Star Force: Initiation (SF61)

by Jyr, Aer-ki

  Jason moved between three different hidden emplacements before he ran out of tunnel. To get to the others he had to move across trails that no longer existed around the blast radius, and some of the automated turrets were up high and fixed to sheer rock…probably with power cables running through drilled holes. There was no physical access to them for enemy troops to take over and utilize, so Jason had to take those down from the outside or disable the controllers wherever they were hiding nearby.

  If Jason were setting these up he’d have relays in place to allow remote control from far distances, so he didn’t bother looking for a nearby bunker and headed out across and under the remains of the trees that had been burnt and bent over, yet not totally destroyed, until he got underneath one of the turrets…with it firing rifle-sized plasma blasts down towards him the moment he came out from under one of the tree mashes.

  This was where the tank would have been a particularly bad neighbor to have, but since it was now gone Jason took a few plasma blasts by not dodging, rather he dropped down onto his ankles and did his best impression of a Jedi jump as he activated his jump pack. His trajectory moved him at an angle, bringing him up to a narrow ledge that he managed to get a foot onto. The jump pack held him up long enough to get steadied as he continued to get hit with plasma blasts and the misses blowing out tiny bits of rock shrapnel all around him.

  Repeating the process he jumped again, this time getting up to the height of the turret and taking one shot directly in the faceplate. His diminishing shields held up and Jason grabbed hold of one of the multiple barrels sticking out from the boxy turret. He held on and dangled from it underneath, squeezing his mechanical hand as tightly as the mental controls in his armor would allow and locking it in place so his muscles wouldn’t have to. He nearly slid off anyway, but the mechanical grip put a little bit of a dent in the barrel, allowing for some additional grip as he pulled out his plasma pistol from his lower back and pumped multiple rounds into the turret, breaking through the armored casing and exposing the inside.

  He took another shot to his shoulder, but most of the barrels couldn’t target him in so close. Tucking his pistol away he reached up and got a hand on the hole he’d just made, gripping the interior before letting go of the barrel. He reached in with the second hand, feet dangling below him over the ravine below, and pried open the turret enough for him to half climb inside. He was going to shoot the vital components but accidentally pulled one out when he was just trying to get a grip.

  He nearly fell, but his left hand held firm as he tossed the power conduit out beneath him with it dropping like a rope for a few meters. Jason climbed up and into the turret as much as he could, then ripped out more and more of the guts until he was sure that he’d fatally wounded the turret…and given its placement the lizards wouldn’t be making repairs any time soon.

  The Archon grabbed the power conduit and slid down the makeshift rope before letting go at the end and falling down to the ravine wall some 20 meters below and braking with his jump pack before kicking of the angled sidewall and drifting himself out enough to land in the flat bottom.

  “One down,” he said, looking ahead at the next one in the green vegetation outside the blast radius, “a million to go.”

  9

  March 24, 2692

  Jafat System (lizard territory)

  Irad

  Provchad shot one lizard in the chest as it and several others were rushing the Calavari, then he reached down with his lower left hand and grabbed its corpse as it fell, still firing his rifle at the others swarming around him and his brothers. He flung the lizard back into the flow, knocking down several before jumping ahead to land on the body and the small island it made amongst the rest. From there he proceeded to punch, grab, and kick every lizard within arms range, making himself a decoy and taking a lot of plasma hits while the others stayed put as gunners and picked off the nearest targets.

  Provchad knew he couldn’t stay out amongst them forever, but his shields were strong and his arms even stronger, though he was kicking as many of the short, scrawny enemies as he was hitting them. Unfortunately that left his upper body as an easy target and his helmet was more often than not the source of the plasma hits, each of which momentarily blinded him as the superheated glowing gas washed over his faceplate.

  With the distraction provided, the other Calavari held their position and began creeping forward, firing as they went, and followed Provchad forward until they got to a pass in a small hillside that the lizards were flowing through. Once there two others came forward and relieved him, allowing the Calavari to retreat behind the others and start recharging his shields while they punched and kicked those coming through the gap while pulling and tossing a few further in where the others shot them down.

  Provchad inspected his armor, seeing a lot of small divots in the orange plates as a tiny shimmer covered his body when the shield matrix reformed at low strength. Pulling a pack of ammo out of his backpack he began to reload his weapons when he visually spotted something running along the top of the hillside underneath the trees. There hadn’t been any lizards up there and he thought the rocky walls were too steep for them to easily climb, but given the firing angle they had Provchad flicked a pistol up to target the blur before it could fire down on them.

  He pulled back when he saw a large black/gold mass running at a speed the lizards could never match, but kept his attention up there trying to make out what he was seeing. It was a Human, obviously, and by the size he’d say a Knight but it wasn’t wearing Knight armor, which was typically bright white. It also didn’t have a shield.

  Provchad checked his battlemap to see who/what it was, finding an ID tag but before he had time to check an explosion knocked him down to a knee as the two Calavari at the front were thrown through the air as a det pack went off in their face. With no time to lose Provchad took his ammo and stuffed it back in his pack, then ran up behind the others ready to fight more lizards whether or not his shields were recharged.

