Star Force: Proving Ground (SF66)

by Jyr, Aer-ki

  A closer look at the wall she’d fallen down along revealed several imbedded ladders, meaning that the lizards had a backdoor to escape should they need to. Seeing that she took to one immediately, climbing back up to the rooftop and looking around.

  There was no one in sight, visually or on her Ikrid radar. As typical the lizards had fought to the last man, but whoever had designed this makeshift base had left them an out. Maybe they hadn’t used it because they knew they could be picked off by the aircraft circling above, but even having the option was something new for lizard methodology, not to mention the retractable canopy.

  Morgan jumped across the small gap and landed a few meters down on top of it, feeling it with her Pefbar as she walked across. It wasn’t just a roof, but an armored one that could take a lot of hits from aircraft before it was penetrated. This was definitely meant to be an infantry bunker, and had she not taken the backdoor approach it would have been very difficult for her troops to fight their way inside. The tops of the barricades had been open to the air, meaning they’d have had to climb or jump over them to get to the other side…which explained why so many lizards were pooled and waiting there to gun them down the moment they did.

  This colony was full of surprises, but fortunately this was going to be one of the last few. Star Force had control of most of the city by now, with only a few pockets of resistance such as this holding out, though it would take weeks to search the entire city and properly safe it. They didn’t have that luxury, for there were many more on the planet that needed to be conquered. Why this one had so many tricks and traps she didn’t know, but she betted it wasn’t going to be the only one. They’d have to do some more thorough scouting before committing to the future engagements, and she planned to be handling a lot of that herself going forward.

  “Archon, we’ve found a tunnel entrance,” someone reported over the comm.

  “Coming,” Morgan said, jogging back over to the gap and dropping down below the roof, cushioning her fall with another Lachka field. She saw the location of the commando that had commed her and ran over to his position to find a concealed panel in the floor underneath one of the tables. It was already open and showed a single person ladder tube heading straight down.

  Morgan sensed further than she could see with her Pefbar, but the terminus was too deep for her to make out, with no minds present to add any datapoints.

  “Damn it,” she said, checking her battlemap. “We’ll have to come back to it later. We need to get moving to point 6. Grab what replacement weaponry you need and follow me,” she said to everyone in her 33 man unit over the comm.

  The pair of Knights ran over to her immediately, their shields tucked up against one arm leaving the other free to punch or fire from. They still had some Star Force ammo left, but most of the Regulars were out and had resorted to using lizard weapons given the 7 hours they’d been out hunting the bastards down. They were almost done now, with only two or three more engagements to go before they could head back to a firebase or resupply point within this city, but until then they’d have to make do.

  Morgan had saved a few rounds of her own, using her Psionics most of the time and doing a lot of damage with her Jumat. She’d gotten to the point where she could snap necks with it if she applied enough force at just the right angle and speed, literally giving her the ability to point her finger and make one of them die, but she’d found it much more effective in attacking groups solo, or better yet with a fireteam in support to clean up the easy targets that she knocked askew.

  The only Archon in the group, Morgan headed back to the barricades, seeing that they’d all retracted into the ground and were now little more than a few paving stones across the street. She ran over them with the two Knights trailing a step on either side while the commandos formed up into a column two wide and followed her out with the entire group picking up speed as they headed on foot to the nearest location that was still seeing combat.

  Cvog was walking his Granthor-class mech through the lizard streets in line with two others of a similar make as they transitioned to a waypoint given to them by an Archon. All three orange mechs were physically torn up, with Cvog’s having lost a third of its shield generators. Still, the designs were so robust that they were more than capable of chewing up any lizard tanks left roaming about, let alone able to snuff out any infantry that was stupid enough to oppose them, shoulder mounted rocket launchers or not.

  The Calavari had seen a bit of calm for the last 15 minutes and were now moving about in a patrol pattern that kept them handy in case any of the last combat teams needed assistance. Most of the other surviving mechs had already left and headed back to the makeshift firebase set up within the city’s outer edge near the gash, but Cvog and his two senior mechwarriors had pulled one of the last duties, given that they were the most experienced and the lesser soldiers needed the reprieve more than they did.

  He was fatigued, but pushing through it. Even after Star Force had regained aerial superiority the fighting had not been one-sided. The defensive setup in this colony was completely different than what they’d been encountering in others, almost as if this had been where they’d put their main defensive efforts into the architecture and everywhere else was just secondary…except that he didn’t know of any reason why this city was special. It wasn’t the largest they’d hit, nor had any significant industry or spaceports. It was a standard city, except when it came to fighting for it.

  There were so many subsurface tunnels that it had taken more than 2 days to hunt down most of their tanks, and it was rumored that there were still some moving about where the air cover couldn’t spot them. Those tunnels that had been found were now shut down, but unlike other lizard designs they weren’t all connected to each other, so the discovery of one didn’t open up them all to the invading army…and the subsurface of the city was coated with plating that made it more difficult for Star Force’s sensors to penetrate.

