the ground in a crunch, then the Archon
pulled out his plasma rifle and shot the Protovic in the head.

Seeing that the guards
and the crowds were stunned for a moment, then a rage built in them and they
all rushed him, armed or unarmed it didn’t matter, they all moved with a single
impulse towards the defiler…which was just as well as far as Mike was
concerned. He shot off in another direction, tracking down the other two of his
primary targets and killing them quickly with his rifle before slinging it onto
his back rack and letting go of his Fornax in favor of just using his armor and
muscles to beat down any and every one that came after him.

The three he had killed
had strapped that woman to the pole so she couldn’t escape, meaning they
deserved to die. The crowd he couldn’t say the same for though he expected the
same, so while he wasn’t going to start shooting everyone in sight as a part of
his mind really wanted to, he wasn’t just going to run away from this. Anyone
in the crowd attacking him was declaring themselves an enemy and that was good
enough for Mike. He wasn’t going to shoot them, but if they died from the
beatdown he was going to lay out so be it.

So the mage held his
ground and punched, kicked, and bodily rammed down every Protovic that came at
him. He could feel their bones snapping and could see the blood splatters with
every hit, but he didn’t feel sorry for them. Attacking a fully armored
opponent with nothing but clothes on was beyond stupid, with many of these
Protovic running straight into their deaths, but Mike knew and could even sense
on their surface thoughts a shared insanity. They didn’t care or think about
anything other than getting to him and taking down the man responsible for
saving their lives, for he had gone from exalted hero to the worst of the worst
as far as the Protovic were concerned, and there was only one answer to that.

And that answer was
blood.

But they weren’t going
to get any of his, for he was far too powerful for even the armored guards that
showed up after a few minutes. Those put up more of a fight but had no chance
against the Archon. Still they didn’t stop, with him being one man amongst an
ever-growing sea of people beginning to flood in around him in the hopes of
choking him out with too many bodies to hit. Against other opponents that would
have worked, but with Mike’s psionics he could make an escape hole whenever he
wanted.

Right now though he had
no intention to leave. What they had done could not be let to pass, and as long
as the sick bastards wanted to fight him he was going to oblige…but he wasn’t
going to put his troops at risk, so in between punches and kicks he activated
the
comm
to his local units with a simultaneous
connection to the Admiral in orbit.

“I need…
an…
emergency
evac
…now. This
location…first,” he said, ducking under a flying body as one of the crowd was
somehow launched up and over the others at him. “Don’t worry about…me…get my
troops out. The Pro…the Protovic are hostiles…no time…to explain…pull out
everyone…on the planet…back to orbit…I’m last man out…and busy…don’t come to
me…turtle up and aw…await
evac
…I’ve got asses…to
kick,” he finished, turning off the
comm
and
continuing to beat down the swarm of glowing bodies around him, for a lot of
the Protovic were barely wearing any clothing.

They were not going to
chase him off, no matter how many of them wanted to sacrifice themselves to
take him down. His tiredness was now forgotten with the memory of the mental
contacts he’d made with the now burnt prisoners echoing in his mind. This
injustice could not be tolerated, and he was going to destroy every bit of
their
darkside
ceremony as he could.