by Aer-ki Jyr
Paul saw Jason’s fleet arrive and reposition to Nestarraffa as he’d requested while his front-most drones were firing long range shots against the V’kit’no’sat ships poking his own lines in arrogant fashion, for they were entering the firing range of the planetary defenses but doing so with Paul’s ships blocking for them. Paul kept realigning his forces to open up a gap but 4 out of 5 times the V’kit’no’sat ship would successfully reposition and block the firing line, with the few times they didn’t make it not being enough to do anything more than suck away a lot of shield energy as they moved off laterally or pulled back up to middle orbit with the rest of their fleet to recharge.
They wanted to get at him and his command ship sitting at the bottom of the well of ships that looked like a mushroom cloud coming up from the surface base and sitting on a wide dish that was the planetary defense shield spreading out for several hundred miles in radius. His fleet took up a lot of space even when packed in closely together, but whenever Paul slid his ships out further towards the edge of the shield the V’kit’no’sat would attack and drive them back…with Paul not having enough ships to force his way up into their midst. He needed them low and in range of the planetary defenses, but they weren’t coming down here anymore after the butt kicking they’d received earlier.
That said, chunks of dead ships were littering the already trashed planet around the base where Paul’s fleet had pushed them to keep them off the shields as they fell down from orbit. Now they made for a ring of mountains that the approaching enemy army was going to have to navigate around or through, slowing them down a bit more before they got close to the base, but Paul had a feeling the V’kit’no’sat were going to make a move before that happened. There was no way they were going to let them fight right under Paul’s parked fleet no matter how fast they thought their own fleet could move to assist.
That meant Paul had a roundabout idea of how much time he had, for the V’kit’no’sat ground forces were heavily outnumbering those from the base and what Paul and Flynn had added, and he was hoping to disrupt whatever plan there was or at least make the V’kit’no’sat a little off guard with Jason’s fleet…and right on cue he saw a few dozen ships leave the enemy formation and head for Nestarraffa. Not enough to fight with, but enough to pull some heavy scans of the planet and fight off skirmishers as they made a pass or two.
They were probably wondering how they’d missed another base there, for right now Jason was doing a good impression of evacuating the surface…or delivering reinforcements, but that wouldn’t make sense given that Star Force knew they couldn’t hold bases in the Devastation Zone that were known to the V’kit’no’sat.
Or at least not yet, save for the Uriti Preserve and Grid Point Stargate. Those were the two big holdouts, while bases such as this one were clandestine only and now that it had been exposed it would have to be evacuated win or lose this fight.
Unless Star Force was going to make a stand. Paul knew that was stupid in the long run, for the V’kit’no’sat would just rally their forces and come here with more than Star Force could handle. Granted, this was already a huge attack force, but Paul knew it was to fight their opposing naval fleet and the base on the surface was just the bait to get them to do it. There were plenty of heavily defended planets with defense shields that circled the entire globe on the front for the V’kit’no’sat to assault, and they would sooner or later, and probably win, so trying to hold such a small base on the coreward side of the DZ was just stupid if you didn’t have people to get out.
But right now they did, and from the V’kit’no’sat’s perspective it looked like they had two bases to withdraw troops from. The question was, were they going to let Jason evacuate Nestarraffa unchallenged? It was a feint, for there was nothing there, but they didn’t know that yet and the scanning ships they’d sent out got intercepted by Jason’s own skirmishers far from the planet, keeping them out of prime sensor range while they still got enough of a scan to determine the location on the surface the dropships were coming and going from…along with the cavernous entrances they were disappearing into.
A closer look would have seen them landing, waiting, and taking back off again with no movement of people or cargo on or off save for a few defensive mechs guarding the landing sites, but the V’kit’no’sat didn’t get close enough to see that and after more than two days of waiting they finally detached some 1,302 ships and sent them off towards Nestaraffa.
That was going to be a tough fight, for Jason would still have the advantage, but not too long after Paul got the sensor updates from system’s center, seeing another V’kit’no’sat fleet entering near one of his ship clusters.
The trailblazer frowned, for there was no way the V’kit’no’sat could have known about them arriving before he did. That told Paul this departure was either coincidence or proof that the arrival of the reinforcement fleets was not random, but rather predetermined by a scripted schedule and the fleet overtop Paul knew when they’d be arriving before they got here.
That meant Jason’s group was probably going to be caught fighting as a diversion while the reinforcements raced to augment their numbers and delay the evacuation of Nestarraffa.
“Flynn, I think this is the best chance we’re going to get,” Paul said via the audio-only comm.
“They still have an advantage,” his peer pointed out. “We’re going to cancel at best.”
“I think we can do a little better than that…but not much. If you have any suggestions, now is the time.”
“Unfortunately I think you’re right. This is the best hand we’ve got. Let’s play it…” he said as the V’kit’no’sat fleet above them began moved en mass away from Paul’s position and spreading out like an expanding ring.
“They’re heading to ground,” Paul said a few seconds before their altitude started to dip and bring them towards the planet’s surface outside the range of the base’s defensive batteries.