  This was the most dangerous battlefield Cvog had ever fought on, for you never knew for sure when the fighting was over. That, combined with his fatigue, made him twitch when a battlemap contact suddenly landed on his mech’s left shoulder and stuck there. It took him a moment to process what was happening, then he did a doubt take when the Star Force icon told him that the Queen of Diamonds had just flown in and perched on his mech.

  He hesitated at first, then opened up a direct comm channel to the Archon. “Is there something you require?”

  “Just felt like riding a bit while I catch a breather. How are you three holding up?”

  “Well enough, but our mechs need considerable repair.”

  “I can see that, but unlike a lot of others yours are still battle worthy. We’ve lost over 60% of what we brought in here to the scrap pile already.”

  “That many?”

  “Afraid so. We pulled most of the pilots out alive, but equipment wise we’ve lost a lot. And that’s not counting what the Bsidd lost prior to the reinforcement.”

  “Do you know why this city was so heavily fortified?”

  “No one does. And we’re not launching any new assaults until we find out what’s going on, just finishing up the ones we’re currently engaged in.”

  “Their tunnels have given us considerable headaches. We never know when a street is clear or not, and they’ve been very good at disguising the entrances.”

  “Are your shields inoperable?”

  “Diminished, but waiting in standby.”

  “Noticed they weren’t up when I landed. How much has the rocket infantry been bothering you lately?”

  “They’re gone as far as we’ve seen. The last half hour has been rather boring,” he said as they came to an intersection and made a left turn, with him walking his mech through the maneuver via the full body harness system that had him standing inside the cockpit with all four arms latched in, which made for far more fatigue than the seated models.

  “Been that way for most, but I’ve got a feeling we’re about to s
ee another breakout.”

  “Breakout?”

  “Troops coming up from underground.”

  “Where do you want us?” Cvog asked, his attention escalating a notch.

  “Right where you are until…check that,” she said, sending him and the other two mechs a waypoint a few dozen city blocks ahead. “Just got intel on another tunnel entrance. Feel up to an ambush?”

  “Depends how many there are, but yes, we’re ready to fight.”

  “Looks like a holding area with about 80 tanks of various makes.”

  “80?”

  “I’ll go with you, and Morgan is already down there waiting. She’ll disable a lot of their pilots and I’ll get the ones nearest to you. You just have to point and shoot.”

  Cvog smiled. “The techs should build a seat for you up there so you can ride along all the time.”

  “Gets kind of slippery when your shields go up, so I’ll jump ship just before we head down but keep close by. Shoot the nearest targets regardless of whether or not they’re firing back.”

  “Copy that,” the Calavari said, rechecking his weapon status. They were all good to go, save for the missile box that had long since been depleted. He followed one of the other mechs as it sped up into a mechanical jog, with the trio making better speed through the cluttered streets and having to step over sporadic debris, either from wisps, ruined buildings, or occasionally Star Force equipment, for this area had seen heavy fighting previously.

  Which made it all the more ironic that another tunnel entrance was located here. The lizards must have been saving this one and Star Force had completely missed it the first time through.

  When they eventually arrived at the spot all they saw was an intersection with a waypoint on it, but then the road suddenly broke apart geometrically and rose up on pivot points like an opening flower, exposing a ramp that led below ground into a tunnel. The trailblazer hopped off his mech’s shoulder and began to free fly on her own beside them, with the Calavari bringing up his mech’s shields again as they walked down into the dim tunnel that only had two narrow strips of illumination running along either side of the ceiling.

  The gap between walls was large, allowing two of the mechs to walk side by side with ease and Cvog brought his up alongside Garavat’s as a new waypoint was added. They trekked towards it, descending several more ramps and taking two multiple fork intersections to the right until their battlemap showed a huge chamber inside of which a single Star Force icon was located, which also had a trailblazer tag.

  The little firefly that was Kara zipped on past and entered ahead of them, ducking to the size a few meters and hovering near the wall as the big orange war machines entered and opened fire on the nearest tanks…that didn’t even swivel their turrets towards them. Some further behind them did and fired off pink phaser streaks that had far more intensity and duration than the wisps did, but they met the mech shields and did not penetrate with the first few shots.

  The maulers that the mechs returned fire with did far more damage to the tanks, and with each one that they killed one more lizard tank behind them would suddenly stop firing and freeze up, with Cvog knowing that was the Archons using their magical psionics.

  This lot of lizards was going to take some chewing to get through, but with not one, but two trailblazers to assist them he had no doubt that they’d be able to succeed in destroying them all. The only real question was how much more damage their mechs would take in the process.

  5

  July 14, 2755

  Pagaliss System (lizard territory)

  Varasiss

  Larissa stood in the center of an enormous underground bunker, looking up from the floor to see racks upon racks of wisp docks stretching out from the walls in a latticework of space-saving designs. There were open airways between them to allow for mass movement, but the 30 story tall room was definitely designed to allow for very compact storage and quick release, with tunnels connecting to the surface appearing on the ceiling in multiple places.

