by Aer-ki Jyr
It took less than a minute to lay waste to them all…save for the Ultra. It persisted longer, diving into whatever ice crevices it could find to try and soak up some of the weaponsfire as it did its best to go turtle, but there was no way to survive the combined firepower of all the ship’s batteries as they finished off the other Viks and focused on the single Ultra. Esna watched as its shields, then its two layers of armor were ripped apart over the seconds that followed, then suddenly all the ship’s weapons fell silent and it accelerated across the frozen landscape just as the previous snowstorm had started to subside, kicking up another one that traveled in its wake like a long ribbon as the Ma’kri race towards the edge of the shield on the northern side.
When it popped out it came under heavy fire, but rather than head back up to orbit it continued to accelerate while staying low to the ground and the snowstorm quickly changed into another fireball that left rivers of liquid water in its wake as the Vik fleet chased after it above the atmosphere where they could move much quicker absent the drag.
“The distortion is helping to disrupt the weaponsfire,” the pilot commented. “I bet he jumps as soon as he clears the atmosphere.”
Esna watched as the Ma’kri was hounded as it tore across the landscape gradually gaining altitude, then almost at random it made a hard turn skyward and shot up through the edge of the Vik fleet, rotating to put its thinnest side towards their nearest ships as it raced through them…then disappeared, but the weaponsfire did not. They tracked the now invisible ship, making additional hits as it flew an evasive course that eventually saw the Vik fleet’s weapons missing, then ceasing fire entirely as 6 ships made microjumps away from the planet.
“What just happened?” a tech asked, with Esna thinking the same thing.
“They engaged their cloak as soon as they left the atmosphere and altered course enough to throw off the targeting locks,” the pilot explained. “It doesn’t work at that range, but it helps. Then they jumped away from the planet. That’s why some of the Vik ships went after them.”
“Will they catch them?” Esna asked.
“Depends how much damage they took. Dragging atmosphere like that sucks energy from the shields and they got hit pretty hard afterwards. They probably took some hull damage, but not enough to stop them. If their gravity drives weren’t damaged, I don’t think the Viks will catch them.”
“No siege defenses,” Rammak commented, referencing the lack of portable shield generators that their ground troops sometimes carried. “They were caught off guard.”
“Enough to tip the battle inside?” a tech asked.
Rammak shook his head. “I don’t think so. There are too many inside the base and their gunships can resupply them with more even if we drop the shields down to their lowest. That was a payback strike, but it won’t save the base.”
“We still got the Ultra,” the pilot said. “That’s got to burn them.”
“Can it be revived?” Esna asked.
“With all that?” the Urik’kadel said, almost laughing. “He’s toast, trust me. There might be some other ones they could salvage, but I wouldn’t count on many.”
“Looks like they’re going to try,” a Critel tech said, pointing to the nearest warships that were dropping tiny craft into the air that appeared to be flying towards the shield perimeter, which was likewise dropping back to a lower altitude to prevent their bigger ships from getting under it like the Ma’kri had.
As if on cue, the few remaining mechs and skeets that Star Force had in play came up out of several tunnel exits and began racing across the now very cratered and hazy battlefield, heading towards the dead Vik corpses to get to them before the enemy could and ensure that they didn’t rise to fight again…as well as filling the air with missiles to try and shoot down a few of the gunships on approach that returned the favor, but not enough in time. After Star Force fought a retreat back to their tunnel exits and the gunships then destroyed those exits, the Vik reinforcements found none of their fallen troops revivable.
The gunships then flew over to the base entrance and added their Zen’zat to the already high number of troops conquering the interior one level at a time.
10
July 1, 4812
Orlero System (Devastation Zone)
Tauntaun
Three days ago the base defense shield had fallen, taken down by Zen’zat and Per’tal inside the base as Star Force could no longer defend it. Rather than pulling out and pounding the base from orbit, the gradual ground taking inside continued as the Archons sealed off multiple entry points and mined others, forcing the V’kit’no’sat to work hard for every meter they took, but there was no stopping them.
The evacuations had continued over the past two weeks with injured Commandos and Mechwarriors coming through to Esna’s outpost, but there weren’t that many more left to come. From what limited battlemap data was available, Star Force only controlled small pockets of the base around the evacuation points and they were near to pulling out altogether. Esna knew they could run a lot faster than her, so it wouldn’t take them two days to get here and to the other outposts that there was no battlemap link to. In fact there was no communication at all, isolating each other out of necessity in case one outpost was compromised so it didn’t reveal information about the others.
Some of the pockets of Star Force resistance in the base were winking out as their battlemap links were cut or jammed, ending up with only the one at the end of Esna’s tunnel in holographic view thanks to the landline connection. She and others watched as Star Force was finally pushed back and detonated several devices to temporarily block the Viks approach, bringing down the ceiling, walls, and even tearing out the floor just shy of the evacuation tunnel that the remaining Archons and Commandos fled into.
