by Aer-ki Jyr
“Deploy,” she ordered when the targeted shield generator finally disappeared in a debris ridden explosion that rained down smoking meteors into the surrounding ocean. The shield generator had been built on top of an artificial island that extended up more than two miles to reach the atmosphere, for generating shields through water reduced their efficiency by 28% in standard water. The Garas’tox had built their own above water as well, but they kept a secondary shield system below. It would create a weak planetary shield within the water, allowing the upper levels of the ocean to absorb a lot of the energy weapons.
The problem with that was it gave the air dwellers access to their world, but if they had to bunker down and hold off against an assault fleet, pulling that shield lower and lower in the water would increase the combined strength of field and water mass, making it harder to knock out the lower shield generators, though not impossible. And combined with shield conduits allowing subsurface weapons access to the air and them not having to suffer vaporization losses passing through the water, it made the aquatics’ worlds the most resilient against orbital bombardment.
Which was why it was stupid for the V’kit’no’sat not to further reinforce them with ample planetary defense stations. The J’gar had proved how powerful that tactic could be, for they’d used their ration of the superior technology to heavily reinforce a handful of worlds in such a manner, then spread out the other planetary defense stations more sporadically, though each world got at least one.
Why Star Force hadn’t done so here, at least with their lesser technology, was something Vax didn’t understand. The waters were so deep here that this world was valuable even by V’kit’no’sat standards…yet here she was, about to take it with a fleet far smaller than should have been required.
The Garas’tox commander watched as her troop transports flew down towards the planet with their O-shaped hulls that were stretched out a bit and reinforced fore and aft. All their ships were so designed, and in space it didn’t make much sense to the non-aquatic races, for the more mass you had in one position the easier it was to defend that mass. That hadn’t stopped some of the other races from building wilder designs, but for the Garas’tox the open space in the center of their ships was critical for landing operations, as Star Force would soon see.
Vax didn’t take her warships down. Not yet. They were still shooting at targets exposed by the single shield generator that had fallen and they also needed to draw fire away from the troop transports. If that meant taking hull damage then so be it, for those transports were much smaller and far more valuable. Star Force apparently agreed, for every battery within rage changed their firing trajectories and targeted those ships, with several being hit despite their escorts blocking for them.
Vax’s long neck snaked back and forth in an irritated gesture similar to what the Oso’lon and other long necks did, whether they were on land, in air, or under water. It was one commonality they all had, and Vax was pissed at her miscalculation. If she’d known Star Force would totally ignore her ships now pounding towards a second shield generator as a distraction, she would have sent them all down together to further shield the transports. As it was happening, the extreme range planetary guns were getting free shots at her ships despite them not being able to target the transports around the curve of the planet.
“All ships,” she said audibly, with her voice echoing through the water-filled chamber with a gravitas land dwellers could never match. “Descend immediately. Get below their firing arcs.”
The view from the holograms of the outside environment suddenly shifted, with the horizon of the planet drifting upwards as her Kafcha-class warship and her 4,294 ship fleet began to descend. They couldn’t all fit through the 102 mile wide hold in the planetary shield simultaneously, but the lower they got to the planet the more of the distant guns wouldn’t be able to target them.
Vax followed up with more specific telepathic orders to certain command deck crewmembers, instructing the 38 Kafcha she had remaining…for one had already been destroyed…to descend last in line. They could take more pounding than the smaller ships, and she’d rather repair a damaged Kafcha than have to replace a destroyed Domjo. Damaged ships had crew remaining alive. Destroyed ones did not. And experienced crew were far harder to replace than warships.
Despite the bottleneck, her fleet moved smoothly and efficiently through the gap in the shields, braking hard and spreading out laterally when they got underneath them before they gently touched the water all the while being hit with missiles and other shorter range weapon systems. It was harassment that they had to suffer through, and damage was taken, but no warships were destroyed. Two already damaged transports went down, crashing into the water rather than landing, but Vax knew most of their passengers would survive the impacts.
That was a big advantage over ‘landing’ on land. Even the term was biased towards the land dwellers, and the hard ground was much less forgiving than the water, which was why when her transports and warships touched down they sank in part way then held station, disgorging underwater weapons, setting up defense perimeters, and essentially creating a vast, interconnecting underwater city within hours as transport tubes reached out gently link ship to ship, though that was more of a formality than any structural necessity. Swimming was swimming, in tube or not, and by the time Vax’s lightly damaged Kafcha touched down, the Garas’tox had their foothold amply secured.
The transports had fully unloaded before her ship touched down, spurting out schools of the large Garas’tox with much slower ‘minnows’ of Zen’zat tasked with support operations. Neither were met unchallenged though, for this Axius world had a large array of aquatics warships waiting for them…though they wisely did not approach the Garas’tox warships. Rather they waited until the Garas’tox troops swam out to meet them in what would be a fair fight.
