1
March 3, 2549
Devox System (Lizard territory)
Yavvi
Kara clung to the hull of the lizard cruiser, nestled up against one of the many lumps on the hull and doing her best to blend in. Her shadow mode wasn’t active, but her Vorch’nas armor had adjusted its color to match the yellow/tan ship as she pressed her body up against it in the void of space doing her best imitation of Spider Man…though to be truthful the wall crawler had nothing on the Zen’zat. With her armor providing and recycling her oxygen supply, the Archon patiently rode the enemy cruiser as it rejoined up with the rest of the lizard fleet, with her already having spent over 8 hours bouncing from ship to ship.
Her quiet, dangerous little game was about to pay off for this cruiser was pulling up into escort position along with dozens of others around the assault pillar that was her target. The 93 kilometer long siege weapon was orbiting one of the lizards’ strongholds 73 lightyears from the ADZ border, with Kara having snuck into the system via warship before being deposited into the upper atmosphere via a quick drone drop off. From there she’d made her way across the planet and hopped a ride up into the lizards’ orbital facilities.
Now that the cruiser was pulling up nearby the assault pillar she shifted her armor into shadow mode…nulling out almost all of the bounce back radiation that eyes and sensors saw with and becoming a black spot on the hull. She jumped off it, clearing the cruiser and flying across the gap to the assault pillar. Both ships had their shields down, for as far as they knew there was no enemy presence within the system.
This fleet was being assembled for another strike on the ADZ, presumably one of the Sentinel strongholds. To date they’d destroyed 7 of the defensive emplacements, but not enough to get at any particular world. Unlike the Skarrons they preferred to knock on the door rather than run troops down to the surface, which was probably due to their history with Star Force and their penchant for orbital bombardment. The lizards needed to secure orbit before any planetary assault, and in order to do that they had to take down the Sentinels.
The assault pillars were the key to doing that without egregious losses, and more and more were beginning to show up in systems near the ADZ. Star Force and the Hycre were pulling regular reconnaissance missions to hopefully give themselves a heads up for any future assaults, but there were so many systems and places to hide a fleet that it was nearly impossible to find something that someone wanted to keep hidden. Fortunately the lizards didn’t appear to be playing coy, and had this assault pillar sitting in orbit around one of their larger and known worlds.
Where it was going Kara didn’t know, or rather where the lizards planned to take it. She knew where it was going, if the Archon had her way, as she sailed across the gap and landed on the giant ship’s hull with her yellow/tan armor reappearing and blending in. She held steady for nearly a minute, checking the area to make sure she’d gone unseen, then she began crawling across the surface of the ship using grip points on her fingers to pull her along as she drifted weightless.
Already having a schematic on file in her armor, she navigated her way to one of the anti-air batteries and nestled up against it. Using her Dre’mo’don condensed into a fine beam she began cutting through the weapon very carefully, tearing out pieces without disconnecting them completely so they wouldn’t float off and be spotted. She opened a hole in the casing and crawled inside halfway, continuing to cut and reposition various components like a mole digging through dirt until she got to a fiber bundle.
Kara grabbed it and extruded tiny mechanical tendrils from her armor that physically hacked in, allowing her to cut the battery off from remote control and keep it from throwing up any mechanical failure flags. With that software blind spot established she began cutting more freely, pulling her body all the way in and moving through the hole in the thick hull armor that the weapon was concealed within.
There was no gunnery chair or control station attached to it, for it was merely a remotely controlled turret. The gunnery station was nearby, set in a small cluster of others, so all Kara had to deal with was machinery as she slowly moved her way through the innards of the ship’s skin, eventually coming to an atmospheric inner liner. Since she’d cut her way through the outer one already she had to reconfigure her shields to cover the panel she was now cutting into. When the hole in it formed and she removed the small plate, the atmosphere didn’t begin to rush out as it otherwise would have, giving her enough time to slide through into the small maintenance crawlway on the other side, turn around, and reseal the panel in place.
It took some extra melting to get the material to fill the tiny gap her cutting had created, but once she got a good seal she released the shield cover and began crawling through the ship. Kara avoided the hallways and stuck to the maintenance areas, most of which were not head height. The lizards crawled as well as they walked, so all of the access shafts in these areas were about a meter high, forcing her to do the same. Given the size of the ship it took her hours to reach the area she wanted, but eventually she came to the navigational control nexus with the enemy fleet and crew completely unaware that she was there.
Still in the maintenance areas, she found the control line that came from the bridge to the nexus and hacked in again. She cut off all control signals from the helm, which wasn’t hard considering how primitive their computer systems were. Kara also felt the same way about Star Force’s own tech, for she’d gotten so used to using the dragon tech that she wore as a permanent part of her body that everything else seemed downright pathetic in comparison. The upgrades the dragon had made to her mind had also considerably changed her…not in mood or character, but by giving her a great deal of knowledge that the other Archons lacked.
