by Aer-ki Jyr
The trailblazer took hits, but Sara was on the Zen’zat before he could truly lay in the damage, striking him in the head with her double-bladed sword so hard he half spun over, landing face down for a moment before leaping up and running off…but a quick Ubven drop by her froze him in place, though she had to remove her Da’nu jamming in order to make it work.
The Zen’zat pulsed his Rentar, eating away at and pushing through the field in slow motion as Rio ran up through it easily, for which his own Ubven allowed via a special energy neutralizer, and he began punching him in the back relentlessly, intending to disorient and daze more than damage, then when the Ubven field finally fell he knocked the Zen’zat to the ground and dropped his own down on top of him…but not before an elbow came up and knocked Rio off him.
The trailblazer recovered quickly as Sara ran out ahead of him, making sure he couldn’t escape, then Rio landed a few more mauler blasts that met the Zen’zat’s bioshield, finally breaking through it as the other two Archons caught up and dropped their Ubvens on the Zen’zat in sequence, allowing them all to hammer him with energy weapons but nothing physical aside from their bodies. Even their swords would have caught on the field, though they were made for more for leverage against armored targets rather than damage, and the other weapons the Archons had brought with them were pouring it out now, including a sticky grenade from Mathis, as the Zen’zat pushed his Rentar as hard as he could to eat his way through the field as he walked towards Sara fighting an invisible hurricane trying to hold him in place.
The armor on his back breached in several places when the grenade went off, with bits of flesh being burnt as the final field saturation failed and he was free again…with the Archons requiring quite some time for their Ubven tissues to regenerate enough strength for a second drop. The Zen’zat, clearly enraged but not stupid, screamed telepathically so hard that all four Archons heard it as he charged Sara, throwing another Lachka attack on her that she slipped out of with her Rentar, but not before he punched her into a nearby wall as he ran past and sprinted away.
Rio flashed past, tearing after him with Sara in hot pursuit a few steps behind, suddenly realizing that she wasn’t going to catch him. Rio surged onward, flying/running down the corridors and catching up until the Zen’zat suddenly reversed course and punched him hard.
Rio half dodged it, but careened off the misaimed blow and into the wall. The Zen’zat shot him multiple times, with Rio’s own bioshield taking some of the hits as Sara caught up with Mathis and Angel trailing farther behind, but before she could strike him he took off running again and Rio sensed two minds pop into view further ahead…then three more.
“Damn it!” Sara yelled, sensing the other Zen’zat approaching. “We had him!”
“I know,” Rio said, getting to his feet and running the opposite way back to the pair of ViLords, who then led them away rather than falling in behind so they could maintain the top speed possible…which was always determined by the slowest of them. “He’s not going to try taking us solo again.”
“Crap,” Angel said as they all sensed more Zen’zat coming down around them, including a few ahead.
“Blow through,” Sara ordered. “They can’t beat us unless we stand and fight or go up top and play with the big boys.”
“The others look like they’re clear,” Mathis said as they released their battlemeld and the stress in their minds lifted. “Are we going to try for the other prisoners?”
“Yes,” Rio said, surprising Sara. “Mr. Badass is hurt and we may not get another shot at this. Go dark and take the main line to the left ahead. We’ll work our way from there and at least find out if any of them are still alive.”
“We need the others,” Sara reminded him.
“They have a job to do, and if they can get back here in time so be it, but getting those four out is paramount. I’m not drawing any of them off until they’re safe.”
“You three are beat up,” she argued.
“Then you can do most of the ass kicking if needed.”
“Alright, we’ll have a look. But we can’t take on a Brat’mar with just four of us and do more than tickle him…and by now they’ve probably got a lot more guards on them.”
“If they haven’t made adjustments yet I don’t want to waste the chance of getting one more person out.”
“Agreed,” Sara relented, using her Kgat and disappearing from the minds of the others along with losing her Ikrid tracking of them as well, but with their Pefbar and battlemap there was no issue of them getting lost. They just couldn’t spot the Zen’zat closing in on them, but with the change of direction and their familiarity with the subsurface Star Force structures they were soon able to elude the enemy and began making their way to one of the other two prisoner holding areas within the huge V’kit’no’sat camp.
Kaalo kept running away from the Archons until his Zen’zat got to him, then he turned around and was ready to fight if they were still pursuing, but unfortunately they were not. He sensed them running off like the cowards they were, but at least they were pragmatic. There was no way they were going to win now and they knew it.
The Tiparen-level Zen’zat balled up a fist and punched one of the Star Force walls in anger/frustration, breaking through it and creating an impact crater around the penetration point as his fellow Zen’zat stood by waiting to follow his lead.
“Make sure they leave the area,” he said, pointing them ahead.
The other Zen’zat ran on by, leaving him to walk back towards the surface as he used his Sesspik to begin healing his injuries, which were significant. He’d learned long ago to not let pain slow him down in battle, but the wounds into his back and chest were deep enough that he had to force himself to stop and hold still long enough to fully stop the bleeding, though most of his wounds were nearly cauterized to begin with.
