Star Force: Excursion (SF46)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  Kip held his sword in the top of the Skarron walker and kept it pinned on the ground as he popped out his plasma cannon on the other arm and started popping some of the turrets that were firing at him as the missile storm continued to come down and expand its impact radius. Meanwhile the other 7 walkers maneuvered about and took shots at the mechs, with Kip’s star having to redeploy to avoid getting bushwacked. The swampy footing caused them to take some damage as they moved off, still throwing up as much anti-air as they could as the turtles got hammered.

  Kip finally pulled out his sword and took a step back, then rammed it in again to the right of his original hole, pulling the walker taught to the ground again as he popped up his mauler cannon on top and took a knee, bringing it directly in line with the puncture in the armor and firing through it. Most of the energy melted the armor around the hole, but the bits that got through began slagging internal components and eventually got to the living compartment, killing one of the pilots inside.

  The trailblazer kept pounding on it until he sensed all of them die, then he stood up and withdrew his sword as one of the others came around and threw a flurry of white plasma droplets at him. Not wanting to abandon his cover, he dug the sword down into the ground and opened up both plasma cannons and the mauler mount and began slugging it out face on with the enemy walker as waves of mist flew across both of them from the missile impact zone behind Kip.

  Before his shield could go down the dead walker beside him exploded with missile hits, clouding his vision with debris as the Type-2 was no longer avoiding the friendly target. Kip ran over to where his shield was laying on the ground and picked it up, feeling a hit on his back as his anti-air missed one. Twisting around he dropped to a knee and hunkered down, having to use both hands to hold the shield steady against the explosions now popping up against it.

  Fortunately the explosions created their own mist cloud around him, blocking the plasma from the other walker, and Kip knew he couldn’t do anything but wait it out and hope his shield held up long enough…but then after a few seconds it was over and the pressure he felt in him arms disappeared. From the battlemap data being transmitted by the other mechs he could see that the Type-2 had stopped firing, presumably out of missiles, but there was a wave of Skarron fighters on their way and he knew they couldn’t call their own out, otherwise the enemy walkers would eat them for lunch and still be hungry for more.

  With the steam/mist momentarily shrouding him from the plasma fire, Kip picked up his shield and ran forward to get his sword, having to lift up a piece of the dead walker to retrieve it, then, taking plasma fire again, but this time from three different walkers, he cradled his shield over his left shoulder and ran as fast as he dared with the footing towards the original one and swung against one of its legs as his own armor began to take hits, his energy shields now down.

  The swing didn’t get through the leg on the first cut, but it did on the well-aimed second, chopping off the bottom half of the front left leg as Kip’s voltron got a plasma bath. He twisted the knight shield around in front of him then ran forward and pushed into the walker, hoping it was off-balanced enough to topple.

  And he was right, for the juggling act it was doing with its legs, poking multiple holes into the mud to reposition, had centered its balance again on the remaining 7 legs by pulling them in closer to the center and thus making it a bit easier to tip over…though Kip had to really leverage it hard as hull warnings began to flash in his cockpit as the enemy plasma from behind him began to chew through the mech’s armor.

  Lifting more than pushing, Kip got underneath the flank with the severed leg and got 2 of the other 3 out of the mud, then used the others as a pivot point to topple the giant machine despite its desperate attempts to stick a pair out even further to stabilize, which drove the remaining two even further into the soft soil. They went in so far that when Kip finally got the thing to flip over they broke off, bent backwards farther than they were designed to move, leaving the double-hulled behemoth pinned on its side, but it was still throwing plasma into his knight shield and his right side that was exposed.

  Those plasma cannons quickly came under attack, and with the walker’s own shields down Kip’s escorts picked off the batteries targeting the larger walker while jumping from point to point on the muddy terrain to get into more favorable positions to use the dead walker parts for cover. With a mix of maulers and plasma they chipped away at the downed walker as the incoming plasma from behind Kip faded out, leaving only the fallen one to try and eat through the voltron’s now pot marked armor.

  Glancing at the battlemap and seeing the Canderians swarming the remaining walkers, Kip stepped away from his walker and brought his knight shield around, covering up from the additional damage and pulling his sword up level with his waist. Then he walked forward a couple of steps and jammed it into the underbelly near to the boarding ramp where he knew the crew pod was located.

  When he pulled it out he fired into the slit with both plasma and mauler blasts, then jabbed the sword in again slightly to the left, making another slit that he then added the energy attack to. Reaching out with his Ikrid he sensed the minds inside the walker and their approximate locations, keeping up the slash and burn strategy until they all winked out, leaving the somewhat operational walker without a pilot to operate it.

  When he pulled back and turned around he saw only two Skarron walkers remaining, and both were taking heavy plasma streamer hits from the turtles that were melting away the enemy’s armor plating. The amount of plasma they were throwing out dwarfed what the voltron could manage, though his mauler cannon made up for it as he walked within range and added the superior weapon damage to what the turtles were already racking up on one side of the closest Type-3.

