Star Force: Upgrades (SF41)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  The Skarrons clearly knew they were coming, with the Type-4 repositioning into a low gap between two buildings and stepping onto/into the single-story structure occupying that spot, wedging itself into cover along the street and waiting for Kip to come to it…which was just fine by his reckoning. The hoths might not be able to shoot it with the buildings in the way, but that wasn’t going to be a problem for the voltron.

  When he was 600 meters away he opened the plasma ports on each arm, exposing the big ass cannons he was carrying that made the voltron seem like a supersized version of the neo, except that it also had anti-air lachars on the shoulders and one rotating mauler that would pop up where the head would have been had the mech had one.

  Kip kept that encased within the armor, not wanting to give the enemy a shot of knocking it out. The voltron had shields, but in order to fire each of its weapons the section of shield along the firing line had to be lowered, same as any other mech, so right now he was going to work with the plasma cannons and see how they took to the Skarrons’ shields and armor.

  When Kip got within 200 meters he raised his arms up and pivoted the torso to the left, knowing that he was going to have to walk right in front of the Type-4 in order to target it. He glanced at his battlemap, confirming that his escorts were keeping back a respectful distance. While the Skarron walker didn’t have very strong plasma cannons, it had enough to wreck a neo if it got a good salvo in from the front…which was where he was having to approach from, unless he wanted to circle around and try it from the back side, which would mean stepping on buildings.

  Maybe later, right now he needed to get a feel for how much of a beast this Type-4 was going to be. Prepping himself for an onslaught, he crept his mech out into the firing line.

  Hundreds of tiny white plasma orbs washed over his mech in the next few seconds, eating into his shields as he pumped a much larger blue orb into the front of the thing…which was a head taller than his neo and had a huge amount of mass up high, making it look even scarier from Kip’s point of view. He squared off with it as it continued to rain plasma down on him like a horizontal thundershower, then the Archon pumped off more plasma shots with both arms at a range of only 120 meters.

  He got through its shields on the fourth shot, then started eating into the thick armor after that, knocking out a few plasma cannons but doing little to stop the onslaught of plasma raining down on him. His shield indicators turned to light green over his chest area as the forward shields drained percentage points, but nowhere near as fast as it visually looked like they should be, given his mech’s considerable defenses.

  Kip held his position and kept firing, knowing he needed to get a baseline for what it would take to bring one of these things down, so he kept pounding with only his two beefy plasma cannons until he tore a hull breach in the walker’s tapered nose. It tried to twist to the side, but being pinned between the buildings it didn’t have much maneuvering room. As it rotated in place, stepping up and back down again on its six insect-like legs, Kip walked to the side, keeping his firing line on the opening as long as he could and succeeded in knocking out the power to a third of the forward plasma cannons.

  A whole slew of the pimple-like emplacements went dark, but the walker continued to rotate around, bringing more intact cannons into play. Kip abandoned the forward breach point as it rotated out of view and picked a new spot on the fat butt of the walker, punching through the shields there with two shots before chewing into the armor while keeping a close watch on his own shields.

  He got about halfway through the armor before his own defenses dropped below 50%, at which point he walked off further to the right until the building eclipsed his view of the walker. He held position, letting the power from his mech’s core soak back into the shield matrixes for the better part of a minute until the edge of the Skarron walker lurched out into view and started firing at his side with a handful of cannons, which increased in number with each lurching step it took.

  Kip rotated his voltron around and continued pounding the aft armor damage after repopping the walker’s weak shields, after which it was a race to see who got to who first. The Archon didn’t want to take any hull damage, and prepared for a quick retreat when his forward shields dropped near the zero point, knowing that his aft shields would have enough juice to cover his exit.

  That didn’t turn out to be necessary, for he got through the armor and breached the interior hull as the walker was only halfway out into the street. Sensing the opportunity Kip walked out and put his mech in between its butt and the other side of the street, half stepping on a low building in order to get the positioning right. From there he stuck his right hand into the breach point and peeled back a bit more armor plating as he launched another plasma orb off his upper wrist and directly inside. A few more like that and the Skarrons’ plasma cannons dropped dead along with the rest of the war machine.

  Kip extricated his mech from the tight spot and walked it to the side back the way he’d originally come from. The walker’s legs hadn’t collapsed, making it a smoking statue at the two breach points.

  The voltron’s plasma ports retracted, protecting them from hits as Kip ran his mech forward and pushed with the hands against the side of the fat tick of a machine. It didn’t move much, but with no power to the legs they slowly buckled and tipped the heavy top section over onto its side.

  Kip grabbed one of its legs with his mech’s left hand and stretched it out, then popped up his mauler cannon, giving the voltron a very low and flat head, and pumped a shot out into the leg, melting part of its armor away. He hit it again and again until the lower leg tore free, then he tossed it aside and retracted the mauler. If the walker wasn’t as dead as it appeared, it was at least going to stay put…else learn how to walk on 5 legs instead of 6.

  “Did everyone take notes?” Kip asked sarcastically.

  “Nice roadblock,” one of the starbrights commented, seeing the Skarron walker stretching across the street ahead of them.

