Star Force: Proving Ground (SF66)

by Jyr, Aer-ki

  Bringing a command ship down again, this time all the way to ground level, was impossible without drawing fire, for it was just too big to get under the necessary altitude, so two of the smallest drones were sent with the Canderous transport being a mere afterthought. It was headed in with a load of mechs, all of which were the remote variety that they heavily favored and could be controlled from orbit. It also meant that they were expendable and the Canderians intended to use that fact to inflict maximum damage on the lizards that had flooded what had looked to be a captive city enroute to being fully in Star Force hands.

  The fact that the enemy had baited them annoyed everyone, but the Canderians most of all. They were sending more manned mechs and infantry units via other means, but fast tracking these mechs via transport in order to get them there as soon as possible, though they knew the odds of it getting shot down before it made wall were good, hence the quick rendezvous with the two cutters that had been deployed at approximately the same time.

  Those two planned to pave the way, all the while using their strong shields and armor to weather the phaser fire long enough to inflict serious damage to the fighter swarm. They too were expendable, so long as their remains didn’t fall down and crush the very troops they were attempting to save.

  When the wisp cloud met them there was a furious exchange of fire, with the anti-air weapons on the cutters opening up and downing handfuls of fighters per second, but their larger weapons didn’t do as much damage, though they were also firing them off into the swarm and hoping to get some lucky hits. As the wisps circled around and engulfed all three ships more sammy fire sprouted from even further away as a Madcat Mark III that was jogging towards the colony opened up with its beefy anti-air batteries in the shoulder boxes and began trimming more enemy fighters out of the swarm.

  Still it wasn’t enough and the Canderous transport was forced to ground before making the wall while the two cutters pressed on, dragging a good portion of the wisps away from the Canderian ship while it unloaded its drone mechs. A few Valeries flew overhead, poaching some isolated fighters then running like hell before they could be overwhelmed, but the sky was still filled with targets and even more wisps were coming into the colony from other lizard strongholds, meaning that for as many as Star Force shot down there was no guarantee of them ever getting through the aerial cover to rescue the stranded Bsidd.

  That was unacceptable, so while even more Star Force troops were assembling to assault the lizard city the Canderian mechs ran out of their cargo bays and didn’t even bother shooting into the air, making a straight line across the sparsely wooded countryside towards the massive wall ahead as the two cutters began firing on it with their mauler and talon cannons.

  Huge chunks blew out with the hits, all the while the anti-air batteries continued to down wisps, dropping them over the already cluttered landscape like dead flies. The Canderous mechs had to avoid those, running a zigzagging pattern at times, but they still arrived at the wall before the cutters had even gotten halfway through it.

  Seeing what they were doing, a huge chunk of those fighters still hovering over the city detached and moved on the ships, firing so many pink streaks into the shields that it looked like the ship was growing a fur coat…and just the one, for nearly all the wisps’ firepower was directed away from the second. After some six minutes of concentrated attack the first cutter dropped from the sky and landed outside the wall, digging into the ground and breaking in two from the impact as already melted supports snapped, but a few weapons batteries remained operational and the remote gunners continued to use them to shoot fighters or the wall where they could.

  The flock of wisps followed the drone down and silenced those guns quickly, then they redirected to the other cutter while the Canderian transport ran for its life, already having deposited the mechs that were themselves getting chewed up from the fighters. They were firing back now while they waited to see if the second cutter could get through the wall before it went down, but to their dismay it didn’t. It had blown out a trench almost all the way through when it was knocked out of the sky, with the Canderian remote pilots immediately running their mechs into the gap before the mass of fighters could redirect their attention towards them.

  They held there, having trouble walking over the blasted rubble, but eclipsing most of the sky and firing up through the parts they could see to keep the fighters from just parking over them and shooting down. Meanwhile three of the mechs at the lead of the group began using their own smaller weapons to carve out a tunnel through the underside of the wall, which eventually took them completely out of the wisps’ firing line.

  18 of the 92 mechs were destroyed before that tunnel was completed, but when they blew out a connection to inside and could see the lizard buildings ahead the mechs ignored the fighters above and moved through the gash and onto solid ground…then started running like mad for the cover of the city buildings ahead.

  All of the mechs were thors, specially modified to fit Canderian specs, and not the fastest movers within the Star Force catalog, but they weren’t slow either, so the wisps only had a short window of opportunity to target them. They made use of it, downing another 36 before the rest finally disappeared within the city and scattered, linking up with the various clusters of Star Force troops there that already had located the best hiding spots to stay out of the fighters’ firing arcs.

  It was a costly delivery, but even one Canderian thor was invaluable when facing off with lizard infantry…though more important now was the gash in the wall, with all other ground units approaching the city directing to that spot. Likewise the lizards did as well, sending a mass of tanks to put themselves into blockade and ambush position just on the inside, intending to plug the hole rather than let the Star Force troops run the aerial gauntlet and succeed in getting a scattering of reinforcements inside.