  Kip’s shot melted away what thin armor remained on the damaged patch, letting the next plasma streamer into the internal components of the walker. A few more shots like that, plus another pair of mauler blasts, brought the behemoth down with all its legs going slack. It crumpled and smashed into the ground, sticking in the muck rather than rebounding from the impact.

  The turtles floated around it, hitting it from multiple sides as the other one went down as well, save for it locked into place on its rear legs, doing a face-plant into a makeshift tripod that the Canderians likewise continued to bombard with loads of dark green plasma…now their signature color, while the voltron and other Star Force mechs continued to use the traditional light blue.

  Kip looked to his battlemap and was about to call for their own fighters, now that the Skarron anti-air threat was eliminated, but he saw that they were already on their way, having broken off their holding patterns just outside of the perimeter boundaries he’d ordered the Canderians to maintain around all Skarron walkers across the planet and throughout this war. They’d followed orders, but now that they were no longer valid they had already started heading for the turtles and the enemy fighters that were just about on them.

  Kip nodded, happy to see they were on the ball, then activated his one remaining lachar to auto-target the Skarron fighters as he got a quick look at the condition of the Canderians.

  The turtles were a mess, with only 4 of the 18 still with active shields. The rest had messed up shells, with huge chunks of armor gouged out and missing pylons, evidenced as they now stuck out what they had left and started to fire their anti-air plasma shards up at the Skarron fighters as they approached. Three of the turtles never made it off the ground, and were still sitting on the mud and smoking from internal damage through armor punctures.

  Kip highlighted those three and sent a query comm pulse, which was essentially an electronic poke to get a response. Two responded with a status update in text, while the third was silent.

  “Dayna, once we clear the fighters get to your people. I’d rather not have to call for a dropship to pick up survivors. How are you doing?”

  “Still operational. You?”

  Kip glanced at his status holo. “Significantly chew
ed up, but still mobile.”

  “A significant victory then?”

  “First round,” he said, seeing some of the Skarron fighters overhead try and hit the smallest of their mechs…and run right into an anti-air barrage. Two of them fell from the sky nearby and made small splash marks, one of which flipped out enough to hit Kip, though you couldn’t tell with all the other mud already on his mech. “They learn and adapt, we learn and adapt. This is a feel-out skirmish. They probably don’t have any data on Canderous since their original defense fleet bugged out and we killed all the witnesses on the planet.”

  “They know better than to hit us with so few numbers,” the Canderian remarked.

  “Take a look at the condition of your turtles, Legat. You’re not fit for another mission. They did considerable damage for such ‘small’ numbers,” Kip lectured him. “Do not underestimate them. What they can’t win directly they will win through attrition, and it’s going to take a lot to get your turtles back into fighting form.”

  “Noted. Shall we head back or go after that Type-2?”

  Kip glanced at the battlemap, seeing it standing off so far away that it would take him hours to get there in his voltron, though the turtles could fly there much faster. That was one advantage to the anti-grav design, and one that he and the other trailblazers had debated initially, but they eventually chose to go with mechs rather than floating tanks, which is what the turtles really were, because of the power requirements. Bipedal motion, while complicated, required far less power than anti-grav did, pound for pound. As such his voltron had significantly longer battlefield potential than the turtles did, which would have to cycle back for refueling after a period of time.

  The muck was making him reconsider that logic, but he knew that legs beat tanks in most situations, though he was glad the Canderians had chosen the anti-grav route. While it wasn’t for the Archons, it did have its advantages…which gave Star Force more options to fight with, and frankly the turtles were better at combating Skarron walkers than the mechs, so far as the Type-3 and smaller ones went. The Type-2s had never been hit by them, relying instead on a Hoth counterpart that also contained a tiny cleansing beam.

  The planet hadn’t had any Type-1s in play when the initial invasion began and only the single Type-2, letting Canderous get some good early experience in against numerically weaker forces. Now was an altogether different matter, and Kip had to make sure the Canderians learned the enemy’s strength and tendencies without it requiring an ass kicking.

  “Not a chance. Even without missiles it would tear you apart. It’s out of range anyway, and if we get that close they could drop reinforcements nearby and cause us a world of trouble.”

  “If you stay behind we can attack with anti-grav only mechs,” the Canderian suggested. “That would give us the mobility required, and we can call in fresh turtles to assist.”

  “Possibly, but I don’t want you hitting a Type-2 without a tortoise. They can throw down far too much plasma. We have to hit them at range to own them. Don’t let them draw you in or you’ll regret it.”

  “Understood,” Dayna agreed. “I’m just eager to press the attack. Where do we hit them next?”

  “We don’t. Next move is theirs. They’re the invaders, so we’ll wait and see what they have planned. If we start to get bored then we’ll stir the pot and see what comes out.”

  When Dayna didn’t respond Kip sighed. “Patience, Legat. They nearly killed you with that missile attack. The last thing you want to do is hit them with less anti-air than you had here. This isn’t a challenge where you want a tough opponent, it’s for keeps, and you want to hit the enemy where they’re weakest and you have an advantage…while prepping to defend yourself against the enemy’s advantage. We get to choose the former, they get to choose the latter. Make sure you choose wisely.”

