Star Force: Proving Ground (SF66)

by Jyr, Aer-ki

  Morgan had come in with one of those teams, meaning that there were now three trailblazers on site, if she included herself. Had either of them asked she would have linked up and used their battlemeld abilities against the still numerous sea of infantry inside the city, but Kara knew as well as they did that her armor gave her too many combat options to keep her reserved to commando work, and that the biggest problem right now was the air cover, hence her taking out groups of fighters whenever she could.

  With more and more heading to reinforce the gash against a third drone warship making its way there she now had a lessened concentration above the buildings, yet still far too many for the mechs to come out into broad daylight. As she zipped about taking down wisps while the others nearby tried to regroup to mass fire on her, Kara noticed another lizard convoy coming in over land on the opposite side from the gash. There was probably at least 20,000 more fighters providing air cover for it, with so many tanks and transports that it was clear that the lizards badly wanted this colony held for some reason.

  When Kara eventually had her shields ripped off by the mounting phaser fire she dipped back down below the rooftops and lost her pursuit, ending up clinging to a wall in shadow mode and watching the approaching convoy as one of the wall segments in their path began to lower back into the ground. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, but for some reason this convoy hadn’t been hit on its way in…and it was probably due to that excessive amount of air cover. The lizards were notorious for learning and adapting, and it looked like they’d taken a cue from the burning hulks of ground transports stretching out in lines around the colony resulting from their previous failed attempts to reinforce the city.

  Suppressing a long string of cussing, Kara slid down the side of the building and kept to the shadows as she moved through the city, stopping only once to kill a group of lizards that were moving about in small number and out in the open as she headed to where the reinforcement convoy was now coming through the mechanically created gap.

  She waited amongst the buildings as the tanks rolled in and crossed the plain that separated wall from city, letting them get just onto the streets before she jumped out from the side and stuck herself to the first tank where it couldn’t shoot her, nor could the ones behind it. She summoned up a large energy orb and used it to melt through the armor with a single hit, then sent a second one inside that detonated and shredded both the crew and interior components while leaving the outer shell visibly intact.

  The hovering tank dropped to the ground, blocking a third of the street, and Kara jumped to the next few repeating the process and creating a blockade of junk as a mix of phaser bursts and large plasma orbs rained down on her and the dead tanks simultaneously. She weathered a few glancing hits to kill one more, then flew off down the street and turned a corner, getting out of their firing lines.

  A huge pink beam passed over the city with a telltale buzz, but from the angle she knew it had come from another colony. When it abated she heard other faint buzzes, immediately flying up to building top level and taking a look despite the trio of wisps that noticed her and fired bad shots in her direction.

  Another huge beam passed over the city and she could see many others crossing the landscape from other neighboring colonies and converging on a point back inside what was now Star Force territory…where she saw a distant, but huge mass coming across the ground. Kara did a double take as her battlemap tagged it as the Ironstrike, one of the command ships in the orbiting fleet. It had come down to ground level but was so massive that it couldn’t get below the closest of the neighboring colonies’ firing lines and was taking heavy fire head on.

  Kara finally paid attention to the wisps and flew up to meet them, killing two before heading back down into the city and avoiding the pursuit that inevitably followed from 50 more nearby. She cycled around through a few blocks then came up on a more concealed perch so she could see with her own eyes what was happening.

  The giant grey donut got larger and larger on the horizon, but was still so far away that she could easily see around either side. With her armor enhancing her sight she was able to zoom in and confirm that its shields were still up, but those planetary defense beams had to have been hitting it hard. Like a giant tsunami coming towards them the Ironstrike grew larger and larger, eventually becoming its own mountain range before it even got close to the boundary wall.

  But it didn’t have to get too close before its cleansing beam leapt out and backtracked one of the pink beams to a neighboring colony, returning the attack on the distant defense tower even as the mass of weaponry coating its hull began firing at the wisp swarm whether they were designed for it or not. Kara saw several bloons launched into the mass, followed by Ta’lin’yi and maulers in addition to an insane number of anti-air batteries mainly designed to shoot down missiles, but that proved to work equally well against fighters.

  As awe inspiring as that was, it didn’t dawn on Kara what they were doing until the ship reached the edge of the swarm near the wall gash and a warning was sent out over the battlemap to get indoors and under any available cover immediately.

  She held her position, eagerly awaiting what was coming. As the swarm looked to hold its ground and continue firing on the Star Force troops at the gash until the last moment, an IDF field expanded out from the command ship and caught them all in its grasp. Suddenly the gravity of the planet disappeared from their point of view and with it the ability for them to maneuver with their anti-grav…leaving them floating in midair on whatever trajectory they previously had.

  With them incapacitated most of the fire coming down to the surface ended as they were no longer to aim properly, but as the first of the planetary defense beams got through the Ironstrike’s shields and blasted a huge crater in its armor the ship continued to move forward at considerable speed. The mass of air preceding it knocked the fighters askew, then the hull hit and splattered the wisps like bugs against a windshield.