“And going to escort their troops up to the front door,” Flynn all but growled as he saw Paul’s fleet break apart too…with several ships racing just above the atmosphere at maximum speed. “What are you doing?”
“Get our troops back under the shield. I’m going to be too busy to keep watch,” he said, already sending out hundreds of orders with mere thoughts as his jumpships likewise moved from their holding position and raced up into higher orbit through the donut hole in the enemy formation as it continued to spread out.
Paul responded with a lot of battlemap data, but Flynn’s mind handled it with ease as he saw what Paul planned to do as the V’kit’no’sat wanted to force them to fight at both planets rather than pool their resources at one. He also saw the fastest of Paul’s ships get out to the enemy ground troops just before their own ships did and lay into them with the naval weapons, the first of which were blocked by the dome-like defense shields the ground units carried with them, but after a few dozen seconds the overlapping naval fire added up and broke through even as the drones got hit from above by the descending fleet.
Flynn saw Paul dive several kamikaze through the V’kit’no’sat ranks, literally plowing the ground with them on it until their huge ships got overtop them and dropped dampening shields in front, stopping the last of the ramming attacks and protecting what was left of their ground troops with their own shields like an invisible curtain dropping all the way down to the ground save for the last few meters.
“Nice get.”
“Take ‘em when I can,” Paul said as the V’kit’no’sat fleet continued to drop almost all the way to the ground and cluster their hulls together so much they almost touched in various groups around the circular perimeter as Paul’s ships went to higher altitude but still within range of the surface. The V’kit’no’sat now had the low position and Paul the high…but if they could get up to the shield and run their troops beneath it, they could push their ships over top them as a buffer and assault the base directly, punishing Star Force heavily if they even dropped the shields f
or a moment to bombard the troops.
The Ardent batteries could depress pretty far, and there was no way for the miles wide V’kit’no’sat ships to get under their firing line, but this way they couldn’t get hit by all of them at once, but rather one or two from each angle, and that would mean the survivability of their ships would extend considerably.
The one major disadvantage they had was if one of their blocker ships went down it would fall on whatever was beneath it, which was why you saw their largest Kafcha-class vessels taking position over the densest clusters of troops.
“This is going to be fun,” Flynn said sarcastically as he readied his mix of mainline, Clan, and H’kar fleet to drop down over top the shield at almost kissing range and keep the enemy warships from moving in directly over the base while Paul went higher and hit the enemy from above where he could without getting wasted from their overlapping firepower.
“We can always surrender,” Paul offered dryly.
“Nah, Morgan would beat the crap out of us if we did. Let’s get to it.”
“Already am,” Paul said as both trailblazers dropped silent to focus their full mental power on the fleet movements that were getting more difficult by the moment as the exchange of fire amped up exponentially.
8
February 28, 4813
Orica System (Devastation Zone)
Varooshser
Paul sat in the passenger hold of a dropship as it transitioned down through the atmosphere over the battlefield below. Ship hulks were everywhere, having impacted the surfaced and caused so many earthquakes and craters that the mantle of the planet had been breached with the fracture cracks and multiple locations had magma plumes oozing up to the surface. Two of them were actually geysers throwing molten material up into the night and giving some illumination to the otherwise deep dark with all 3 stars and the gas giant on the far side of the planet.
The V’kit’no’sat fleets had withdrawn over a day ago, with both sides suffering heavy losses. They had succeeded in getting some of the ground troops up to and inside the base, but not enough to take it. Though it was a statistical anomaly, for the base was going to have to be evacuated now that its location was known, this was the first time in history that Star Force had beaten back a planetary assault and come out victorious.
Paul had gotten a good sleep in after 4 days straight of activity. He’d been able to do it thanks to his tier 2 psionic Inas that allowed him to get by on less sleep and recover faster when he did get the chance, but the only thing that had truly gotten him through the previous 4 days was the fact that it was a fully mental endeavor and that there had been breaks in the fighting sufficient enough for him to let his people handle most of the maneuvers. He hadn’t left, but the strain on his mind was not as great and he’d stuck it out all the way up until they’d left before grabbing some badly needed sleep.
But now he was needed on the surface, for the fighting down there wasn’t complete yet. The base was in Star Force hands and the enemy ground troops that had survived had been evacuated in the final pullout, but with all the crashed ships there were surviving V’kit’no’sat that had to be found and dealt with.
Had this been the reverse situation Paul never would have left them behind. The fleet compositions has been essentially even when the V’kit’no’sat pulled out, perhaps fearing the growing attrition curve, so it wasn’t like they had to leave at that moment. In fact, if both fleets had stayed then they would have probably canceled each other out with Star Force prevailing but only maintaining about 5% of the ships they had come into the fight with.
That was a guess, but one that Paul had worked through as the V’kit’no’sat fled. Typically they stuck at a target until they had it or until it was obvious that there was no way to win. Them running from an even fight was not normal, and Paul’s gut told him this was yet another attempt to draw Star Force into battle and reduce their numbers. If the V’kit’no’sat were finally ready to devote more of their massive empire to this fight then attrition would be on their side…despite the massive blow to their ego it must have been. But at the end of the day the V’kit’no’sat cared about one thing above all else, and that was winning…even if they had to bleed themselves dry to accomplish it.
