Star Force: Initiation (SF61)

by Jyr, Aer-ki

  Trevor reached out a finger and pointed to a scorch mark on her tail armor. “How’d you get that?”

  “I never said they went down without a fight.”

  “Ambush?”

  “They were near to triggering a large explosive. I had to act quickly before a section of the dome was destroyed. One of them got a hit in on me before I killed him.”

  “Define ‘large,’” Trevor said, concerned.

  “Look,” Kameena said, picturing it in her mind so the Archon ranger could easily see it. The pair had worked together for so long they’d established this type of shorthand, knowing that it’d be quicker than verbal explanation. Also, the Elarioni’s subconscious, primitive telepathy acted as a booster to let Trevor access her thoughts more easily than other races, given his limited skills in that department.

  “They didn’t put that together from scratch. There’s got to be an armory or production facility nearby.”

  “My thoughts as well, but I have not encountered any such placements within this dome and the search is nearly complete.”

  Trevor thought quickly, floating mid hallway in front of the Elarioni who, in battle armor, didn’t glow with bioluminescence…a look that made her appear as formidable as the Archon knew her and the others to be. Many of the Elarioni were on the pacifistic side, or more accurately the ‘gentle’ side as far as their personalities, but there was a whole slew of them that were both active and eager to fight…and a lot of those had crossed over from the independent Elarioni to join Star Force for just that purpose.

  “Come with me,” the Archon said, activating his jets to shoot him down the hallway towards the few unmapped sections of the dome. Kameena flicked her armored tail rhythmically beside him, not needing her booster jets to keep up. Her arms were tucked in closer to her sides and her whole body undulated, making her look like a metallic snake as she paced him unquestioningly.

  Trevor led them into new hallways, skipping the few rooms adjacent to them when he scanned them with Ikrid. He was looking for something in particular and it wasn’t going to be in a room if he guessed right.

  The pair came across another floor doorway…save that it and most of the others had no doors…and they swam down to another hallway that ran parallel some 10 meters lower, at the end of which he picked up a few lizard minds.

  “Contacts.”

  “Permission?” the Elarioni asked.

  “Careful,” he said, with her sprinting ahead of him with a wicked tail kick. Trevor increased the speed of his jets a bit, but there was no catching her as she zoomed down the long hallway. There were tiny, dim lights built into the walls but suddenly there were additional green orbs lighting up in the distance just before Kameena got to them.

  Careful with his aim, Trevor sent a Fornax blast low and sniped it past his friend, hitting a lizard a bit further down. The Archon didn’t even bother to pop out his gauntlet’s weapon, for by the time he arrived the Elarioni had already killed all 8 lizards that were guarding a vertical hallway that led down into the bedrock.

  “More down there,” Trevor said, sensing hundreds of them within his limited range. “I think they wanted to collapse the dome to conceal them.”

  “To what end?”

  “Not sure, but I think we’ll get our answer down there.”

  “Ready,” she said, twisting over and facing straight down.

  “Not alone. There are a lot down there and I’m scanning first. Who knows what they might have waiting for us.”

  “Your caution is admirable,” she said, with Trevor knowing that it was sarcasm. He tried to connect to the battlemap to send a signal but after three tries the only contact he could get was her.

  “Go whistle up some support, I can’t get through.”

  Without a word she spun about and swam by him so close he could have swore she’d touched him…but knowing her she’d done it on purpose just for the near miss.

  With her petite form disappearing with distance Trevor swam down a meter and grabbed hold of the rim of the vertical shaft, keeping his body out of view but leaving his head where he could look down. There were no lights below, so all he could see with was his Pefbar. It didn’t reach very far, and the minds he was sensing were below it, meaning he’d just have to wait on this one. In order to take this planet they had to root out all lizard installations, and whatever was down there probably was something that could sustain a resistance group if allowed to go unnoticed.

  It was a good thing Kameena had got to those explosives when she did…and not just because it would have brought a chunk of the dome down on top of them.

  Two hours later Trevor swam up from the seafloor, having completed the destruction of the lizard growth pods that had contained thousands of new problems at varying stages of development. Back in the open ocean again he felt very tiny, especially with the giant markers on his HUD indicating the no go zone further to the south. Between that and him was his destination, a Star Force destroyer that had been dropped from orbit along with several other smaller aquatics warships.

  The battleships were still nearby, with two visible in the distance. He wasn’t going to swim back all the way to them, plus he needed a more mobile vessel to move around the area in hence he was about to board the destroyer. Unlike the whale-inspired battleship design the destroyer had flat hulls and mathematically crisp angles ending in a blunt, but knife-like nose that the rest of the ship fanned out behind.

  Trevor headed towards it like a tiny missile, his jets propelling him at speeds he could never have swam with only his arms and legs, no matter what size of fins he might have. The distance across the submerged city, now partly rubble beneath him, was disconcerting for while he was moving it looked like he wasn’t, with the destroyer floating midway between surface and seafloor appearing to be getting no closer.

