Star Force: The Dinosaur War (Star Force Universe Book 45)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  He’d managed to destroy all those around Winage, so they’d lost that production at least, but the others were still cranking out replacements. Not enough to even make a dent at the million they’d lost, but if Niom couldn’t hold this planet and be a continual thorn in Star Force’s side in this system, they’d return to regular order at about 80% capacity, making this attack a failure. The Oso’lon could not suffer this level of losses without being able to take systems, so he had to make this attack work somehow. He’d been given additional ships because of this system’s heavy shield generators, but he’d gotten no forewarning about Sivir arriving and Niom was wondering whether Virokor really had a handle on the warfront or not.

  Niom’s orders had come directly from him, not Yaniel, who was located on the V’kit’no’sat border until they could secure territory here that he could move into. He was commanding all the Oso’lon ships, but Virokor was the invasion leader and Yaniel was letting him handle many of the assignments.

  Had this entire assault been wasted? Or was it part of a larger plan? Niom didn’t know, and was now having serious doubts, but it didn’t matter now. What mattered was what he was going to do about it, and if he could get the Uriti to sit here doing nothing then that would be a victory…and if it left, he could bring his fleet back in and retake the planet. If he left the enemy could secure the system, but so long as his fleet was here he was going to put pressure on them, for the Uriti couldn’t move fast enough to engage them if the Oso’lon didn’t choose to be engaged. Getting caught and pinned was the only threat, for against the Star Force drone fleet it looked like Niom would still have an advantage, though they hadn’t all arrived yet.

  The fleets escorting the Uriti were large, but not overly huge, as they were designed to fight with and protect Star Force’s largest assets, not press the attack on their own. If they wanted to come out and fight him, he’d oblige, but the moment the Uriti moved he would disengage. It was the enemy’s ultimate weapon and he couldn’t get forced into a fight against it. Especially not this one.

  So Niom watched and waited as the last of the cargo and crews were exchanged with the surface, then his ship departed with one of the last fleet groups, slowly jumping away from the planet and further out into the system where they would slow to a creep off the weaker stellar gravity then sit, watching the planet they now mostly controlled get attacked by the Star Force reinforcements and hoping that the Uriti didn’t find a vulnerable target that it could hit from orbit…and the same went with the Star Force drones.

  Niom left a few reconnaissance probes behind so he could monitor what was happening, and either Star Force couldn’t detect them or didn’t care, for he got a good look as the reinforcement fleet flew into orbit and began to take damage from the few small planetary guns the V’kit’no’sat had brought with them and networked with the grounded warships. They’d managed to only capture 2 of the Star Force shield generators, giving them a small umbrella over different sites in addition to the smaller ones elsewhere that were of V’kit’no’sat manufacture. The rest of the planet was open to attack, save for the piece that still held Star Force troops underneath the last pieces of the planetary shield.

  When the drones attacked they suffered some losses, but they soon retreated up to a higher orbit out of range. Niom didn’t expect that was because of the firepower issue. His ground defenses were heavily outgunned. But there were obvious prison camps placed near all the planetary guns and shield generators. He’d made sure to put them in plain sight, and they were mostly full with Bsidd occupants.

  Then he saw the Uriti come down to the planet. It went so far as to kiss the upper atmosphere as it shrugged off hits by the planetary guns…then they stopped firing. Probably because they didn’t want to make it angry, knowing it had the power to wipe them out and the chance that it might react without orders if they managed to sting it enough.

  It drifted slightly, moving over one of the captured shield generators, then it began to descend. Niom watched in horror as it looked like it was going to crush his troops and the prisoners alike, but it stopped just short of the surface, pressing into and breaking through the defense shield with its huge mass. The shield held for a few minutes, but it couldn’t hold out against that much raw power. Niom didn’t know if it was sending a charge into it or not, but the glow from the Uriti seemed to increase slightly.

  Then Niom watched from V’kit’no’sat monitors on the planet, relayed through the probes, as the Uriti descended further and touched the top of the shield generator. It seemed to rest there, almost as if the puny tower was holding up its mass, but the emitters must have been damaged enough by the small contact, for the Uriti went down no further. If it had it would have broken off parts of the tower that would have fallen on the prison camps below.

  Niom was impressed by the accuracy of the collision. That was a maneuver that would have been tricky for a warship, let alone a biological of that size. Perhaps its gravity drives were more sensitive than artificial ones…but that seemed absurd given the precision of the V’kit’no’sat drives. Regardless, it had just pancaked the top few floors and rendered the shield generator inoperable without collapsing it on those beneath.

  “Order the other garrison to move prisoners to the top of the structure immediately. Make sure they’re visible on top or we’ll lose that one too,” he told his bridge crew, though it would take time for the message to travel across the system due to the distance lag.

  He continued to watch the Uriti hold its position, drifting upward ever so slightly to expose a few meters on top when a few clusters of drones shot down towards the planet directly over top the Uriti, using its bulk as cover against the V’kit’no’sat weaponry. When they got near, the Star Force version of drop pods emerged from within the drones, which had been enclosing them inside a block formation. Those drones skimmed the surface of the Uriti and dipped underneath the edge, exchanging fire with the surface guns as the dropships zipped around behind them, heading for the shield generator.

