Star Force: Atonement (Star Force Universe Book 68)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  “Leaving is irrelevant. All that matters is that I deliver Garuva’s message to your trailblazer. After that I am expendable.”

  “Typical V’kit’no’sat bullshit,” the Hjar’at said with a sneer as he turned his head back to glare at the Era’tran as they continued to walk the long, spacious hallways. “Nobody is expendable.”

  “In this war you are wrong. My mission matters far more than my life.”

  “How do you know that if you haven’t seen the message?”

  “I know what it is about. And I must get through at any cost.”

  “Why?”

  “I am forbidden to tell you.”

  “You’re predictably opaque,” the Hjar’at said as he opened a side door and led the Era’tran into an empty room, but one that had a holoprojection pop up immediately upon entry with the system-wide battle data displayed. It scaled down to the distance between them and the Castle, along with the massive number of Hadarak units in the immediate area.

  “Watch and learn,” the Hjar’at said. “This is the real enemy both of your empires are blindly ignoring as they nip at your tails.”

  Bran’cen looked closely as the detail filled in with the enemy units’ movements, as well as those Star Force ships converging to their position from outside the Castle defenses and some from within. All were headed to a mutual area where the run would take place, and along with them one of the Lurkers was also approaching…

  2

  Alden-031 was in a heavy grav training session when word came in about the V’kit’no’sat Kaeper’s arrival, but it wasn’t until he’d left that crushing inferno, showered, and made his way to the Castle’s command deck did he get the addendum about a courier’s message. The Hjar’at warship that had intercepted the vessel indicated the Kaeper was high speed modified but damaged, so they had taken it inside their drone hold and were going to make a run in because the message had to be hand delivered to either a trailblazer or the Director.

  One of Alden’s ruby red eyebrows raised when he read that. Castle 15 was no longer in V’kit’no’sat territory. The surrounding systems had been swallowed up by the Hadarak, most of which had been evacuated prior to their arrival. Those refugees were mostly back in the Rim now with Beacon and Axius absorbing them, though 56 million were still stuck in this Castle waiting for transport.

  They were safe here for now, but getting the transport ships in and out was a major hassle and getting worse with each year. Alden had assigned himself this post when it was discovered that the Hadarak were not going to all-out assault the Castle…for they’d tried and failed multiple times…nor were they going to skip over this system. They’d been sending reinforcements here continually, raising the pressure on the Castle’s traffic in and out and presumably building up for an even larger assault.

  Alden hoped they would, for they could kill a lot of the larger Hadarak in short order, but he had a sneaking suspicion that they were up to something tricky with this siege, so he’d picked this one of the Castles already surrounded by enemy territory and had been camping out the past 8 years trying to figure out what they were up to. They were intent on not letting him use the Castle as a base of operations to launch assaults on the nearby systems, but that hadn’t stopped Alden from getting it done. This Castle was now a nuisance for the Hadarak behind the slowly moving border, and the fact that they couldn’t remove it seemed to be something they simply would not let go.

  But they’d done it before with others. Already Star Force had 8 systems around the galaxy tagged as Hadarak no-go zones because of the ‘Megaloids’ there. That was the term Roger had come up with for the Heidoor that were ‘big,’ and the one that the Wranglers had found behind enemy lines had been quite talkative once they smuggled a Uriti into that empty system to do the translating, one Megaloid to another.

  The reason the Hadarak stayed out of that system, even allowing Star Force to base there and strike out against them without reprisal, was because of a negotiated ‘treaty’ of sorts. The Hadarak across the galaxy could not communicate quickly with one another, so they operated with memory protocols, including maps. System 33920 was off limits on their genetic map, thought they probably didn’t know why.

  When the Hadarak had first entered this galaxy they had to fight a massive number of wars against the other Megaloids in the Deep Core. It was so tedious cleaning out the biggest of the threats that they often tried to negotiate with those more powerful than them, and sometimes it paid off. Recognizing the incoming threat of the Hadarak and their numbers, some had decided to move aside and relocate further out into the galaxy after taking heavy losses. This relocation saved the Hadarak a great amount of time, resources, and gave them some easy acquisitions early on, and they had honored their agreements to avoid one another ever since.

  Those that had left had designated larger stars and star clusters beyond the Deep Core as their own and the Hadarak had granted them immunity there after sufficient combat determined that neither side was going to back down or win easily. The Hadarak needed the Deep Core for the Gateway gravity wells, but the Megaloids in this galaxy had no interest in traveling elsewhere…nor did they have the experience or knowledge to know how to do so. They just wanted to be left alone by the extra-galactic invaders, and the Hadarak were glad to have to avoid fighting them all to the death in order to acquire what they needed.