  The command ship mowed down so many of them that they fell like bits of yellow/tan hail down to the surface. That storm continued up to the wall, covering the mechs that were fighting their way to the gash and then on in to the outer buildings. Before long the edge of the donut passed over Kara’s head and knocked the wisps out of the sky right down on top of her.

  She held her ground, mentally calculating their fall angles and having to jump aside once to avoid a collision. Once the forward edge of the massive ship was past her she saw hundreds, if not thousands of wisps flying around beneath it that hadn’t been caught up in the IDF, or held there long enough. Using the battlemap she confirmed that the field was only extended off the front of the ship, so Kara jumped back into the sky and started hunting the remaining wisps aggressively now that their concentration had diminished to almost nothing and they were scattered about with plenty of room for her to maneuver beneath that beautiful donut.

  As she flew to her first target she noticed on her sensors as chunks of the command ship also began to fall to ground as the planetary defense phasers carved up the outer layers now that the shields were down.

  Larissa was running down one of the city streets with two Scionate pacing her when the ‘duck and cover’ order came in, but they were being pursued by a pair of tanks at the time and didn’t have the luxury of doing so. They’d been probing a large infantry gathering point and bit off more than they could chew when several nearby buildings began producing far more infantry than they had previously contained, indicating a high probability of additional tunnels beneath this section of cityscape.

  The tanks she could have taken on her own with her psionics, even fried as she was, but with infantry pacing them there was no way she could knock all of them down and kill the tanks at the same time, so the only legitimate option she had was to run, regroup, and find some other place to probe to keep the lizards’ attention off her Bsidd and more to their own defense.

  With each corner they turned they got a brief respite from the weaponsfire,
but there were multiple groups of lizards now pursuing them, including a handful of fighters that ventured down into the narrower city streets. One of those that got too close Larissa snagged and had it swivel about and fire on one of the tanks, delivering a pink phaser burst into the yellow/tan hull armor.

  After that she lost contact with both, running out of controlling range for the fighter and turning yet another corner as they zigzagged their way back into ‘friendly’ territory where the rest of the Scionate and a small group of Archons were patrolling and hunting down any small lizard teams that ventured inside.

  By the time she and the two Scionate reached that zone the sky disappeared a la Independence Day as the command ship moved over the city, plowing into the wisps and gratuitously knocking them out of the sky…save for the fact that she was running where some of them were falling.

  With a telepathic urge she sent the Scionate over to the nearest wall and joined them in running there, hoping that the wisp pieces would bounce off the walls and not hit the ground within a few meters of the buildings. She was right for the most part, but they did get sprayed with small debris twice as impacts on both the ground and the buildings above threw components and glass everywhere.

  Larissa’s shields held up to that sandblast, but the street was literally dotted with dead fighters and she assumed a great deal more were covering the rooftops, which fortunately were more or less flat in most cases, else they’d been funneling all the wisp remains down to the streets. The Scionate likewise were alright tucked up alongside the wall and the three of them continued running back into friendly territory, with the giant ship above them entirely eclipsing the sky but not firing down on the remaining fighters.

  For a moment Larissa wondered why, since after the ‘duck and cover’ order had been given there shouldn’t have been anyone in the streets to get hit by misses, then she saw several squadrons of Star Force skeets and Valeries making their way overhead and engaging the remaining wisps directly, along with Kara’s signal that was prominently displayed on the battlemap so everyone involved would be aware that she was there when often they couldn’t see her, given her body’s tiny size compared to the fighters.

  That and she was a badass, so she might as well have a badass marker on the battlemap.

  Larissa likewise had one of her own on the ground, letting all other nearby units know where she was at a glance rather than potentially lose her small dot in the mix of others. Right now Morgan’s icon was half a city away, with the full battlemap returning now that there was a Star Force command ship and fighters overhead to relay the weaker signals around the buildings.

  To her relief she saw many active Bsidd units scattered across the battlefield, but at a glance she knew there was less than 10% of what had originally been here, with the ‘down’ markers covering the city in large clumps.

  Before she could pull up a count of all markers that had gone offline, either destroyed or deactivated since the beginning of the ambush, the command ship began pulling back with large ‘no-go’ boxed popping up and traveling along with it as large chunks of the ship’s forward end were falling off and crushing buildings below.

  “Oh shit,” she said, realizing just how much damage it was taking and stopping in her tracks. The Scionate nearly ran over her, but skidding to a halt a few meters past as they jumped to her outer flank. “Stay here and be ready to run, warning or not. Keep your eyes up.”

  Larissa did likewise, watching both the battlemap and the sky as the sun returned underneath the retreating edge of the ship. Just then another thick pink beam hit and a chunk over her fell off. The trailblazer didn’t move, even as the warning box fell on them at the last moment as the ship’s computer estimated the general area that was vulnerable. It didn’t have time to calculate individual pieces, for there wasn’t that much distance for them to fall, so it was giving generous measurements.

  Larissa watched the building-sized chunk detach and gravity take hold of it. “Stay put,” she said, eyes up as it fell perilously close, landing on the roof of the building they were hunkered up against and pancaking the top. She couldn’t see the impact, but a moment later the upper levels puffed out debris that began to rain down on them, then a waterfall of material followed it over, soon to add to the wisp debris clogging the street.

