by Isaac Hooke
Jason fought just outside the walls of the main palace. Those walls were only slightly taller than his mech, with triangular towers sitting at each of the four corners. Defensive turrets lined those walls, and fired up at the incoming attackers. Dragonlions swooped down and breathed flame, but their attacks were absorbed by the energy shield that protected the palace.
Inside, though he couldn’t see it from here, resided the main pyramid of the palace proper. Jhagan had tried to convince Risilan to stay inside the palace, protected by the shield, but she hadn’t listened. Instead, she fought with the Modlenth mechs—those were alien mechs with humanoid characteristics, quite similar to Jason’s Vulture mech in fact, but half the size. Modlenth referred not to the mech design, but to the Tyrnari branch that Risilan’s people belonged to. Several of the mechs wore the topknots of Risilan’s personal bodyguard, meaning that she was embedded somewhere among them. She never broadcast her actual position, not even to her allies; only her bodyguard knew which mech she fought within.
The queen had freed Bruiser, Lackey, Shaggy and Runt from their coops in the city so that they could participate in the fight. Bruiser had grown quite fat on the queen’s food, no doubt hoarding it to himself, and he was slower than the others. Well, a few more battles like this and he’d shed the extra pounds in no time.
Runt climbed onto a triangular building nearby and leaped up as a Dragonlion swooped down toward Jason; Runt wrapped its T-Rex-like jaws around its throat, pulling it from the sky. The pair landed heavily in the street, shaking the surrounding buildings, and tussled for only a few seconds before Runt broke the creature’s neck.
“You know, we’re going to have to consider renaming Runt sometime,” Jason said. “He doesn’t really live up to his name anymore.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Aria said from beside him. She fired her lightning weapon at the Dragonlions, and then ducked behind her shield as they breathed fire at her.
Jason took cover behind one of the free triangular buildings ahead. He could see the other War Forgers and their clones spread out behind the buildings in front of him, with Modlenth mechs interspersed in between. The streets were piled high with the bodies of the first wave of bioweapons, land-based creatures that resembled crocodiles with snakelike necks.
“Got flyers!” Jerry said.
Jason glanced toward the distant horizon ahead and saw the upside-down pyramids of enemy flyers approaching. The protective dome that once enclosed the city had been dismantled years ago after the environment had been cleaned up, and all that remained was the base, encircling the city like a tall wall. The defense turrets in that base were mostly destroyed, which allowed the fliers to approach with little resistance. Those incoming craft usually dumped fresh bioweapons, so it was imperative to destroy them as quickly as possible.
The local flyers, which looked like big eggs hovering overhead, changed course to intercept. They fired at the distant targets, while also shooting at closer Dragonlions as they passed; the ships took a few swipes from the bioweapons along the way, and one of the flyers crashed, smashing into a triangular building below.
The enemy fliers returned fire from their positions outside the city, and struck two more of the local craft overhead, causing the vessels to crash.
Still taking cover behind his current building, Jason aimed his energy cannon at an upside-down pyramid. In his scope, he saw large metal shapes falling free of it—they landed just inside the city wall. He realized the enemy flyer was deploying attack robots of some kind. Based on the scale of the buildings beside them, those robots were only about a quarter as tall as he was, or half as tall as the Modlenth mechs.
He zoomed in on the lead robot. It was some kind of quadruped with laser and energy turrets installed on the sides of its neck—basically a land-based gunship. He opened fire, and his energy cannon smashed into a shield. He ducked as it fired bolts of energy in return.
“These guys should be fun!” Lori commented. She stood nearby with the tip of her tail glowing a bright blue from the heat of firing so many plasma bolts in rapid succession… he hadn’t noticed her return to the visible band. She activated her stealth features a moment later and disappeared.
Jason whistled. That was the signal for the Rex Wolves to take cover behind the buildings. The well-trained beasts of war instantly complied, clamping down on their instincts to obey their master.
