by Jyr, Aer-ki
And they weren’t the only ones. There was a huge shift undergoing and a lot of it depended on what Davis would do to the Lacvamat and Scionate. At the moment there wasn’t much he could do with the Archons busy to the point of breaking, but as always power was more than just military might, with the economic arena just as important.
Now that he knew the Scionate weren’t responsible for the bioweapon attack that put their fighting down to self-defense. That didn’t excuse what they did during the pullout or how they were fighting the war, but it made the Lacvamat as the ones who were in the wrong. He suspected that would not matter to them, and they’d probably cite Star Force as being allied with the Scionate, but it did mean the penalties on the Scionate would be less than had they actually instigated this whole mess.
They’d already lost 2 systems to the Lacvamat and were on the verge of losing a third with four more now under varying levels of attack. So far most of the fighting was occurring on Scionate territory rather than Lacvamat worlds, and it was entirely likely that at least one of the worlds the Lacvamat had taken would not be returned to the Scionate afterwards…but that was just thinking ahead. Without the Archons and their fleet to enforce any of his edicts he was going to have to work this from a different angle for the time being, and to that end he decided to open up another Alliance World.
There were four already in the planning stages, none of which had been assigned regional owners, but with so much material being used to boost warship production the additional of new worlds and their construction required some heavy Star Force infrastructure that was lagging behind. And if he couldn’t curtail the fighting between those races involved, he could reward those that were staying out of it…as well as getting them to supply the resources to get the Alliance World up and running.
The Reen had wanted to help, and now they’d get their chance. He’d offer them 3 territorial slots out of the 8 available in exchange for a number of materials that he’d negotiate later, then open up a similar arrangement for several other races who had resources to spare. Being as territorial hungry as they were, he could bring additional resources into Star Force’s coffers, perhaps even more than needed for the construction of the planet, while giving those less belligerent races a boost in the internal power struggle…as well as hinting that more would be coming in the future for those who played ball.
That would put fear into those races sitting on the fence and might even convince the five engaged to rethink the wisdom of pushing this conflict as far as it seemed they were intent on going…which was to annihilate the opposition.
Davis had already blacklisted those five races from Star Force purchases of starships and construction contracts, not that there were many available given the heavy war production, but those vacancies had moved up others on the waiting lists and that in turn would also affect the power struggle down the road. But he knew he had to do more than that, so with the bioweapon attack mystery solved he began laying out a plan of numerous little tweaks, nothing major, that he would begin to use to reshape the ADZ in this time of turmoil and leave the territorial penalties to the future when he had the ability to actually enforce them.
He also had two requests from races outside the ADZ still standing, and decided to act upon them now. Both were races with worlds along the border of Epsilon Region, which Star Force hadn’t colonized very heavily as yet, but of these two races one already traded with the ADZ and the other one wanted to begin to do so in considerable amounts, with both requesting a foothold world to act as an emissary to the rest of the growing community.
Giving them an entire world wasn’t going to happen, but he would give each a single regional slot on a scheduled Alliance World coming online in Epsilon within the next 14 months, along with the promise of more territory if they proved themselves valuable. That would also mean that two of the slots that would have gone to present ADZ members would be taken away by outsiders, sending the message that the power struggle wasn’t going to be a purely internal affair and Star Force could bring in as many outsiders as it wanted, meaning new players in the game that, as far as percentage went, would diminish the current ones.
Growth was the key to everything, and he needed to make the races fighting one another pay in that regard. If they kept fighting and wasting resources and lives then they’d be curtailing their own growth while others expanded even further with Davis’s assistance. That might not be enough to get the blood feud stopped, but it would be an ever-present reality that cooler heads would respond to as they saw the writing on the wall.
Hopefully that would prevent some of the races considering throwing in with either the Scionate or the Lacvamat from adding to the internecine.
It wasn’t a good situation, but Davis had learned long ago that even in catastrophes there were always opportunities if you looked hard enough. The real question was whether or not the Archons would be able to hold the line without the support they deserved.
He didn’t know if they could or not, for he was reviewing the stats daily as they came in, but he’d learned long ago not to bet against them. He would do his part on the interior, and hoped they’d be able to pull another Houdini, keeping the Skarrons pinned down and out of the ADZ interior for a good while longer.
9
December 15, 2553
Plenx System (Dvapp Territory)
Rvitx
Paul waited, tucked underneath a rocky overhang as the Skarron troops moved all around him enroute to a major offensive. They’d gotten reinforced by a trio of transports that had made it down from orbit, with his warships having gunned down two others as they came in. The ones that landed, though, had added just enough troops that the Skarrons were mounting one last push to try and break the Star Force troops that were all that was holding the native Dvapp defenders together. Both sides had been so wore down that the number of troops on the planet was a small fraction of what it had been in the beginning, and a windfall of new reinforcements from either side would easily tip the scales.
