by Aer-ki Jyr
The feathery giant dropped to the ground, but the victory was short lived as a force field snapped into existence over the wall the portal was in and began to slowly push outward, hitting the stunned body and moving it away from the entry area.
“Backup system,” Steve said, running back to the barrier shield interface and tagging more ships for entry clearance. “We either destroy it or fight them indefinitely.”
“If we destroy it the Caretakers will be all over our ass.”
“Buy me time then,” Steve said, maintaining the battlemeld link that made the words almost pointless, for he could sense what she was thinking and vice versa, but they had an audience that needed to be kept in the loop and he didn’t want to waste time having two conversations.
It didn’t take long until another two Jestiv popped into view behind the two stunned bodies of their kin, and once again everyone in the room opened fire other than Steve, and they all got grabbed and their weapons turned askew by the invisible power that was Essence.
The Paladin were helpless against it, but the Archons were not…though each attack required Steve to help Cora defend against it, winning the Vargemma valuable time that ships were not entering through as the naval fleets above the surface swarmed like bees everywhere. No one was sitting and watching now, other than the Olopar, with the newly arrived ships being the prime targets.
The Paladin fleet was also coming up from the surface in numerous places, but most of it was moving to cover the tower, for a huge amount of ships and aerial craft were headed their way in addition to the attackers being sent through the portal. One way or another the Vargemma were going to take it back and seal the breach, and Cora felt it was just a matter of time before they dropped their non-lethal marching orders and went full force against the tower, perhaps destroying it from orbit in order to deny Star Force its use.
They didn’t jump to that right away, but after 5 different pairs of Jestiv came through and were stunned unconscious, the 6th pair came in and immediately used an Essence technique on everyone inside that went straight for their brains. Cora and Steve were able to throw up a quick defense shield, something that they and the Knights of Quenar had recently developed, and without it the sheer pressure of the enemy’s Essence would have pushed through a nullification field and killed them the way it did the Paladin.
All of their loyal soldiers dropped to the ground dead, with the regenerators in their armor unable to fix their destroyed brains. The Jestiv had reached inside their heads and blended them up into goo within a moment, leaving Cora and Steve the only survivors.
In that moment everything changed, with both of them realizing they couldn’t play this game anymore. If the Caretakers came and killed the Jestiv for what they did, it would only be a handful of them lost. An easy sacrifice for the Vargemma to make in order to deny Star Force the barrier shield control. That meant either the trailblazers had to run away, stay here and die…or go all in.
And with the fact that all the Paladin in the room had just been killed, the choice for them was easy. Fuck the Caretakers, these bastards had to die.
Steve shook off another grip attack, one that actually tried to crush him rather than hold him in place. His defense shield took a huge amount of Essence to counteract it, and he knew his limited reserves would not work for a long fight, so they had to end this quickly. He raised his left arm and opened the armor over his palm, then he fired a green beam that punched right through the energy shield protecting the first Jestiv, ripped through his body and out the other side, hitting and wounding the other Jestiv, but not penetrating more than a few inches.
Cora fired a Jumat blast at the second one as it threw a cascade of Essence-enhanced lighting towards Steve, then she followed up with her own biological Bra’hem and drilled a hole straight through his chest that she flicked sideways so it cut out through the right side of his body and tore through the portal behind him. As the Jestiv fell to the ground Cora launched forward and finished up with several death saber slashes through the equipment, making sure it was no longer functional. She could have used another Bra’hem shot, but she didn’t have very many of them in reserve, and her other arm only contained a Choratrik, with the bioplasma being far less deadly.
Most high level Archons had replaced one of their bioplasma weapons with a Choratrik. Some had taken two while others kept the more easily rechargeable weapons, but the trailblazers liked having a few heavy shots to deliver when necessary…and today was definitely one of those days.
Cora could feel the damage done to Steve with the lightning attack, for some of it had gotten through his armor. Normally that couldn’t happen, but it had been Essence enhanced and that brought into play a whole new realm of physics that they hadn’t begun to fully chart. The pair was still battlemeld linked, so she could feel the regenerator instantly working to repair his burns, but they hadn’t been enough to take him down as it was, only knock him backwards and fry small parts of his armor and its interior components, but thanks to the redundant design of the nanotechnology his armor visually flowed a bit and sealed the gaps while flaking off bits of destroyed components like dandruff.
“Fuck,” Cora said, looking at all the Paladin while getting on the comm to those outside. “Vargemma just turned lethal. If you detect any Essence use, turn and run. When the Caretakers get here do not fire on them unless protecting each other. If they shoot me and Steve, ignore them unless we request help. We had to smoke two of their special forces and destroy some equipment, so we’re probably on their shit list now.”
Steve went back over to the console while she was talking and started letting more ships in, all the while both of them noticed the immediate shift in naval assets above. Those that had been heading towards the incoming Knights of Quenar ships and the few new Paladin vessels now coming through were turning around and heading straight for the tower.
“They’re going to obliterate this place,” Steve warned, letting ships in as fast as he could.