Hiding behind the building just in front of him, Xin leaned past and unleashed the superheated plasma beam from her eye region. She struck the same quadruped he’d targeted, and her beam penetrated the weakened shield, damaging its face.
Aria fired her energy weapon again, and finished that particular target.
Jason and the others continued to defend as the attackers rushed in. The local flyers destroyed all of the incoming upside-down pyramids, but at great cost—they’d lost half their numbers. They had to pull back, because they were exposed to the quadrupeds in the city below.
Eventually, the enemy robots dug in behind buildings across from them, because they were unable to withstand the barrage of fire from the War Forgers and the Modlenth mechs.
Overhead, the Dragonlions thinned out as the team continued to fire upon them. The airborne bioweapons occasionally struck the War Forgers with their sticky flames, but the damage only momentarily blinded them, and wasn’t able to melt their armor, as Tara was a testament to.
Speaking of which, a Dragonlion screamed overhead, and he glanced up to see Tara plunging her sword through its body. Then she leaped down and landed beside him, taking cover behind a building nearby.
“What did I miss?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Jason said. “Really.”
They shot down the last remaining Dragonlions, and then remained dug in for some time, until Jerry managed to take his War Forger clones around to the right flank of the enemy, while Julian took his clones in from the left side. The two groups shot at the exposed sides of the quadrupeds, and with the continual pummeling from the front, the teams destroyed them in short order.
“See, who needs Cataphract mode when you have teamwork!” Jerry said.
“That looks like the last of them,” Jason said. “Risilan, are you still there?”
“My scouts tell me the rifts have closed,” Risilan responded over the comm. “But I’ve just heard in from the orbital defense platforms. Multiple Link vessels are incoming. It looks like that was only the land-based portion of the attack.”
“Do you have enough defense platforms to hold off the assault until the fleet returns?” Jason asked. “And surface-to-space defenses?”
“Given the number of ships I’m seeing out there, no,” Risilan said. “They’ve already reached orbit.”
Jason’s gaze was drawn overhead, where a large, firework-like explosion spread across the alien sky: one of the defense platforms had exploded.
Lori materialized beside him. “We’re in deep doo-doo now.”
Eric led the Bethunia II toward the rendezvous point in front of the Tyrnari homeworld. There had been too many Banthar ships to jump via a single rift, so they’d had to take two. Jain had taken his own rift with the Void Warriors, who were all heading toward that same waypoint.
Eric was inside the sailing ship virtual reality environment. The stars hovered overhead, and beyond the translucent sea, matching up with the stars on his forward camera. The deck of the sailing ship around him was empty, however. He glanced at the other sailing ships on either side, strung out in a long line, ships that represented the Banthar fleet. The other Bolt Eaters had transferred their consciousnesses to the AI cores of individual Banthar ships, just as Bambi had said they would. The transfer wasn’t permanent—they could restore themselves back into their smaller AI cores whenever they wanted to, using the techniques Jain had taught them.
“Maybe you should transfer your consciousness into the Bethunia II as well, using Jain’s technique,” Bambi had suggested shortly after awakening inside her vessel. “It won’t be so
bad… these vessels have AI cores that are fairly expansive. You’ll hardly notice the mind shrinkage.”
“I’m not ready to leave the Banthar homeworld entirely under the control of an Accomp,” Eric said.
“But Dee is already going to be in control while you’re remotely operating the Bethunia II,” Bambi said.
“Yes, but the difference is I can return instantly to handle any problems that crop up,” Eric said. “Whereas if I transfer my mind entirely, I’m stuck here until I get back.”
He’d left a rift gate open behind him after arriving, of course, to maintain that connection. A rift that would remain open a tiny amount despite any spacetime jamming devices in the system.
Flashes lit up his forward camera above the homeworld, and he zoomed in.
“I’m only seeing Link vessels out there,” Eric said. “Where are the Tyrnari ships?”