No matter how much she shared with the others they would never understand. She not only knew about computer systems, she was permanently linked to them via her Vorch’nas, and over the years had gotten used to interfacing in that way…making this type of hack extremely easy.
With the bridge cut off she took control of the ship’s engines, running a quick diagnostic and ensuring that they were fully functional before powering them up. She issued movement orders to the escort fleet around her, indicating that the big ship was going to reposition and that they needed to get out of the way. It was exactly the type of thing the bridge would send, except they were completely in the dark up until the giant needle began to twist to starboard and lightly accelerate…with the cruisers matching its movements.
Kara figured they were beginning to panic, or would shortly, when they realized they’d lost control. Then again they could all be napping, giving that the ship hadn’t moved from its current orbit in the past 19 days according to the navigational logs. Regardless, Kara didn’t care how they reacted. They didn’t know where she was and they weren’t going to find her any time soon…not that it would make much of a difference if they did.
Very slowly the giant assault pillar transitioned over to a jumppoint with hails being sent by a number of lizard superiors inquiring as to what was going on. Kara didn’t have access to those from her current position, for the line she was tapped into only held the navigational operations and it was an isolated system…deliberately so, making it impossible for an outside source to access their computer systems and interfere with things like maintaining orbit.
But she wasn’t on the outside, she was inside their giant chess piece and moving it out away from the planet…and dragging the escort fleet with it. Whether they knew or not what was happening they maintained their position, possibly on the orders of others to stay with the ship until they figured out what was going on.
102 cruisers jumped with it, as Kara gave them the appropriat
e navigational linkup to execute a fleet jump. Several preceded it, with most following a few seconds back as they headed for another planet in the system. It was uninhabited, with the assault pillar leaving the bulk of the lizard fleet behind and transitioning to the gas giant and its six moons while leaving the lizard bridge crew at wit’s end.
Kara moved the assault pillar into orbit of the largest moon and sent out a beacon pulse from her armor powerful enough to get through the mass of material around her, then she input some final holding commands into the navigational nexus and abandoned her position. Finally she worked her way out of the maintenance areas and into the walkways, stretching a bit as she stood up, then took off down one with a three step run before leaning forward and transitioning into a superman/flash pose and flew down the hallway, knocking over the first lizard she encountered with a hefty shoulder hit.
Given how large the ship was, running would take too long and she didn’t want to use the internal transit system…for that could be shut down and she just didn’t like the idea of waiting for them to come at her. She wanted to be on the offensive, so she flew through the corridors with her feet only inches off the ground and made her way to where she knew there was a link into the main computer system nearly 3 kilometers away.
She rendered the two lizards in that room unconscious with a single thought, knocking them out via Ikrid as she walked over and punched her armored hand into one of the consoles and hacked into the system, giving her access to the majority of the ship’s primary functions not on deliberate isolation. With them she was able to access the ship’s sensors, comms, and weapons control. She shut off the later, taking down the sensor link to all the gun turrets on the behemoth…leaving them able to shoot but blind as to what they were shooting at.
The camera feeds from the batteries themselves she also took out with a simple virus added to the system, but she still maintained her uncorrupted view of the mounting space battle outside as the Hycre fleet that had been lying in wait on the far side of the moon came around and began trashing the escort cruisers.
Kara took the assault pillar’s shields down as well, with a handful of the Hycre’s beautiful warships hitting the armor plating around the gravity drive and beginning to cut their way through as the rest of the fleet quickly cleaned up the easy ambush, which many of the naval specialists referred to as a ‘gank,’ which was a gaming term meaning the ‘blindsiding of the enemy from concealment.’
That concealment now gone, the lizard fleet around Yavvi was immediately alerted by the escort cruisers and began to move out to the jumppoint. That only gave the Hycre a short window of opportunity, but in those free minutes they killed 95 of the escort cruisers with the other 7 successfully running away, trying to draw pursuit off and buy time for the assault pillar but the Hycre didn’t take the bait. With its escorts now gone they turned on the giant ship and began targeting specific areas and hammering on the thick armor protecting the vital systems.
The weapons were another matter, with those being located in openings on the hull…and without the shields they were completely exposed. Many of the Hycre ships went for the main weapon, firing up the ‘barrel’ and slagging the interior while the rest ignored the defensive weapons, knowing they could easily be replaced after a quick stint in a shipyard. They needed to severely wound the gravity drives so it would stay put in orbit. Kara could have taken the ship and let it fall into the moon, or even the gas giant or star. She didn’t feel comfortable with slaughtering the crew like that, but there was also another reason for leaving it be.
The Hycre had been operating in this system for a while now, mostly reconnaissance missions and a few isolated hits, but with only one inhabited planet for them to guard the lizard fleet was massed in orbit around it, making any small scale action virtually impossible. If the assault pillar was stranded here, in orbit around a 2nd location, the lizards would have to split their forces or leave it unguarded. If they left it unguarded the Hycre would finish it off, nipping at it until it was just a floating carcass. If the lizards defended it or tried to bring in enough tugs to move it to a shipyard then that would offer up options for smaller scale engagements…and if they brought over their massive fleet from the planet then the Hycre could strike there when they weren’t guarding their orbital infrastructure.