Vax knew not to underestimate the Star Force aquatics ships, for they were the equivalent of the mechs the land dwellers fought. They allowed the puny Zen’zat offshoots to combat the larger races, and underwater was no different. However, their support troops had a speed advantage on her Zen’zat, and as she watched combat breaking out their Elarioni and Suvo were quickly flanking the main engagement and going after her Zen’zat.
Vax deployed some Garas’tox guard units to the flanks, bringing them out from the warships, but the Elarioni and Suvo were too fast and could pick and choose when to engage the Garas’tox. Normally they’d have another servant race with them, known as the Chavco, which were even faster than the Elarioni, but the J’gar who controlled the Chavco and set their assignments with the other aquatics races had redirected them to Warden assignments only, meaning Vax was going to have to work with no fast moving support troops.
She did not like that, but it wasn’t going to stop her from crushing this Axius force. It would just take more time, for they could run as much as they liked, but one by one their cities and defense forts would fall and eventually all those on the planet would submit to the Garas’tox or be forced to flee further into the vastness of the oceans and try to survive on what pittance they could find out there…or go feral and start eating the less advanced sea creatures. Either way, Nautilus would belong to the Garas’tox and Vax hoped they’d be able to keep it, for the initial intelligence reports had been accurate, now confirmed by the landed warships that were sampling the water and scanning the seafloor.
This wasn’t the best waterworld in the galaxy, but it was definitely top tier and well suited to the Garas’tox even more so than the J’gar who preferred slightly warmer water. And with the oceans blocking some orbital attacks, it was questionable whether or not a Uriti could be used to remove them. Vax had no doubt that a Uriti used properly could devastate a water world, for simply boring a hole down into the crust and releasing a magma plume would begin to heat up and vaporize the water, but from an orbital bombardment point alone, the oceans acted like a rechargeable shield of their own, and most of the Star Force cities were sitting on
the seafloor.
That didn’t make her feel safe, but with Star Force’s reluctance to commit to friendly fire casualties in order to target the V’kit’no’sat, Vax hoped they wouldn’t bother committing a Uriti here and save its precious time for the land dwellers that had nowhere to hide from its attacks. For if the Garas’tox could establish a permanent base here, they could use it as a point of stable resupply and branch out to other assaults, providing a badly needed forward base. As it was, numerous fleet groups were going missing as they transited across the stars beyond Star Force territory. What or how Star Force was managing to ambush and destroy them with was unknown and becoming alarming, for some fleet groups were never heard from again, and the likelihood of destroying every single ship out of 200 or more vessels was implausible, though not impossible.
Vax was becoming convinced that Star Force had some new weapon or tactic that the V’kit’no’sat hadn’t discovered, and with the Uriti able to show up and hammer any location they wanted, the V’kit’no’sat could not put down the necessary infrastructure on any captured world without losing it in a matter of minutes. That meant long supply lines and rendezvous points between Star Force territory and the furthest edge of V’kit’no’sat territory, and Star Force was doing so much damage as they were moving back and forth that some races had begun annexing the intermittent systems and garrisoning them with entire fleets just to make sure their supply routes were not ambushed.
That meant a whole lot of ships being tied up doing nothing, effectively neutralized by the threat of attack Star Force was using to strike fear into the V’kit’no’sat. If Vax could take and hold this world in a way that did not allow a Uriti to uproot them, they’d either have a true forward base to work out of or they’d tie up a huge Star Force fleet in orbit blockading them. Perhaps even a Uriti with it, which would then spare other invasion thrusts so they could operate more freely.
Either way, it was the deep water on this world that was such a huge advantage, with some depths being more than 260 miles deep, that made her wonder if Star Force was completely clueless to the defensive potential…or rather they simply didn’t care and needed to protect more industrialized worlds to keep their drone fleets continually restocked as the V’kit’no’sat tore through the tiny ships with ease.
Their swarming capability was their threat, and in order to maintain that they had to keep replacing the losses. Perhaps this system wasn’t key to doing that, or perhaps Star Force was just stupid. Or maybe the Uriti had a way of reaching deep down into the waters from orbit. Vax didn’t rule out that possibility, but the only way to find out was to wait and see how they responded.
Right now though, there was a large war to be fought in the water, person to person, or in this case, person to mech. Her troops would win out in the end, but she expected a moderately hard fight. Star Force hadn’t reinforced this planet nearly as much as they should have, but they hadn’t left it underdefended either. This was going to be hazardous, but once the Garas’tox broke them in open water the assaults on their fortresses would move quickly. If they’d pulled back and played defense it would have been more difficult, but they were even now coming out to confront the Garas’tox in open water.
And that was their second biggest mistake…and it was going to allow her invasion fleet to take this world even faster than she’d initially speculated. And hopefully with a few planetary defenses left intact if they could capture them quickly enough.
Perhaps that was what Star Force was doing. Fighting the Garas’tox here and now, in the open, so the rest of the planet would have time to prepare sabotage measures so they could not seize any of the truly valuable infrastructure. Vax wished she could ignore them and go after those locations, but she couldn’t with the Axius aquatics forces approaching from all sides and effectively blockading them. She’d have to break their forces first, then disperse squads across the planet.