  Some of the drones went with them, acting as blockers and coming down so close to the surface that the firing arcs of the guns were almost completely filled with the black armored hull of the drone. That freed up the dropships to race towards the shield generator over top the prisons and garrisons and everything else the V’kit’no’sat had deployed around their most valuable asset…which was likewise so valuable that there were no defenses set up directly around it, for the Oso’lon were banking on the fact that the shield generator itself wouldn’t be hit from above and the Star Force troops would have to fight through multiple defensive lines to get to it.

  But not now that the shield was down, for the dropships went straight to the top and slid under the expanding gap between Uriti and crushed roof, dropping off a few elite teams of infantry as a mass of larger transports began descending from orbit and pooling above the Uriti. Niom knew they would soon find a spot nearby on the planet to land, then they’d disperse their mechs and engage the defenders directly.

  He saw no aerial craft in play, and with the shield now down there was no need for them when Star Force could use their drones for close in support. His other shield generator had to get prisoners in place so the Uriti could not do this there. If they could hold that location then they’d have a chance of holding the planet, but this shield generator position was now compromised and his troops were going to get slaughtered by the drones if they didn’t scatter now.

  The ground commander at that location was Nerudi, and Niom knew that he knew the situation better than he did, so he didn’t issue any orders. Many of his troops were going to die because of that unexpected Uriti maneuver, but some could still get away if they moved now.

  As if in telepathic connection, he saw the Nerudi did just that. Drop pods on the ground began rocketing off laterally with Zen’zat aerial craft moving up to engage the drones that tried to interfere. That was a big mismatch, but if they could just buy the drop pods some time…

  Niom
watched as more drones moved underneath the Uriti, only to begin massive air to ground fire. It wasn’t specific, but a blanket attack the kinds of which he assumed Star Force would never use. They were targeting buildings along with the openings between them and Niom didn’t understand what was happening until he saw they were also shooting the prisons.

  Then he understood. Those weren’t damaging weapons, but rather very large stun guns. They looked similar to Dre’mo’don orbs, but the lack of explosions was telling. It seemed they were just going to stun everything that moved, then pick their Bsidd out of the unconscious bodies later.

  It was a good tactic, because it meant the Oso’lon couldn’t hide behind the captives, but hitting the buildings was tricky. If they overloaded the stun levels they could kill the Bsidd, and the buildings would soak up a lot of it. Plus, the Oso’lon were so large they wouldn’t be rendered unconscious at levels suited for Bsidd. It would make them groggy though, and have to beat through their shields first, but it was a decent tactic for countering the living shield philosophy…which was encouraging, for it indicated that Star Force did in fact want to recover their people. And that meant the Uriti wouldn’t fire on the planet and wipe them all out within minutes.

  Eventually he saw prisoners beginning to cluster at the top of the other shield generator, meaning they should be able to hold that location against the Uriti if they brought the shield down low enough that it just skimmed the top of the generator. But his troops under assault now were soon to be overwhelmed by the ground troops that were following the drones down. At the moment they were shrugging off the stun blasts and repositioning, but once the mechs got deployed that movement advantage was going to disappear.

  And all Niom could do was watch. If he brought his fleet back in to the planet the Uriti would be there to stop them, and he couldn’t engage it, not even for a short distraction. The losses would be much too costly.

  His ground troops were on their own, and right now he’d learned a lesson that needed to be shared with other V’kit’no’sat invasion fleets. Niom wrote up a message packet, included the sensor data, then gave it to a Kaeper in his fleet and sent the courier off to spread the word. Shield generators, captured or otherwise, had to have prisoners on the top of them. Otherwise Sivir, and perhaps the other Uriti, would simply come down and gently crush them.

  A costly lesson, but if he got the word spread quick enough, it might be worth it in the long term, for this war was looking like it would a millennia-long campaign…at the minimum, unless they could find a weakness in the Uriti, which he highly doubted. Their only weak point had been discovered long ago, and with escorting fleets there was no way to sedate them. All Star Force would have to do is shoot them with their own weapons and that would counter the sedative effect.

  So unless they could catch a Uriti without a fleet, Niom saw no way to neutralize this threat. They were going to have to fight around them and chip off systems where they could, with a lot of retreating in the mix until they wore down the Star Force industrial machine enough that they couldn’t replace their drone fleets. Then, and only then, could they attempt to take on the Uriti.

  And that was one fight that Niom truly was not looking forward to.

  8

  April 1, 4898

  Skeeter System (Rim Region)

  Yolf

  The Uvbor fleet had entered the system under heavy assault by the Protovic defenders, but they’d suffered the necessary losses to establish a foothold and got the bulk of their fleet through the jumppoint. After that it was a matter of engaging the defenders where they could, then pounding through the planetary shields and establishing another foothold on the surface of the jungle world.

