Star Force: The Admiral

by Aer-ki Jyr

  Paul’s fleet moved past the defenders as they made way for his ships as they arrived in convoy and headed around stellar orbit to another jumpline. While there were a lot of ships here, including some massive shipyards continually being expanded in the colonies, this was not where he was going to get reinforcements from. That would be two systems over, so Paul’s fleet passed through the Willy System and jumped again to the Degar System. From there they moved deeper into the Preserve and arrived at a partially nebula-encased star that limited the jumplines in and out.

  It was the Jurassic System and the favorite playground of the Uriti due to its five stars that had carved out vast tracks in the nebula and were continuing to suck up bits of it with each rotation around the gigantic pair in the center. In addition there were a handful of unremarkable planets that now contained highly developed Star Force cities, but it was the level of infrastructure in orbit around them that was amazing.

  With this essentially being a safe haven against the V’kit’no’sat there was a little bit of everything here, including discarded wrecks of ships from non-Star Force races that had fled the now destroyed ADZ through this location. Gone were the refugees, long since moved out to the rim, but their damaged hulks still floated in graveyard orbits where salvage teams were occasionally picking over them for useful components while the bulk of the industry here was stellar mining and the total consumption of one of the planets.

  Right now it looked like a giant piece of cheese that rats had gotten into, with huge craters where material had been excavated. Paul knew it wasn’t Uriti damage, so to speak, but large sections of it contained the Uriti’s minions who were handling part of the deconstruction, for the gigantic space-living creatures had the ability to spawn robot-like biological creations of tiny size to do their bidding, and those, when en mass, were just as dangerous to the galaxy as the Uriti themselves were.

  Star Force’s allies hadn’t been thrilled when the Wranglers started to experiment with using them, but now they were heavily involved in the defense of the Preserve and on the world designated ‘Lego’ as they helped to pull it apart piece by piece, some of which went to the Uriti as food.

  When Paul arrived in the system he saw that they were here too, or at least 13 of them were…all but two of which were currently bathing inside the stars. The two that were sitting in orbit around one of the outer stars were Zelda and Bahamut, with Bahamut being one of the earliest ones to join the Preserve and had taken on a dominant role within their curious social behavior. It was currently the defacto leader of this herd, though they rotated them around so they all had access to each other eventually.

  Bahamut, like all of the Uriti, had its own unique shape with thick, giant wings, a long neck/snout, and stubby tail tip. It had no eyes, ears, or other surface features, looking more like the hull of a warship than any living being in the galaxy. It saw through sensors of its own, with the wings not actually used for flight. It moved on its own biological gravity drives similar to what Paul’s body had, allowing it to grip and push off of gravity wells…and the bigger the better, which was why the Uriti and Hadarak really liked black holes, though there were none in the Preserve, but the stars at the center of this system were nearly large enough to become one, altering their light output to eerie levels.

  It would have been a ‘dim’ system without the other three stars in higher orbits, as the emissions from the center two stars were slowed greatly by the gravity before they could escape it, but for the Uriti and Paul’s ships the gravity wasn’t an issue, for the stronger it became the more power his engines had. So long as he didn’t come in contact with any of the stellar matter, high mass stars and black holes weren’t something to fear other than the sensor distortions that occurred around them.

  The tracking markers for the Uriti within the stars were theoretical, for they couldn’t actually track them that deep with the signal distortion, and had they been normal sized stars it would have been difficult too despite their size. Bahamut had been 24 miles long and 38 wide, wing tip to wing tip, when they’d acquired him in the Preserve, but now he was over 50 miles wide and continuing to grow so long as he kept receiving ample amounts of nutrients and the training that Star Force was so well known for.

  The other Uriti were a mix of those smaller and larger, with the biggest being the aptly named ‘Godzilla’ that was shaped like a tri-blade with a radius of 72 miles and a thickness of each ‘blade’ at 23 miles near the midsection that blossomed out into an approximate sphere a few miles wider. Godzilla wasn’t in this system at the moment, but with the largest V’kit’no’sat line warship being 36 miles in diameter, the Uriti having armor superior to even Yeg’gor, coupled with a regeneration rate that was crazy fast, the V’kit’no’sat were outmatched and outmassed even without the offensive weaponry that the Uriti creators had added to their already formidable Hadarak origins.

  “Hello fellas,” Paul said from the command nexus as he got updates on their status through the battlemap, in addition to everything else in the system, including the pool of waiting drone warships stacked lazily in a holding orbit around the smallest of the planets…over a million of them currently unassigned to any ship or system defense force. That number may have seemed like a lot, and on its face it was, but if on average each Warship-class jumpship carried 100 drones, then then a million would fit into 10,000 jumpships…and Paul’s fleet that was still jumping in contained 7,382 of those ships, though of various models and makes.

  Rarely were jumpships lost, but the drones were fired off like ammunition against the V’kit’no’sat and required replacement. This system was the endpoint of a major resupply route across the Devastation Zone from the rim, coming from systems far beyond the front that were doing nothing but producing more drones for the war effort, many of which were coming from the Paladin, with some of their carrier ships still in the system ostensibly having brought more of the drones in recently.