  A group of Clan Tron ravens ran up a shallow river in single file, using the waterway to pass through the forest that was too dense for them to push through on foot. The transports that had brought them here didn’t dare risk getting anywhere close to the wall and safely dropped them off at range, allowing them to approach at their own discretion while a multitude of other units did likewise all around the perimeter so the wisps couldn’t concentrate everything they had in one location.

  This group intended to head for the gash if possible, but right now they just needed to get close to the wall and the river was the quickest way to get to the surrounding plain. When they eventually got through the trees and stomped out onto dry ground they saw the smoking remains of a hoth nearby. Its crew had been pulled out already, but the still standing corpse of a mech was a testament to the damage that wisp swarm could do if they chose to come out this far.

  They weren’t at the moment, and had only came out after the hoth when it started carving up the wall with its cleansing beam, but typically fighters couldn’t touch a mech with that heavy of armor, indicating that both the numbers and new weaponry involved were escalating this battle up to an entirely different level.

  That said, the ravens continued forward. They weren’t going to throw their mechs away needlessly, let alone their own lives with a rushed attack, but they needed to be in position to do something if an opportunity arose. Following that logic they continued to head for the wall at a position about 50 degrees north of the gash, intending to play this by ear.

  Larissa stood leaning against a wall, taking a quick breather after killing another 20 or so lizard infantry. The Bsidd with her were barricaded inside one of the lower levels of a huge building that the fighters would have a hard time tearing down even if they tried. That would give her troops time to reposition if it came to that, but it also gave them a fairly large playground to fight in without exposing themselves to the air cover and she was making the most out of that advantage.

  The lizards were still pouring troops into the building despite the number of entrances that she’d destroyed to limit the flow. There was an abundance o
f killing necessary and Larissa had already been at this for 19 hours. The Bsidd were even worse off, but she was buying them some quick naps when she could, taking the bulk of the harassment raids on herself.

  She was getting loopy though and relying on her ambrosia to keep her going. Her Inas ability had sustained her thus far, but unlike in training there was a constant flow of adrenaline here that added to the wear and tear on her body and mind, prompting her to grab even a few seconds of downtime when she could, with this bout lasting all of 27 seconds before she sensed more troops approaching around the corner in the hallway 20 meters ahead of her position.

  Pushing off the wall she gathered herself and aimed her pair of lizard phaser rifles ahead as she jogged towards them, having expended her Star Force ammunition long ago. Larissa pulled the triggers even before the first one showed its scaly head, with the first little pink flash hitting it in the armored chest as soon as it came around the corner. She peppered the next two, which had their traditional armor vests augmented with nearly full armor, leaving only their hands, feet, and head exposed. It stopped a few hits, but the potent phaser blurps eventually burnt through and took them down.

  The trailblazer would have preferred just mowing them down, for her psionics were being stretched even more than her physical body, so she compromised, throwing a Fornax field over the group as they spilled out into the hallway and began shooting back, then she ran forward a went hand to hand with them. Dropping the rifles after a few more shots, she snapped more necks than anything, eventually leaving a pile of corpses as she sensed more lizards approaching from a slightly different area of the building.

  “Archon, we have friendlies incoming, southern street entrance.”

  Larissa paused, expanding her battlemap and seeing no one there…but then again these thick lizard structures were hampering the signals to no end.

  “Who and how many?” she asked the Bsidd.

  “Scionate and 26.”

  Larissa frowned, returning to a jog towards the nearby lizards as she searched the battlemap again, expanding it out even further…then she finally saw them.

  “Cover the northwest lobby with a strike team, hit and fade if you can’t own them. I’ll get the Scionate inside,” she said, heading a different direction and leaving the nearby group of lizards to her troops. As she made her way to the south entrance she watched the battlemap, seeing the quickly moving signals hopping from one building top to another at a speed that she would have been hard pressed to match.

  There were wisps hounding them up there, but somehow they’d made it this far and she was determined to get them inside, though cursing herself for not having lugged a jump pack all this way, for there was no way she could reach the rooftop in time using the internal structure. She would have gone up the exterior, but without a jump pack her spiderman wall climbing would never get her there fast enough.

  Larissa came to the southern entrance, then telekinetically started pulling objects off the debris pile blocking the doorway before wedging herself into the gap and using her powered armor to throw the heavier pieces aside. She really wished they’d found the Jumat trigger by now, but as it was Morgan was still the only one to possess that tier 3 psionic.

  Clawing her way through the mess, she eventually broke her through into the now nighttime sky and was met by a hail of pink rifle fire. Her shields took a few hits, then a Fornax field took down the 30+ lizards waiting outside with Larissa pulling a pair of their rifles loose and shooting them down with their own weapons, finishing just as the first Scionate fell over the rooftop far above her.

  The dive slowed near the end, decelerating enough that a low flying wisp nearly rammed him as he tried to snipe the Star Force solider out of midair. Fortunately it missed, then the fighter took a nose dive down to the street and crash/skidded past Larissa, with her mind locking down the pilot’s long enough to make sure the wisp was crumpled beyond a return to flight before she reached her Ikrid out to the other fighters above as the rest of the Scionate spilled over the rooftop like a waterfall of suicide jumpers.

