by Aer-ki Jyr
“I’m good,” Kara said, shunting a course plot over to him that she would update enroute. “Let’s go.”
Paul zipped the ship up about 100 meters then pointed the nose at an angle and accelerated hard…harder than any Star Force fighter could move, with barely any drop in shield power when they auto-activated to cut the wind when reaching a certain speed.
“Easy,” Morgan said calmly.
“Less time visible the better,” Paul replied in kind.
“That’s not why you’re rushing.”
“Don’t worry. You can fly on the way back if you want.”
Morgan whisper laughed, but intended to hold him to that on the return trip.
Paul accelerated the gunship up at an angle, following a wavy course plot that was wagging like a dogs tail on the far end as Kara made adjustments based on the position of orbital ships and Star Force’s own sensor beacons, trying to keep them in the least intense sensor ‘beams,’ which was a misnomer because most of them were transmitting in a spherical, or at least hemispherical radius.
The hull of the dropship registered the hits, including the visible light coming from the star, and dampened them, meaning that very little reflection occurred that also cut off any possibility of a sunlight glare coming off the hull for anyone looking up at the sky to see as the tiny ship left the hangar. Portions of the colony were open air, but like most Star Force colonies the bulk of the infrastructure was indoors, leaving only a scattering of people on the surface of the buildings to see the gunship rise up and disappear in the distance…whereas several dropships coming and going from the various spaceports could be seen like tiny stars, brightly shining from the reflected sunlight.
Kara led them on a very loopy course up to orbit and around to a non-standard jumpline to get away from the traffic, then Paul made a high power jump pulling/pushing against 6 different gravity wells in order to get the proper line to set them into the coast phase over to the 8th planet in the system that the Scionate had located their capitol on.
The gunship wasn’t designed for inter-planetary trips, used primarily as orbit to surface transport akin to a dropship, but the gravity drives were more than powerful enough to do so, making the craft very useful for such travel…but lacking that oh so important restroom that starships required.
That wasn’t going to be a problem, for with the V’kit’no’sat gravity drive it was a short trip, with Paul decelerating them on another non-standard jumppoint and having to yank on multiple gravity wells to get them decelerated out in a fairly high orbit, whereupon Kara started to work her magic plotting them a course down inside the Scionate sensor grid.
That grid amounted to stations in orbit that were monitoring the traffic, most of which was not Scionate, but visitors to the system conducting a variety of business. No Star Force vessels were here, requiring individuals who wanted to access the transit grid to come over to Admat, as well as for market activity. That gave the Scionate the privacy they wanted while allowing them the linkage to Star Force, though there was no official restriction on Star Force ships entering orbit or even coming down to the planet. It was simply a matter of respect, which left thousands of alien ships traversing orbit around Vaadsip that Kara had to plot their way through.
Fortunately a planet was huge and there were plenty of gaps to shoot through, the trick was avoiding the sensors, meaning she had to pick areas where they were weaker, with Paul taking a cautious pace forward that had them spending more time in orbit than they had been in making the jump between the two planets.
With Kara monitoring the sensor reflectivity and keeping it within ‘ghost’ levels that wouldn’t return enough signal for them to be detected, Paul followed her directions and they got down into the atmosphere, further shielding them from sensors but also creating physical disturbances that could be tracked, requiring that Paul keep it slow and not produce a fireball upon reentry.
The last hurdle was the city sensors. The planet was a large grassland with multiple cities, the largest of which was the ruling city, which like the others had sensors to detect and monitor ships on approach…meaning they couldn’t come right down on top of them and into the infrastructure, though there was some debate about that, given how well the gunship’s hull was holding up against the ‘crappy’ Scionate technology. Funny thing was, from the V’kit’no’sat’s point of view, this wasn’t a stealth craft at all, nor were most of their ships, which their sensors could detect just fine.
To play it safe Paul brought them down well outside the city, all but landing on the surface and allowing Kara to determine the minimum height of the sensors…which came in at 34 meters. She had Paul fly about side to side around the colony giving her a slice of the radial pie, allowing her to map out the differing heights and create a basic map that would allow them to come in under the sensor beams.
She picked out a sweet spot where one of their buildings had raised the ceiling to 56 meters and Paul flew well under that all the way up to the perimeter defenses and stopping far enough out to give Kara time to plot a course in. They waited there some 20 minutes before Paul accelerated the ship ahead in a flash, visible to anyone that was looking as a blur that crossed into the city structures and decelerated so rapidly that it would have looked to collide with the buildings.
Paul took it to a spot that Kara had found for them and parked it in a nook that gave them partial visual cover from above and no windows around the immediate area…and to top it off there was a shadow forming that covered half the gunship as it hovered in place four inches above the rooftop.
“Any activity?” Paul asked up the short ladder to where Kara sat as he abandoned the pilot’s seat.
“If they saw us I see no immediate sign of it. We can wait and watch or deploy now and deal with problems as they arise.”
“I vote for option 2,” Morgan said, standing up and stepping ahead of Paul out into the walkway between the rows of seats that were two stories deep, making for four rows with a catwalk over her head to service the top two.