  “Wise words,” the Canderian agreed as their fighters appeared overhead, mixing it up with the Skarrons. “We’ll pick up the crews from the damaged turtles. Your mechs should get a head start back, unless you’re going to call for dropships?”

  “Negative, we’re walking back and I’m waiting here until you get them out. I may have to lift up an edge, otherwise you’ll have to dig through the muck.”

  “There are enough armor breaches that we can go in through the top as soon as the fighters clear the air.”

  Kip glanced at the battlemap again, seeing that between the Canderian fighters, which were being remotely controlled from the nearby firebase, and the anti-air mech support, the Skarrons were getting eaten alive. They didn’t stay and fight it out to their deaths, but mixed it up with the Star Force fighters long enough, Kip thought, to get a decent set of battle data, then they flew off, heading back towards their own base with the Canderians nipping at their heels and making a few more kills before pulling out to avoid running into the no-go zones around the enemy walkers.

  “Copy that,” he said, heading over towards the downed turtles anyway, arriving just before the fighters disappeared with his escort mechs hopping around like crickets behind him as they kept pace. He looked down on the turtles, each of which easily outmassed his voltron, and saw the holes torn through meters of dense armor by the Skarron missiles.

  Those things were damn dangerous, and it looked like the Skarrons weren’t saving them up to use in small amounts anymore. That meant that any pairings of Type-2s and larger were going to be very difficult to hit, and Kip knew that they’d use that to their advantage, with the larger engagements to come featuring dozens of walkers working together across a wide area, overlapping missile ranges while preserving skirmishers to go after the tortoises when they got within cleansing beam range.

  This had just been the first of many battles to come, and from the look of it the Skarrons weren’t taking the Humans for granted this time. They were going to learn about this new version of their enemy and adapt before they made a major strike, both on the ground and in orbit, meaning the coming year was going to prove to be very interesting for Kip, and he was quite certain the Canderians were going to get an education in the ways of warfare.

  Kip just had to keep them alive long enough for the lesson to sink in.

  9

  February 1, 2506

  Mden System (Zeta Region)

  Nexus 4

  Morgan and Davis dropped down from orbit to one of 7 Star Force mega colonies on the planet, already having visited several other systems in their unofficial tour, landing in the Mssot spaceport. They came down through an atmospheric shield that separated the landing bay from the airless world, then parked next to dozens of other Star Force dropships and exited their craft amongst a Human deck crew.

  The pair didn’t see one of the Mssot until they had progressed further into the colony, coming out into extremely high hallways, taller even than what the Calavari required, where they saw a very gangly creature nearly three times their height walking past. It was covered in black, almost oily scales and had a single red eye on his head that looked down upon them as it waved a three digit hand at the pair, seeing Davis’ red Archon armor and Morgan’s black stripe, which it knew meant she was one of the elite strikers.

  Morgan waved back and they passed it, heading further into the colony.

  “That’s the largest yet,” Davis commented over the comm.

  Not very strong though, Morgan replied telepathically.

  “These are their offspring?” Davis asked as they came across another two ahead of them as they approached the entryway onto the main promenade.

  Yes. The bad ones are still on their prison station, serving their penance with genetic work. The Mssot you see here have been trained by Star Force from birth.

  “Are they loyal?”

  I’m told so. This is the first time I’ve seen them in person.

  “What are you getting from their minds?”

  Curiosity and respect. They don’t get very many Archons here.

  The pair walked out through the archway and onto what looked like a
miniature canyon with roads stacked along the sides and interconnecting walkways…all of which were stairs, segmented into large steps and small to accommodate the mixed population.

  “How long can they hold their breath without those filters?” he asked, noting the small wrap around their chests that covered their lungs vents. They breathed the nitrogen in the air, but the oxygen that the Humans required was toxic to them.

  I’m told several minutes.

  “Do they intend to stay with Star Force?”

  You’ve read the same reports I have. And Randy hasn’t told me otherwise. I do know that a few of their individuals have left.

  “Where did they go?”

  Bolo, I think. Where we’ll end up eventually. They may have left Star Force space from there or remained. We can check the files later if you want.

  “Where are we heading?”

  Morgan pointed to their right and Davis lead the way, walking down one of the long, straight roads until they took a short staircase off and down, which lead to a road that ended in a commerce station…inside of which were a mix of Mssot and Humans conducting daily business.

  Davis walked in, his hesitance gone as he saw the Humans interacting with the larger Mssot without a second thought. He headed over to the trading board and noted the exchange rates for various natural resources that the Mssot were nano-processing for Star Force. With a great deal of engineering and biotech help, Star Force had modified the Mssot’s own technology towards a mechanical foundation, in this case replacing designer microbes with biological nanites who had a controlling core of technology that then grew a ‘body’ made of organic compounds.

  Those nanites could then be remote controlled in a limited fashion by a computer, with the Mssot then upgrading them heavily with their knowledge of biology and using them to deconstruct various ores that Star Force mining teams on the planet were providing them. The refined materials and various molecular conversions were then put up for sale on the Star Force planetary market, with many visiting races or alien entrepreneurs that operated within the Star Force system purchasing the materials they needed.