  Rushing them across the DZ was something that the V’kit’no’sat were always trying to stop, so the route in constantly changed, but when they got to the Preserve they were safe and allowed to pool here for fleets like Paul’s to pick up replacements from, and the trailblazer was happy to see that there was enough to top off all of his ships here, though he’d be taking a lot of them for himself and a third of his original fleet was still out with Ghostblade and underequipped.

  But they’d have to make do for now and already had enough to protect a moving target. It was the planets that couldn’t move that would need huge fleets for reinforcement, and the sooner Paul got all his warships reloaded with new drones and he got back into the patrol rotation the better, for his spidey sense was tingling and he knew in his gut the V’kit’no’sat would be hitting somewhere else soon…if not already.

  7

  February 23, 4813

  Orica System (Devastation Zone)

  Orica A

  Jason-025’s fleet began coming out of their deceleration jump against the larger of the two stars at the center of the trinary system, with his command ship Sanguine Blade near the head of the line. He expected combat immediately, but was relieved when the battlemap showed small groupings of Paul’s fleet guarding the door, so to speak, and keeping the V’kit’no’sat away from his chosen jumppoint.

  There were many into the Orica System, including some at the far out Orica B star that orbited the pair in the center, but the red giant Orica A held the most gravity and Jason’s fleet had made top speed to get here when an alert came through the relay network. His fleet had been stationed in wait some 182 lightyears away…a distance that used to be unbelievably vast for Star Force. It still was, for space hadn’t shrunk, but the ever increasing engine speeds as the Human-led empire gradually caught up to the pinnacle of V’kit’no’sat tech had that ‘vast’ distance reduced down to only 11 days travel time thanks to a few larger stars nearby that Jason had diverted through.

  That actually upped the distance traveled to 218 lightyears, but since his
fleet was able to push off faster thanks to the higher gravity making their engines more powerful, the travel time had been less than a straighter route. A perfectly straight route was impossible, for a 182 lightyear jump was something that the navigational computers couldn’t aim well enough to hit, and even with a little tugging on distant gravity wells during transit your ‘hit or miss’ opportunity was still 99.99% determined by your initial slingshot out of the departure system.

  Star Force navigational computers might have been able to pull it off without any planets in the system and an open corridor through space, but that was still iffy at this point and not worth the risk. Plus a direct route to Orica would have ran Jason’s fleet through a nebula, which would have killed them shortly after impact as the friction at greater than lightspeed would have ate away at the shields then tore through the armored hulls before finally sandblasting the entire ship into nothing but fast-moving debris that would come out the far side and maybe get to Orica eventually, though most would fly askew and be lost in deep space from all the tiny collisions with the nebula material.

  So Jason had to take a roundabout approach anyway, and in this case an even longer one came out the faster, getting him to Orica not too late as both Paul and Flynn-046 were here with their fleets defending another outpost that the V’kit’no’sat had discovered and attacked…but one that was still in Star Force hands despite a huge ground battle taking place on one of the 93 formerly inhabited planetoids named Varooshser. Formerly inhabited by the Nestafar when this was their capitol system, then left untouched when the Voku claimed the system and rebuild many of the other planets before the V’kit’no’sat attacked and kicked them out of the Devastation Zone long into the war.

  Originally the Voku had stayed out of the war on the order of their Elders, which Star Force knew as the Zak’de’ron. Paul was close friends with Cal’com, the leader of the Voku, and he’d told Jason that once the first V’kit’no’sat attack had occurred he desperately wanted to help Star Force fight. That said, he had received new orders to fight the V’kit’no’sat here while an organized retreat from what became the Devastation Zone was enacted for all Voku territory along with the other races they were tasked to protect…and once the Voku had been driven out the V’kit’no’sat hadn’t pursued them any further.

  Cal’com wanted to still help Star Force but couldn’t without disobeying orders…something he’d never do, Paul had said, and if it kept the V’kit’no’sat away from the mass of Voku territory then so be it. Cal’com had also confided in Paul that if their home territories along the edge of the Devastation Zone were hit then he would be free to fight…and probably die…along with Star Force, but the Zak’de’ron had been wise in advising him so, for the V’kit’no’sat had left them alone after getting them out of the way.

  The Orica System was one of the riches prizes in the Devastation Zone and a spot that one would think Star Force would have to be stupid to try and put a base in…but that was part of the genius of it, hidden beneath the debris from the Nestafar war and essentially in plain sight, geographically speaking. To date the V’kit’no’sat had never noticed their stealthed comings and goings, but now they were here and hammering the base that was quite a bit larger than what was on Tauntaun, and it seemed like they wanted it pretty bad.

  As Jason got caught up via the battlemap data, his Sav-enhanced mind ran through everything that had happened previously as his fleet came out of its jumppoint and pooled there, waiting for orders. He only had 3,488 jumpships with him…small compared to Paul’s fleet and many of the other trailblazers, but still a massive fighting force when all the drones deployed. He was currently at 89% capacity and was going to unload here until he saw the naval situation.