  But that was just a reality of aquatics, with Trevor reminding himself to be patient as the distance was gradually diminishing and the image of the destroyer slowly grew larger in front of him…but not before the giant no-go zone beyond suddenly was hit with an object from above. The Archon had seen it coming down on his battlemap before it hit the waves, but it was no less an impressive sight.

  Moving slowly so to diminish disruptive currents from its bulk moving the water out of the way, the aquatics MCV easily outmassed all four battleships combined and made for an almost perfect rectangular footprint as it slowly eased down into the water. Trevor kept jetting forward as it sank in, feeling the small shock wave hit him just prior to him reaching the destroyer. Its shields were down and the one of the entry ports glowed with ringing lights to help direct him to it. Swimming like a missile to target he hit the bullseye head first, passing through the energy shield and into the conditioned water inside.

  The pressure was lower, but he could only feel that through the lessening of resistance to his movement. The temperature and molecular content he couldn’t detect with his armor covering him, but the Elarioni inside most definitely could. Two of them were waiting for him inside the waterlock, neither of which wore armor. They were ship’s crew and glowed with bioluminescence on various parts of their naked bodies, but it was their eyes that stood out the most for they were glowing a Thrawn-esk gold.

  “I need an air recharge,” he said, using his armor’s external speakers.

  “Follow me,” one of them said, with his helmet doing the translating. The second Elarioni swam out of the way and let the clumsy armored Human jet past, then followed him with her tri-finned tail only lightly flapping to provide propulsion. That third fin was part of the reason why they were so mobile, with all three able to bend and twist into various configurations. Working out armor to accommodate that had been a headache for the techs, but now that they had it was more than worth the effort, with every additional upgrade making the Elarioni even more lethal in combat.

  But inside the destroyer they were in their natural form and comprised the entire crew. All Star Force aquatics facilities and ships were now
split into two varieties, internal air or water. This was a water destroyer, just like two of the battleships were water craft as well, but despite the Elarioni being far superior in terms of water movement and combat they still were commanded by the Archons and had a mixed relationship with them, for while the Humans were slower and all around newbs in the water they were also gifted strategists and came equipped with psionics that the Elarioni couldn’t match.

  The differences between the two were so great that combining crews or infantry teams would have been detrimental so the binary design had been established, though every ship had facilities to accommodate the other that Trevor needed to replenish his oxygen supply which was now at 23%. It had been continually replenishing from oxygen in the seawater and some internal cycling, but the rate at which he’d been breathing it in had been greater than the resupply.

  Knowing from experience it was better to be conservative with his air than reckless, he needed to top off before continuing with the oversight of the lizard colony security and beginning stages of reclamation. That and he knew he was going to have to pee before too long and he couldn’t just take his armor off mid ocean, especially with the pressure this far down.

  Trevor swam through the Elarioni-designed corridors that kept a touch of overall Star Force motif to the infrastructure until he was led to a small area of the ship that was just a single room, but with adjacent water compartments that could be converted to air if necessary. It was located at the top of a corridor so no Elarioni could accidentally fall inside, and on top of that it was covered by a sealed door that the crewmember retracted so the Archon could enter.

  His head pushed up through an energy field separating the air from water and he got his arms over the edge of the small pool and pulled himself up…feeling his own weight again as he got a knee underneath his torso and stood up. That was one of the challenges with aquatic field work, for even if he had been swimming around by hand and leg the entire time the neutral buoyancy would wreak havoc with an Archon’s training state. As it was, his legs were just beginning to remember their normal weight after floating around more or less effortlessly for many hours.

  He walked aside and out of view of the small pool, finding several facets to the room that was much akin to a set of personal quarters/equipment room. There were foodstuffs without water, for the ship’s ‘atmosphere’ was drinkable, ambrosia, uniforms and armor replacements…and most importantly, after his oxygen resupply station, a restroom.

  Trevor deactivated the safety interlock within his armor and had it begin peeling apart along the chest, then down the seams of the arms and legs, allowing him to step out of the single-piece suit while leaving the spread out monstrosity in place like a scarecrow. He didn’t bother bundling it up for he was going to be getting back inside it within minutes, but he did walk over and pull an oxygen line from the recharger and connect it to the suit before heading into the restroom to relieve his bladder.

  He grabbed a few foodstuff ration bars to chew on and a cup from the storage compartment, then walked over and dipped it through the energy field and filled it up with water before sitting down next to the pool and having a snack. Some people thought that drinking water that Elarioni were swimming around in was gross, but he’d gotten used to it. Like on an air ship the ‘atmosphere’ was continually cycled and cleaned, making the water nearly pure. Plus the Elarioni didn’t produce any toxins as far as Humans were concerned, so he didn’t mind. Actually the water had a microscopic sweetness to it, though he’d been told that was just his imagination.

  Trevor kept his break short and redonned his armor, now with an air supply back up to 100%, and jumped back into the pool letting his momentum carry him all the way down into the water. No Elarioni were waiting for him, which was proper given that he was a fellow member of Star Force and not a foreign guest who had to be watched at all times.