“I know. Already working on an escape route.”
“We’re not going to get enough through,” he said, releasing the battlemeld but still keeping an eye on the entire room with his Pefbar.
Cora switched comm channels and linked to the incoming KoQ, some of which were already engaged in battle against isolated Vargemma ships and totally owning them with their own disabling weaponry.
“Be advised, the Vargemma have gone lethal and I think they intend to either overwhelm or destroy this tower to deny it to us. We’ve had to kill two of them and destroy the portal they were using to get inside, so the Caretakers are going to be engaging as well. We are not going to be able to hold open the door for much longer.”
“Then we have but one choice,” one of the ship captains responded. “We must fight both parties with our full weaponry.”
“The Caretakers will engage their Olopar and obliterate us,” Cora warned.
“Are they programmed to destroy parts of the Temple?”
“I don’t know, nor do I know how many ships they have or if they can override our control here.”
“If the shield control is destroyed or captured, we have no other way of gaining entry. We must maintain it at all costs.”
“I agree with that part, but the Vargemma have a lot more weaponry than we do if they go with Essence.”
“They will also have to fight the Caretakers, but the Caretakers will not intervene to protect the control room. They will only respond to its destruction. We must act first. There is no other option.”
Before Cora could respond the battlemap showed a number of Knights of Quenar ships disappearing from the clusters they were in…then a massive storm rocked the troops outside as the atmosphere above them was torn apart, throwing winds around at hundreds of miles per hour at the surface and thousands of miles per hour at altitude. Out of those winds came some of the KoQ ships with visible damage as they emerged inside the atmosphere using their ship-sized Den’gar…but one that wasn’t suited
for use other than in vacuum, meaning the air molecules were being shoved aside as the ships plowed into them with its previous momentum while reintegrating with them at the same time.
The entire crew must have been eviscerated with air molecules injected into their bodies if that was the case, for numerous systems on the ships were malfunctioning…some exploding…as their molecular makeup was altered by the new atoms popping in out of nowhere, and in the case of the occasional overlap, mini fusion detonations were occurring.
Cora couldn’t believe what she was seeing, but somehow the 6 ships managed to stay floating 32 miles above them, then some of their weapon systems fired down on the troops assaulting the Paladin ringing the tower. Not all of it got to ground, for some of the weapons batteries exploded the moment they were activated, but a lot of their thin silver beam technology…whatever it was…remained intact enough to function…and kill the Vargemma with surprising efficiency once the Paladin quickly allowed the weaponsfire to get through the outpost defense shield.
“They are crazy,” she said to Steve.
“This is about to spiral out of control unless they take the hit for us, and I don’t think there are enough of them to do it. We…”
“I see it,” Cora said, noting several ‘blinks’ appearing on the battlemap as some of the survivors of the orbital bombardment outside started heading towards the tower and skipping from point to point through the Essence Realm. They hadn’t been doing so previously, probably because they weren’t allowed to use their many lethal skills, but now it seemed they were past that and coming straight here.
“They can’t jump through without running into stuff. They have to have vision.”
Cora looked up. “Stupid windows.”
She took off and flew upward, rising to the level of the ring of windows that were letting in natural light around the edge of the ceiling in an arc. That’s the way they’d have to come in, unless they chose an outside path and traveled through the hallways later.
But some of them didn’t make it, for the ships above predicted their path and threw down as much firepower as they could without hitting the Paladin and managed to make a few kills, but some still got through to the base of the tower. Instead of fighting the troops there, they just bypassed them whenever possible, then disintegrated the entry doors along with any Paladin standing in their way, gaining them entry from below.
Cora floated back down, then began telekinetically lifting the stunned Jestiv bodies in front of the two entry doorways while giving them additional stun shots. Her troops were dead, but these weren’t yet. She wasn’t going to kill them in their sleep, but if their buddies didn’t mind going through them that was their problem. They had telepathy and could sense them through the walls, so it wouldn’t be an accident if they did. Plus some probably had a Pefbar version and could Stargate their way through the walls at close range, but if they wanted to physically open up the doorways they’d have to go through their own troops one way or another.
“Trailblazer Cora,” a tortured voice said from one of the KoQ ships above them. “Establish a Beacon for us.”
“The Vargemma can use it too,” she warned.
“They will reach you before us if you do not. At least 38 got through your perimeter. Can you hold them off alone?”
“My Beacon skills are not good,” she admitted. They’d been practicing with the KoQ earlier, and she couldn’t propel anyone yet at sufficient speed, but she might be able to catch one moving slowly…though she doubted it. It was a lot harder than they made it look.
“Highlight a perimeter that is safe and we will do the rest. You need not stop our momentum, only mark our destination.”
“Six meters suspended in air,” she said, floating up above the open floor with a ring of dead Paladin surrounding it. “Tell me when you’re ready. I don’t want them here first.”
“Standby,” the voice said with an audible cough, making Cora wonder just how much atmosphere he had shoved into his body and how good their healing technology was. “Begin.”
