by Jyr, Aer-ki
It was very much an infantry war here, with the big machines playing support, and in infantry wars the Archons dominated…let alone a battlemeld-linked pair of rangers.
When the countdown expired Karen and Travis walked off the ramp together, not having to say anything to each other for they already knew what the other one was thinking. Trusting the telemetry they dropped into freefall, immediately goosing their jump packs to break against some of the lateral momentum as they fell into a deep river at the bottom of one of the ravines…with Travis nearly missing and hitting the rocky sidewall.
He created a telekinetic wedge between himself and it, acting like a crash bag, and deflected himself down into the fast current a meter shy of the rock, disappearing underneath the water and coming back to the surface some 40 meters down as he swam to the side and came up near to where Karen was, with both of them quickly disappearing into the rocky jungle using their jump packs to get over tricky terrain.
They moved quickly for about 10 minutes before they finally noticed overhead Skarron fighters. Knowing to keep their shields turned off unless necessary, they kept moving under the canopy as much as they could manage and avoided their detection all the way up to a Skarron outpost that was little more than an encampment underneath the trees with a few single story prefab structures set up to accommodate the troops temporarily stationed there as they moved from one point to another on trails the Skarrons had been carving out of the trees, dirt, and rock for months…all of which usually operated below the canopy, making their movements virtually invisible to any fighters or orbital surveillance.
And with the great distances involved the Skarrons weren’t walking. They’d brought in tread-wheel transports that looked like giant centipedes in that the ‘wheels’ were made up of hundreds of individual segments that would literally wrap around rocks and allow the trucks to move over bad ground without having the energy expenditure that anti-grav would require. They had flying transports for that, but they were spamming the surface with these trucks and moving both troops and supplies everywhere they had built their roads.
The outpost ahead contained both troops and workers for doing more of that carving, with at least one branch being extended nearby. When the twins came to the edge of the outpost they didn’t offer up any warnings or give any sight nor sound of their approach, simply sliding into the camp and opening fire on one of the Skarrons there that was out in the open and moving from point to point.
Both Archons hit it with a combined Fornax blast before Karen jumped up on top of its fallen form and blasted into its back with her plasma rifle while Travis stayed on the ground and shot the Hobbits nearby that were coming to the Skarron’s aid and attempting to shoot his sister. Both of them kept the big enemy down with Fornax blasts until it was dead, then Karen jumped off and helped Travis clear a path through the enemies that were popping up everywhere to the largest of the buildings.
They fought their way inside, killing the Hobbits there before a lot of them could even get to their weapons, then split up and came out different exits, with Travis staying outside and fighting in the open while Karen snuck over to the nearby building and killed six more Hobbits inside, but passed over the knot of Engineers she found there. For whatever reason their race never fought the Humans, and in return the Humans didn’t target them. They were workers, not combat troops, and even though they were on the enemy’s team building and harvesting raw materials for them, they were no threat and treated accordingly.
Once the Hobbits began to pool outside to numbers that would jeopardize the Archons’ shields even with half of their shots missing, the twins used their Lew ability and both started generating an Ikrid field between the two of them, creating an invisible column of energy connecting the two Archons that they then ran through the Hobbits, taking down all those who passed through it with a disoriented visual and auditory wash implanted into their minds. It was temporary, just a little bit of mind tricks that made them see blots and bright flashes of light while hearing distracting sounds, all of which was delivered not to a targeted enemy, but to any that passed through the energy field.
The twins rendered some 80+ of them unable to fire back within four seconds of sprinting around either side of the group, then they proceeded to fire away at the enemies outside those effected, shooting those who could still shoot back while hitting them with individual Fornax fields and trimming the plasma fire coming back at them considerably.
Between Fornax, Lew, and a few other psionics, Karen and Travis kept the mass of Hobbits and two more Skarrons distracted, disabled, or confused long enough that the two of them were able to fight and shoot their way through them…then they broke up and chased down the scattered remainder of the combat troops and killed them before returning to the outpost and ignoring the Engineers as they came out of the buildings to look at what was going on. The two Archons quickly moved to the racks of equipment lining the storage buildings walls and pulled out several fuel canisters that they converted into a makeshift bomb.
After getting the Engineers clear they detonated it, blowing apart the building and at least damaging the handheld equipment so it couldn’t be used to carve out new roads, after which the twins got to work on the big pieces of mechanized equipment that looked like miniaturized and beefier versions of their combat walkers. Gone were the thin legs, leaving thick columns that supported crab-like work walkers that could cut down trees, move dirt, or carve out sections of rock.
For those the twins pulled out small explosives from their packs, with both knowing exactly where to put them on the machines in order to disable them. They planted some 14 in total, all linked to a single detonator and made sure the Engineers were clear before wrecking the lot with a quick pyrotechnics display that caught some of the nearby tree branches on fire.