  Getting his head oriented as to which way was which on the destroyer, he swam off through the corridors towards the bridge where he was going to get to work patrolling the extraneous facilities situated around the main lizard colony…which from now on was Star Force property, at least until the MCV got around to dismantling it all.

  5

  March 23, 2692

  Jafat System (lizard territory)

  Irad

  Arvak sprinted across the dry, sandy ground of the wash and up to the tree line on the far side, tucking his arms in as the Bsidd pushed through the brush and under the forest canopy. He didn’t stop or look back, but kept running as fast as he could manage with a countdown indicator on his helmet prompting his speed. In less than 3 minutes he had to be in position and he still had a lot of ground to cover.

  The trees weren’t helping, for they were more like bushes and had branches coming out of their trunks at all levels. With his armor protecting him from scrapes, thorns, and other concerns Arvak blew through the thinnest sections on as much of a straight line as he could but every now and then he’d hit branches that wouldn’t bend and he’d get stuck, with his 8 arms often getting tangled up and holding him back.

  That was why he was tucking them in now as the theta variant pushed his way across terrain. He was approximately Archon-sized and the fastest of all the Bsidd varieties, making for good scouts and skirmishers, though today he was tasked as a sniper and had to get into position before the heavy infantry met up with the lizard army pushing their way.

  This was the fourth day of ground battles on Irad in what looked to be at least a multi-month campaign. While the nearby planet of Ulmed was lightly inhabited this world was not. It was full of lizard colonies that the navy was still pounding on from orbit to break through their defense shields, but even when they did that there had to be ground ops to go in and clean up.

  Arvak’s group hadn’t gotten any of those assignments yet, rather they were assaulting facilities outside the defense shields. Right now he was in mountainous, irregular terrain where the lizards had burrowed underground to build a series of bases, how many Star Force didn’t yet know, but they were virtually impervious to orbital bombardment. A Calavari unit had been sent into the region to establish a foothold and firebase, then through them the Bsidd were moving forward and flushing out every bit of lizard infrastructure they could find.

  That had eventually resulted in the lizards coming aboveground and mounting a series of counterattacks, with the one about to go down being the largest yet. Arvak had been sent with a number of other scouts racing ahead to grab some valuable points of high ground that looked down on the dry riverbed that he’d just ran across, knowing that the lizards would have to pass through it and into the open briefly. If not they’d hold up short of it and give the Bsidd troops maneuvering options…which it didn’t appear was going to happen.

  On his battlemap there were numerous reports of enemy movement through the trees, which was protecting them against air attacks, though there were reports of wisps starting to come up out of the ground in several nearby and previously unscouted locations, suggesting that they were going to buy the ground troops enough time to get to the Bsidd and potentially overrun the two forward staging bases they’d established.

  Arvak didn’t intend to let that happen, so he ran on as fast as his two main legs could carry him and only popped out his other ‘arms’ for additional propulsion when he was going up inclines. Eventually he got to the rocky hillside that overlooked a portion of the dry riverbed from about 600 meters away and began scaling it where he could. There were no paths up so he just took his best guess and climbed through the overhanging vines and loose vegetation, finding rock where he could and leveraging himself up using various grip points on his appendages in lieu of the fingers his race didn’t have.

  With only a handful of seconds left on his countdown he found a ledge that gave him a narrow slice of riverbed in view and decided that was going to have to be good enough, kneeling down and pulling his sniper rifle off his back. He synced it up with his battlemap and used the spotter data from oth
ers to align his targets, focusing on three points of the riverbank. Two of them were obscured from his position, but the third was not.

  As he swung his sights around to cover that area he saw other icons imposed on his HUD indicating his fellow snipers. Some were in position already while others were still moving, with their ID tags making it clear that they were friendlies even if he couldn’t visually spot them. In contrast there were box-like warning markings indicating the approximate position of the enemy troops and within a few seconds the green-skinned lizards began pouring out of the forest and crossing the riverbed by the hundreds.

  The bulk of the Bsidd army wasn’t close enough to engage them there, leaving it up to the snipers to thin the enemy down as much as they could. Taking to his task, Arvak and the other snipers in position began unleashing solid sammy beams down from elevation and onto the riverbed. Each was tinted blue, as most Star Force energy weapons were that could be modified as such, and lasted .62 seconds in duration. That gave the snipers enough kill power to take down even the mauler variants with one shot, punching straight through their armored vest, thick skin, and dense musculature to poke out the far side of their bodies and melt some sand behind them.

  It also gave Arvak some sweeping capability, with him deliberately drifting his aim as he fired to catch two or three lizards with one hit, inflicting a cleansing beam-like gash across their bodies or even severing their heads completely off if the angle and beam path matched up with their necks. To be honest he wasn’t trying for any of that, he just needed to do damage to as many as he could before they crossed into cover again and there were so many it was hard not to hit them. With that in mind, wounding five or six with a quicker flick of his sights was preferable to a solid, clean kill on only one.