  “Follow me!”

  Larissa took off across the street, dodging a big piece that came down and taking them into a zone between the dusty waterfalls that followed. A few bits hit her shields and bounced off, with a huge chunk hitting and half burying itself in the street to their left while a pile of debris fell and built up on top of it, as well as one to their right.

  The next thing she knew dust from both flowed out like clouds and covered the area, making it so none of them could see what was around them.

  Larissa clicked on her Pefbar and mentally linked to the two Scionate, giving them a bit of her psionic vision as well as the ability to warn them if any more chunks came down towards them, though she couldn’t see the top of the building and would only have a split second to react if something did come within her range. Sending calming ‘hold’ orders telepathically, she had them wait with her while the building continued to crumble, eventually losing the majority of the top 5 levels as the command ship segment imbedded itself as the crowning ornament on the lizard structure.

  “I think we’re in the clear,” she said, mentally telling them which way to head. “Let’s try and get out of these clouds…then we have a ground war to fight.”

  “The lizard fighters are gone,” one of the Scionate commented as he looked at the battlemap.

  “Most of them,” Larissa agreed. “We’ll have troop transports on the way and mechs coming in through the gash shortly.”

  “Are we evacuating or fighting this out?”

  “The wounded will be pulled out, but we’re definitely killing these bastards here and now.”

  The pair of Scionate growled appreciatively inside their armor.

  “Thought you’d feel that way. Come on, let’s go find that group we were just playing with and reintroduce ourselves.”

  4

  July 6, 2755

  Pagaliss System (lizard territory)

  Varasiss

  Morgan ran ahead of the Ninja Monkey Regulars, leaping up onto the side of one of the shorter buildings in the city and climbing the rest of the way to the top. From there she sprinted across to the far side while her troops circumvented it around the perimeter and began to engage the lizard infantry on street level that had bunkered themselves behind a series of what looked to be premade blockades and a courtyard with an overhang that prevented attack from the air.

  Or mostly, for when Morgan reached the edge of the building she jumped off shallowly and fell down between the wall and the edge of the giant infrastructure umbrella that was concealing the courtyard, slipping through the two meter gap and landing on top of a trio of standard variant lizards that were seated in the shadows below eating some of their battlefield rations.

  With a thought she knocked them and the dozen or so nearest her to the ground with a Fornax field, then ignored them and ran further under the canopy towards the back lines of the mass of troops heading to engage her Clan infantry out and around the corner. She didn’t even bother to pull out a weapon, merely throwing a few Fornax blasts to her left and right to stop enemy phaser fire from coming her way as she barreled into the back of the crowd and punched right into the midst of them, pulling a few aside with telekinetic grips and tossing them through the air and out of the way, but mostly she fought her way inside hand to hand until she was buried amongst the horde.

  Suddenly a wave of bodies surged up over her head and pushed outward, scattering like leaves as she started throwing concussive energy around. Morgan moved through their ranks like a snow plow, knocking them aside and unconscious in many situations from the blunt force until she worked her way up to the front lines and attacked the barricades from behind. They were several meters thick an
d seemed to have extruded from the street…and would have been impossible to blow through with only infantry weapons in any realistic amount of time, but she spotted a control station imbedded into the wall on her left as a handful of lizards managed pointblank shots into her shields.

  She tossed them aside casually with another Jumat burst from her left arm and ran up to the terminal, physically pulling the two lizards in front of it away and throwing them out behind her before bringing up a bioshield covering her back as she quickly studied the controls…which weren’t complicated. There were only two buttons, one that toggled a holographic interface and another that operated the barricades.

  She didn’t have time to explore the hologram and punched the other button. Agreeably the barricade plates began to retract into the ground one by one and slowly, opening up first a door-like slit that allowed the first of her Ninja Monkeys thorough behind the cover of a heavy Knight shield.

  The lizards that had been sniping thorough narrow peep holes pulled their weapons out of the crack-like gaps and fired on the column of Star Force infantry appearing, but Morgan took care of them with a series of Fornax blasts, disabling them long enough for the commandos to come through and shoot them as they were twitching on the ground.

  Her shields kept taking hits, but there were so many lizards nearby that they could hardly shoot at her without hitting their own and she wasn’t about to let them get any space by backtracking. The trailblazer ran with their pullback, sprinting a few steps back into their midst and scattering them again with consecutive Jumat attacks while her troops shot them where they fell.

  Playing vanguard, she lead her Clansmen further under the overhand and into their makeshift base, eventually pulling out her own rifle and helping to finish off the last stragglers before the entire area was clear and she marked it as such on the battlemap. In that first moment of freedom she looked around, seeing piles of crates scattered around tables and what looked like makeshift bunks. The entire ceiling was solid save for the gaps around the edges on the eastern and western sides. Stretching out her Pefbar into the structure she saw the internal mechanism that allowed the roof to retract, meaning this courtyard was originally exposed to the air.