“Ditto. Keep us updated with any activity, but stay low unless we need you.”
“I admit I have mixed feelings about that,” Kara said, dropping down the ladder and following Paul and Morgan over to the door.
“Says the girl who’s used to going on one man missions behind enemy lines,” Morgan lightly complained.
“Is that a touch of jealousy I hear?”
“Yes,” Morgan said honestly, opening the door and dropping down to the rooftop with a muted clank.
“Same here,” Paul agreed, hesitating a moment. “Hopefully we won’t need you to go all badass on them, but if we do remember this is a zero casualty mission. Don’t get carried away, because we still like these guys…mostly.”
“Understood.”
Paul stepped out and dropped down, already seeing Morgan on the edge of the nook and looking out, plotting their first leg. He walked over to the other side of the ship and checked the opposite way as Kara followed him out and stepped down, her red scales covering her foot a moment before her toes hit the roof. She reached back towards the ship with her mind and mentally closed and locked the door, leaving the ship essentially sitting out in the open and counting on the manic nature of the city to cover their presence.
She set up a link with the ship, with her being able to monitor its sensors via her Vorch’nas so she would know if indeed it was discovered and be able to return to deal with it promptly. The shadow creeping across it would help obscure the view from above, which had numerous dropships flying high overhead at a regular pace, but none of the hovering vehicles were passing over this location, constricted to specific routes throughout the city.
When Kara stepped out of the shadow a piece of it went with her, the red scales on her body now appearing like a dull spot that seemed to defy shape…less of a blackness than a lack of light, with her body more fading from prominence than standing out against the lightly colored buildings.
That spot took off
, running across the rooftop then dropping over the edge and disappearing from sight as she began scouting out a route for the pair of top ranked trailblazers who were now tied at striker level 93.
How’s it look? Paul asked Morgan as he circled back around the ship through the shadow and came up behind her.
A lot of jumping…not a lot of windows. I think if we keep moving we’ll be alright even if we’re spotted, no waiting on Kara for directions. We just take what she can offer us on the fly.
Agreed, Paul said, seeing the distant waypoint on his HUD that was their eventual destination…the central den of the Scionate race. After you.
Morgan ran forward two steps and leaned forward, jumping off the edge and shooting herself on a more or less flat trajectory over to the next building some 25 meters away with the help of her jump pack. Paul followed two seconds later, giving her plenty of a head start so he could just match her pace and leave her room to navigate without him running up on her backside.
Per typical Morgan, she took off and didn’t let up, making Paul work to keep pace and the two of them on a quick transit across the city, two black specs jumping like fleas from building to building enroute to a diplomatic session that would be long remembered throughout Scionate history.
8
Dor’wan looked up from his sentry position outside the main entrance to the ruling bloodline’s den, hearing a disturbance in the crowds of Scionate that were, as usual, wandering the open ring-shaped plaza surrounding the habitat and administrative complex of their leaders. This wasn’t the first time there had been a ruckus, with the moving of all Scionate to the ADZ having caused considerable dissent, but the ruling bloodline hadn’t been overthrown and in recent years such disturbances had been relegated to a few discontented skirmishes, which is what he assumed this to be.
Dor’wan sat in his ceremonial combat armor, looking out through the crowd but unable to see what was happening, though he quickly perked up as the din escalated. There was genuine alarm in the thousands of Scionate milling around the den, and soon he finally saw why when the crowds nervously parted as two black-clad bipeds walked through them up towards the main doors. They were a considerable distance away, but behind them he could see several Scionate laying on the ground, indicating that some sort of combat had occurred.
The other guards rose to their feet with Dor’wan, knowing full well that outsiders were not allowed in the city, meaning whoever these two were they had come here either by secrecy or combat…with the bodies in the crowd behind them attesting to the latter.
Then one of the unarmored Scionate in the crowd ran out towards the pair and executed a well-formed lunge jump towards the one on the right…but was inexplicably repulsed by a raised hand. Dor’wan didn’t even see the Scionate make physical contact, nor did the biped even turn towards the attack. It just raised its hand and the Scionate bounced backwards, landing hard on the ground and not getting up for several seconds.
Dor’wan mouthed the controls in his helmet and popped out his armor’s weaponry, as did the other 15 as they came off their ceremonial pedestals and onto the hard, jeweled surface that surrounded the den. It had been polished to perfect smoothness, with each stone matching up seamlessly with the others, and was not meant for any footfalls other than Scionate.
The leader of the guard trotted out towards the bipeds as Dor’wan moved to the left to flank them, with more security assembling inside the den and coming to the doors at their request, which he monitored via the comm chatter. How these two had gotten here no one knew, and the security footage of their walk across the ring was causing those monitoring from inside to declare these invaders extremely dangerous.
Dor’wan already knew that much, but what weapons they were using was another matter…though he could clearly see handheld firearms held in slots on the back of their armor as the lead guard and one other approached the pair.
“Whoever you are, stand down…now,” he growled in the trade language through the speakers in his armor. “Or we will make you.”
