by Aer-ki Jyr
From his vantage point up top, while the rest of his unit were taking a quick nap below in a prefab firebase that they’d actually set up inside a gutted lizard building for the visual cover, he could see the mech battles taking place around the city. The lizards were fighting through the interior but also trying to flank the invaders, which was why they’d attacked on a wide swath. It would give them a ‘safe’ zone in the middle that they could fall back to if necessary, but the mechs were determined to keep the tank swarms and fighters at bay. He could see several of the Porcupine-class quadruped mechs patrolling behind the front lines daring the lizard fighters to come within range, but the suicidal pilots were backing off at the moment, with the once barren countryside getting a lot of yellow/tan metallic boulders added to the natural pale pink ones.
With the number of porcupines that they had in play, Harris knew they’d be safe from all but the largest of the wisp swarms. Those had been present when they’d initially attacked the city, but the perimeter had been an easy approach in that there were no boundary walls. Typically lizard cities didn’t have them, for they were constantly growing and pushing out their borders, but they did have defense turrets and towers that a group of heavy walkers had to take down from range. Two Rafael-class walkers, the largest that Star Force produced, had knocked out the visible turrets from afar and were now parked out behind them in what was essentially the middle of the invasion zone. They were too big to enter the city, unless you wanted to squash buildings while walking over them, but they did a remarkable job of keeping enemy tanks away through intimidation alone.
The current engagements were happening further around the curve of the city where their firing lines did not connect. Harris could see a lot going on, and was taking a moment to check out what the battlemap was telling him before he got back into the action. This city looked like it was going to take weeks to conquer, based on the number of reinforcements that were pouring in, but Star Force was grinding its way forward and he had to take rest sooner or later. He’d spent an 18 hour stint fighting before coming here to grab some food and rest rather than redeploying back to a safer Star Force ground base. Many others were doing the same, and now that he was up he wanted to take stock of the larger picture before he got consumed in hand to hand fighting alongside the Commandos and Knights while higher ranking Archons pressed forward sniffing out traps that could collapse buildings down on top of you.
His helmet had a magnification function built into the cameras hidden within the hard exterior. There was no faceplate on this version, relaying entirely on a holographic HUD inside to allow him to see. Some of the old models were still used but Harris, like most other Archons, preferred not to have a weaker section of armor covering his eyes. The plate hovering just in front of his face was the thickest on his body and would allow him to take several direct blasts without penetrating. The fact that he looked like a robot from the outside didn’t bother him, for most of the Commandos with him were likewise wearing similar ‘faceless’ helmets.
With the zoom function expanding out, he was watching one Starbright-class mech battle with a dozen or so lizard tanks when he noticed a dark cloud in the distance behind them. At first he thought it was a storm wall approaching, for this planet regularly had wet weather, which was odd considering the plant-less, rocky terrain. Both lizard and Star Force aerial fighters could navigate through clouds and rain well enough, but lightning strikes were going to make things tricky for them and he wondered if the lizards weren’t going to try and make a play in the storm when it got here.
Harris moved his line of sight forward as far as he could until the edge of the city eclipsed his view. The mech battles were continuing beyond his line of sight, but it looked like there were groups of tanks trying to rush past them and dive into the city streets behind Star Force lines in an attempt to the flank the ground troops within. He saw one Keema streak mildly disrupt the skyline before melting/exploding one of the tanks in a single strike, followed by four more shots in the next 5 seconds coming from one of the rafaels that ended their little flanking run before they could make the buildings.
The lizards had pushed too far and paid the price for it, but the fact that they were even trying showed how desperate they were. No…desperate wasn’t the right word. They had a different feel to them right now, aggressive for sure, and reckless to a fault, but he got the sense that something else was in play. He zoomed out his battlemap to cover the distance mech fights and saw a huge army of tanks behind those within his line of sight, on the order of several thousand all trying to cut in on the edge of the crescent and get behind the troop positions within the city.
Just then a warning beacon registered in his HUD calling everyone to battle, including those on sleep cycles. Harris was already up so he didn’t need to do anything yet, merely waiting on orders for where his unit was meant to go, but wondering what the urgency was beyond the tanks, he expanded his battlemap out to cover the entire city looking for the source of the warning.
He found not one, but six beacon markers indicating extreme threats. Five marked reinforcement lines coming in from neighboring cities on an order of magnitude far beyond what they’d been getting. No doubt a result of the new arrivals that had been pouring down from orbit with naval unable to stop most of them from getting to ground. He’d wondered when those troops would come into play, and unfortunately it looked like they were going to dump them on his position rather than spreading them out piecemeal across the planet.
“Shit,” he said, hoping Star Force was sending reinforcements as well, for there was no way they could hold out against that many…then he noticed the sixth beacon’s location and snapped his head back towards the approaching zoom and engaged maximum zoom, seeing that it was closing on them rapidly. The dark ‘cloud’ was now resolved down to tiny granules of moving objects, which his battlemap was tagging as lizard wisps.
Harris didn’t have anything to say to that, with the approaching doom clamping down on any verbal retort. There were so many wisps that his battlemap couldn’t get an accurate count, and they were all headed straight here.
The porcupines began moving a few seconds later, increasing their spacing while other mechs moved in to flank them. It took less than half a minute after that before Harris’s orders came in, with a waypoint directing him and his unit down into the substructure of the city and off the streets.
The ranger pulled back his zoom and turned away from the approaching wisp storm, sliding off the edge of the roof and dropping down to the alley three stories below where he joined his Commandos coming out and racing for one of the entrances to the undercity and away from the aerial attack about to hammer them.
Harris waited for the last of his men to come out, then followed up the rear along with a pair of Knights as he heard the porcupines’ array of sammies begin to fire off so fast he couldn’t count the number. By the time he ducked into the building entrance that would lead them down and out of sight, the sound of the phaser storm began to build to monstrous levels and he was very glad he wasn’t out there in a mech right now, though when those ground troops got here he didn’t expect to be much better off.
Three days later…
“What have you got?” Jyra asked, walking in with Mace and Leo as Brandon was leaning over a holographic table in their small private chamber onboard trailblazer Sara’s command ship.
“Have a look,” he said, zooming out to a regional map of the planet’s surface where Star Force still held positions. They’d been forced back into three captured cities and two defense outposts they’d constructed of their own, though those were being heavily engaged by the lizard ground troops.
Jyra looked at the basic map, noting a few small updates but seeing nothing of consequence…as far as a mission for them was concerned. Star Force was getting its ass kicked, having to give up ground to avoid being obliterated while a single key strongpoint was being constructed. Right now it lay at the center of their territory inside a captured
lizard city. That had seemed odd to Jyra, for Star Force usually preferred to construct its own digs, but for whatever the reason the trailblazers had chosen to set up there and were coordinating all of the retreats to buy time to layer it with tech from the fleet in orbit that was barely hanging on to an overhead slot.
It was a turtling up strategy that was daring the lizards to hit them and suffer the consequences, but it also meant that the enemy could now land reinforcements on the far side of the planet without contest and move them across land or air given enough time. If they tried anything closer they’d be harassed or shot down, and even now there were some naval groups out elsewhere around the planet and system doing just that to the lizards, but the bulk was with the command ship Jyra was on that was protecting the ground troops and feeding them supplies. Without them providing cover the lizards could kamikaze ram their cruisers into the captured cities and it’d be bye bye ground troops.
“What am I looking at?” Jyra asked.
“A nightmare situation,” Brandon said, referencing the entire ground campaign, “but not one without holes to exploit. We can’t do anything about the supplies coming down from orbit, and blowing up a few on the ground won’t do much good, but these lizard cities are still actively producing material and warm bodies to throw at us. If we knock down even one wellspring it could make a sizeable difference over the months to come when you do the math.”
“I think ‘negligible’ is the term you’re looking for,” Leo countered.
“We’re not going to win the war on our own,” Mace agreed with Brandon, “but we can save our guys some trouble by taking out factories and avoiding them having to face off against the produce later on. Almost impossible to measure something like that, but it’ll have a real effect so long as we don’t eventually concede the planet and withdraw.”
Jyra raised an eyebrow. “Is that actually being considered?”
Brandon shook his head. “I don’t know, but unless the trailblazers can pull some magic on a scale I’ve never heard of, there’s no way we can win this without a lot of reinforcements. Even then this is going to be a bitch on the ground. We could be looking at a decade-long planetary engagement.”
“Or worse,” Leo added.
“So one factory out of commission adds up to a lot of stuff not being produced over that timespan,” Brandon summed up.
“Alright then. Where do you want us to go?” Mace asked.
Brandon pointed to one city in particular, then looked at the other three Arc Commandos for their reactions.
“Behind enemy lines?” Jyra spoke out what the other two were thinking.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Brandon offered.
“This,” Mace said, pointing into the hologram of the city that spanned more than a 60 mile radius, “would be a first. Our troops only took down a tiny slice of the exterior. That means it’s still lizard central and it’s where they’re routing the reinforcements through.”
“Part of the reinforcements, and it’s not the front line anymore thanks to the ass kicking we’re getting down there. That means it won’t be heavily defended. They’re throwing everything at our troops, not putting up defenses in the rear.”
Leo reached over to the controls, nudging Brandon aside, and zoomed in on the city in question. He brought up the formerly Star Force section of it and jabbed a finger at the new construction zones popping up.
“They’re rebuilding the turret defense.”
“Which will take time. We’ve got a window of opportunity to hit them where they’re not expecting us to. If we wait it disappears.”
“Most of their troops are moving through,” Mace commented, thinking hard. “They’re not hunkered down in defensive slots, which is odd if they were worried about counterattack, especially with their shield emitters being slagged.”
“They’re not even thinking about a counterattack,” Brandon emphasized.
“How much damage could we do?” Jyra asked.
Brandon zoomed in again, showing several markers he’d placed earlier on key facilities, including the bigger defense turrets near the city center.
“We can’t touch these, they’re too well defended. But these,” he said, bringing up 19 different locations spread across the entirety of the city, “I think are doable.”
“All of them?”
“No, unfortunately. We can’t carry enough explosives for more than two, I’d guess. And unless we want to get really bold and put them on long timers, we can’t come and go several times to get them all loaded up. If we can sneak down to the planet and patiently work our way in, I think we’ve got a shot at doing this once. More than that, at this location anyway, would be pushing it.”
“And you think this isn’t pushing it already?” Leo asked.
“If we stay in the shadows no. The question is whether we’re sneaky enough.”
“If we’re exposed we’re as good as dead,” Mace commented.
“We can go underground as a backup. Hide out and make them chase us, so it’s not an instant death fail.”
“That’s so reassuring,” Leo mumbled.
“If you want to nix it, just say so. We can find somewhere else to pitch in.”
“No, you’re right,” Jyra said, looking at the map. “This will matter if we can pull it off. Putting us four on defensive engagements doesn’t gain much. We need to go on the offense and hit something big.”
“Unfortunately the ‘big’ stuff is out of our reach,” Leo argued, looking back at Brandon. “What’s our exit strategy…other than running and hiding?”
“Arrange an evac point outside the city and sneak back out.”
“After we blow it?”
“We can set short timers, I just don’t want to leave the bombs where they can be found over the course of time.”
“Bombs as in what?”
Brandon frowned. “Nothing pretty this time. Just what we can carry in our packs along with survival gear for a few weeks.”
“So not much then,” Mace summed up.
“We’ll have to be creative in the placement.”
Jyra looked at Mace, with both of them in agreement, then she glanced at Leo and gave him a mental ‘boink’ sound and question mark in a telepathic burst.
“This is dumb,” he said plainly, “which is why the lizards wouldn’t see it coming. If we can stay dark it’s doable, otherwise we’re toast. I’m game if you have a really good plan.”
“I do, but I haven’t cleared it yet. Needed you guys onboard first.”
“We are,” Leo confirmed. “Call it in.”
Brandon walked away from the holo table to a pedestal on the other side of the small room, putting his back to his team as he placed a bare hand on it, linking into the telepathic device interface and connecting to the ship’s nexus where the trailblazer was. Through it they had a brief conversation even as she was guiding ships in orbit and coordinating the fighting retreat on the ground. Alpha 9 was the only Arc Commando team involved in this campaign and she’d been saving them for special missions, letting them choose when and where to get involved, but even Brandon wasn’t sure she would go for this one.
He sensed some hesitation when he had completed his proposal, but within a few seconds he got confirmation along with an added wrinkle to the plan to give them some better insertion cover. The Arc Commando withdrew his hand from the pedestal, severing the connection to the computerized hive mind that was organizing this invasion, and turned to his three peers.
“We’re approved and on the clock. 33 minutes to get geared up and in position. Our ride is going to be a bit more flamboyant than I had planned.”
3
The command ship moved down into low orbit as far as it could without endangering itself from the anti-orbital batteries, though some of them were painting its shields will diffuse blasts that were exceeding their effective range. While they did so a portion of the shield was lowered while a few railgun-equipped drones flew down in the shadow of the sh
ip then flanked it, loosing their slugs at the lizard cities without the ability to aim properly given the distance, though hitting their miles-wide shield plates wasn’t going to be an issue.
When the first few fell to ground the anti-air batteries hit them, but couldn’t stop them. Slightly deformed from the light strikes they rammed into the flat shield discs over top the cities and began draining them of power…but at a rate far too low to be effective on a planet-wide assault, else the invasion force would have come equipped with far more. Lizard shields had upgraded to the degree where physical impact didn’t drain them as much as it once had, ironically giving them more of a defense again the kamikaze attacks they themselves employed regularly.
The railgun slugs were basically that, though on a much smaller scale. The anti-orbital batteries couldn’t track and hit them, given the speed at which they were falling, otherwise they never would have made it to ground. After a couple minutes of bombardment the command ship joined in, save for the fact that it didn’t have any rail guns.
What it fired down towards the planet were much larger objects, but at the same insane speeds. Essentially large asteroids, these slugs would do considerably more damage when they hit…but they weren’t aimed at the cities, rather a stretch of uninhabited land in between where they came crashing down with huge craters being carved out from the impacts and the resulting dust clouds filling the air even as a rainstorm was wetting the ground.
All together the command ship sent down 134 objects, with the drones’ railgun bombardment continuing a few minutes more before cancelling the attack well prior to the massive shields being penetrated. The ship and its escorts retreated back up to its holding orbit, with the anti-orbital guns ceasing their likewise ineffective attack, leaving all quiet for the moment at the attack sites while the ground battles continued to occur in 5 locations to the east.