by Aer-ki Jyr
But Star Force had heard of him and the eggs that he’d been protecting. The Zak’de’ron were working their own agenda, and through an ally of Star Force’s called the Voku, Paul had been able to assemble bits of information about their activities, for the Voku were one of their servant races from long ago that had recently received new guidance from them. The fact that Puff had let Star Force retain knowledge of his existence was a large measure of trust that Paul and the others had not betrayed, keeping the V’kit’no’sat in the dark about the Dragons’ existence even though they had not bothered to help Star Force when the war started and Paul’s empire started to get chopped up planet by planet against an unyielding tide of assaults into their heaviest populated region known as the ADZ.
The ADZ was gone now and had become a piece of the Devastation Zone, with Sol at its center. Only Earth the V’kit’no’sat had chosen to populate, reclaiming their lost colony and using it as the forward base of operations for the continuing annihilation crusade against Star Force. Every other world in the Devastation Zone had been conquered and cleansed, leaving nothing but ruined landscape and scar marks on worlds that had once housed billions, if not trillions of people on each.
And the V’kit’no’sat kept those worlds bare, patrolling the Devastation Zone looking for Star Force or any of their allies while periodically taking more worlds off the front from them and pushing the line back further and further as Paul and his people kept fighting a gradual retreat while evacuating the people under assault…but they didn’t save everyone, and the long list of casualties in this war could have been lessened greatly if only the Zak’de’ron had helped buy them some more time, but they hadn’t. They had never promised to be allies, and when it came to fighting the V’kit’no’sat they were clearly not going to get involved in a mismatch…for as much as the Dinosaur empire hated Star Force, if they got even a whiff of the Zak’de’ron still living they’d throw the full might of their empire against them, fearing the insane power they wielded might one day regrow their civilization to the level where it could threaten them again.
And that was the irony of it all. The V’kit’no’sat were methodically wiping out Star Force with only a tiny fraction of their empire’s fleet. Meaning that no matter how hard Paul and the others fought, they could always bring in more to counter any victory they obtained.
Except they couldn’t do it instantly. Travel times across the galaxy were not forgiving, and to get ships out to the Devastation Zone from the inner core of the galaxy where the V’kit’no’sat empire existed took at least a month, if not several, depending on where they would come from. Meaning those Paul was fighting right now were essentially on their own for the immediate future save for any other fleets already enroute or repositioning from nearby.
That’s why Paul wanted to engage them here, but he needed to do it in a way that wouldn’t scare them off and in a way to get his people trapped on Tauntaun out alive.
But for the V’kit’no’sat they didn’t seem too interested in the survivors save for those ships stationed at Tauntaun. The bulk of their fleet was elsewhere in the star system fighting Paul’s ships, as if they were as interested in getting this naval vs naval fight as he was…which told him that they had more reinforcements on the way, for right now he was kicking their ass in a limited sense. Trading losses at a rate of approximately 5 to 3, though Paul’s losses didn’t involve crew, only unmanned drones.
The V’kit’no’sat losses didn’t always mean a ship was destroyed, for Paul could knock chunks out of them equal in size to his drones and they’d keep fighting as if they hadn’t been touched. They were just that big and powerful, but attrition would wear them down eventually so long as Paul’s command ship and the other control ships in the system didn’t get caught…and the V’kit’no’sat were always trying to flank the drone fleets and hit them in the rear.
But space was big and Paul’s ships were just as fast as the V’kit’no’sat’s, and whenever the enemy got too close the control ships would run. That would interfere with the drone fleet’s operation, but other control ships nearby could take over for them or they could leave the fleet on auto-targeting protocols if need be. Those weren’t nearly as effective as having a person sighting each weapon and rotating shields for maximum coverage, but it gave the control ships the windows they needed to run and reposition elsewhere to stay out of the fight…though right now Paul was taking his command ship into the brawl, for he’d just gotten an opportunity he hadn’t been counting on.
Another Star Force fleet had just began to arrive in the system, coming out of their interstellar jumps two and three ships at a time in a long convoy that bore Morgan-063’s fleet tag. She had a fleet nearly the size of his, meaning the V’kit’no’sat were going to be outnumbered within a few hours.
Would they stick around to fight or flee in face of the mismatch? Paul didn’t know, but if they had more reinforcements of their own coming they might stick around. If not, he needed to hurt them as badly as possible here and now, which was why he was taking his command ship in off the periphery of the fighting and joining a tendril of drone ships, most of which were less than a fifth the width of the Excalibur’s giant donut-shaped hull, as the black rectangles clustered around the grey with blue striped flagship and waded into an outcropping of Era’tran ships.
The V’kit’no’sat responded immediately, seeing an opportunity to strike the command ship, but Paul didn’t pull back. Instead he forced his fleet group head on into the larger ships and used the impressive weaponry on the Excalibur to add to the little stings from the drones, drawing fire away from them and thus increasing their longevity as the mass of both fleets that were further off and spectating suddenly began to collapse towards each other.