Cora tilted her head back and lit up her Beacon, which was a technique that caused an enormous amount of Essence flow without consuming it. The disturbance could be seen a great distance by those with vision for it, but an exact point was not possible until she forced it down into a smaller and smaller position, held above her. When she’d said ‘suspended in air’ it had a double meaning. It meant the KoQ had to come in above her to avoid hitting her, as well as letting them know they’d be dropping a fair distance afterwards.
She forced her glowing orb some 10 meters over her head, projecting it from her center of mass rather than any outstretched limbs, only to have a Gevdak pop up beside her with a loud crack before she even had the Beacon half condensed.
Steve’s body shot across the room and tackled the Gevdak, knocking it to the side then blowing its armored pod into the far wall with a Jumat blast…then he followed up with several wrist-mounted Dre’mo’don shots to get its shields down, then finished it off with a stun blast rather than cracking the case and allowing the aquatic to suffocate to death in the air.
Cora ignored him as much as she could, focusing on the making her beacon more and more visible, then when she had it as tight as she could get air pops that sounded like gunshots started to ring out above her…with robed Knights of Quenar dropping around to the ground below in a defensive ring around her floating feet.
Feeling quite a bit more comfortable, Cora held position as more and more Knights dropped in, then another Gevdak moved in between the dropping Essence bubbles, able to see them clearly to avoid hitting them, then launched a disruption attack directly into one of the Knights of Quenar that had just emerged and was unable to get a second’s warning. He exploded in a rush of gas and so hard it knocked Cora to the side, dragging her beacon with her, and she had to fly back into position to keep the other Knights from emerging into the walls or surrounding equipment.
The Gevdak didn’t live more than 5 seconds after that, with the Knights killing him with some invisible technique, for the small pod dropped to the ground and didn’t move again.
“Protect the Archons!” one of them yelled in their own language, with a few moving out to the doorways and popping through them using their Den’gar so they could spread further out and give them a greater defensive perimeter.
This isn’t going to be enough, Steve said to her telepathically as he returned to allowing ships inside the Temple. They’re the JV team compared to the Vargemma in Essence skills, and those 6 ships aren’t going to last very long when the other fleets get here.
I know, she said as more and more Knights rained down around her, ready to fight and die to buy them a few more seconds and a few more ships’ entry into the Temple.
6
Samsiv watched the battles occurring in space, in the air, and on the ground from a protective lair deep under the surface. No one knew where he was, nor that he even existed, and that’s the way Viceroys preferred it. Direct combat was not their way, though they were certainly built for it if necessary. No, his mind was his weapon, and as he watched the situation unfolding in the Temple he knew the Vargemma had won. They were willing to suffer a small scale Caretaker backlash in exchange for neutralizing the barrier shield command center, and soon they’d have enough ships and troops there to do it. Two trailblazers, reinforced with Essence-wielding Knights of Quenar, were not going to stand a chance against troops with far more experience and power with regards to Essence.
If he had naval advantage they might have been able to make a fight of it, but he didn’t. The few ships the Knights of Quenar had sacrificed to get over target were not going to last once the Vargemma got there, and Samsiv didn’t have enough ships to send, even if he activated Operation Blindfold. There was no way he could fight this with the Olopar ready and able to bombard everything out of existence on the surface. The same would happen in space if he told the Paladin to switch from stun combat to full combat, and there was no way,
with these numbers, that his troops could win unless he did that.
And doing so would get them all wiped out. The command center would be cleansed of people, perhaps rebuilt if it was destroyed, and the doorway the fleet was using to slowly come in would be shut again until another Essence-capable team got back to it…but there was no way the Vargemma would let that happen a second time. And if the trailblazers died, he didn’t have anyone to replace them. Same went for the Knights of Quenar, which was why he was organizing a rescue operation to pull them out of there before they got killed.
But as he was summoning troops to their location, something changed. The KoQ ships coming into the Temple were becoming less in number and more Paladin ships, as well as a scattering from other Star Force factions, were beginning to show up. Including an Avenger-class warship.
It was a brand new ship, designed and commissioned only in the last decade after the Uriti’s ability to donate Essence was discovered. That Avenger alone held numerous Magicite canisters, along with at least 3 different types of Materia weapons. Samsiv didn’t have the latest ultra-secret updates, but he knew what the ships had been designed for…and that was to take out Olopar, Lurkers, and other highly dangerous fleet killers.
And onboard was at least one Archon or Maverick capable of Essence use. There had to be in order to operate the weapons. Star Force didn’t have the technology of the Founders that allowed machines to do it. There had to be a wielder present to fire them, so now there was at least one more Essence user in the field, but that wasn’t what intrigued him.
Almost as if he had known his thoughts, a message from that ship was transmitted to the Paladin comm network and it found its way to Samsiv. It was from Thrawn, and coming through a much more direct method than the slow interchange system. It was a tactic that Samsiv had been mewing himself, but was far more heavily worked out by the elder Paladin. Now, if only there was…