Esna hadn’t been wrong about their running speed, for…
Her train of thought was broken as she saw dust-like snow dropping around the fleeing personnel and someone brought up an exterior map of the base.
“They’re going for the tunnels,” a Bsidd soldier commented.
Esna watched the fleeing personnel as they distanced themselves from the few cameras in near the base, seeing a few of them stumble just prior to disappearing from view as they ran out of range.
“They don’t know exactly where they are, so they’re bombarding the perimeter,” another Bsidd added as they all watched the Vik fleet pour so much firepower down around the base in a giant circle that it vaporized the ice and sent huge plumes up into the air that were visible from the far away cameras positioned around this side of the planet. It looked like a curtain of steam, except there were visible chunks being thrown out from the explosions as the Viks tried to cut off the recently discovered evacuation…but at least they didn’t know exactly where to shoot.
Esna watched for several minutes, then their connection to the base winked out and they were left with only peripheral data coming from tiny surface mounts. That let them watch the orbital bombardment from the outside, but they no longer had access to orbital scans or pretty much anything else now that the base’s equipment was no longer feeding them data.
“They cut the landline,” a tech said. “No way of knowing if our people got through that section of tunnel before it or not.”
“The door…” the Bsidd said, scurrying out of the room. Esna followed it all the way over to the entry tunnel where it was indeed open with only an energy shield separating them from the cold beyond. There were two other Commandos there, one Protovic and one Human as they waited for another group of evacuees that were less than a mile out and running towards them, but the Bsidd didn’t say anything to them. Instead it pulled out a panel on the wall nearby and bringing up statistics on the shield and holograms of the surveilled area ahead.
Nothing happened immediately, with Esna seeing the people on approach running normally, then they were suddenly knocked off their feet and dragged through the tunnel as the Bsidd reacted so quickly he knocked Esna aside as he hit t
he door controls.
She fell back on her butt as the heavy blast doors closed, but just before they made it all the way the shielding sparkled a little bit.
“What’s happening?”
“The explosions are traveling through the tunnels,” the Bsidd said a moment before there was a large bang that sent a vibration through the entire outpost.
“Clear now,” the Protovic said, seeing the people in the tunnel starting to pick themselves up again slowly…some of them anyway. “Stay here,” he told Esna, “and guard the door. If another blasts comes through, close it.”
“Got it,” Esna responded as the two Commandos and Bsidd soldier, which Rammak had said was basically the same thing for their race, opened the door again and took off running down the tunnel. Esna watched them shrink in size visually, but was able to follow them on the hologram easy enough as they raced towards the downed evacuees with the Bsidd taking the lead. Somehow it could run a lot faster than the others and it probably had to do with the fact that it wasn’t actually running, but rather crawling down the tunnel with grip points below, beside, and above it.
Actually, it was more throwing itself down the tunnel while the other two ran quickly in its wake as a warning beacon was set up in the tunnel. It wasn’t a momentary flash, but a permanent marker the Bsidd put up in the battlemap they were all sharing locally, and Esna quickly saw the reason why…
There was a lateral crack in the ice that the Bsidd had just jumped over. One that hadn’t been there before, meaning that the shockwave must have created a crevice that looked to be about half a meter wide. Esna messed with the hologram controls and eventually got a larger image as she shrunk the tunnel down, showing the crack to be widespread but not going all the way up to the surface, thankfully.
“There could be a lot more further back,” Rammak commented as he caught up to her from wherever he had been.
“Are the miners ok?”
“Yes. I think this fissure formed due to the blowback from the sealed tunnel. Hopefully everything past this point will be unaffected…” he said as they got a warning in their helmets a split second before the now standing evacuees were toppled again by another blast wave.
Esna slapped the door control and sealed it in time, then another vibration shook the outpost.
“How many more of those are coming?”
“Whenever they hit the tunnel. It’s probably a lot worse closer to the base.”
“Does that mean we lost the Archons?”
“Not necessarily. If they survive the blasts they can dig their way out.”
“How?”
“I’ve seen them melt metal with their bare hands. Ice is much easier. If there’s an intact tunnel for them to get to they’ll make their way to us. If not, they’ll be trapped and have to make their way through cracks or try to get to the surface. It’s not good, but I wouldn’t count them dead yet.”
“Can you melt metal?”
“No. It’s a psionic. It’s rumored Arc Commandos can.”
“What’s an Arc Commando?”
“A legend. There’s no official record of them, but I’ve talked with people that have said they fought beside them.”
“No record?” she asked, getting another warning but having kept the door shut this time.
“Star Force has layers of secrets. The higher…” Rammak said as another vibration hit the outpost, “ranked you are, the more you’re aware of. That way the Viks can’t get the most important information out of Commandos like me if we’re captured.”
“How do you melt metal with your hand?”
“I do not know,” he said as the Bsidd was seen on the holo racing back towards the outpost with a passenger wrapped up in what looked like half its mandibles, but the other half were still propelling it along like a rocket…plus the last shockwave probably helped too.
