Star Force: Earth Evacuation

by Aer-ki Jyr

  “Brad?” Jenn asked as the beam fired again and again, but it was unlike anything else Star Force had attacking from the surface.

  “I don’t know,” he answered honestly.

  “Is that another superweapon?” Sarah asked. “It’s the same color.”

  “It’s bigger,” Jenn said, poking Brad to get his attention.

  “I think you’re right,” the ex-Commando lazily said, for his eyes were locked on the vid screen as the Dinosaur fleet suddenly started moving erratically around the edges but were locked still in the center as the big gun continued to shoot the huge egg-shaped ship that was using its own superweapon to vaporize the smaller Star Force vessels with single hits.

  But then other weird energy weapons began firing up from the same location, and as the dust and debris settled around that part of Antarctica the camera began to make out a massive, flat-topped pyramid underneath that Brad had never seen before…and for good reason, because there had been a city on top of it that had just been blown apart to reveal it.

  “V’kit’no’sat weapons,” Brad said in awe. “Has to be.”

  “What?”

  “Earth used to be theirs. They must have left something behind and we hid it this whole time. That’s why they went to Antarctica first. I was never told we had a superweapon.”

  “You mean that green/black thing is…”

  “A V’kit’no’sat building. Maybe a battlefort or something.”

  “Are we winning now?” Sarah asked.

  “I don’t know. They’re just standing there taking the shots and…oh crap, it was a trap. They didn’t know it was there. Damn, you guys are good.”

  “What?” Jenn demanded.

  “The trailblazers. They hid that superweapon underneath the city, I’d bet you anything. And look at their fleet. They’re not moving an inch in the center. We have some ships that can freeze your engines with an IDF. That means they can’t move. They’re pinned there and getting hammered.”

  “So we’re going to kill them?”

  “We are killing them, but if they can kill our interdictors they can get free and run.”

  “Running is still good if it takes them away from here,” Sarah said as the hopeless battle now looked to have taken on a whole new aspect. They saw the shields on the biggest Dinosaur ship go down and its hull start to take hits, but eventually it was able to move off and escape the range of the superweapon on Earth, though many of their other ships didn’t and when they left they left running with the Star Force fleet chasing after them.

  Jenn and Sarah felt like cheering, but they were both too unsure of what was going on to take that emotional step.

  “Brad?”

  “They still got troops on the ground, but not a lot. I think we just won round one.”

  “Round one?”

  “If that was a trap they won’t be able to do it again, and now that the V’kit’no’sat know where the superweapon is they won’t attack Antarctica again from overhead. They’ll hit Earth elsewhere and move over land to take it out, but that means they’ll have to punch a different hole in the planetary shields and I don’t think they have enough ships left to do that. They’ll have to wait for reinforcements.”

  “Wait, what reinforcements?” Sarah asked. “I thought that was all of them?”

  “They have an empire that spans half the galaxy. More will come. You can count on that.”

  “But not today?” Jenn asked, with Sarah’s expression mirroring the sentiment.

  “No, looks like we bought ourselves some time.”

  “To do what? You said they’re still coming and we can’t beat them. Can that superweapon do other things?”

  Brad looked at Sarah and sadly shook his head. “We hurt them, but given how big their empire is it’ll only be a scratch.”

  “So what now?” Jenn asked.

  “Now we wait for the evacuation order.”

  “But we just won!”

  “We won ourselves some time, and if I know the trailblazers they won’t waste it. Right now they’ve got ships to hunt down and troops on the ground to deal with, and I wouldn’t want to be them with our warships overhead.”

  “What?”

  “Military stuff. Those V’kit’no’sat ground troops are going to die soon, but there might be some hard fighting to take them out. Even if there is it won’t affect us up here. They’ll be confined to that region of Antarctica.”

  “When do we leave?” Jenn asked, pain in her eyes at the thought of what lay ahead of them.