Travis looked over at the group of Engineers just staring at them blankly, throwing them a sarcastic salute then leaving them and their residential buildings and food supply intact as he and his sister ran off down one of their roads heading towards the next link in their mountainous supply chain. They couldn’t do anything about destroying the roads themselves, but they could wreck the equipment being used to create them and kill their workforce, for most of the Hobbits were doubling up their infantry duties with construction ones.
Leaving the Engineers alive could have been seen as a strategic mistake, for they could go to work again, but in truth the only reason the Archons were targeting these camps and killing the Hobbits on sight was because they were actively assaulting the Protovic world. Had this been a Skarron world the Archons wouldn’t have killed them so…lithely, but they were here doing harm or helping others do harm to the Protovic and that they couldn’t tolerate. Those Hobbits, while building roads, would just as quickly pick up a plasma rifle and go into battle. The Engineers wouldn’t, which was why there was no point in killing them.
Not to mention the fact that a good number of them were defecting to the Alliance, for they were seeing more compassion from their enemies than they were their masters. Karen and Travis didn’t care about that now, for they weren’t on a recruitment or rescue mission. They were hear to cause havoc and havoc is what they were going to cause…but there was a very fine and firm line between being a slayer and a butcher, and butchers they were not going to become.
That was a lesson that Bri had drilled into their heads, and they hadn’t truly understood until she showed them some of the results. While the twins had always been told how Archons were supposed to think and behave, all the way back into basic training, it had always been focused on them doing the right thing rather than seeing how it affected others. Once they’d gotten to see and hear firsthand from some of the Hobbits that had switched sides and get their point of view did they stop looking at the enemy as targets.
They were people, and not always involved due to their own choices. The Hobbits in particular were a slave race that would be killed on the spot if they didn’t fight, which meant that Star Force wa
sn’t just going to kill them off. They were going to help them if they could.
But if they were trying to kill their allies and doing a good job of it, well, the kid gloves would come off fast enough. Bottom line was, Archons would let you stop being an enemy, and would always give someone that option…but if you chose to be an enemy then they would treat you as such, with their dislike for killing quickly disappearing when you put someone else’s life in danger.
They were warriors and took on the role of slayer in a heartbeat if necessary, and right now, with the Skarrons pressing hard against the inhabited band of the Protovic planet, slayers were what Travis and Karen had to become…and they were very good at it.
7
October 23, 2553
Evelynn System (Scionate/Star Force Territory)
Shadow Isle
“Report please,” Admiral Victor asked when walking into the moon base’s command center.
“A large Lacvamat/Gnar fleet has arrived insystem and is moving to assault Night’s Veil. Information is still updating, but I would guess they’ve already begun combat.”
“Damn, they are getting bold,” Victor said, sitting down in his chair and accessing his personal holos with information coming in directly from the insystem relay network. Though Star Force had no presence on the Scionate world they did maintain a number of surveillance posts throughout the system, including planetary orbit, though at present Night’s Veil was on the other side of the star from Shadow Isle, which was orbiting a large, uninhabited planet full of valuable resources cloaked in a noxious atmosphere named Widowmaker.
It and the three moons surrounding it belonged to Star Force, while the rest of the system was Scionate property. Shadow Isle wasn’t a transit grid nexus, but rather a more private Star Force colony used as a military staging base that doubled as a storage depot, collecting both shipments of supplies from other systems as well as a scattering of mining outposts on Widowmaker, though those operations were mostly remote operated from the moon, with only a few hundred personnel on the planet to facilitate the machinery and handle the quiet excavation of subsurface tunnels that Star Force was creating without anyone else’s knowledge.
To the Scionate the moon was just a little backdoor Star Force outpost recently created since the transfer of ruling bloodlines and an added bit of penance on the part of their race…while also serving to bolster the system’s defense as Star Force kept a decently sized naval force there to service both Beta and Gamma Regions with reinforcements as needed. Most of that fleet had since been dispersed, but 3 warships and several hundred drones were still present around the moon as a defense fleet.
So far the Lacvamat had stayed away from Star Force worlds, even going so far as to avoid transitioning through one of their systems given the bad blood resulting from the Sentinel incident, but now they were hitting a Scionate planet right next door and Victor wondered just how far they were prepared to push this…and if the Scionate were going to flee to the moon to seek sanctuary.
Admiral Victor was the senior commander on the moon, given that it was primarily a naval way station, with a handful of lower ranking Archons on site for security reasons but no high level ones. Technically they outranked him, but given his experience they let him handle the security of the moon and planet below while they worked on their training and dealt with any odd problems popping up. They were stationed here primarily as backup, and Victor hoped they wouldn’t be needed in the coming days.
A new fleet of six warships was due to arrive within 2 weeks, fresh off the shipyards in Epsilon Eridani, and he truly didn’t want to have to waste any of their drones with this mess that was about to unfold, but so far the Lacvamat hadn’t shown any signs of strategic sensibility…though their tactical acumen was proving to be significant. They were handing the Scionate their asses where the reserve should have been true, both out thinking and out maneuvering the dominate military power and putting them on the defensive, but with no planning for the long term or how it would affect the ADZ as a whole.