“Let me,” Rammak said, standing by the door controls as he communicated with the Bsidd via a private helmet comm. “Stand back.”
Esna retreated out of the way, then another warning flashed followed by a fourth vibration impact. A tiny fifth followed a second later, which was little more than a knock on the door as the Bsidd was thrown into it.
Rammak opened it immediately and the mass of mandibles climbed in carrying a Kiritas in a broken envirosuit that was also oozing a little blue blood as the Calavari resealed the doors in preparation for the next impact.
As if on cue one of the medtechs that had evacuated to the outpost rushed in and took the Kiritas from the Bsidd and immediately began peeling away the envirosuit and applying a small device on the guy’s fleshy chest. It seemed to seal against his skin, then there was an audible crack as a bone was reset and the flowing blood dried up as what Esna recognized as a Star Force regenerator quickly worked to accelerate the healing of the Kiritas to near magical levels. The same thing had happened to her after she’d been wounded on Forso, but she’d been hurting so badly she didn’t remember much of the process.
They let the regenerator work for a few minutes, then the Kiritas was able to walk away under his own power before the next group arrived in between more concussion waves, each of which was of a different intensity. By the time they all got inside with several more wounded, the fissure in the ice had expanded out to two meters and the tunnel had been set askew so that only part of it was visible. The other section had dropped to the right half a meter, still leaving an opening but making it harder to get through especially for the bigger races.
The bombardment didn’t stop for another 2 hours, at the end of which the tunnel was still more or less intact, but broken in several spots whether it be cracks or chunks of ice having fallen down from the walls or ceiling, but there appeared to be no full cave-ins as far as the outpost’s perimeter monitors could determine.
How much damage had been done to the base was unknown until several hours later when the Ma’kri sent a wide data pulse down that the outpost was able to pick up, but wouldn’t dare respond to for fear of giving away their position to the Viks…at which point they’d no doubt get blasted from orbit. The one way transmission gave away the Ma’kri’s position, but it was still running around the system with the Viks unable to catch it and Esna was glad it gave them a sneak peek of what was going on.
The base itself hadn’t been touched, with the ice overtop not having a single weapon impact crater on it, though there were some additional ice chunks that had flown out over and landed on it from the destructive halo that now ringed it. There was a corridor a mile and a half wide that was utterly devastated, now reduced to a trench that held a liquid lake that was just beginning to refreeze.
“Oh no, the tunnel…” she said aloud as dozens of others were watching the incoming data.
“The air will slow the water if there isn’t another release for it,” a Calavari tech said as he studied another control panel. “Pressure on the tunnel shield has increased 43%, so there’s a bottling effect. Given the narrowness of the tunnels and the temperatures of both the ice and water, it might seal itself off before reaching us. There are other connecting tunnels for it to drain into as well.”
“Oh shit,” a Kiritas tech said, drawing looks from everyone else. “The water is trackable.”
“Not inside the tunnels…”
“The fissures aren’t sealed,” a Bsidd finished. “Every time it branches out the orbiting fleet will be able to map it if they’re looking closely. Which means if the water reaches this outpost we have to evacuate immediately. We can stop it here and preserve what’s beyond, but they’ll be alerted to our position.”
“We need to know where the water is,” a mechwarrior said, still limping on his right leg as a healing patch worked on it. Esna had asked him earlier why he wasn’t using a regenerator and he said because the power charge on those things was insane and they needed to save it for worse injuries.
“We can seal the tunnel further up,” the mining tech assured them, “and cut our way through any obstructions. Is there any cha
nce of Zen’zat coming through that water?”
“Not likely. They’d have to find the tunnels again.”
“They’d come by air and core down,” a Human Commando added. “We can watch for gunships with the surface scanners.”
“Not well,” a tech differed.
“It’s something,” the Bsidd soldier said, having taken effective command since no Archon was here. “Stay in the tunnel so they can’t pick you up freezing new ice, but backtrack as far as you can and see if you can pick up any survivors. When you get to the water, stop it if the diffusion is still covering you. If not, back up until it is.”
“Alright,” she said, tapping on the chest of the Human Commando next to her. “You’re with us.”
Esna watched those two and a few others leave, then she backed out of the room while the Bsidd and others went into analyzing what little bits of data they could get regarding the status of the Viks in the base. Rammak followed her and caught up in one of the bunk rooms where a few other people were sleeping and she was peeling off her own armor.
“I’m getting a few hours,” she said, retracting it down into a cube to save space along with everyone else crammed into the little outpost. “They’re all dead, aren’t they?”
“There’s no way to know, but without help to get to them they’ll die of starvation even if they’re still alive and trapped. The one thing they have going for them is that there are these outposts to get to if they can, and some a lot closer down the tunnel.”
“If they’re not destroyed too,” Esna said in a whisper, trying not to be rude to those sleeping, though nowhere in the outpost was truly quiet.