The Skarrons hadn’t gotten a large one, but it was enough that they thought they now had the advantage, and it was all rooted in the Type-1 walker they’d received and was now covering for the rest of the 26 walkers and infantry in the attack column moving across the rocky terrain towards one of three remaining Dvapp cities. The rest were either evacuated or destroyed, with the planet essentially having been turned into a debris field with more dead than you could count, especially with the Dvapp corpses melting away and not sticking around long enough to be noted.
Most of Star Force’s losses had been in the way of machinery rather than troops, with them having more people available than mechs and fighters, but they’d still lost a lot, and without those valuable machines the excess personnel wasn’t much of a help, especially when they didn’t have enough places on planet to house them. Most of his dispossessed troops were now back up onboard the jumpships, including those commandos and Knights who he didn’t have replacement armor for. He wasn’t sending them into combat without it, so he’d had to evacuate them.
That left a small core of Star Force troops to head off the Skarrons while the Dvapp tried to rouse what limited resistance they could. Nearly all of their combat troops had been killed, with only militia remaining. For some reason the Skarrons were targeting the Dvapp harder than others, not just in the number of systems under assault but in killing all those they came across. They’d actively pushed the residential areas rather than gunning for the Star Force troops, atypical of their normal methodology which had them going at the strongest enemies and most highly valued targets straight off.
But that didn’t matter now. This last assault was going to make or break the invasion of this world, and if Star Force couldn’t turn it back the Skarrons were going to run the table and eliminate the remaining settlements, and there was going to be nothing he could do about it short of bringing down his limited warships for fire support…and that was practically suicide with the Type-1 in place, not to m
ention the other walkers with their anti-air capabilities.
If he’d had more drones he could have taken it out regardless, but he couldn’t waste what he had and still hold onto orbit. There were Skarron ships up there, and if he weakened his fleet enough they’d pounce, but for the moment Star Force and the Dvapp were the stronger and keeping the enemy back from low orbit, aside from the occasional resupply run that they pretty much had a 50/50 chance of intercepting. Paul just wished they’d gotten the transport bringing in the Type-1, for that beast of a machine alone was going to decimate what mechs he had left.
In this late game scenario it looked like the limited reinforcements were going to win the Skarrons the planet and that no matter how much Paul tweaked their defenses it just wasn’t going to be enough. He was going to have to bring the warships down and try to take out the Type-1, but then there would be nothing preventing the Skarrons from bringing their own ships down into the atmosphere after they finished off his fleet in orbit and pounding the crap out of his surviving ground troops.
Either way the Skarrons had already won, or so his Dvapp colleagues had pointed out, wanting to start evacuating the few people they could in the hours they had before the Skarron assault column got to them. Paul wasn’t going for that and had his mechs and handful of fighters standing behind in ambush positions within the varied terrain, given they were able to move around much easier with jump jets than the Skarrons could walking overland on their spindly legs.
They couldn’t take down the Type-1, but they’d stand a decent chance against the Type-3s and 4s. There was one Type-2 in the mix as well, but that one would just have to be dealt with the hard way. Chew up the others first and they could isolate it, but the key to it all was taking out the Type-1. So long as it was in play they were doomed.
And they had nothing that could contend with it short of a fleet of drone warships.
They were beat, pure and simple, and damn the Scionate for pulling out when they did.
That was the general sentiment in the mini war council between Paul, a handful of his Archons, and the Dvapp, which was when the trailblazer quoted Darth Vader and left their headquarters, deploying himself out ahead of the rest of his troops that he’d carefully arranged into the ambush formations he wanted.
Don’t underestimate the power of the Force.
With him concealed in his tiny hollow with his shields turned off so the Skarrons couldn’t track him just in case their sensors could penetrate the rock, which he doubted, he waited and watched with his psionics as infantry and then several of their walkers passed by his position. He could actually see a piece of one of the Type-4s out the open side of his hollow standing atop a ridge that gave him a view of its upper half, but it was too far away to notice him behind them and only a few inches of helmet showing on a direct line of sight.
No, Paul was tucked away nicely and now in the center of their army waiting for the enormous Type-1 to come across his position, hoping he’d guessed right about what path it would take.
The seven segmented walker was mid formation, leaving it with flanking units on all sides to protect it from attacks, though in truth there was nothing around that could harm it. Right now it was providing aerial cover for the rest of the mechs and capable of throwing up a flat, circular shield above itself or the nearby area to protect against bombardment from orbit or fighters, though Star Force didn’t usually use any bomb-type weapons. They wouldn’t get through the anti-air lachars anyway.
Stretching his Ikrid to its limits Paul waited and watched through the rock behind him, sensing the infantry minds and those in the nearest of the walkers until he finally felt the big one coming slightly to the east. He thought it was going to be close enough, but given the height of the segments this was going to be a stretch as was and he didn’t want to add any more meters than necessary. He knew he couldn’t reposition without drawing attention, and right now his only chance was to stay hidden. Get even close to that thing and it’d bathe the surface with so much plasma they wouldn’t even have to aim to hit him, just spam the area with shots.