Normally they didn’t. Aside from the Hadarak and a few enemies of the distant past, the V’kit’no’sat usually annihilated their opposition without losing a single person. Their ships were so big it was almost impossible for a lesser opponent to take one down, and even severely damaged they could still keep fighting or flee and use regenerators on any injured crew. The fact that they were trading massive ship losses…that did contain crew…to take down Star Force’s drone fleet and get at their surface bases was alarming. Not unusual, because they’d fought like this in previous centuries, but never on this level without a planet for them to claim.
Varooshser was a junk world and worthless, because the V’kit’no’sat didn’t care about colonizing any of the territory they took from Star Force aside from Earth. They just wanted it annihilated, so a pristine Star Force planet with full planetary shields and billions of people was a prize for them to take and smash, but a junk world with a single base wasn’t worth it.
No, the objective here had to be the fleets and reducing them for another strike, or series of strikes, to come later when Paul and the other DZ fleet commanders would have less to respond with. Take their large fleets out of the equation and the V’kit’no’sat could better estimate how much in the way of forces they would need to take a given planet and do so without it being an even fight. It was when they didn’t know how many forces were in pay that Star Force stood a chance and could come in with superior numbers, but not if those reinforcements weren’t around to pull on.
Replacements would be coming in from beyond the front, but not fast enough to replenish what was lost here. Paul really wished he knew how many ships the V’kit’no’sat had in the Devastation Zone, but that was knowledge that he was going to have to work without, for even while most of the V’kit’no’sat ships operated without stealth mechanisms and boldly went wherever they wanted, there were so many star systems that it was impossible to watch all of them without a surveillance and relay network…which was why V’kit’no’sat kept blowing up whatever comm infrastructure they could find, keeping Star Force and anyone else dark as to the full extent of their movements.
The Devastation Zone didn’t have firm boundaries except along the Star Force border, but if you measured by where the V’kit’no’sat had hit and the stars in between, the DZ contained a whopping 3.02 million star systems. Not all of them had planets, but that was still a very big playground to operate on and the V’kit’no’sat were adamant to keep Star Force and its allies out of it while not bothering to care about anyone else. Some races, like the Gnar, had been attacked because of their association with Star Force but only as far as orbital bombardment. The V’kit’no’sat had laid waste to their planets without bothering to land a single drop pod, then ignored the survivors even as they rebuilt so long as they didn’t get in their way.
And that was the same for everyone in the DZ. Everyone had gotten hit who had even the slightest connection to Star Force or was strong enough to potentially assist them. They didn’t want anyone of consequence on their turf…and yet they’d just turned and ran, leaving this base intact.
Something was definitely going on and Paul had a number of ideas what it could be, but no way to narrow them down as he headed towards the surface along with a number of other Archons from his command ship as they went to help the ground teams hunt down and eliminate the remaining V’kit’no’sat, many of whom had grouped together and were fighting an effective counterattack against the base, knowing that if they stayed anywhere else they’d get picked off from the warships overhead.
But Paul wasn’t doing that. Yes, they were enemies that were trying to kill them and wouldn’t think twice about doing it again if he let them go, but since Star Force was going to evacuate the b
ase anyway he didn’t bother trying to hunt down the survivors and just let them hide out amongst the ship debris so long as they weren’t near any of his people or operating intact weapons batteries on the ship remnants. Those had already been taken out over the past day, but you never knew if you missed one or not until it opened fire.
But as Paul dropped down to the base no enemy fire tracked his dropship. The area surrounding it was clean save for the troops working their way underground through the catacombs in the junk fields the base had been built within. There were many access points, most of which were too small for the larger V’kit’no’sat races to move through, but not all. Star Force had mechs out in them fighting the survivors as they tried to make one last effort to damage something of Star Force before they were killed.
When his dropship landed in an innocuous spot within the surface debris he felt a familiar presence nearby. Soon after he got off the dropship along with the other Archons they took a hidden lift down into the upper levels of the base where Jason was waiting for him along with some more Archons and a lot of Knights.
“You all with them,” Jason told those that had come down with Paul as he motioned with his finger and sent a telepathic ping for the other trailblazer to come with him. The pair ran off through a separate corridor and left the others behind with Jason in the lead and Paul a step behind him, both wearing their blue/orange Archon armor complete with a full exoskeleton of weaponry in lieu of the traditional packs and weapon racks, for where they were going they were going to need the bigger guns that could lay down burst damage rather than worrying about a longer grinding campaign over the course of days.
The two ran in silence, for there was nothing to talk about and they knew each other well enough that Paul didn’t even need telepathy to read Jason’s movements all the way up to another base exit that was underground, evident when the smooth, sculpted corridors were replaced with random junk and a plethora of defense turrets and shield generators marking the entrance along with 20 or so defenders.