“That’s a good question,” Jain said over the comm. “I’m not detecting enough debris to account for how many ships Queen Risilan is rumored to have. So my guess is, they’re in other systems. Probably trapped by Vaernastian jamming vessels.”
“Then it’s a good thing we got here when we did,” Eric said.
“Yes, indeed,” Jain said. “I’m going radio silent.”
He vanished from the tactical display as he activated his cloaking device. The one named Medeia also vanished, joining him in subterfuge.
“Why can’t we all have different abilities like them?” Traps complained over the comm. “We’re stuck with ships that are exactly the same. We shoot boring black holes and gamma rays, and molest our enemies with lame micro machines at close range.”
“Don’t discount the power of these weapons,” Eric sent. “Trust me when I say this, you don’t need flashy toys to cause damage. You can kick ass with what you have.”
“Oh, I believe you,” Traps said. “I’m just saying some variety, and some uniqueness, you know, something more representative of our personalities, would have been perfecto.”
The enemy vessels began to turn away as the three groups of ships neared the rendezvous point.
“Well, here we go,” Eric said. “It’s time to show the Void Warriors what the Banthar fleet can do when we’ve got Bolt Eaters fully deployed among them.”
21
Jain was cloaked as he approached the Tyrnari homeworld. The Link vessels had turned away from their onslaught to face these new attackers. There were no Tyrnari ships anywhere in the system; he had detected debris consistent with some of their vessels in orbit—his sensors reported high concentrations of the metals the Tyrnari commonly used in starship construction. But there wasn’t enough debris to account for the whole Tyrnari fleet. The queen must have sent most of her fleet elsewhere, for whatever reason. Perhaps the Paladins or other Earth envoys had arrived here before Jain, and had convinced Risilan to join the alliance. But somehow he doubted that.
Well, whatever the case, it was obvious the Tyrnari needed help. Eric was right: the Banthar and Void Warriors had arrived just in time.
He activated his inertialess drive to release a subtle burst of energy to stay on course. He was beginning to wish more Mimics had made it through the original rift, because other than Sheila, he was the only one with full stealth capabilities. Actually, her stealth capabilities were even better than his own, seeing as the emissions of her Newtonian drives were indistinguishable from background radiation. She used propellant, true, but the constituent gases dispersed so rapidly that it didn’t show up on ordinary sensors. He would have to look into installing a pair of Newtonians sometime to act as his main maneuvering drives while cloaked.
Around him, the virtual bridge was nearly empty, as he operated under radio silence for stealth purposes. Only Xander remained, standing beside him, ever the obedient companion.
Of course he’s obedient. He’s part of my mind.
Eric’s Banthar ships were quite a sight to behold as they ate up the stars of space ahead of Jain and the Void Warriors. Eric had brought with him almost his entire space navy this time, leaving fewer than twenty ships to protect Banthar Prime. He’d recalled warships from all the colonies and military bases the Banthar had spread across the galaxy, greatly augmenting the numbers: he was definitely going all-in on this. Jain admired him for that.
The Link ships out there couldn’t be looking forward to the battle that was coming. Unless reinforcements arrived, they were very likely going to lose, given how outnumbered they were. In fact, Jain was almost expecting the Link vessels to begin jumping out, but to their credit they remained in the system. Perhaps the Vaernastians had orders to jam the rift creation beams of their own ships. He wouldn’t put it past the Link Empire.
Teleporters materialized in front of the Banthar ships. The latter began swerving, no doubt to avoid the expected teleportation bombs. The Banthar unleashed the termite swarms that coated their hulls. They launched their black hole weapons to herd the Teleporters into those swarms, and in moments several of the Teleporters were engulfed by the micro machines. The Void Warriors arrived and picked off the survivors.
Jain remained hidden, drifting forward, biding his time.
Barbells, Claws, and Buckyballs waited ahead. There was also an Armadillo among them. It stayed back while the others broke away to intercept.