  With her providing psionic cover the wisps never got a good shot and three of them careened into the sides of the nearby buildings, pinballing around with two of them crashing. The third managed to bounce outside her Ikrid range and skillfully recovered quick enough to avoid a fatal smash, but limped off slowly into the sky with a dented and damaged craft.

  “Archon,” the first Scionate said as he approached her position and swung around her backside, coming up on her right flank in a guard position as he surveyed the dead lizards around her.

  “Inside,” she ordered. “Kill all you can find, but stay within the confines of the building.”

  “Gladly,” it said, running on all fours and diving into the gap in the debris still partially blocking the door while Larissa stayed put and continued to cover the others as more wisps poked their way down between the buildings. The yellow-armored cats eventually all fell safely to ground, then sprinted over to her position and followed their brethren inside, with her ducking through last and beginning to reassemble the barricade with the bits of junk she’d moved aside earlier.

  “Did you lose anyone on the way in?” she asked the three that had stayed with her.

  “Not us, but many mechs have fallen to the fighters, both Calavari and Canderous. Archon Connor sent you this,” he said, producing a small container from the pack on his armored back that rotated around his body to his belly where his paws could reach it.

  Larissa took it telekinetically then opened it with her armored hands, finding a canister of ambrosia senzu beans inside.

  “If he was here I’d kiss him,” she said, popping the seal on her helmet and telekinetically flying three of them up and into the storage slots before stowing the rest in her own pack. “The Bsidd in this building are very battle fatigued. Protect them and help me hunt the lizards. They keep sending waves into the building and I’m having a hard time covering all the angles.”

  “Hunting lizard infantry is our specialty,” the armored mask covering the Scionate’s muzzle said before turning to the right and sprinting off with the other two following on its armored tail.

  “Thank you, Connor,” she whispered, taking another few seconds for a microrest before finishing up the barricade. It wouldn’t hold up to a tank blast, but fortunately they hadn’t sent any of those to her position yet. Other Star Force units hadn’t been so lucky, but she’d cobbled together what survivors she could find and rallied them here, with none of the Bsidd mechs that she’d come across having made it this long.

  With the battlemap signal disruption being what it was, she hoped there were still others out there, but at the moment the only ones she could pick up were a trio of Calavari jamtror about two kilometers away that were poaching lizard tanks while sticking to a region of the city that had a multitude of overhangs. Larissa wanted to be out assisting them, but there was no way she was going to leave these Bsidd infantry alone. They were barely hanging on as it was, and there was no way she was going to risk them dying after all they’d done to stay alive thus far.

  She considered leaving them in the Scionate’s protection, but nixed the idea immediately. There were too many lizards still coming at them for the Scionate to handle alone, and right now her psionics were the big reason they were able to mow down so many that the Bsidd were having to assign cleaning crews to remove them from the hallways in the interim between fights to keep their bodies from clogging up their pathways and firing lines.

  No, she was going to stay put unless there were other troops nearby that she could bring back to them, and those mechs wouldn’t fit in the building. Until someone else strayed nearby she had to stay here and hold out until the rest of Star Force fought their way in to rescue them.

  3

  July 2, 2755

  Pagaliss System (lizard territory)

  Varasiss

  Kara saw the break in the fighter swarm above and leapt up from her position between two
very close buildings, shooting into the sky like a missile and arcing towards one of the nearest wisps. It didn’t respond to her approach, frozen on its current course thanks to her Ikrid as she moved up close to it and produced a small green/white orb in her hands and sent it into the hull at a range of less than 20 meters.

  The Archon curved away sharply as the fighter detonated in a confetti-like spray and headed for the next closest one as the others took notice of her position. There were only a few hundred within reliable firing range and she intended to tear up at least a third of them before having to retreat back down into the city.

  As she hunted down, froze, and destroyed her next target, a larger battle was brewing out over the gash in the wall. Star Force troops had been hammering it relentlessly and subsequently destroying a lot of the lizard tanks in the process, which had taken pressure off the city streets and the few surviving Star Force mechs roaming there. She’d been down helping them for most of the past two hours, but couldn’t miss this opportunity to strip away a bit more of the enemy air cover.

  That air cover had been continually reinforced by units coming in from other colonies now that the hidden hangars below the city had emptied themselves. Between her, the mechs, the dead drones, and the Star Force fighters operating on the periphery of the swarm, they’d killed over 120,000 wisps, but there were still more than a quarter million in operation. More than half of those were now centered over the gash and engaging a lot of mechs that were increasing the kill count drastically.

  The only infantry that had gotten into the city were through hot drops, with several Archon teams making their way across the wall at other locations while the swarm was preoccupied with the gash. Those had met heavy resistance but managed to slide through, with the lizards keeping enough fighters over all parts of the city to prevent any mass of troops from getting through and inside the barrier wall.