by Aer-ki Jyr
“Yes way, youngling.”
“It won’t work.”
“Probably not…which is what makes it a worthy challenge.”
“And if we fail?”
“Hence the reckless part.”
Levi raised an eyebrow. “You sure?”
“I’m through letting circumstances dictate my actions. Time we do the dictating,” she said, waving him forward again.
Levi twirled the double blades around. “You lead, I’ll follow,” he said just before launching himself at her and engaging in another rapid fire crisscrossing of stun blades.
When the Jor-El returned to Tieor it didn’t deploy a dropship to take the two Archons back to the surface, rather it headed straight towards the largest warship the Varshoo had and launched a Nami at it. The powered missile shot ahead of the Ma’kri and decelerated rapidly as it came up next to the target vessel, which hadn’t bothered to move. It did have its shields raised, but they did nothing to stop the IDF bubble from going up and snaring the warship in place.
The other warships nearby did move when the Star Force vessel came in close, not knowing of its strength, but clearly seeing that it was larger than any of them. To counter it they moved a fleet in around the knife-like ship and opened fire…with the Jor-El simply ignoring their pathetic attacks and moving up over top of the target warship and the Nami holding it in place.
A few pinpoint mauler blasts brought the ship’s shields down, followed by a few more that plucked away the ship’s upper weapon batteries. Once those were down the Ma’kri extended its own shields around the captured ship and sent a dropship equipped with breaching gear down to the hull, where it cut and installed its own airlock in the Varshoo ship.
Through that breach point two sets of armor followed, with it resealing behind Jenna and Levi and the dropship returning to the Ma’kri. There was an assortment of Star Force troops onboard that they could have used for this sort of assault, but the Archons had decided that the risks for this operation were going to be theirs alone…which would allow them to be as reckless as they liked without having to worry about protecting anyone else.
As the Varshoo ships were seeing, the Ma’kri was so powerful that it didn’t even need to bother shooting back at their fleet and simply absorbed all the damage they could dish out while Jenna and Levi fought their way through the enemy ship with a combination of stun weapons and psionics. The confined corridors were an advantage to them, given that the Varshoo couldn’t mass any real weaponsfire against them, not to mention that the Archons could see through the walls, doors, and around corners with their Pefbar, giving them dominance in that fact alone, ignoring the rest of their long list of advantages.
The two stayed together for the first bit of the boarding action, then after seeing the next to no resistance that they were getting decided to split up in order to subdue the crew faster. It took no more than 12 minutes to get to them all, stunning them into captivity and taking command of the bridge. There they locked down the ship and proceeded to begin collecting the crew of over 800 and dragging them into the hangar bays where a flock of dropships came in to pick them up.
All the while the other Varshoo ships continued firing on the Jor-El up until it fired another Nami at a distant cargo ship that was far larger than any of the enemy warships. Pulling the captured vessel that the Archons were on with it, the Ma’kri moved over to and landed another dropship on it. Levi took to subduing that vessel himself, then a series of commandos, Knights, and techs came over to it from the Ma’kri and began setting up the cargo ship as a makeshift prison, with Jenna finishing the transfer of her prisoners over to it, leaving the captured warship unoccupied.
When the Ma’kri had moved only a couple of Varshoo ships followed it, with the others staying back out of fear, and rightly so, for less than an hour after the cargo ship was taken two more missiles shot out and caught the warships nearby, with the big ship abandoning its other captives and flying to disable their weapons before delivering Jenna to one and Levi to the other, both of whom made short work of the crew and began carrying their bodies one or two at a time to the hangar bays for pickup and transfer to the prison ship.
It was after those two additional warships were captured that Jenna finally sent a message out to the Varshoo fleet, instructing them to either flee the system or surrender, with the threat of similar seizures extended to their vessels as well. Their cargo fleet heeded the warning and immediately began withdrawing to a ‘safe’ distance, but their warships lingered in planetary orbit up until the Ma’kri eventually shot after another one, displaying far superior engines to anything the Varshoo had seen before, the Skarrons included.
When that warship was hit with a Nami, disarmed, and captured within the Ma’kri’s shields, the rest of the Varshoo fleet ran off elsewhere in the system to be tracked down later, for only one enemy jumpship was insystem and it loaded up as many vessels as it could and took off before it too could become a victim of the mystery ship, carrying with it the news and warning back to the nearest Varshoo staging base.
9
October 25, 2735
Noop System
Tieor
With the Marauders providing air cover, Jenna and Levi made an aerial jump into the city of Lethol, coming down onto one of the city streets rather than a rooftop. As soon as they hit ground they were off and running down the mostly empty streets, looking for targets. They dispatched the first few handful of Varshoo soldiers with stun blasts on their way towards the main barracks the invaders had set up, then ran up against a unit of 20+ that were coming out to meet them as more were being roused from their bunks or other duties.