Linked into the battlemap network, Paul could feel every ship in the fleet and, if needed, remote control every gun, shield generator, engine, and system on those ships, but he could not do it simultaneously. He could fly 10 ships by himself with ease, but there were so many here that he couldn’t do so effectively, meaning he had to pick and choose where he inserted his mind while trusting in the other Archons’ and naval officers’ skill and judgment to handle the tasks required while he directed the overall battle.
With a single thought he put target beacons on specific points where shields were weakening on the Era’tran ships, told which of his own vessels to attack and which to reposition, and tweaked the Excalibur’s shields to 57% power forward. Every moment that continued had his Sav-enhanced mind working at lightspeed to control as much of the battle as possible, but it was never enough. Fleet combat was truly a group fight, and the rest of the crew in the fleet had gotten used to supporting Paul, knowing that he’d find ways to fight the V’kit’no’sat that the enemy hadn’t even thought of, with his nickname of ‘The Admiral’ being given to him long ago due to his instinctive ability to feel his way through naval combat…not to mention the fact that he had been personally responsible for the development and design of most of Star Force’s weapons and ships, though in truth it had been more of a group effort than most accredited him for.
Paul and the other trailblazers hadn’t learned from the V’kit’no’sat records when Star Force began. That knowledge had been withheld from them, making them learn and develop Star Force’s own combat identity from scratch. Later on they’d been given access so they could advance and make ready for the inevitable war to come, but the way Star Force fought is the way the trailblazers had come up with on their own. They hadn’t learned from anyone else, rather figuring out things as they went and building the empire’s military piece by piece into what it was today.
Now recruits would learn from their example and the multitude of training scenarios and programs they’d created over the centuries…but they had never had that luxury. They’d always been the ones leading the way and having to discover things for themselves that others would then use to better the empire. That meant Paul and the other ‘trailblazers’ had to be better than
the rest, with a knack to think outside the box that was proving to be continually annoying to the V’kit’no’sat, but they too adapted well and whatever Paul would come up with they would soon counter, but not soon enough today to stop the beatdown about to happen.
Paul knew he was baiting them, and he knew they knew it, which was why the beatdown wasn’t going to happen here. Even as the fighting around his ship intensified as the V’kit’no’sat did indeed try to focus on his ship…but not to an extent that would leave them overextended…Paul had the bulk of his fleet behind him move en mass. Blinking out on fast accelerating ‘jumps’ laterally that caused a mushrooming effect on the battlemap, then they raced even faster when they got on a straight line trajectory out from the star and pushed hallway around the V’kit’no’sat’s extended fleet blob that was unengaged in the current fighting.
Paul’s ships braked hard then dove down into their midst, hitting a buzz saw of incoming fire that knocked out many drones within a few seconds, but he pressed through the losses until the V’kit’no’sat fleet was essentially cut in half with both sides hammering the drones in the gap and Paul was losing them fast.
But these were huge ships, for even his smallest drones were nearly half a mile long, and destroying them all took time…and Paul had no problem with ordering them to ram the V’kit’no’sat ships, for there was no crew onboard them, which added even more damage and chaos to the fighting that seemed completely calm and controlled in Paul’s mind’s eye as he stood in the command nexus with a hand on the control sphere and numerous holograms surrounding him, but he mostly saw what was happening through the fleet’s sensors that were tied directly into his mind, making the mass of ships an extension of himself as he guided them through a level of teamwork fighting that few others could understand even with weeks of post battle analysis.
To Paul it was instinctual, and an instinct that had been honed to near perfection over centuries of warfare against lesser races prior to the V’kit’no’sat War, then enhanced even further by the impossible challenge of fighting the empire of Dinosaurs, for they were even more intelligent than Humans, for the most part, meaning he was having to contend against legendary minds in the opposing fleet that gave him little margin for success even in the most beneficial of engagements.
But with Morgan’s fleet coming in and his call for her ships to redirect to his position immediately after arrival, he knew how many vessels she had while the V’kit’no’sat did not, making this engagement a bit of a question mark for them as he pressed into more and more combat…far more than they were comfortable with as his command ship started taking hull damage.
Paul turned it around and started to flee back through his lines as the V’kit’no’sat would expect, with the Era’tran ships he’d attacked chasing him. They above all other races seemed to hate the Star Force control ships, as if they were a carrot on the end of the stick that they could just never quite reach. He pulled them after him as Paul signaled the surrounding drones to move in and block their path, with many of the ships simply ramming through them trying to get to Paul who couldn’t make an emergency jump out through so many of his own ships.
Except he could and the V’kit’no’sat knew that, meaning they were either being really stupid today or just proud enough that they wanted to drive him off. Either way he was drawing this bit of the V’kit’no’sat fleet out as the formation of ships in front of the Excalibur suddenly shifted in unison, making a path for him to jump out that he took, getting his command ship out of weapons range.
But two Era’tran ships followed him through that gap, meaning his ship had to run and keep running as they pursued, but he wasn’t worried. Unless they were a lot faster he could run indefinitely so long as he didn’t lose engine power, but the V’kit’no’sat knew that if his ship was running then the control signals going out from it would be distorted and he would lose his magical effect on the fleet, so each second they had him on the move was a victory for them as the Star Force fleet became a little less organized…though not much, for the other Archons and naval commanders were both skilled and experienced, but against opponents that could very well be over a million years old, the difference in command influence was immediately evident.