He felt the minds in the first segment and tracked their movement, mentally plotting out the closest they would come to him. Each piece had its own crew, which worked together to move the giant centipede around, up until they decided to split it apart. That didn’t happen unless one segment needed to be jettisoned, because the shield generating strength of the flat ‘plates’ it created to defend against heavy attack were much stronger when all the segments were combined, though the armor alone was enough to protect it against an insane amount of weaponsfire.
But it would do nothing to block Paul’s Ikrid.
When the first segment hit the closest point to Paul’s position, with the first of its legs coming down some 250 meters to his left, he reached out and tried to connect to one of the minds he was sensing. His contact was very light, given the range, but he focused his mental power and tried to make it as efficient as possible. At first he didn’t think he was going to be able to do it, then he finally got a very faint connection that allowed him to pull information from its senses and allow him to see the inside of the walker along with a few of its surface thoughts.
He quickly realized it wasn’t the one he wanted and switched to another, then another. It wasn’t until his sixth connection that he found the Skarron that had the control panel that he wanted.
Implanting the suggestion proved even harder than reading its senses and took numerous layered attempts to get the impulse firmly imbedded to cut the power to the plasma cannons and divert it to the shield generators to block an incoming orbital bombardment that would destroy the walker if he didn’t scrape together as much power as possible.
It didn’t work at first, but with the layering going on more and more eventually it just snap activated the Skarron carried out the suggestion. There was a large, audible crackle outside as the shield formed over top the big walker even as it continued to plod forward, prompting him to act quickly. He switched to another mind in the crew pit and hammered it hard with layering, feeling it pop a moment later as the rest of the crew focused on the loss of power to their weapons and the shield going up, prying the other as to what was going on.
With that confusion taking place the other Skarron lowered the boarding ramp, with Paul bolting out of cover the moment he felt him hit the switch. Having planned out his run through the terrain via Pefbar earlier, he climbed up a small ridge, shot by a half dozen Hobbits that he didn’t even bother to flip off, and ran underneath the outer legs of the forward segment of the Type-1 as it continued to walk forward.
As it moved a long, thin tendril extended down from the underside forming a stairway. Cringing, he saw it hit a rock and twist a few seconds before he got to it, but the trailblazer jumped up onto the narrow ‘straw’ before it had a chance to break off and climbed the odd staircase in a hurry, needing to get inside before the plasma cannons overhead came back online.
A jolt underneath his feet signaled that the Skarrons were pulling the boarding ramp back in, with him only halfway up. He didn’t bother trying to reacquire mental control over the crew, instead run/jumping up it and staying ahead of the collapsing sections behind him in a race to get to the hatch before the steps beneath him vanished and he fell.
With the help of his jump pack he took several meters in each step, coming up to the opening and ramming into a Skarron poking out the entry parlor to see what was happening below. He drove his armored shoulder into its face, denting into its mount as he hit and rolled/jumped up onto its back as its arms bent over and tried to grab him with more of a limb-bending attempt than he had ever seen one try, for it didn’t have any weapons on them to shoot him with.
Paul didn’t bother fighting it, merely Fornaxing and sliding across its back and heading through the extremely large interior of the walker and into one of the auxiliary crew bays. The main control pit was further up, with these Skarrons being techs/gunners, and Paul bypassed them as well, neutrali
zing them with his Psionics and running past, heading for the ‘bridge’ of the segment and having to climb through several levels in order to get there.
When he got inside the giant control room he pulled out his rifle and started shooting, having to throw a lot of shots into the Skarrons to take them down, then even more at the ones coming up from below to counter him with some small weapons they’d appropriated from somewhere. He took care of them as fast as he could, then those that came after him unarmed, resulting in a corpse-filled room with even more minds staying away below.
Rather than go back down after them he went for the control consoles and began inputting commands, drawing off the memories of those below when he encountered something unfamiliar, and stopping the big walker in its tracks. He ignored the questions coming in from the other crews and disconnected the forward section, a process that took an incredibly long amount of time.
When it finally separated from the other 6 pieces he walked it forward and rotated it around, powering up the plasma cannons and using a blind targeting lock to get them to remotely shoot without their gunners manually targeting each one, then began pouring plasma into the unarmored connective tissue that he’d just exposed.
Catching the other segments off guard he took the moment while the plasma was pouring out to activate the missile launchers in the uppermost section of the segment and fired on the nearby walkers…unloading the entire payload in his segment and damaging a lot of the Type-4s while pouring most of the missiles into the somewhat distant Type-2, enough at least to get through its shields and damage its armor on the starboard flank, though the thick plates and sturdy shields protected against the missiles far better than he’d expected. He’d hoped to take it down, but then again he only had the missiles in his segment to work with and the walker’s anti-air was chewing up a lot of them.