The two Archons were the only ground troops assaulting the city, but the Marauder fighters overhead had made it clear that Lethol was under attack. Still, no one had known where the pair was coming down, so they still had a great deal of maneuvering options within the city if they chose to use them.
But they didn’t. They weren’t here to evade the troops, but to confront them head on.
Already in battlemeld, Jenna and Levi split up and moved to opposite sides of the street as they ran towards the lachar shots coming at them, most of which missed but with a few impacting on their shields. With their footspeed that wasn’t going to be a problem, but if they let groupings like this have time to throw a lot of firepower into their armor then they could get into trouble really quick.
Activating their Lew ability, the Archons created an invisible energy conduit between the two of them that would transmit Ikrid stimuli on contact. When they got to the attackers they didn’t shoot back or dive into their midst, but rather ran along the walls and bypassed them, with Levi having to punch one out of the way as he did so.
When the energy field passed through the troops they dropped over unconscious, as if Jenna had individually targeted each of their minds and put them to sleep, which she could have, but Lew made it far easier because once activated neither Archon had to focus to get the desired effect, just get the invisible ribbon into contact with them.
There was a limit to how far they could stretch it, and unfortunately it wasn’t lengthy enough to allow them to circumvent an entire building, but they did manage to widen their formation a bit when they came out onto the courtyard in front of the hotel that the Varshoo had claimed for use as their barracks. They managed to catch another few dozen scattered around the area, with Jenna firing a shot wide left to catch another outside the Lew clothesline.
All the others were within that effective range, so the Archons simply ran up to the barracks’ main door and took down the few more that were coming out to fight…then they simply stood on either side out of sight and let them run out into the trap, toppling to the ground unconscious as soon as they hit the invisible barrier. Jenna and Levi used their Nemsa ability to strengthen their combined telekinesis and dragged the bodies to the side, stacking them up in neat little rows to keep the center lane clear and not give any clue that there was actually a trap waiti
ng for the Varshoo as they continued to scramble out.
They took down over 300 soldiers with that trick before the flow finally ceased, then the pair went inside and hunted down the few remaining stragglers, clearing and reclaiming the barracks before they moved off elsewhere in the captured city and eliminated the remaining guards, for most of the Varshoo assault troops had moved on to contested sites, not expecting any major counterattack here.
It took over 12 hours to search the city and eliminate the remaining pockets of Varshoo personnel, for which they had to rely on a lot of local tips once the captured denizens thought it safe enough to start helping them out. The Marauders handled those information duties after they set down a collection team within the first hour and began picking up the unconscious prisoners as per their agreement with Star Force that Jenna had hammered out with Brayden, who was more than grateful for their return, but not immediately keen on her plan. That said, he wasn’t about to turn down the kind of help they could offer, and eventually agreed to her terms.
With Lethol recaptured, they were essentially putting up a huge middle finger to the Varshoo, made all the worse by the orbital beatdown that had already been exacted. Jenna followed both with an edict to the invading troops across the planet, ordering them to withdraw immediately and they would be allowed to leave the planet. If not, she and her apprentice would be coming after them.
The Marauders made sure to capture, and then distribute images of how the two soldiers had taken down the entire defense team left in Lethol, hopefully sowing some fear into the rest of the Varshoo, but whatever effect it might have had wasn’t noticeable, for their armies didn’t even bother to respond, continuing their pushes into other areas of the planet and further whittling down what remained of the planetary defense force and their allied mercenary units.
Jenna had expected that would be too easy a victory, but the edict had to be given to set the groundwork for events to come. So as the Marauders collected the prisoners, took possession of the city and helped to see to its population’s needs, and loaded the captives onboard Star Force dropships so they could be taken up to the fleet of now prison ships for safekeeping, the two Archons redeployed themselves out to one of the primary zones of conflict rather than going after another guard force in an already captured city.
Deciding to bite off the biggest amount they could chew, in order to make the biggest impression and test their skills before battle fatigue had a chance to set in, they had a dropship take them to the outskirts of Hamrathor, where the largest Varshoo army was stationed and currently pummeling a third of the city.
“You ready for this?” Jenna asked.
“Are you?” Levi echoed.
“Run and gun and don’t look back,” she advised.
“And when we run out of stun rounds?”
“We improvise, but no killing on our part.”
“And if the others have different ideas?”
“We can’t control them, so just focus on us.”
“This is still crazy,” Levi emphasized.
“We can call it off if you’re not feeling it,” she said, knowing that the only way they were going to survive this was as a pair.
“Fortunately for you, I happen to like crazy,” he said, looking across the grassy plain towards the city edge and the surrounding tanks as he flexed his armored fingers in anticipation. “Let’s bring some civilization to the savages.”
Jenna felt his battlemeld prompt and accepted it, with their minds linking and able to read each other’s senses. Now they had four eyes, four ears, and two bodies’ worth of stimulai between them, not to mention a host of special psionics at their disposal. Levi was still missing several, but the ones he’d already developed would serve them well, and she’d need him and his skills augmenting her own in order to have a chance of pulling this off.