  “When they tell us to, but right now there’s still enemy ships up there that need removed. After they’re gone I expect the evacuation plans to kick in. When that will mean us I have no idea. It’s a big planet and we’ve only got so many ships.”

  “Ok, but until then?” Sarah asked.

  “Same routine until told otherwise.”

  “Even after all this?” she said, standing up and pointing to the vid screen.

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Yeah, like do something.”

  “Trust in the plan and wait for orders. This has been a long time in coming. The trailblazers will get most of us out if we do as they say.”

  “Most?” Jenn asked, standing up next to Sarah and glaring at him.

  “It’s a big planet,” he repeated, “and the V’kit’no’sat ships are very fast. They’ll be back with more.”

  “And we’re just supposed to sit here and wait?”

  “Better than being in Antarctica,” Jenn pointed out, but she was feeling the same way.

  “Well there’s that,” Sarah agreed. “Poor bastards. They got shot by our own weapons.”

  “No,” Brad said firmly. “We wouldn’t do that.”

  “Didn’t you see that city go ‘poof’ when the superweapon fired?”

  “Didn’t you see it not fire immediately when the enemy arrived overhead? They were probably waiting until everyone evacuated from the blast zone. We don’t kill our own,” Brad said angrily. “You should know that even if you aren’t in the military.”

  Jenn put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder before she could snap back at him. “Easy.”

  Sarah glared at her for a moment then flushed her seething emotions out with a shake of her head as she closed her eyes.

  “Sorry. You’re right.”

  “Better,” Brad said, also standing with them. “We’ve known this would be coming for a long time and I promise you there is a plan in place even if I don’t know the details. We wait until we get word, then we follow instructions. The military will give us cover as we evacuate. I know that much.”

  “Why didn’t they tell us this was coming?” Jenn demanded.

  “To avoid this reaction and a lot of pointless worry. Come on, let’s get out of here and do something. Europe is safe for the rest of today, I can promise you that.”

  “Do what?” Sarah asked.

  “Anything. Spend some credits, run some miles, whatever. This is going to be the new normal and it’s better to process it while doing something else. Standing still and endlessly worrying will get you twisted up into a paranoid mess.”

  Jenn grabbed Sarah’s hand and gave it a good squeeze. “He’s right. We need some air.”

  “I feel sick.”

  “Me too, which is why we need some air.”

  “How long before they can come back?” Sarah asked the ex-Commando.

  “If they’re nearby, weeks. If not it’ll be months. Space is big and it takes time to travel across it, even for the V’kit’no’sat.”

  “Weeks? Fine then, let’s do something, because I think my head is about to explode.”

  “You’ll adjust,” Brad promised. “A lot of people are in shock right now.”

  “Where out there is it safe to run to?” Jenn asked. “The Nexus?”

  “I was never told that, but it’s a big galaxy.”

  “So we run and hide or die?”

  “I…don’t…know,” Brad said slowly. �
��Trust the Archons, they’ll know what to do. They always have, and they just got us our first victory.”

  “With a trick,” she pointed out.

  “A win is a win and we’re still standing here worrying. Start walking and we’ll figure this out on the go. Right now we need activity.”

  “Fine,” Jenn agreed reluctantly. “Let’s go.”

  “Come on,” Brad said, grabbing each one of them by a hand. “I’ll look after you both, I promise.”

  The official evacuation order didn’t come down for another 3 days, but there were lots of housekeeping instructions and explanations prior to it that gave some people work to do, but both Sarah and Jenn no longer had jobs to occupy their time. Most of the private corporations were closing shop, now that luxury items were pointless when you couldn’t take them with you. Only the Star Force-operated shops remained open, and even those weren’t seeing a lot of activity.

  The entertainment districts were the reverse, for people were flooding into them in order to take their mind off their worries or to spend up their remaining credits while they had a use for them on anything that could distract their attention away from the impending doom. That didn’t change when the evacuation order came down, because most of the people on Earth weren’t going anywhere…at least not right away.