  “I don’t think I can move it,” Kip said, wondering if he could maybe budge it a bit. Its mass was so large he was surprised the damn thing could even walk around…and it was the baby compared to the others. “Just go over or squeeze through.”

  “Copy that.”

  Kip took his own advice and activated his mech’s jump jets. He bent the mech’s knees and jumped, floating the voltron up into the air as he watched the power gage. The anti-grav wasn’t strong enough for flight, but with a capacitor boost it was enough for short hops.

  Adding some horizontal push against the planet’s gravity well he sailed over top of the walker, then dialed back the jump jets and landed on the angled hull, trying to surf his way down the far side…but his footing didn’t work quite like he wanted to and he got his mech’s right foot caught on an angle, causing the voltron to do a face plant into the street…literally. The mech gouged out huge impact craters at the elbows and knees as it landed, popping its own shields into oblivion under the physical strain.

  “Doh,” Kip said to himself as he worked the mech’s arms and legs around in preparation to stand back up as a trio of neos came over the Skarron walker and glided past him to more graceful landings.

  “Were you trying to do that, boss?”

  “Shut up, Parren.”

  “I’m sorry, I thought my comm was off while I was laughing.”

  The voltron crawled up into a kneeling position then stood up slowly as Kip turned it to face the little neo ahead of him. “Don’t make me dropkick you.”

  “You going solo on the next one?”

  Kip answered by raising his right arm and popping the plasma cannon mount up, then he fired the largest orb setting he had over top of the three neos, sending it well down the street and into a Type-5 that had poked around a distant corner.

  The blast knocked the biped off its feet, as well as vaporizing several Skarron infantry nearby. Two more plasma orbs came in and finished off the smaller mech, with the quadrupeds scatte
ring off the street and opening up their path ahead.

  “If the next one corners itself again, yes. Otherwise feel free to add some precision fire to the target points I set. As for the Type-3, we’ll see when we get there. I may hold off until we get a hoth in range, but for now let’s just focus on cleaning up the 4s and 5s and stepping on as many cockroaches as we can.”

  “Copy that.”

  Kip walked his voltron forward down the more or less straight street, coming to a section of city that he was tall enough to look over the building tops of…at which point his proximity warning lit up as distant missile launches were detected heading his way.

  “Madcats,” he said, popping up the anti-air lachars on his mech’s shoulders, “incoming missiles. Get high…now.”

  Behind him two of the smaller mechs activated their jump jets and rocketed up into the sky, where they immediately began launching plumes of intercepts off into the distance towards the incoming missiles from the Type-2 that had launched them. More and more popped out of the missile boxes as the mechs descended and landed on top of the Protovic buildings, pausing slightly as they got their footing, then resuming as the lachars pods on the arms began firing off almost simultaneously with those on the voltron.

  A cataclysmic collision happened kilometers away, visible by a growing plume of explosions and later smoke and dust as the first intercepts met their targets. Smaller explosions surrounded them as the lachars popped more of the Skarron missiles, with some not exploding at all and merely dropping out of the sky as their propulsion systems were knocked out.

  The river-like swarm of big missiles fought its way forward, bringing the destructive cloud closer and closer towards the Star Force mechs until it washed over the voltron, covering Kip’s mech in explosions that ripped through his shields and into the outer layers of his armor…but no further. He checked the battlemap, which indicated that no more missiles were incoming at the moment, then walked the voltron ahead.

  “You two ok?” he asked the madcats even as he checked their status remotely.

  “They weren’t aiming at us.”

  “No damage,” the other confirmed as the voltron pushed its way into clear air. Kip stopped there and raised the right hand, twisting the wrist around flat to the enemy and curling up the thumb and fingers, save for the middle one.

  He held the one-fingered salute for the next few seconds, then lowered the arm as he waited to see if more missiles would be incoming…but they weren’t. Maybe the Skarrons didn’t understand sign language.

  “Where you guys at on ammo?”

  “34%.”

  “38%.”

  “Looks like we’re going to need more than 2,” Kip said, pulling up the command interface portion of the battlemap and requesting four more madcats with the same loadout to rendezvous at his position…along with a dropship standing by with new missile boxes for this pair once they arranged a temporary LZ, which he assigned the small mech group to creating and securing.

  7

  March 7, 2465

  Alpha Region

  Star Force Warship Excalibur (Mid-jump)

  Paul pushed off the soft cube with his legs, summoning as much leverage as he could in the zero g training room, and launched himself towards Kara, who was clinging to a position on the ‘ceiling.’ He held his fists out in front of him and tried to maintain as straight a line as possible as his feet left the padded structure, turning himself in a ballistic missile that shot across the medium-sized chamber.

  But as he zipped through the air he felt a telekinetic tug on his waist that pulled him off course, landing him some three meters to Kara’s left. Paul somersaulted over and landed on his feet, crumpling his legs to absorb as much of the momentum as he could as he reached for a handhold…only to get head-butted in his side as Kara rammed into him, knocking them both off the lumpy cubular wall and into midair where they proceeded to wrestle each other for leverage.