Without a word between them, the two began running forward across the grass and up to cruising speed as they looked ahead at the remains of one defense turret on the far left and the tanks that were currently assaulting another one far right. They were running directly towards their flank, which had hundreds of infantry in columns with them…and that was just the units on this side of the city. Thousands more were already inside, with their air cover swirling about shooting targets on the ground with no opposition coming from the air, just an occasional anti-air burst from a surface battery or defense tank.
Halfway across their run the pair of fighters that had futilely chased off the Archons’ dropship turned back and angled towards the pair of fast moving dots in the grass, stitching the ground around them with plasma fire, which got the attention of the infantry ahead, who turned in their direction now that they’d located the well-known threats, for those two suits of armor were now infamous on the planet after the recent broadcasts.
Suddenly one of the aerofighters stopped firing and took a nosedive towards the ground, pulling up just shy of crashing and skidding across the dirt into a gentle tumble as the other one bathed the two Archons in plasma, igniting fires in the grass around and ahead of them before flying by and making a long arc to circle back around, but as it did so the two suits of armor emerged from the smoke still at a run, heading for the infantry ahead of them and the tanks behind that were busy exchanging fire with the defense tower that was on its last leg.
The infantry wisely stopped their advance and took up firing positions, forming rows and waiting for the enemy to come to them. That waiting didn’t involve holding their fire though, with the first row taking wild shots at range that began to narrow in on the Archons, who didn’t bother to do more than throw a little weave into their running approach.
With the fighter circling back around, it was going to get one more pass against them before they met up with the infantry, but as it moved back towards plasma range the dots increased speed beyond anything that should have been physically possible, then one of them shot forward even faster, flying through the air like a cannonball and landing in the front line of infantry…which collapsed around his impact point, dropping over a hundred men to the ground instantly.
The fighter had a brief window of opportunity to shoot the other one and accelerated in low to the ground and stitched a long line of red plasma orbs up to the enemy soldier, then tipped the targeting reticule down to try and keep the damage pouring on that spot as the fighter continued to move forward. When it was almost overtop the target the pilot blacked out, then his ship nosed into the ground and flip over end for end until it eventually skidded to a stop in a long furrow of dirt off to the side.
With the rest of the Varshoo fighters further off and no immediate threat, Jenna finished her run up to the infantry and threw a linked telekinetic wall at a group of them that still maintained formation off to their left and were peppering Levi with blasts. His shield were already weakened from the fighter damage, and now they were getting hammered hard by the dozens of lachar hits. Small as they were they added up, and it would take time for their shields to replenish themselves once they found cover.
Except that there was no cover.
They knocked down 11 of them, taking them temporarily out of the fight as Levi ran around the others, using a Fornax field to keep them twitching on the ground while he chucked a few stun grenades into the mix, taking the opportunity to down dozens of them before they could get up again. Once Jenna got up to him they split and used their Lew to run around and knock out more of them, all the while their shields were dropping into the danger zone.
Before they got through them all Levi’s went down and his brown armor started taking a few dings from the lachars, but those quickly stopped as he threw up a bioshield over himself. That matrix had less power behind it, but its design was so much more advanced that it was essentially worth 60% of the technological version so long as he sustained the effort.
Jenna still had some regular shields left, so she kept sprinting around and dragging their Lew line across the infantry and knocking them unconscious with the invisible
hits until one of the tank shots impacted the ground a meter in front of her, with the concussion of superheated air knocking her up and off her feet momentarily.
She landed in charred grass, immediately pivoting to her right and darting to the side to throw off the next salvo. With her shields down to a sliver, she put up her own bioshield and let them start to recharge, catching a handful of lachar blasts that kept coming her way. Throwing in several deviations in her running path she managed to dodge some of them, but there was a continual chain of hits wearing her down, as was expected.
There was no way around that, given the frontal approach they were taking, but they’d almost gotten the infantry mowed down to adequate size for them to throw their finishing move…but the tanks were going to be a problem, for they were out of range and now coming after them with the defense turret no longer showing any return fire.
Jenna knew they had to hurry, so after running around and knocking down another 20 or so Varshoo with their Lew, the Archons came back together and huddled up, with Levi literally wrapping his arms around Jenna as they took a knee, trying to present as small of a target as possible. His bioshield combined with hers, linking together as the Cerden ability allowed, and grew far stronger with the bond, allowing the next tank shot to hit and not breach.
They were extra vulnerable while stationary, but both of them had to concentrate in order to bring the Jini saturation levels up to what they needed. It took a long few seconds, during which the lachar blasts honed in on their position from the surrounding infantry and added to the damage a second tank plasma blast did, along with a partial third from another tank now gaining a firing line on them.
One second more was all they needed, then together they emitted the Jini, sending out an Ikrid bomb similar to the Lew, except that this one reached out like lightning strikes and hit any mind within range, draining part of their charge without any conscious control or effort.