“You’ll try…” Morgan said, raising a hand in front of her and unleashing a wave of concussive energy that knocked both Scionate off their feet and back through the air several meters. Before they landed both Humans split, taking a hit each to their shields from the plasma weapons the Scionate had in the head section of their armor as they ran towards the closest guard and engaged them in hand to hand combat.
Morgan punched one so hard it flew backwards into another, knocking both down and partially stunning the first, while Paul wrestled with his and got a hold on one of its paws…after which he spun around and threw it across the plaza, jumping into an attack on another before it even hit the ground.
Dor’wan backed up immediately, firing off shots whenever he could without hitting the other guards or the crowd behind that was thankfully running away rapidly. Still, he had to get low to the ground so in effect he was firing upwards to avoid hitting Scionate in the background. He made several hits on one of the attackers before his head suddenly got dizzy and he lost all bodily control.
Next thing he knew one of the black intruders was over top of him and he felt a hit to his ribs, after which he was tossed into the air before a massive blow sent him to the ground. The impact didn’t do more than jar him, given the armor he wore, but a moment later he blacked out none the less.
“That was easy,” Morgan said as she casually walked over to the center of their little skirmish and met up with Paul as they continued past the guards to the main doors that were locked tight.
“More where those came from,” Paul said, sensing a host of minds on the other side of the doors.
“Guys, heads up,” Kara said over the comm. “Valeries are headed your way, not to mention a lot of guards coming from everywhere in ones and twos. Some armored, some not. I think you’ve hit their fanatical sweet spot.”
“We’re not even warmed up yet,” Paul replied, knowing that they had to get inside before the fighters got here. The infantry they could handle easily enough.
“Want to knock first?” Morgan asked sarcastically.
“Happy to,” Paul said as he walked up to the control panel as she bit down on the two senzu beans that she’d cheeked just before they’d dropped down from the rooftops onto the plaza. Each contained 200 doses of ambrosia, with her currently daily intake at 94. Any more than that and she’d overload from saturation headaches, meaning she was going to have one monster one coming her way that would potentially cause her to black out, but since it took a few minutes to get into the blood stream she had a window of opportunity…and by the time that happened, her body was going to be screaming for more ambrosia.
Using Pefbar, Paul saw the internal components of the door locking mechanism and how they were configured within the wall, then made quick work of the control panel…tearing it out and disconnecting the physical locks so that the massive doors would move on their tracks when pulled. That said, they had no power and the seam between them was non-existent, leaving a six inch wall between the Archons and the interior of the den that had to be gotten through.
Pull stepped back, tossing aside a few components that he’d ripped out with his armored hand. “All yours.”
Morgan summoned up a continuous wave of tingles, bringing the energy up and out into her arms and then passing it through her armor into a holding aura where it manifested into the concussive energy. She dragged more and more of it out and condensed it down into an invisible ball that she held cradled in both hands beside her…then she launched it forward towards the seam in the doors in a Kamehameha motion.
The impact made a very loud boom, but other than slightly denting the doors it did no good, leaving the heavy barriers in place.
“Nice,” Paul said, walking up to the now visible crack where the two met and digging his fingers into the gap. He activated the powered movement that his armor was capable of and pulled hard on his narrow grip point, moving the door another inch that let him get his fingers in
all the way. Once he did he was able to slowly walk the right-side half of the door open as the Scionate on the other side froze in place thanks to Morgan’s Ikrid.
She held them inert until Paul had widened the gap enough for one of them to go through, then Morgan ran up and mentally released them a moment before releasing another concussive wave through the opening and blowing aside those standing closest to it. Paul followed her in and the two cut loose on the 50+ guards, with Morgan doing the heavy lifting and Paul cleaning up after her. The Jumat ability that she was using was fueled using ambrosia…or more accurately could be refueled using ambrosia, and with each blast she fired the saturation level in her bloodstream diminished.
The senzu beans were going to make up for that, but she had to keep launching attacks or risk an overdose, so Paul let her take the lead and blast aside whoever she wanted, with him taking the rest hand to hand and stunning them, either by Ikrid suppression when he had the opportunity or by using the stun rifle he had brought in on his back. The Archons no longer used stingers, having left those to the security forces and general populace as they’d upgraded to pure energy weapons, now that they’d developed a decently sized clip and a bolt of energy that could travel more than a few meters.
That bolt, looking like a condensed marble of pink energy, soaked through the Scionate armor once their shields were breached…and a lot of the guards didn’t have armor with shields. With Paul blacking out those who Morgan knocked down, the pair proceeded through the outer area of the den complex, coming up against more and more Scionate that were unarmed and unarmored, literally throwing themselves at the Humans to try and stop, or at least delay them as they fought their way inside towards the central chambers where the royal blood made their home.
The den was huge, but Star Force already had a blueprint on file so Paul and Morgan knew where they were going and didn’t bother making any detours to find Scionate ass to kick. They all seemed to be coming their way anyway, and the trailblazers knew they had to get to the leadership before they could evacuate, prompting a run and gun assault that the Scionate simply could not stop. Whenever they massed plasma fire on the Archons they’d absorb a few hits with their shields before the Scionate would either get knocked down by invisible energy blasts or drop to the ground unable to make their own bodies function.