  “What the hell!” Jenn yelled at Brad when he came back to their quarters after finishing a workout.

  “What?” he asked, seeing that Sarah was nowhere around.

  “That’s what,” she said, jabbing a finger at the vid screen and the enormous evacuation ships that had arrived out of nowhere. Each was more than 400 miles long and could hold an insane amount of people, but as had been noted there were only 18 of the ships here at present to assist the ‘smaller’ normal vessels with evacuation out of the system, meaning they had a lot of round trips to make wherever they were going.

  Brad watched the news feed for a minute, seeing that it wasn’t a Star Force channel, and the reporter was quite angry that the first ‘people’ that Project Galactica, as the superships were called, was going to evacuate were the various animal races held in Earth’s sanctuaries.

  “What’s the problem?” Brad asked mockingly, though he was slightly peeved at her problem with it.

  “My problem? Humans should be going first. Cats and dogs and cows last.”

  “The weakest and least able to defend themselves go first,” Brad corrected.

  “Even if some Humans die later because there’s not enough time to evacuate everyone?”

  “Yes,” he said firmly. “We don’t betray anyone.”

  “They’re dogs, Brad, dogs!”

  “And they deserve to live too. They are our responsibility and we’re not going to leave them here to die.”

  “What if we’re the ones that get left!”

  “The military are going to be the last ones out. We’ll go before them.”

  “I can’t believe you! Star Force having the sanctuaries is a waste of resources anyway, but to put the animals above Humans is just wrong!”

  “If we’re going to die,” Brad said, his anger turning his tone cold rather than bombastic, “then we die with honor. We don’t trade lives, barter lives, or betray lives. We try to save everyone, regardless of whether or not we succeed. Those least able to defend themselves and those most valuable go first. We are neither, so we wait our turn.”

  “How can you be so cold about this? People are going to die!”

  “Stress brings out true colors. I’m sorry to say I keep forgetting how little training the maturia actually gives you.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “You’re panicking.”

  “No, this isn’t panic. It’s anger. The animals don’t matter when Human lives are in jeopardy.”

  “You need to stop watching this trash,” Brad said, changing the channel to the official Star Force news vid.

  “It’s not trash, it’s the truth. Why are you siding with Star Force?”

  “I am Star Force, and so are you.”

  “I’m a civilian, and so are you. We don’t have to think like they do.”

  “Their thinking is the only reason we’re still alive right now. They know what they’re doing.”

  “Like hell they do. Animals first? What kind of bull shit is that!”

  “Stop calling them animals. All races have different attributes. Humans aren’t the smartest, you know.”

  “That’s debatable.”

  “Just because someone is less capable doesn’t meant they don’t have an equal right to live.”

  “I’m not saying we should start killing them and eating their bodies. I’m saying that if we have to pick and choose who lives Humans should come first.”

  “And what about the Bsidd, Calavari, Kiritas, Irondel…you think Humans should come before them?”

  “They can all talk, Brad.”

  “So can some dogs.”

  “Barely, but that’s not the point. They’re not on our level.”

  “That is why they need more protection, not less.”

  Jenn put her hand on her forehead and closed her eyes. “I can’t believe we are having this conversation.”

  “Neither can I, because it’s a moot point. The decision has been made and we don’t get a say. The trailblazers and Monarchs are in control, and despite what those rag news vids say, they do know what they’re doing.”

  “Well maybe they shouldn’t be.”

  “Now you are talking crazy. Snap out of it, please. I’d like Jenn back.”

  “This is Jenn you’re talking with.”

  “No, it’s some panicked crazy person ready to throw everyone else to the monsters to save herself. You’re better than that.”

  “If it comes down to a matter of picking and choosing…”

  “You have combat training. All Humans have combat training from the maturia. The races in the sanctuaries do not. We can’t even warn them about what’s coming because they won’t understand. We have to get them out of here first along with the younglings.”