When he finally got back to the surface there was a gunship waiting to pick him up that flew him across the distance he normally would have ran, but from its elevated viewpoint he could see the continuing battle on the perimeter of their camp where the Star Force battlesuits were attacking in far greater numbers and being torn apart methodically. He did not fear them taking the camp, but he did know that there were many Brat’mar and Kar’ka going down out there.
When the gunship landed near a medical station he triggered his damaged armor to shed all non-responding components, with a shower of sand-like material falling away before the rest retracted back into the typical forearm gauntlets, leaving the burn marks in his clothing and body where the Archon weapons had burnt through…though it was their simple rods that had given him the most trouble, and that was an embarrassment he did not tolerate well.
“Do you want a Kich’a’kat?” a Zen’zat medic asked when he walked in and the extent of his injuries became visible.
“No,” he sneered in disgust. “Use the gel.”
“If you wish, but you’ve lost a lot of muscle mass. I’m surprised you can even stand up straight,” he said as another Zen’zat pulled out a canister and brought it over.
“I have no patience for the ignorance of medics,” he snapped, but made no further retort.
“How did they beat you?” the medic inquired, respectful but stern as he opened the canister and the pair began pulling out small amounts of glowing gel with their own Lachka and pushing it into the charred remains of his flesh at the wound points. It began dissolving all dead tissue and spurning the normal regeneration of tissue immediately without enacting the flash growth that would deny the muscle tissue the adaptation enhancement from the wounds’ recovery.
“There were four of them and they were all steeped in treason,” Kaalo growled, but his ire wasn’t directed at the medic. “They have psionics they have not earned, and a great deal of them. All four of them had Ubven.”
Both medics froze, aware of what the tier 3 psionic was but never having encountered anyone who had actually possessed it, for it was extremely rare.
“All of th
em?” the second medic asked.
“Indeed,” Kaalo said, sneering against the burning sensation of the gel as it worked deeper into his wounds, not harming any living tissue but energizing it in a very uncomfortable fashion.
“If you are needed immediately for battle, why not use the Kich’a’kat?”
“There is no immediate need. The cowards fled.”
The medics continued in silence for the next minute, filling every charred crater with a pale while glow until all were attended to.
“Finished,” the medic said, pulling off the tatters of Kaalo’s shirt and offering him a new one.
The tier 4 Zen’zat put it on slowly, not wanting to disrupt the gel any more than necessary, then headed for the door as his armor redeployed across his body in a quick wave of what looked like liquid material until it hardened.
“You will be needed shortly,” he said as he left, though it would be more than an hour before the wave of Zen’zat casualties started coming in.
8
The Voltron’s physical shield smashed down into the rubble, blocking a Brat’mar cannon shot headed towards the Archons carrying the prisoners as they came up to the surface behind the battle lines that were falling apart. The V’kit’no’sat had suffered a lot of casualties but the Star Force mechs were dropping far faster and recovery operations of downed pilots was taking priority as they started to fight a withdrawal after the Archons reappeared…with their location being swarmed by the V’kit’no’sat nearby.
A neo ran up and punched a Kar’ka back as it jumped over a limping madcat to try and get a shot at the Archons as numerous Zen’zat were now pouring out of the subsurface corridors everywhere, but staying in the shadows and out of the line of fire trying to get a chance to take out either the Archons or the prisoners. Why it was so important to get them the mechwarriors didn’t know, but they’d be damned if they were going to let those bastards get through to their people.
A second Voltron ran over and blanketed one area of partially constructed buildings with weaponsfire, chasing several Zen’zat contacts back underground as the 11 Archons continued to run with their four recovered prisoners at the center of their tight formation with numerous bioshields deployed to hit anything that got through. Further back, having stayed out of the heaviest fighting, several madcats ran forward, firing from their arm- and chest-mounted weaponry at distant targets and Zen’zat trying to get out ahead of the retreating Archons, but with their missile boxes remaining silent, as they had been throughout the battle.
Two madcats stayed on a direct course to the fleeing Archons while the others fanned out into a perimeter as they stopped, firing at anything that moved while the missile boxes on the two opened up…revealing empty compartments inside as the mechs stooped down as low as they could on their legs.
Two of the Archons jumped up on the mechs and climbed into the missile boxes, then using psionics pulled the prisoners up to them, locking them inside while the rest of the Archons headed for other missile boxes, cramming inside as the two mechs scooped up the vulnerable infantry and spun around, running away from the retreating formations and getting their precious cargo clear while the other madcats stayed and helped to collect pilots recovered from both downed mechs and skeets as the battle was switched to a high speed retreat.
Those mechs that fell on the way out caused minor delays, for Star Force intended for no one to be left behind…though the four Archons still inside the enemy camp were an exception. The trailblazers had ordered the mechs to get clear after they determined there were no more prisoners to be recovered. The other two groups had been either destroyed or moved, and the Archons were going to make their own way out.