And personally, Vax preferred it that way. No hiding and running. Fight the battle for the planet up front and get it over with, one way or another.
If that was what they were thinking or something else she didn’t know, though she’d have plenty of time to ask them about it later when the Axius troops were prisoners. She’d already given orders to disable rather than destroy their opposition whenever possible. While taking civilians alive was a necessity, taking warriors was a privilege now that the death marks had been lifted and this was a war of conquest.
Some would die. Many might die. But not all would. This was going to be her world unless she was forced from it, and the more hostages she kept around her ships and captured cities, the less likely Star Force would be to try and blast them from orbit. That tactic was working elsewhere already, with Star Force mounting a few counter invasions on ground to try and take back a handful of key worlds…at least long enough to evacuate the survivors while a Uriti or a massive fleet took possession of space.
Hopefully Star Force would ignore the value of this world and let her establish her stronghold down in the ocean where the land dwellers were uncomfortable going…and right now the smallest of the Uriti was far away, with her keeping an eye on its location whenever intelligence made its way to her fleet, for that Uriti was the one that concerned her the most. Star Force had used it to attack the planetary defense station on Terraxis from below ground, and she knew it could be used to do the same thing here, or even just deployed into the water to bully her own ships and troops out of the way.
That was a small possibility, and hopefully this system would get lost in the mass of assaults, but if it didn’t she had an evac plan, as all commanders were required to keep at the ready. Star Force couldn’t evict them from all worlds, and even if Vax’s fleet was driven from this one they’d be back to retake it as soon as the intervening forces left.
Star Force had too many worlds to defend and too few ships and Uriti to do it. So long as the V’kit’no’sat kept moving around and avoiding direct contact, there was no way Star Force could stop them from chewing apart their empire bit by bit. It could be a long war. A very long war. But it was one with a certain outcome so long as everyone stuck to the plan. It wasn’t the traditional way for the V’kit’no’sat to fight, but it was already proving effective and would continue to do so…until someone slipped up.
That someone wasn’t going to be her, but she was really hoping this system would be overlooked. For this planet truly was a jewel in the rough so far out from the Core…and the Garas’tox really wanted to keep it.
6
July 24, 4897
Star Guardian System (Rim Region)
Havoc
Junarri was a Dasc, one of the smallest races in the V’kit’no’sat similar to the Ari’tat, though slightly larger with an armored stripe from the back of its head all the way down to its tail tip. Small nubs appeared all over the armor, some sharpened, some dull, but when Dasc…known to old Earth as ‘Scutellosaurus’…wrapped their tail around to touch their face, their armor acted as a firm support for their wheel-shaped body. They had the option of rolling like the Rammus did, though they rarely used it. Mostly they hopped around like a kangaroo, looking like a tiny Rit’ko’sor, but within the V’kit’no’sat they were far less respected.
In fact they were one of the lowest races in stature and territory. 93% of their worlds were shared ones, and the primary reason the Zak’de’ron had recruited them was for their judgement. They were wiser than most races, which made up somewhat for their lack of physical or psionic power. They did not have Sav, nor any other special psionic, only the base Ikrid, Lachka, and Pefbar that all V’kit’no’sat races had.
Junarri stood only a meter tall at the hip, though he stretched out more than 3 meters in length. That made him one of the larger ones, for his race did not possess Ultras. What they did have was an uncanny knack for evaluation, making them some of the best researchers, scouts, and all around troubleshooters in the empire…but when strength was valued most of all, many forgot the power in such attribut
es and deemed the Dasc as an undeserving member.
The Ari’tat were less disrespected, for they got involved in the politics of the empire far more effectively. They were also good traders, and while the Dasc maintained elite marks there, they didn’t have the territory needed to facilitate enough trade to have an empire-wide impact.
So the Dasc networked out with the few allies and neighbors they had, doing their part to help the overall empire mostly through research and battle against the Hadarak. Their fleet of starburst-shaped warships didn’t rely on their physical size, and in fact the smaller the crew was, the more machinery you could pack into the mandated hull volumes. For that reason their ships were among the most powerful per mass, but they only built the smaller models.
They had no Kafcha, nor did they have any Na’shor. Their largest ships were Dak’bri battlecruisers, and to the diminutive Dasc they were unnecessarily large vessels. Most of the Dasc fleet was made up of Ti’mat and Wur’ki, and they’d wisely chosen to make hundreds of such vessels for what it would have cost to produce a single Kafcha.
Furthermore, they built reinforced command decks within their vessels to increase the likelihood of recovering crew from destroyed warships. They didn’t like losing what little population they had, for wisdom was not something one was hatched with. It was accumulated over time, whereas muscle strength came much more quickly. Thus the Dasc had to keep their crews alive in order for them to grow more experienced, and against the Hadarak they’d even developed an escape pod system that could throw the command deck module out of the ship like a slingshot and away from the minion hordes before the Hadarak arrived to crush it.