  “The younglings I can understand,” she said, referring to those Humans still in the maturia whether they be infants all the way up to young adults.

  “Well then you’re only half crazy,” he said as the news vid suddenly switched over to a camera shot from in near the star. It was showing one of the incoming jumppoints for interstellar traffic as dozens of huge Star Force jumpships were arriving, but they were of slightly different design. There were already several hundred gathered near the jumppoint, each of which carried more of the drone warships that Star Force remotely piloted to keep their naval combat losses restricted to equipment rather than people.

  But these ships didn’t have Humans on them, for they had come from another part of the empire in response to the distress calls sent out from Earth.

  “What now?” Jenn asked, seeing his concern.

  “Doing the right thing may not always seem the best thing to do when you’re in a panic, but it does have its advantages. If Star Force put Humans first, then we never would have rescued and annexed the Bsidd…and look who’s showing up to help provide us cover while we evacuate.”

  “Why wouldn’t they come? They take orders from the Archons like everyone else.”

  “There are plenty of Bsidd worlds out there that the V’kit’no’sat are likely to hit later. Why should they waste ships here defending Humans when they could save them to defend other Bsidd?”

  “We’re all Star Force, so why would that matter?”

  “Exactly. We’re all Star Force, right down to the refugees we take in from across the galaxy and the races too primitive to care for themselves that we support in the sanctuaries. We live as one, we fight as one, and if necessary we die as one. Nobody gets betrayed, nobody gets left behind, nobody gets discarded. You and I will wait our turn. The sanctuaries get emptied first and the Bsidd are coming to help make sure we all get out alive.”

  4

  July 3, 3604

/>   Solar System

  Earth

  Two years. It had been two years since the Dinosaurs…correction, since the V’kit’no’sat attacked and had not returned to Earth. They’d been sighted elsewhere, looking, scouting, but not fighting. Some people suggested that they might not return, that the defeat they’d suffered at the hands of Star Force had scared them off, but no Star Force officials had ever said that and Jenn and Sarah, while hoping that it was true, had Brad telling them all along that they’d be back, and now they were.

  They came back with 20 times as many ships as before, but were met with an even larger Star Force defense fleet drawn from across the empire to oppose them. There were more than just the Human and Bsidd ships. The Protovic were here, and the Calavari, and the Trinx, and even more subfactions of Star Force all under the combined command of 13 out of the 100 trailblazers. Having even 1 in a system was rare, though this was Earth and Sarah had heard of when there were 2 stationed here or a few more temporarily came back for a meeting or something, but 13 was unheard of.

  There was no ambush of the incoming ships like before, and after several scouts arrived and fled, the V’kit’no’sat came in on a very obscure jumpline so they could secure a foothold in the system to deliver their full fleet. After an initial fight there the enemy had driven straight to Earth, ignoring all the other planets and space stations. They had one target and one target only, and it looked like there was nothing that was going to stand in their way.

  And with them came not one, but two giant ships that the girls now knew were called Mach’nel and were very rare in the V’kit’no’sat fleet. Both contained superweapons, but neither attacked Antarctica. Instead they pushed in and fought the Star Force fleet over South America where the planetary defenses, combined with the fleet in orbit, made the V’kit’no’sat pay a very heavy price to get through the planetary shields, including damaging one Mach’nel so bad it had to withdraw from the system, but they couldn’t stop them from breaching the shields and landing troops on the ground.

  Sarah and Jenn were with Brad in their quarters when the breakthrough came, and they watched as the huge V’kit’no’sat ships descended through the atmosphere and parked over cities in Brazil and pounded them into oblivion even as the Star Force fleet fired into the ships from above and below. Evacuation orders had gone out for the affected areas as soon as the planetary shields over top of them had begun taking hits, but according to the reports it hadn’t been soon enough and a lot of people were getting caught in the orbital bombardment.