The Barbells and Claws combined their attacks so that a wall of energy grids and rifts approached the Banthar. They reversed course, separating to fly around that wall, and the Void Warriors followed suit. The Buckyballs had repositioned in expectation of such a maneuver, and had followed along the outskirts of that expanding wall, and when the Banthar came within range, the Buckyballs fired their multi-directional plasma weapons. Those beams ate into multiple Banthar ships at the same time, causing breach damage.
Medeia materialized. She had slammed into one of the Buckyballs, her sword section embedding deep. The impact blew the target apart. She cloaked again as Barbells launched energy grids at her.
Jain was also close to one of those Buckyballs, and he fired two blobs in rapid succession. The target detected the launch a moment later, and tried to swerve away, but it was too late: the projectiles smashed into the delicate metal framework and tore through the ship.
Jain fired his inertialess drives to change course. The Barbells and Claws were concentrating fire on his position, just as they had done Medeia. They wasted their energy grids and rifts by firing them in an expansive area all around him, when they could have been focusing their attacks on the Banthar. They were probably worried that there were more cloaked ships out there… he and Medeia had cloaked after entering the system, so they knew there had to be at least two, but they also knew that other vessels could have entered the system already cloaked. A valid concern, if wrong.
Jain was struck a glancing blow by one of the energy grids, but it wasn’t enough to damage his stealth countermeasures, so he continued drifting past the Barbells. When he was right on top of them, he decided to fire his lightning weapon. At near point blank range, the damage would be immense. The Barbells had made the mistake of gathering too close together—there were four within a five thousand kilometer radius, and so the bolt he unleashed arced between four ships, and took them all down.
The other nearby Barbells and Claws turned around frantically, trying to target these stealth ships in their midst. But that only allowed the Banthar to close, firing their herding black holes, and the micro machines thereafter.
Jain activated his inertialess drives to shift directions, which would give away his position, but he wasn’t worried, as most of the enemy ships were already turning away from him without firing so that they could deal with the Banthar threat.
Ahead, the Armadillo lumbered closer, threatening to blow itself up to eliminate everything within a three thousand kilometer radius. He was going to pass within that radius. He decided a little sleight of hand was in order.
He fired his inertialess drive again to alter his course so that he wouldn’t pass inside t
hat radius. And then he quickly programmed three stealth skirmishers and launched them.
The units proceeded into the blast radius and separated so that they were traveling fifteen hundred kilometers apart. He wanted to make it seem like they were much larger ships, requiring significant space. The skirmishers proceeded to fire their short-range plasma cutters, which could be interpreted by bystanders as weapons in the process of charging. To his delight, the Armadillo detonated, believing it would destroy three enemy ships. But all it got were three skirmishers. The stealth tech was expensive, in terms of the exotic elements required, true, but not as expensive as a ship. With luck, he’d be able to recover those elements after the battle was over.
By the time he turned around, the Banthar had essentially finished the battle. There were a few Claw ships remaining, but they were fleeing and already in the process of jumping out. A minute later, all those ships had vacated the system, and the battle was done.
Jain uncloaked. He tried to fire his rift generation device, and was happy when the beams formed. That meant there were no jamming ships hiding in the system. Then again, maybe there were, and they just hadn’t activated their jamming devices yet. Something to look out for.
He reconnected to the fleet network, and the Void Warriors returned to his virtual bridge. Medeia also appeared as she uncloaked.
“Well, that was easier than it probably should have been,” Sheila said.
“Thanks to Eric and his Banthar,” Jain said. “Are you there, Eric?”
“I’m on the line, yes,” Eric said.
“Good job,” Jain said.
“Thanks,” Eric told him. “I liked what you did to that Armadillo. Gotta love it when you can get an enemy to trade one of their starships for a few decoys. I’m assuming that’s what you used?”
“Yeah,” Jain said. “Launched some of my stealth skirmishers, and tricked the Armadillo into thinking they were hidden starships.”