  Behind the det pack explosion the infantry flooded in through the gap again and Provchad found himself back in a firing line, mowing down as many as they could but with too many tiny bodies running at them for the Star Force troops to shoot them all. The lizards came right up to the big Calavari in their orange armor and fired their plasma weapons into their larger hulks at pointblank range, whittling down their shield strength with every hit.

  Suddenly the black blur dropped down directly into the gap in the hillside and every lizard within 10 meters of it fell to the ground. When Provchad saw that he knew that the Human had to be an Archon, for no weapon had been used to take the lizards down, but rather their infamous psionics. As the Calavari continued to shoot the ones in between the Archon and their line he saw the black/gold two-armed ally shoot those lizards on the ground as they were helpless to do anything other than twitch.

  Suddenly two more black blurs dropped down from the hillside and fell into the lizards near Provchad, punching them away from where they landed with bright lights on their fists. When they hit they had the distinctive sound of plasma, but the Calavari had never seen such weapons before. They glowed white rather than Star Force standard blue, but he was sure it was a plasma weapon of some kind.

  With one holding the choke point with his psionics the oversized Archons helped the Calavari clean out the rest of the lizards on this side then ran towards their twin, disappearing through the gap to the other side and going after the lizards there.

  Provchad knew better than to follow, for his shields were down again, so he moved over to the two Calavari that had been hit by the det pack as the others slowly advanced to hold the choke point against any more enemies coming through. When he got over to one he saw a huge hole in his armor that ran from upper right arm down across the chest plate to his left hip. Orange blood was flowing everywhere, but another goo-like substance was eeking out from around the edges of the armor and slowly stopping the blood loss like an instant bandage.

>   Provchad tapped on the Calavari’s helmet, trying to see if he was still conscious, and got a slight hand wave in response. He didn’t know how bad the wound really was, but he was alive for the moment. Knowing that he couldn’t walk on his own, Provchad grabbed a pistol while putting his rifle back onto his rack, then used his three free hands to lift his badly wounded brother up into a carry position up over his right shoulder.

  With his weapon ready to respond if anyone tried to jump them, Provchad began walking the wounded one back the way they’d advanced, hoping to get him to safety before he bled out or got jumped by any roaming lizards, for there were so many corpses littering the ground there was no way to be sure that they were all completely dead. If they weren’t, Provchad was going to finish them with his pistol.

  Setting a repeated ‘wounded ally’ signal on the battlemap, he walked his passenger off, knowing that someone could up to take him eventually, then Provchad would return to the front lines.

  Darius punched the lizard jumping for his neck with his left fist, knocking it back without delivering a plasma blast. That setting only had a limited number of shots and he didn’t want to waste one now so he kept to traditional hand to hand and broke bone with blunt force rather than burning the lizards with plasma. The other two Arc Knights with him were using plasma, both in the form of pistols, as the trio fought their way through the pool of lizards that had collected on the other side of the hillside.

  The Calavari had followed them through, fortunately, for there were too many here for even them to take down head on and they didn’t have time to be coy about this. They had less than 20 minutes to push this line up to a convergence point with another assault group before a reinforcement of lizard tanks beat them to the riverbank. They needed to get across in order to take down a turret tower that was keeping nearby units well away from a firebase that the lizards were literally spewing out of.

  Star Force had a mech star moving up the river to try and get close enough to the turret to take it out through the cover of the forest, but they were pinned in close and half submerged in water walking single file in order to make it through the narrow gap in this ravine bottom. That would put them in a bad position if those tanks got to them and it was up to Darius to make sure they never got that far.

  He wanted to run ahead and take the tanks on without the Calavari, but there was way too many enemy infantry out and about to contend with while they were assaulting the tanks. They were going to be a handful as it was, and they couldn’t have dozens of plasma blasts hitting them per second when they went after them.

  So they needed the Calavari there to deal with the infantry and cover them while they took to the tanks…but the lizards had the Calavari essentially pinned down, meaning the Arc Knights had to move the line up and they didn’t have time to be careful about it. In typical Knight tradition they ran straight into the heart of the enemy and took it to them like a punch to the face.

  Their armor was more advanced than standard Knight equipment, but they weren’t carrying any physical shields due to them needing to move fast through the forest and the big barriers weren’t designed for that. Each of them had an assortment of firearms and swords with them, plus their glove augments, which contained both plasma and stun options, but for right now Darius was going to use his natural strength to save ammo as long as he could.

  To that end he punched two more back before telekinetically picking up a pair of lizard plasma pistols and dual wielded them as he ran forward shooting and knocking down more infantry, not caring how many hits he took. He had to disrupt the lizards in order for the Calavari to follow up and shoot them down, and to do that the best he needed to be in the middle of them.

  Once he got far enough inside the pool of enemies waiting to go through the hillside gap he summoned up his mental strength and emitted as large a Fornax field as he could, dropping well over 100 of the lizards to the ground like an invisible blast had hit them from above. The plasma blasts coming towards him stopped for a moment, then as he held them down shooting the nearest ones around him the lizards outside the radius of the fallen ones saw him and took aim, resuming the plasma barrage on him and ratcheting it up now that he didn’t have a shield of lizards around him blocking far-ranging shots.