  The racks were empty now, for all the lizard fighters in this colony had been destroyed and were now laying in pieces around the cityscape. As far as Larissa knew the purge of the locals had been completed two days ago, but there were so many nooks and crannies for survivors to hide in that she didn’t consider anywhere on the planet outside of the Star Force firebases to be truly safe.

  After a good day of rest the trailblazer had come back out here to have a look around as survey teams were continuing to map the underground chambers, often having to use very powerful sensor equipment brought below ground to circumvent the dampening layer in order to find new tunnels whose entrances hadn’t yet been discovered. There were hundreds of independent systems, some like this one having been burrowed more than 2 miles below ground. The lizards were notorious for developing subsurface structures, but they’d never gone to this extent with a surface city overtop.

  Normally their robust underground facilities were camouflaged on the surface, with little or no infrastructure above. This colony clearly wasn’t one of those cases, and unlike the others these subsurface facilities weren’t all interconnected, making it clear to Larissa that they had been built for one purpose and one purpose only.

  To confront, confound, and ambush an invasion army.

  If one tunnel system was discovered the others wouldn’t be exposed, allowing the mass of lizards below ground to operate with virtual impunity until all of their hideaways were rooted out. In this case that hadn’t happened, for the mass of them had come out to ambush the Bsidd army conquering the city. Had she had a command ship directly overhead in orbit they probably could have detected the tunnels with an intense sensor scan, or at least they could now that they knew what to look for, but with the orbital defense guns the lizards had developed there was no way to get a ship into that low of an orbit to do the scan…and that meant there was no way of knowing how many more of the lizard colonies on the planet had this sort of ambush infrastructure in them.

  It was time to launch two more attacks, but the trailblazers were holding off on those and finishing up the ones currently in play while they studied this colony in depth, not wanting to risk another surprise until they had some answers here. A Mainline/Clan reinforcement fleet was on its way to help solidify their hold on orbit, for two days ago another lizard fleet had shown up and had to be beaten off. They’d killed a few drones in the process, and if they kept whittling down their numbers they’d be at risk of allowing ships to get to ground, and that was unacceptable.

  The lizards weren’t going to reclaim orbit though, not with two Sentinels holding pieces of it, but the risk was in allowing lizard cruisers to get in-atmosphere and directly attack ground troops. Star Force held naval superiority, and that was the only reasonable way that they were going to be able to conquer this planet, for the majority of it still lay in lizard hands. That would take a lot more killing and equipment loss to accomplish, and Larissa didn’t expect to leave this planet for more than a year, possibly longer if more surprises were waiting for them.

  Other empires wouldn’t mind just spamming troops and overrunning the enemy, which was difficult with a spammer like the lizards, but Star Force wasn’t going to send anyone into battle assuming that they were going to die. Loss of equipment was one thing, but loss of life was completely unacceptable. Larissa had lost over 70,000 Bsidd to the ambush in this colony, and she was going to take her time now to avoid walking into another such debacle again.

  And that time right now was being spent wandering around the captured colony, looking at what the lizards had built and how they’d used it, all the while just thinking things through while others dealt with security sweeps and debris removal.

  Larissa sensed the mind approaching from her left before she ever saw the dark blue armor, and kept her eye line on the racks above as Liam jogged over to her position. If something had been wrong he would have commed her immediately.

  The trailblazer in command of the Calavari on this
mission decelerated to a smooth stop beside her left should and looked up in the same direction she was. “Ingenious little bastards, aren’t they?”

  “What’s new.”

  “Them not trying this in other locations.”

  “We don’t know that for sure yet,” Larissa said, finally looking at his faceplate.

  “It’s not part of the planetary design, and there were no partially constructed bunkers like this in the colonies that we’ve already taken.”

  “Are we even sure about that? Some of the smaller ones we could have completely missed.”

  “I’ve been having the Calavari do some double checks. Nothing has turned up as yet.”

  “And?”

  “I think this was a test.”

  Larissa raised an eyebrow. “Of what, exactly?”

  “What it would take to kill us. They lost a huge amount of troops, but now they have data to analyze and how many they have to throw, against the Bsidd at least, in order to overwhelm our shielding and armor advantage.”

  “A little late in the game for that.”

  “They’ve never been able to take away our orbital bombardment capability before.”

  “Point.”

  “I think they’re going to be even more devious now that they don’t have to duck and cover like they have in the past. And once they get these defense batteries widespread, we’re going to have a hell of a time taking planets…at least ones with a full grid like this. We’re going to have to hit them while there are still sections of the surface accessible to landing craft and knock out the guns via ground assault. If we wait and let them fully turtle up we’re going to be burning through drones like crazy making entry corridors.”