by Aer-ki Jyr
Instantly that tumble of energy reduced, with visible gaps forming in the cascading arcs. It didn’t stop its forward progress though, heading directly for the Sentinel pieces and intent on either ramming them or burning them if it had any weaponry left. Liam accounted for the first possibility by sending ships to push the invoker out of alignment, but first he had to get it disabled or any ships getting close enough to yank it away with an IDF field would be shredded by what looked to be standard invoker weaponry, though perhaps beefed up in intensity a bit based on how some cruiser debris literally puffed into dust upon impact with it.
Liam fired another shot, then two more before the energy arcs all but went out and the invoker was clearly aiming to ram either the Sentinels or the base below, but a swarm of drones rushed to it like pilot fish and pushed it aside using both IDF and their own hulls that gently rammed the sides then pushed into it, often imbedding themselves in the craft as their gravity drives shoved the invoker off its path.
The now dark ship passed by the Sentinel segments with 7 kilometers to spare…a near miss considering how big these constructs were, but more than adequate. Now all Liam had to do was repeat the process and use his fleet of drones to harass the assault pillars a bit longer, for the third Sentinel piece was now locked into place with only one more to go.
The lizards knew they were out of time, but Liam’s fleet was too well arrayed and the planetary battery was delivering too much firepower to let the big ships ram it. One assault pillar tried though, positioning far out for a jump that Liam knew was coming. He forced a group of drones through the lizard lines, losing more than half of them in the reckless charge, but the others he had break through the shields at two points with concentrated attacks enough to slip a few drones through and onto the hull where they became engines that he could use to steer the assault pillar a bit.
It still made its jump, but sailed past the Sentinel and hit the planet a few hundred miles away from the base. The impact was massive and sent tremors across most of the planet, not to mention debris all the way back up into orbit that would be raining down on the planet in the days to come, but it had failed to take out the Sentinel before the fourth segment was attached.
When that happened the internal components realigned and the power cores came online…along with the shield generators and all the weapon systems. Its Keema batteries weren’t as large as the planetary one, but this Sentinel had 24 of them…not to mention other short range weapons and a few tricks to avert collisions.
Liam linked to it with his Sav-enhanced mind and added its firepower to the ground battery and began tearing through the lizard fleet that was surrounding it as the cradles fled. The Sentinel floated over the planet, now suspended by its own gravity drives, and Liam nudged it further up towards the bulk of the lizard fleet killing cruisers with single hits and often taking out two with one penetrating shot.
When he got the short range weapons into play the lizard fleet did not turn and run like it should have, rather the assault pillars and invokers both attacked along with the cruisers, intent on taking it out no matter what the cost.
Liam admitted this one might be lost, but even as he pushed it further out into orbit more Sentinel pieces jumped down into the gap with the planetary battery covering them while the Sentinel fought the lizard fleet. It wasn’t exactly a ‘safe’ zone for assembly, but it was far more resistance than the lizards had expected and Liam knew they’d get the others online, for all the pieces that had fled to other parts of the star system and were being continually chased eventually headed to Planet 13 and began assembling side by side.
There was no way to stop them all now, and by the end of the day three of the massive defense platforms would be destroyed, along with a fourth being heavily damaged, but two would remain intact protecting the planet, and from that point on Star Force had its foothold, as well as a temporarily weakened lizard fleet to contend with.
And both Liam and Paul knew it was only going to snowball in their favor from that point on.
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