  The entire planet was covered in vegetation, with even the poles remaining above freezing and the equator sporting some of the largest trees Tanu had ever seen. The ‘hadrosaurs’ were a mix of quadruped and bipeds, with their rear legs being larger, but they spent as much of their time on their front legs as they did standing.

  Right now Tanu was standing, observing a slew of holograms from his command deck as his forces continued to march across the planet with little real resistance. The Protovic world was not heavily defended…at least not compared to the size of the invasion force the Uvbor had brought. It was overkill, but necessary to get through the planetary shields with the minimum loss of ships. Now that they were on the ground the planet would be theirs. It was just a matter of time.

  And it was the only planet in the system that was inhabited. That meant that the Protovic had nowhere to run to, so they’d either die fighting or surrender, giving Tanu plenty of hostages to hold off a Uriti if and when one came around. He doubted that one would, given the small stature of this system, and the V’kit’no’sat as a whole needed worlds taken to be used as staging bases. Tanu intended to provide the Uvbor and Virokor with one, and the more time he had to work with after full conquest of the planet, the more difficult it would be for a Uriti strike force to remove them.

  Tanu spent his time onboard his Na’shor, monitoring the progress of the invasion rather than taking part in it. His ship had fought in the space battle, but there was no point in him going down to the planet yet. His physical skills were better than most other Uvbor, but the battles were so one-sided that he wasn’t needed. He’d been assigned this system to conquer, and his skills were more needed in organization and leadership rather than in making kills…or captures, in this case. The number of Protovic prisoners were already over a million, though their containment was a bit tricky. Most of them had telepathy, along with some other weak psionics, meaning the guards had to stay alert.

  Tanu didn’t mind that. If an Uvbor’s mind was so weak to be tricked by one of these Protovic, they deserved whatever happened to them. Uvbor were superior to Protovic, so no psionic dampeners were going to be used on them. It would be an admission of weakness if it was, plus Tanu didn’t want to waste the resources on the impudent little bipeds.

  The Uvbor commander was casually monitoring the various feeds from across the planet when he got warnings from the patrols in near the star. Warships were coming in from the Narui jumpline, one that he had only a few ships near. He wasn’t going to be able to get his fleet there in time to block them, so he recalled his patrols and allowed the Star Force fleet to enter unopposed as data on the ships began to amass.

  They were Star Force ships, but the variances between racial designs were so small it was hard to determine at range, but when the jumpships began disgorging blocky S-shaped drones Tanu felt a deep hatred welling up inside him.

  Those were the traitorous Rit’ko’sor, now called ‘Raptors,’ and the Uvbor were going to hit them hard right now. With a mental command, Tanu began pulling his fleet away from the planet intent on meeting the Raptors near the star, and perhaps before the last of them arrived, depending on how many there were. This was an enemy that could not be ignored, and his disgust at the heresy that was Star Force was nothing compared to the rage he and the other V’kit’no’sat felt for the Raptors.

  More and more Raptor ships emerged and held their position around the jumpline as the Uvbor approached, then a massive ship came through and Tanu’s rage soured with a steady dose of fear. The Raptors had brought the Mach’nel they’d stolen from the Rit’ko’sor during their split with this fleet, and Tanu had nothing to counter it aside from numbers.

  And with every additional ship that came through, it was becoming painfully clear he wasn’t going to be able to win this battle.

  Riona-111 sat on the command deck of the Mach’nel, named Moshari, as her crew of Raptors operated the massive craft. She didn’t need to stand, for the command nexus on this ship had been fashioned into the architecture and had her in a seated position with a semi-circle of machinery behind her. The Raptor pits had the crew sitting on wide pads or bicycle-like seats that allowed for their tails to hang off the back. All were mentally linked into the ship’s systems and the command deck was eerily silent as the Uvbor shi
ps attacked the Raptor fleet.

  The Archon was surprised at the ferocity. The V’kit’no’sat had to know they were outmatched, but they were engaging full on anyway. At least they weren’t stupid enough to shoot the Mach’nel itself and were exclusively targeting the drones and trying to get at the jumpships, but were having no luck catching them during evasive maneuvers. And with the Mach’nel fully outfitted to control the drones, there were no small lag interruptions in the combat when a control ship had to make a microjump away. The drones were programmed to fight on their own if necessary, but with Moshari just sitting there in the middle of them the Uvbor didn’t even have that slight advantage.

  Riona didn’t have to do much, letting the crew handle most of the fighting unless she saw an opening in the enemy or a weakness in the Raptor ranks. She’d fought with this crew so much against the Ziviri that they knew each other well by now, but this fight was a personal one for the Raptors and she was comfortable taking a back seat unless needed and letting them start to settle the score.

  The Uvbor were going to lose, but they didn’t seem to care. They were standing right in front of the Mach’nel as it picked them apart so they could take on the Raptor drones. In theory if they took all of them out they could then focus on the Mach’nel, but they didn’t have the numbers for that. She sensed they really wanted to get to the jumpships so they could kill the Raptors, but short of that they were going to kill their drones and do as much damage as possible rather than running and preserving their fleet.