But not for long. A few seconds after Paul jumped out the orders he’d been crafting beforehand went into effect with a massive fleet repositioning that split off the Era’tran segment and isolated them, meaning they couldn’t escape and the rest of the huge V’kit’no’sat fleet couldn’t get to them. Paul was losing drones so fast elsewhere it didn’t seem worth the sacrifice, but when his fleet turned and pounded the Era’tran ships they were forced to fight and die over the next few hours with Morgan’s ships arriving to replace some of what Paul was losing.
In the end he wiped out all of the 74 Era’tran ships in that little cut off group, including two Kafcha, so that when you compared the losses ton for ton, Star Force had won out by a factor of 4 to 1, and before the V’kit’no’sat could really make Paul pay for the maneuver enough of Morgan’s ships got to his position to force the V’kit’no’sat to pull out of the very costly fight as Paul tried to isolate more subgroups with the incoming flow of drone warships.
That was a feint, because Paul really didn’t want to continue the fight, but he could have if needed and the V’kit’no’sat saw the threat, with them transition into a fighting retreat that pulled them back across a few hundred thousand miles of space to a slightly higher stellar orbit where their new fleet configuration could have turned the tables on Paul if he’d pursued…but he hadn’t. Not more than a few skirmishing tendrils to hit wounded ships lagging behind the others and to give the V’kit’no’sat a good kick in the butt as the two fleet groups got some breathing room between them again.
But that recent throwdown had gone in Star Force’s favor, with Paul sending our recovery teams for the debris on the battlefield that they now owned…as well as hunter teams for V’kit’no’sat survivors. Paul wasn’t going to try to risk boarding any of their ships and taking captives, not that they would have accepted surrender anyway, so he located every bit of intact ship left drifting and had them targeted by the surrounding fleet, pulverizing the debris to the point where no more mental signatures detected.
Paul wasn’t going to risk his people saving the enemy, especially when he really didn’t have anywhere to put captives, but he wasn’t going to let the V’kit’no’sat recover them to fight another day and he wasn’t going to let them freeze or suffocate. He’d give them the small respect of a quick death from weaponsfire rather than a lingering end, but no more. Paul had to catch a quick respite before major combat broke out again, even as his subordinates were organizing strafing attacks on the edge of the V’kit’no’sat fleet’s skirmisher line.
For in system battles of this size, you’d be sure to lose no matter how many ships you had if your crew became fatigued to the point of sloppiness…and Paul was the main weapon Star Force had in this fight, even with Morgan’s inclusion. Her naval skills weren’t his equal, but they were solid and experienced enough for him to turn temporary command over to her and leave the bridge for a crash nap of a couple of hours…maybe less if the V’kit’no’sat made a major move before then, but he figured they wouldn’t.
In fact, he expected them to have a reinforcement fleet on the way themselves and to hold tight until it arrived.
And when it did, he needed to be clearheaded enough to face whatever they had coming in.
2
October 4, 4812
Orlero System (Devastation Zone)
Stellar Orbit
After two months of fighting the V’kit’no’sat finally broke, with Paul maintaining his disciplined endurance as fleet leader in what looked like an infinite timespan, but no one aside from him knew how tired he truly was. Morgan was just as fatigued, as were most of the senior Archons and fleet officers, but the V’kit’no’sat were finally pulling back towards the star in order to jump out of the system along wit
h the first segments of their fleet that had already left.
Others would have let them go, but not Paul. He knew that in times of fatigue and transition lay the largest opportunities, so he assumed the command nexus again, breaking a short nap he’d been on when the en mass retreat began, knowing that he had to be in the lead or risk disaster. Right now the V’kit’no’sat still outnumbered the Star Force fleet, ton for ton, but the combat trend was with the Human-led empire. Paul had proven himself superior to the V’kit’no’sat fleet commander, whoever it was, but he also knew that this retreat could quickly be turned into an offensive, so he linked into the battlemap systems again and melded his mind with the fleet, getting them moving in a myriad of split transitions across the star system.
The V’kit’no’sat couldn’t jump out quickly and they knew it, hence they were leaving via 3 different jumplines that would result in 3 different destinations. That also meant they could get their ships out of the system 3 times as fast while still being close enough to one another for mutual defense in low stellar orbit…and they were very low, baking in the stellar radiation of the star so much that it was licking away their shields.
If Paul sent his ships down that low the same would be true, giving the V’kit’no’sat a small advantage due to their larger size and stronger shields. Each of his drones were tiny in comparison and had less internal volume for shield area. That wasn’t a major shift in the playing field, but it was a factor that Paul wasn’t going to overlook and he guessed it might be the V’kit’no’sat trying to discourage pursuit. Based on the enemy fleet movements it felt like they’d had enough, but Paul never assumed such things and constantly asked himself what he could do in their situation…and if they held the jumppoint in low to the star and Paul came in after them in shifts they could do a lot of damage before he could get all his ships in position.