The mechwarriors didn’t like that, but they weren’t going to disobey two trailblazers. The plan had been to pull all of them out, but if they could get clear on their own it would save a lot more mechs. With that in mind the battle slowly disintegrated as the V’kit’no’sat chased after them until some clever ambushes discouraged the practice and the two sides retreated to their respective strongholds.
Star Force’s was well off, but flocks of dropships came in once the area was safe and picked them all up, including the madcats with the four prisoners, and took them back to one of the Star Force-held spaceports.
“Damn it,” Sara said as her four-man team stayed under Kgat anonymity and moved even further inside the V’kit’no’sat camp…the last place they were expected to go. They had decided to try the trick after heading for the edge and making sure they were seen traveling that direction, with them doubling back and going after the prisoners that had been moved. Their search had brought them near a V’kit’no’sat landing zone where they saw them being loaded onto a gunship that had just taken off, headed for one of the giant doors in the sky that led back into space.
“We can’t get them now,” Angel said, angry but pragmatic.
“That was only three of them. Where are the others?” Mathis asked.
“Good question,” Rio agreed, “but Angel is right. We can’t signal the fleet in time to intercept, and if we did we’d pull them down on top of us here. We’ll review the logs and see where that gunship went, then tag the ship with a marker for potential capture later. Odds are that won’t be an option, though.”
“I hate these fuckers,” Angel added as the Archons pulled back from their observation point just above ground and took to the subsurface tunnels again, crawling through a layer of debris until they got into the intact substructures.
“Where we going?” Mathis asked.
“Does anyone have any memory of where they might have split the others off?”
“No,” Sara said icily. “Think they used those three as decoys.”
“Meaning they’re still here,” Mathis argued.
“We can’t keep roaming around pressing our luck. If we don’t know where to look we need to get out of here before they decide to start blasting.”
“Without the mechs they can focus on us now,” Angel agreed. “I don’t like leaving, but we can’t let ourselves be captured either. Question is, do we bag one of them on the way out?”
“No,” Rio said, heading down a tunnel of his choosing with the others following. “We move fast and far. We’re ghosts until we get in the clear.”
After that there was no more talking, only single file running and silence until they got well beyond the boundaries of the V’kit’no’sat camp and to a working transit hub, then they took a train car through subsurface landscape all the way back to the edge of the nearest spaceport and got off where the damage the V’kit’no’sat had done earlier had cut the lines. From there they signaled for an aerial pickup and got back into the business of continuing to evacuate the remaining civilians, hoping that no more of them would be snatched up or killed before getting them off the Ribbon and down beneath the protection of Titan’s planetary shields.
Kaalo walked by the Zen’zat guards surrounding the single prisoner camp they now possessed in another landing zone camp, but this one was well underground with all approaches physically blocked off so no potential rescue teams could easily get to them. There were several hundred prisoners here that had been deemed of some value, but it was the few Archons that had been captured that he was interested in.
A few entrances had been reconstructed to allow the Kar’ka down this far with more ease, but the Brat’mar could not reach the prisoners. Hopefully this would help to further camouflage their location, but the Tiparen didn’t care about that. He wanted another shot at their Rio, though the Brat’mar had ordered him not to seek out combat until he was fully healed.
At the moment though he needed information, so he located one of the holding cells with an Archon currently under interrogation by a Kar’ka and walked in on them, seeing the Archon outside of armor and laying stiff on a table with a three fingered Kar’ka hand laying over his head making the physical contact necessary to bypass the Ikrid block. Another Zen’zat stood by for assistance, and both V’kit’no�
�sat looked over at Kaalo questioningly.
“Leave,” he commanded, retracting his armor into his forearm gauntlets as he looked down on the Archon.
“What is it that you want?” the Kar’ka asked.
“I have questions that need answering, and I will ask them alone.”
“I have not finished with this one.”
“You are finished…now,” Kaalo said, staring up at the Kar’ka and making it clear with his gaze that he was not in a mood to be argued with.
The Kar’ka sniffed rudely but made no other objection, knowing the status of this particular Zen’zat along with the fact that he could remove the Kar’ka by force if he wished, and some of the elite Zen’zat tended to throw their weight around more than they ought to.
The Kar’ka released the Archon and walked out, with the other Zen’zat going with him as the prisoner, now with his body back under his own control, sat up and slid off the table with a mix of fear and rage in his eyes.
Kaalo shut the large door with a telekinetic tug, then looked down on the smaller Archon.
“You may not know the identity of your sponsor, but I require different information.”
“I’m not going to tell you anything,” the Archon said, a little wobbly from the drugs he’d been given to loosen his mental resistance. “You’re going to have to dig it out like the rest.”
Kaalo pointed a finger at the Archon and lifted him up off the ground with his Lachka, holding him head level so he could look him eye to eye.