Either way it changed the playing field while taking one of their key pieces out of the picture for a while and putting an end to whatever near future mission they had planned…which spared an ADZ system from getting hit and bought them more time to build Sentinels and defensive fleets.
That was why Kara had elected to stay on the lizard front rather than transitioning over to fight the Skarrons. While she could do a lot in direct battle, she was the only one who had the Vorch’nas and could go on these insane clandestine missions that would prevent attacks on the ADZ, potentially saving many lives but more importantly hardware that would be destroyed even if all the people were preserved. Given the attrition that Star Force was facing fighting on two fronts, keeping the lizards off their backs and letting their defenses swell was oh so critical.
That, and she just liked messing with the enemy’s big ships.
With her sabotage efforts done, Kara flew through the assault pillar’s interior not even aware of the pounding it was taking. Nothing could be heard or felt where she was at, for the ship was just that freaking huge. That said, she still had her own sensors and was able to pick up the Hycre signals between their ships and tap into their own version of a battlemap…though they didn’t know that she could.
Picking a spot on the hull that wasn’t under attack, she headed for one of the many small hangar bays and knocked aside the lizards in her way with either brute force or telekinesis as she coasted up to the doors. She opened them with a casual button press and walked through, launching herself over to the control station and barging her way inside. She waved a hand at the occupants theatrically and the six standard variety lizards dropped unconscious along with one librarian. Putting them into a deep sleep via ‘the Force’ she walked over and activated the bay doors.
When they began to part she walked back out into the bay, knocking down a pair of armed guards heading her way with an invisible Lachka punch that felt like a crate hitting their scaly faces. One was rendered unconscious by the hit, with the other squirming around stunned but trying to get back on its feet and to its weapon as quickly as possible.
Kara ignored them and flew off across the deck, zigzagging through the various ships and darting out through the atmospheric shield and the crack in the doors. Once into open space she activated her beacon and let the Hycre know where she was. Using the gravity drives in her armor she flew a curved course up and around the massive ship, heading for one Hycre cruiser in particular as it pounded on the assault pillar.
It opened a portion of its shields and let her in to one of its airlocks. She ducked inside and let the exterior doors reseal, then the inside of the small cubicle filled with the hot, thick, sulfur-laced atmosphere that the Hycre lived in. Her armor didn’t mind and she walked inside, heading through the ship and passing several of the floating gas-bags until she got to the chamber where they wanted her.
It was several stories tall, with Hycre floating through it at various altitudes. She flew up a level and sat on a support pylon jutting out from the wall to connect to a workstation. Keeping out of their way she sat and waited, watching their sensor feeds in her HUD as they pounded the assault pillar and eventually broke through its armor, getting at the sensitive interior.
When the lizard fleet began to arrive the Hycre took the opportunity to kill a few of their cruisers, then as the numbers swelled and they’d done sufficient damage to the assault pillar they began to withdraw using their superior binary drives to pull away from the lizards at range, but still able to fire cleansing beams back at them.
They stuck around the edges for some 20 minutes sniping the lizards before they came out after them in packs of 30+ ships to one…but
it wasn’t until the lizards began to backdoor the Hycre and try to pinch them off with other sneaky attempted ganks did the Hycre eventually withdraw. Some of the ships stayed in the system, bouncing off to other gravity wells and putting themselves outside of lizard sensor range waiting for an opportunity to jump back in and kill a ship or two.
Kara’s cruiser took her back to the two stars at system center, allowing her to transition over to the Star Force warship waiting there. Her task done, it jumped out of the system and she headed over to the sanctum for a quick run to flush out the stagnation she’d been accumulating from sitting and waiting for so long…then she got some much needed sleep. When she woke she headed back to the sanctum for some real workouts as the warship took her to the next location on her hit list.
And that list was growing with each year that passed.
2
April 21, 2549
Reesi System (Beta Region)
Metropolis
Ikki watched the countdown inside his Valerie cockpit anxiously, wanting to get out into clean air but still tucked up inside the carrier that was just now entering the atmosphere. The big ship served as his Axius squadron’s mobile base of operations and had just entered the system via jumpship, detached, and was now making its way down to the planet under naval escort. According to the battlemap telemetry the Skarron navy was doing their best to get at the carrier and other vessels but the Star Force drones were holding them at bay, giving them their window of opportunity to get down to the planet.
Metropolis was a Human/Kiritak world on the border of the ADZ and one of the more recent Skarron invasion points. The fighting had stalled in orbit just like everywhere else as the Sentinels kept the enemy pinned to higher orbits aside from staged runs down to the surface to escort troops, with the heavy fighting occurring planetside. Metropolis was badly in need of reinforcement, having already lost one of its three large continents to the enemy, but with so many engagement zones across the ADZ reinforcements were hard to come by.
Star Force: Backdoor (SF53) Page 1