  So there were a sprinkling of systems around the galaxy where the Hadarak would not go, and some of those systems held planetary civilizations that benefited from the immunity without even knowing it. The Megaloids inhabited the star or stars there, not caring about anything else for the most part, and the one Star Force had talked to was similarly disinterested with the galactic purge and ongoing war. It could travel wherever it liked beyond the Deep Core and the Hadarak would not touch it…and if they did he’d kill them easy enough, for this race of Megaloids were far superior to the Hadarak, including the Lurkers, who could not effectively use Essence on them, for they seemed to absorb most of the attacks like a dry sponge sucking up a water pistol shot.

  There was only one in that particular star, and the others of his race were likewise isolated by choice save for specific pre-arranged meetings. This particular Megaloid had been named Obi-wan due to the fact he was a hermit, and a powerful one at that. Obi-wan had no interest in fighting the Hadarak, but he also didn’t care if Star Force lived in his system as they fought the Hadarak either. So right now there was a growing Star Force base in that system that was causing all kinds of havoc with fleets going out and razing enemy worlds their fleets had largely left undefended…and as of last Alden had heard not a single minion had arrived in that system to strike back at them.

  So why were the Hadarak so obsessed with taking down this Castle? If they could overlook other systems, let alone one that Star Force was basing out of, why were they devoting so many resources here to just sit and blockade a relatively useless system whose only benefit was it wasn’t in Hadarak hands and could operate as an oasis on the battlefield?

  Except it was becoming more and more irrelevant the further the battle lines moved. Alden couldn’t help neighboring systems, because the closest friendly ‘neighbor’ was getting further and further away. And communications were only maintained by mobile relays in enemy territory that had to keep dancing around in order to stay alive, for the Hadarak had destroyed all other infrastructure in the fallen systems.

  Alden still had his comm link back to the rest of the Star Force empire, but that was about it. He got additional ships and resources on a regular basis, and used them to do as much damage here as he could to deflect attacks against inhabited planets elsewhere…but the Hadarak seemed too damn paranoid about leaving the Castles sitting in place as they mowed down everything else. Alden needed to figure out what it was, so that was why he was here, but the V’kit’no’sat didn’t know that. So this courier wasn’t coming here for him, so why head this direction at all?

  He had a lot of questions to ask whe
n this courier arrived, but first he had to get the Era’tran here, and that meant punching a hole through the constantly shifting Hadarak formations holding an incomplete shell perimeter around the Castle.

  “Might Mouse,” he said over the comm to his Clan ships docked or floating within the gaps between the Castle’s webs, “time to roar. The Hjar’at are sending a single warship through the lines. Make a hole for them.”

  “On it, Alden,” High Admiral Sara Himelin said from onboard her flagship Super Star Destroyer-class dreadnaught sitting with plenty of space to spare between the nearest filaments of the Castle that allowed easy navigating room all the way across the interior if need be, though she wouldn’t have to travel quite that far to get in position to assist the approaching warship.

  “Rally up,” she told her bridge crew as more detailed orders flew out through the telepathic interface in her command chair. The dagger-shaped anti-Hadarak dreadnaught she commanded had been built for one purpose and one purpose only…to fight this war and this enemy…and there weren’t that many of them in existence. There were three here, but only this one was under her command. The other two belonged to the Hjar’at and Calavari, which were only a couple of the 183 Star Force factions with troops inside the Castle perimeter and beyond. There were even some non-Star Force ships here to study the Hadarak and observe the fighting, safely sitting behind the primary weapon matrix that the Hadarak had not found a way to defeat…yet.

  But they probably wouldn’t push within weapons range of it, so Sara had to go out to them and Clan Mighty Mouse got to do the honors this time. Her warships began moving from all over inside the Castle towards the rally points she had just sent them, with her 52 mile long dreadnaught moving into pole position as they eventually gathered just inside the outermost filament bands.

  She had a fleet of regular warships plus 38 other anti-Hadarak vessels of smaller sizes. They were designed primarily to fight and endure the minion swarms, but they could also chew up the Mainline units with ease. What they could not do is move very fast, shoot very far, or carry drones. Dreadnaughts were all fighting ship, not carriers, and the handful of hangar bays on her flagship were mere specs on its hull that was more than half a mile thick of Yeg’gor armor.

  Anti-Hadarak dreadnaughts were meant to defend more with armor than shields, but her flagship also had Essence defenses so not to make her slow ship Lurker bait. The smaller ones had some basic Essence neutralizing shields fueled by a Magicite, but hers was large enough to carry some more options, but she had no Tar’vem’jic or other super heavy weapons onboard, Essence enhanced or otherwise. Her ship was built as a grinder for close to medium range combat, and it was not designed to kill Lurkers, only survive them.

  But Clan Mighty Mouse didn’t just have dreadnaughts. They had standard, fast warships carrying drones as well as a pair of Avenger-class warships that were designed to kill Lurkers and other big Hadarak using Essence. