by Aer-ki Jyr
He didn’t, but after a couple of hours another Archon did, discovering some of the collected debris in one of the last downed kirbies. He brought Rafa four small pieces of tech, the purpose of which neither Archon could discern, but if it was worth it to the lizards to launch an attack to recover them it had to hold some significance.
A few hours later more Mantises arrived, along with a couple of dropships carrying prefab buildings which Rafa’s team set up to house both a defensive garrison and a Star Force research team. Over the next few days parts of a defense tower would start arriving, and once it was erected it would give the site more of a defense against a similar attack, though one wouldn’t come. Whatever the lizards had wanted they’d gotten, because from that day forward they didn’t seem to care about the debris field.
Star Force did, however, especially wanting to analyze the cruiser’s hull armor. The more they knew about the enemy’s tech the better, and there was no way they were going to waste a find like this…even if the lizards had succeeded in smashing the most sensitive components.
9
October 29, 2262
Epsilon Eridani System
Corneria
“Confirm visual locks,” Brad-912 ordered his fellow Star Foxes. A flurry of vocal confirmations washed over his skeet’s comm as he lined his aerofighter up on an attack profile on the lizard base. It had a deployed energy shield up at an altitude of 1055 meters, warding off continued attempts at orbital bombardment. It was sufficiently strong enough to defend against a single ship’s rail guns indefinitely, but couldn’t hold up against a sustained fleet action. That said, it offered enough protection for the lizard cruisers to have time to intercept and harass any attacking fleet, forcing them to direct their fire away from the base or be destroyed.
The lizards hadn’t made the mistake of directly tangling with Paul twice, reserving their strikes to hit and run efforts designed at disrupting orbital bombardment rather than wiping out the Human fleets…which also allowed them to preserve their own ships, how many of which the lizards’ had no one knew, but with Star Force receiving additional ships from Sol every couple months attrition seemed to be on their side.
The lizards had at least three cruisers left, as evidenced by the runs to orbit to disrupt the orbital bombardment. The location of their jumpship was unknown, but they’d managed to establish a surface base several thousand kilometers to the south of their previous attempt before they were discovered. No cruisers were beneath the powerful shield, but scores of kirbies continually struck out on light raids hitting multiple targets simultaneously…a new trick the lizards had thrown in to disrupt the Humans’ reinforcement capabilities.
Without the ability to sit in low orbit and blast the hell out of the shield Paul had sent one of his Clan Saber corvettes equipped with a small rail gun down into the atmosphere on its powerful gravity drives, of which only a fraction of the available fleet was capable of doing. Its thin shields held the atmosphere at bay as its unaerodynamic shape sank down into the atmosphere without the reentry speeds coming from an orbital descent. The ship got all the way down to the surface and was slowly skimming over the treetops towards the lizard base, intent on shooting beneath the shield, before one of their cruisers appeared and blew it to pieces.
That had been a costly experiment, but it had defined another tactical defense the lizards could employ…which brought them to this most recent attack.
Brad’s sensor board, which couldn’t see the shield or the tower that produced it, suddenly lit up with contacts as a beehive of lizard fighters suddenly appeared from within the base and began scurrying to intercept the incoming Clan fighters.
“Oh shit,” Brad whispered before triggering his comm. “Stay on target and fire through, then go evasive. We don’t want to engage them anywhere near that shield.” The Archon adjusted frequencies. “Head’s up people, the enemy’s got fighters in play. We could use some assistance ASAP.”
“Sabers have your back,” Harrison said, kicking his skeet into overdrive to close the gap with the Star Foxes.
“We’ll hit the backside in 3 minutes,” Kervet-1505 said, leading his Ninja Monkey squadron in from the west so low that some of their shields were clipping tree branches. “They’ll either have to break off from you or leave us clear to attack.”
“Hurry up,” Brad urged. “Looks like we’re outnumbered at least 3 to 1,” he said as more and more fighters emerged on sensors, stretching out in a thin line as they sped to intercept the Star Foxes.
The Archon pilot watched his rangefinder and saw that they weren’t going to get as close as he hoped to launch. “Stand by,” he ordered, triggering the release of the large belly missile his skeet was carrying.
The missile dropped away, flipping out small fins as it activated its burn and rocketed ahead on a straight line. Brad rose his skeet up 100 meters or so then triggered the targeting laser that had been added to the front right wing of the T-shaped hull. He had to focus to keep the tracking dot on the distant tower, unable to aim other than with a steady hand on the stick.
“Launch!” he ordered the rest of his squadron. “Then get ahead and cover me.”
17 other fat missiles leapt out towards the distant tower from below him, tracking in towards his laser point as tiny pinpricks of incoming fighters flew over the forest to intercept them. Having to keep a straight and precise trajectory to maintain the laser, Brad was a sitting duck to their approach, but his fellow Star Foxes jumped out in front and sped ahead to engage the fighters while he held the target.
The fast missiles mostly got through the fighters…3 of them were shot down by tiny plasma streaks, more reminiscent of their handheld weapons than their warship batteries. As soon as the missiles passed the lizard fighters half of them broke off from the Star Foxes and angled towards the incoming Sabers, giving Brad a bit of relief as he painstakingly kept the laser point on target.
Suddenly the tracking icons for their missiles began winking out as they hit the shield perimeter…or where they guessed it to be. At least one got through though, because there was a massive explosion visible where Brad had been holding the laser target.
“Did we get it?” he asked, holding the laser steady for a moment then breaking off up high as his squadron began to engage the enemy fighters just in front of him. With the altitude he tipped his nose over and dove down towards a cluster of the tiny fighters and swung around on one’s tail.
As if in response to his question a light caliber rail gun round fired from higher up in orbit flashed down to impact the top of the shield, confirming it was still in place.
“Negative skeets,” Paul’s voice came in over the comm. “Shield is still active.”
“Damn it,” Brad shouted inside his tiny cockpit, both at the negative report and the fact that his plasma shots missed the fighter as it arced to the right faster than his skeet could turn. He responded by circling off the opposite direction and taking a shot at another fighter that was doing its best to shoot down Ally.
Either it didn’t see him coming or didn’t care, because it continued to fire off small lances at the skeet, matching it move for move as Ally did a good job of being evasive, though he did see a few shield strikes. He glanced at his sensors, making sure no one was on his tail at the moment, then opened fired as he got a partial angle on the fighter. One lance per trigger pull rather than the normal two, he kept firing shots at the yellow/tan wisp of a ship until he finally got an impact…which poked a smoky crater in the port hull.
No shields? he wondered, continuing to fire as both the lizard and Ally kept flying erratic courses.
He had to be careful not to shoot when Ally flashed by his sights, but Brad’s persistence paid off in that he scored another three hits, the last of which sent the fighter down into the trees, tearing out a short ravine in the greenery.
A quick check of his sensors confirmed that they’d lost a skeet…Gary…and that they were still outnumbered despite the group that had pulled
off to engage the Sabers.
“Thanks, boss,” Ally said over their private comm.
“Time to get smart,” he replied. “They’ve got better maneuverability so we group up. Follow my wing.”
“Just a second,” she said, flying around to get in position as the sky was a mix of blue and green plasma flashes.
“Star Foxes pull back, these coordinates,” Brad said, setting a crude waypoint in the forest ahead. “Try and get them to follow you away from the base,” he said, throttling up and heading for another of his squadron that had two fighters on her tail. He and Ally both opened fire, causing one to veer off, but the first one blew apart the skeet’s port anti-grav engine, causing the fighter to flip down and hang on the two remaining drives, making it a sitting duck, unable to maneuver effectively.
In a desperation maneuver the pilot cut power to the other two engines, dropping her damaged ship down toward the trees. Brad fired across her aft, trying to discourage the lizard fighter from pursuing and finishing her off. It didn’t work, though Brad scored a hit on the tri-form fighter’s upper fin, taking out one of its three plasma cannons.
Ally’s shots came in from a different angle, with Brad realizing she’d temporarily broke formation with him to swing around on the fighter’s aft. A double shot from her skeet broke through the fighter’s hull and detonated something inside, blowing the ship apart before it ever had a chance to hit the ground.
Brad saw Irene’s skeet slowly hit the trees and sink down inside them, hoping that she was still alive and recoverable later, but he didn’t have the luxury of worrying about that now. He dropped a virtual nav point over the approximate location for use later then curved off, heading towards his previous nav point with the rest of his surviving squadron, some of which were already using the now linear battlefield to their advantage picking away at the interspaced lizard fighters, either shooting them down or forcing them to go evasive…which put more distance between them and the leading fighters.
Brad and Ally shot another down in such a manner before the lot of enemy fighters suddenly broke off and headed back to their base.
“Pursuit course!” Brad yelled into his comm, knowing they had a brief moment of opportunity. “Snipe and retreat. Get what you can,” he said, suiting action to words and wheeling about, firing on three fighters as they flashed by. As he came around he quickly discovered that their speed was superior to the skeets, but he still managed a few shots at the trailing fighters, all but one of which missed.
In the distance he saw another massive explosion at the base from the far side, but the thick tower that supported the shield remained visible this side of the detonation…and it didn’t fall.
“Foxes, swing north to assist the Sabers in retreat,” Paul said over the comm. “Everyone break off, they’ve got anti-air defenses in close and the tower has its own defense shield.”
“Damn it,” Brad swore, swinging his skeet around and speeding off towards the Sabers who were in closer to the base and now pulling out, dragging a line of lizard fighters with them.
“Blow through firing,” he ordered. “Make them choose targets. If they don’t follow double back for a second run, but keep linear. They’re too mobile to take out alone in close quarters, so stay in at least pairs. Two runs maximum, then break away.”
“Copy that,” Ally said along with similar sentiments from the others as the Star Foxes veered off to come to the Sabers’ aid.
Irene Darrington’s skeet hit the ground tail down, sticking in the soil and leaning against the nook in one of the gigantic trees, leaving her facing nearly straight up at the gash in the canopy her crash landing had just tore. Her head hit the side of the canopy on the way down, dazing her for several minutes before she finally woke up, half fallen off the skeet’s pommel and leaning back against the top of the canopy.
She blinked away the haze and remembered where she was when the front end of her skeet solidified in her sight. What had been a ‘T’ was now a crumpled mess. Both engine pods were gone and the front end had a branch the thickness of her waist impaled through what had been the nose. A quick check of the skeet’s control board confirmed that the computer hadn’t survived the impact with the trees, nor had her comm.
“Wonderful,” the pilot said, slipping the loose belt off her waist, regretting she hadn’t snugged it tighter. She hit the manual release on the canopy and heard it crack open, but the springs didn’t raise it up above her head. Using an arm she shoved it up an inch, hearing the sound of branches on the other side.
Irene let it back down and twisted around, putting her back upright against the pommel and pushing her feet up against the top, snugging them up with a modicum of force then pushing out with as much strength as she could. The canopy cracked open half a foot, then retracted a few inches, leaving a larger gap than there had been before. With several subsequent pushes she enlarged the gap enough to crawl out, but first she retrieved the survival supplies underneath the pommel, having to learn to become a contortionist on the spot to get the cushioned belly seat up with her still in the cockpit.
She dragged the contents out, then pushed them through the gap between the canopy and what was left of the hull out into the branches. The vest and containers stuck in the foliage rather than dropping to the ground, which Irene was thankful for, because she didn’t want to lose track of them.
Slithering through the gap she pulled her head and shoulders out, seeing that she was mired in a glob of branches her skeet had torn off from above and dragged down with the crippled fighter. Half sticking out of the vertical canopy she pushed, broke, and bent herself a pathway through the mess, dragging herself out of the fighter and into the daylight coming down through the breach in the trees. She tossed her supplies down to the ground then began to pull herself out, catching her foot on a snag and pitching her forward into the 2 meter fall.
Her leg caught firm and held her upside down, leaving her hair the only thing actually touching the dirt. Her head pounding as the inversion tickled her mild concussion, she pulled up into a sit-up and unlatched her boot, which let her fall the rest of the way to the ground.
Irene rolled up to her feet, getting her sock wet with mud, and looked around before she extricated her boot from the mess of branches nearly hiding the skeet from view. She couldn’t hear any fighters or sounds of weaponsfire, meaning the combat zone had either moved off or she’d been unconscious for some time. It was still daylight, so she couldn’t have been out for too long, but without the comm she wasn’t going to be able to coordinate an extraction.
On that thought she pulled on her survival vest and found the short range communicator. Wondering about the wisdom of potentially giving away her position, Irene opted to try the pulse rather than issue any sort of verbal distress call. She hit a button on the small squarish device which sent out a short, powerful signal with a single code.
A return blip registered, logged by a tiny green button that indicated that her position had been picked up and registered by some Star Force craft in the area. Breathing a sigh of relief she picked up the other containers she’d pulled from the skeet and attached them to the various latches on the vest, filling up the expandable backpack and leaving her more or less hands free mobile. Knowing she needed to get away from the skeet but keep to the immediate area waiting for rescue, Irene hiked off into the surrounding, dimly lit woods in search of some place to lay low, given that below the canopy there was little underbrush to obscure her position.
She found a deadfall about half a klick away and dug in for the night, but she couldn’t sleep, constantly worried that the lizards would track her down. Sitting with her back against the log and nibbling on ration bars she waited through a very long night until her portable comm unit beeped.
Pulling it up and reading the request for verification she sent back a response ping, her pulse elevating. A minute later another ping came, which she answered back immediately. The sound of an approaching Mantis filtered through the forest
as she got a third ping, and when she answered it the craft came to a hover overhead, blocked from view by the trees. A fourth ping confirmed her location, followed shortly by a pair of descending Archons breaking through the canopy on rope-like descenders.
“Got her,” Brad reported, dressed in full armor as he stepped off the foot hook and ran over to her position. “Are you injured?”
“Bumped my head, nothing more,” she said, a tear of joy visible in her eye as the second Archon stepped up, rifle in hand.
“Any trouble?” he asked, scanning the nighttime forest with his armor’s enhanced vision.
“Not yet,” Irene said as Brad directed her towards the rope. He pointed the pilot’s feet to the hooks then attached a belt around her waist before stepping on the opposite side. There were four foot hooks spaced around the solid base of what looked like a thin anchor, which Brad stood on grabbing the rope leading up through branches. He touched a button near his waist and the wench back up in the Mantis began dragging them skyward.
“Lean in,” he urged, wrapping an arm over her head to deflect some of the smaller branches and leaves. After a quick ride up they passed out of the forest canopy and into a cool breeze just as the night was beginning to break into dawn at the farthest extent of the horizon. A few seconds later they were hoisted up into the aft end of a small Mantis where they were levered inside the hold via an extendable pylon that the descenders were attached to.
Irene stepped off and onto the deck plate, pulling her vest off and having a seat while the Archons secured the aft hatch and the Mantis flew off, skimming the treetops.
“Thanks,” she said, cradling her head in her hands as a medic stepped over and started examining her.
“Good job getting down in one piece,” Brad said, pulling his helmet off.