If the front fell the Skarrons would come in and wipe out the Lacvamat, which would make this war all but pointless.
Then again blood feuds rarely made sense outside their fanatical context, which was why the Admiral wasn’t entirely sure the Lacvamat would avoid the Star Force world. It was small and isolated, and if they truly wanted to control the system they’d have to take it out…which would put them at war with an opponent far more powerful than the Scionate but so overwhelmed with the Skarrons that they couldn’t do much at the moment.
At the Sentinel incident they hadn’t fired on any Star Force craft or facility, they merely braved the weaponsfire to get at the Scionate, showing that they weren’t going to listen to Star Force’s edicts, but then again they weren’t, Victor hoped, stupid enough to cross the line into actually fighting them.
As the updated reports made their way across the system and to the command center the Admiral watched with keen interest how the combined Lacvamat/Gnar fleet systematically drove the Scionate out of orbit, with many of the ships fleeing to elsewhere in the system but the attackers didn’t follow them. Instead they held onto low orbit and began landing a large number of troop ships, some of which were Nammet but none Gnar. They opened up three different ground invasion sites and went about the process of what looked like a legitimate grab for the world.
Victor couldn’t do anything about it, given that his orders were not to waste ships on their blood feud, but he hated watching a fight going on nearby and sitting it out. The Scionate also sent out a plea for help the second day, which he had to grudgingly refuse. This war never should have been happening, but given that it was the Scionate were the defenders. He didn’t know about the legitimacy of the bioweapon attack, but the Lacvamat were the ones to start the actual fighting and he really didn’t like having to leave their insystem neighbors vulnerable when they were being assaulted.
He had to keep reminding himself of the Skarron threat and that his ships would eventually end up fighting there, as would he once the reinforcements arrived. He’d be transitioning out with a new commander coming in, for his stay here was just a temporary one.
But none of that mattered to his gut. Combat was going down and he wasn’t involved…and that just felt wrong.
8 days later the situation changed when a relief fleet arrived from the Hammids and Victor took keen interest in seeing how they were going to fight. To date they hadn’t taken part in combat on either front, but for some reason they’d sided with the Scionate and, so far as he’d been updated, this was the first time their troops were being thrown into battle.
Their fleet wasn’t large, but it was strong enough to defend itself and the massive number of transports it was escorting down to the surface. Victor wished he had some surface surveillance posts or even some stealth drones in play, but he didn’t. All he could see was from high orbit and where the ships went, with only a very tiny glimpse at what was happening down on the planet.
Nammti was riding in one of the first transports to go down, her wings tucked in closely as she and her broodmates were packed together in a rack so cramped it was hard to breathe as they waited to be released into open air. Her feathery wings were stiff and cramping from the long wait that had her cooped up with the rest of them prior to arrival in the system so they could be deployed tactically once they arrived no matter what the circumstances were.
She didn’t know any more now than she did before loading, but when the signal came the floor beneath her feet opened up and she dropped out of the transport like a rock, letting gravity pull her down and away from the others before spreading her wings and nulling her fall. There were so many other Hammids around her that it was hard to fly, but they’d practiced such maneuvers ad nauseum in the past and they all managed to avoid hitting one another as they formed up into groups and flapped their way down to a surface position now being marked for a diving attack on her visor.
She wore a headset and light harn
ess around her body that mimicked the old Calavari design and had actually been created with assistance from one of their techs. It provided an energy shield that would shield her from plasma while not interfering with her flight in the least. Physical objects would still get through, but their enemies didn’t use many weapons of that sort aside from missiles, which would be mostly useless against the flocks of Hammids given they were deploying in the tens of thousands.
Each was about half the size of a Lacvamat and could outmaneuver them with ease, and as she flew with the others Nammti saw that the distant ground below her was covered with a swarm of Lacvamat that were their targets. She’d never liked the fleshy avians who didn’t have a single feather on them, nor their overly militant attitude. Hammids knew how to fight but were very reserved in doing so given their fragile bodies. They couldn’t put armor on else lose their flight capability so they had to brave the fields of combat without protection, at least until the shield generators had been built.
That gave them some measure of survivability, but their strength had always been in their numbers and being able to chip away at a superior enemy until they were wore down enough that they either retreated or were destroyed. The Lacvamat had a similar strategy, except they liked to bombard ground troops from above where they were out of return fire range. It was a cowardly method of attacking that the Hammids didn’t employ, though they would bombard the surface, but through diving runs rather than just lopping ordinance down…though in part that was because of their smaller size their weapons had a much shorter range of attack.
But the Hammids also believed that if you were serious about fighting then you’d do it face to face, with the way the Lacvamat fought being disconnected to the point of cruelty. They killed opponents without even seeing them, leaving them little more than statistics, and in war the Hammids fought people, not statistics.