  Paul recovered quickly and got his left hand against her throat, peeling her torso off him enough to raise a knee up between them before their mass bounced off the far wall, sending them both spinning. Kara wrapped an arm around Paul’s leg, making him unable to kick her off, so he created a telekinetic wall between his leg and her body, pushing it out half an inch and prying her grip off him enough to slip his leg free. With a shove to her shoulders he slipped free and went careening across the chamber until he impact the far wall, then he bounced off it to another where he finally got a handhold and steadied himself.

  ‘Below’ him Kara bounced from one wall nook to another, building momentum with each pushoff in preparation for a strafing run on him…with the ones she’d thrown previously each coming with a vicious kick. Paul may have outranked her by a handful of levels, but her agility had nosed above him, due in no small part, he figured, to her flight experience. She wasn’t using her Vorch’nas now, but she had definitely become more accustomed to maneuvering off the ground, making her more than an even match for him in zero g…while he had gotten back to kicking her butt in just about everything else.

  Paul reset himself to another handhold, then clawed his way over to another not wanting to give Kara a stationary target to fling herself at. Then all of a sudden he got a wash of Fornax through his head, which he pushed back against and partially negated, focusing on his hand grips while pouring everything else into the mental tug of war…but he lost out and the Fornax escalated, causing his body to shiver and his head to wash in disorientation.

  Which was when he realized it wasn’t the Fornax anymore.

  Confirming his epiphany a moment later the small monitor circle attached to his forehead over his left eyebrow beeped three times in rapid succession.

  Stop, Paul declared telepathically, not knowing where Kara was as his eyes didn’t want to focus on anything in particular. He heard a crunch beside him, then a blurry mass came over and a cool hand pressed against his forehead, twisting it to the side.

  “There yellow,” Kara reported. “What are you feeling?”

  “Did you hit me with a Fornax?”

  “Yes.”

  “It spiked off that. I can’t see much, and my head is spinning,” he said, feeling a strong grip latch onto his shoulder.

  “I’ve got you, turtle up and see what you can do,” Kara said, keeping one hand on Paul and the other on the wall handhold.

  Paul let go of his own handholds and floated free, letting his fellow Archon anchor him in place. He dismissed his physical senses, which were hit and miss as it was with his disorientation, and focused entirely on the inner turmoil, trying to channel the storm that seemed to be growing in strength with every second.

  A hard point formed in his mind with the distinctive feel of Kara. It wasn’t reaching down and in to where he was, for the Ikrid blocks prevented it, but the point seemed to hover just above him, giving him a point of reference that he mentally reached up to and used to get his internal bearings…after which he started pushing aside the disruptions within and shielding a few key areas. With those bastions of calm he began reconstructing his mental armor that had just been washed away.

  Paul knew the only way that could happen was from an extremely powerful external mind…but had that happened it wouldn’t have been instantaneous. This was sudden and unseen, meaning his armor had been taken down from the inside…and still was, though he was rebuilding it faster than it was going down.

  The hard point in his mind sank lower and touched his consciousness as Kara repositioned her grip to his bare wrist and made flesh to flesh contact, allowing her to hack past the Ikrid blocks.

  Do you need me?

  I’ve got it. Just keep me grounded.

  Another beep sounded from the monitoring device.

  1 red…stay with it.

  The storm in Paul’s mind continued to grow stronger, but he kept restricting it to certain areas and pushing it out of places it shouldn’t be, focusing the transformational flux where it was meant. If it got out of hand he’d have to squ
elch the disruption, essentially corking up the flow that he needed to unleash…but he couldn’t have it shredding his mind in the process.

  2 red, Kara said, her mental voice imparting concern and elation at the same time.

  Paul breathed hard, sucking in a very deep breath and feeling his body start to ache a little bit, though it was nothing compared to the pain starting to ring out through his head.

  3 red! Go for it if you can!

  Push me off…

  Kara gave him a gentle nudge away from the wall and let go, but kept her mental presence within his mind to steady him as the hurricane within him was building even further. She’d yet to experience this herself, but a few of the other trailblazers had…hence the creation of the biomonitors, which they all now wore during training sessions just in case this happened so they could record the changes and hopefully the impetus triggering the transformations.

  Kara telekinetically grabbed Paul’s body and steered him out into the middle of the chamber as the three little lights on the monitor went from solid red to flashing red, and she knew he was about to ascend. She could feel fireworks going on inside him, and they didn’t disappoint. Her Zen’zat memories told her what this was, but feeling it firsthand was something else entirely…and with Paul’s mental armor down, she was getting his full mental output, realizing for the first time how much psionically stronger than her he’d become.

  Paul’s bodily ache increased along with the hurricane in his mind, then like the flashing lights on the biomonitors his body began to pulse with an internal light in a painful rhythm, with each cycle getting brighter, faster, and penetrating deeper inside his limbs and torso. For a moment he felt like Goku about to go Super Saiyan 3…but then a little explosion happened in his neck, like a crackle he felt inside, followed by another and another that spread out, each spawning into two or three others.