  The V’kit’no’sat had them outnumbered, but not by too much and Jason’s addition was going to tip the scales in Star Force’s favor…but this stank with the scent of trickery. They were being presented with a battle to fight, that they had to fight, with a strong but not too strong opponent that would force them to cut and run without a costly fight.

  Cost. That’s what the V’kit’no’sat wanted. They were bleeding Star Force intentionally, and while these kind of battles were what Jason and the others had been wanting to get into, the fact that the V’kit’no’sat were fielding enough ships here and at least two other places since Tauntaun told Jason that these were just setup actions for something else later…either that or their intelligence was really bad concerning how many fleets Star Force had in the Devastation Zone.

  Or maybe that was the point of these attacks, to draw them out so they could count. If that was the case he hoped they were impressed, because the fleet of 13,822 V’kit’no’sat ships were either going to have to slug this out or run…and with 3 stars in the system there was little chance of either side getting pinned here with so many available jumppoints to run through. A part of Jason hoped they’d stay, but it’d also worry him if they did, for the V’kit’no’sat never did anything without purpose and the base on Varooshser certainly wasn’t worth this effort.

  Eventually Jason got a message from Paul, who was far beyond realtime comm range, saying that he wanted Jason’s entire fleet to move to Nestarraffa and set up in a defensive blockade against orbital bombardment.

  Jason raised an eyebrow as he stood in the command nexus onboard his flagship. Nestarraffa was the old capitol of the Nestafar as well as the Voku capitol in this region. It’d been completely cleansed of Nestafar infrastructure and now had a savaged landscape of broken Voku buildings and large sandy plains built from rubble dust. Star Force had nothing on the planet as far as Jason knew, and the battlemap wasn’t indicating anything new.

  But Jason knew Paul’s tendencies and had a feeling what this might be about, but regardless he was going to trust him, especially since he’d been in this system fighting for the past 8 days and Jason had just got here. Flynn had gotten here 6 days ago and aside from a little smiley faced text message saying ‘Hello, Ez’ he didn’t offer any tactical solutions or requests, merely taking a split second to make fun of Jason while he was busy harassing the backside of the V’kit’no’sat fleet that was entirely focused on Varooshser.

  They had a huge swath of middle orbit claimed over the base location, but Paul’s fleet was hanging in low orbit and along with the minimal planetary defenses was keeping the V’kit’no’sat back, but they’d landed troops on the other side of the planet and had worked their way around overland with large mobile shield domes to temporarily protect them against any potential bombardment from Paul while their fleet swept in and forced a naval fight.

  Right now that wasn’t happening, with both sides staring them down and the planetary defense shield over the base sitting just below Paul’s drone fleet with the jumpships almost touching it as they levitated in the upper atmosphere behind the drones, ready to dip down underneath the energy shields if they were targeted…but where they could assist with long range weaponsfire when needed.

  That told Jason that Paul was doing everything he could just to hold that position and cover the base, and with a quick review of the battle timeline he saw that the V’kit’no’sat were again coming into the system in waves, just like Star Force was, and the base had been able to hold out long enough for Paul to get here, with a fiery exchange earlier that told Jason why the V’kit’no’sat were not trying to brute force their way to the base.

  They were going to try to take it out via the ground rather than face those Ardent beams coming from the surface. There were only 18 of them, but each was bigger than anything the V’kit’no’sat had in their fleet. If they could be taken down from the ground it would save many warships…but there was one flaw to this strategy and that was Paul’s fleet. If the V’kit’no’sat army got to the base they’d be right under them, and all it would take would be a quick dropping of the base defense shields and the armies would go ‘poof’ under that combined firepower no matter what mobile shield units they had with them.

  The V’
kit’no’sat were going to have to remove Paul’s fleet and Jason figured Paul knew it, which was why he was stubbornly holding that spot. Now he was sending Jason’s fleet off to another planet entirely with no one to fight there that he could see.

  Jason waited for the rest of his ships to arrive, then had them all jump out in quick succession taking different routes to Nestarraffa so they didn’t have to wait as long in line. Some of his ships went halfway across the system in the wrong direction before bouncing back off another planet or star so they’d arrive all over planetary orbit rather than in one spot, getting his fleet into position much faster despite the extra distance.

  Something Jason had learned a long time ago was that when you were a navigational officer in the fleet, the most direct route was usually not the fastest, and if you couldn’t think outside the box then you’d be replaced pretty fast by someone who could, and with over 150 different gravity wells in the system a ship had thousands of jumplines to pick from, including slingshot maneuvers that arced your coast trajectory.

  Jason was very glad Star Force had the superior gravity drives in their ships, else the V’kit’no’sat could have danced around them indefinitely, but now it was finally a fair fight.

  When the last of his jumpships arrived in Nestarraffa orbit and got into position, Jason ordered them to release their drones and form the clouds of tiny defensive points around the jumpships and command ships as they protected a third of the planet beneath them and began making dropship runs en mass down to the surface…with empty cargo holds both ways.