  Knowing he couldn’t take that much plasma and survive for long he released the Fornax field and the lizards began standing up, some of them right into the path of plasma and taking the friendly fire while the other two Arc Knights pushed through other areas of the assembly pool, one of which had brandished a plasma sword for the occasion. Darius hadn’t used his, for he knew it didn’t hold that many charges, but the extendable blade would be wrapped in plasma that would partially discharge on physical contact akin to a pistol blast. With skill, one could deliver far more plasma strikes with a sword than a firearm and that’s exactly what the Arc Knight had in mind.

  He tore through the lizards around him, poking, slashing and kicking them aside in a flurry of movement that even a Jedi would have been hard pressed to match, for the 7 foot tall Human didn’t suffer the typical ‘big guy’ slowness that the Calavari were clearly demonstrating, though some of them were upwards of 8 foot tall.

  No, the Knights were fast and the Arc Knights even faster, akin to Archon speed and faster than many of them. Personally trained by the original badass himself, the Black Knight, the Arc Knights suffered nothing in movement when compared to the lizards and were able to outmaneuver and outfight the tiny infantry with ease…there were just so many of them and they had a deadline to meet.

  Realizing that the other Arc Knight was right, Darius pulled out his own plasma sword from his back rack and triggered the blade extension. The stubby cylinder sprang out a meter and a half long blade that was bathed in plasma with a second button press, held close and contained by patches of smart shield that would only release with a prerequisite amount of physical pressure. That amount was high enough that a mere brush wouldn’t trigger a ‘shot’ but with the sheer power the Knights had in their arms, let alone before the powered armor enhancements, there was no chance of the blades not discharging when they meant them to.

  Darius whipped his sword around and hit two lizards with it in sequence, discharging a couple of shots into the first then hitting the second with the tip. That half of the blade lost its glow for a split second then returned to pure white a moment later. The Arc Knight didn’t try to count the hits, but he knew that if he went hard at the swarm of lizards he’d expend its charge within a minute…but right now that’s what had to be done in order to get to the tanks in time.

  Sending a Fornax wave out behind him to diminish the shots into his back, he dashed forward swinging and hacking the glowing blade around and dropping bodies in his wake. The blade didn’t sever limbs like a lightsaber, but it was capable of delivering multiple plasma hits per swing if he wiped the blade across a target…which was more than enough to kill them in a heartbeat.

  Darius didn’t look back, fighting his way forward and throwing in a few punches on the way, trusting the Calavari to follow him up and knowing the other two Arc Knights would be doing the same. Sooner than he expected the sword went out, leaving him with a metal rod that he continued to hit lizards with, though he had to amp up the strength of his blows to do enough damage that the lizards stayed down when hit.

  Nearly to the far side of the pool he retracted the blade and stuck the hilt back on his rack as he telekinetically grabbed two more lizard rifles and fought his way forward with them and a mix of psionics, eventually getting to the other side and a trail that a scattering of additional lizards were running down to join the others.

  He held position there, shooting them and those behind him while the other Arc Knights and Calavari fought their way up to him. Darius didn’t have time to look, but the sea of trees behind him where the lizards had been gathering was quickly turning into a corpse-filled park so thick that the Calavari were actually having to pick up and throw bodies aside to make paths for the
m to walk through.

  Darius waited for the other Arc Knights to catch up to him, then he tossed the lizard weapons aside and grabbed new ones, not knowing what their charge level was, and followed the pair as they passed him on the run. Moving faster than the Calavari could, the threesome fought their way up the trail dropping bodies as they went and rushing towards the rendezvous point, with Darius seeing that the other Calavari unit was closer than them and already engaging infantry near to the waypoint on his battlemap.

  That was good, for there were no Arc Knights with them and they’d need both Calavari groups to keep the enemy infantry busy when they hit the tanks, for the region around the turret was heavily defended.

  10

  March 29, 2692

  Jafat System (lizard territory)

  Irad

  Jason jumped up to the edge of the hole that they’d blown into the roof of the lizard subsurface facility, grabbing the edge and hanging with his feet dangling. He pulled himself up and got an elbow on the edge then slowly wiggled his mass up over the tipping point and crawled along the dirty roof plate. It was melted in some places, jagged in others, but less than a meter away there was a wall of hardened dirt that he began scaling on all fours until he reached the top and could finally stand up.

  He breathed a sigh of relief, now that the key facility had been taken and secured. This assault was over, but there were several others ongoing across the planet and many more to come. Taking a planet was not an easy task, especially one with this many enemies…but beyond that they had been dug in more than normal and it had been a very long past six days.

  He’d cycled out twice for sleep, with his troops doing so more often than that, but they hadn’t let the lizards rest, keeping someone banging on the door nonstop as they fought their way through the ravines and down into the base. Now that he was topside again his battlemap began to update with information from other battlefronts and space, with him immediately noticing the arrivals in orbit.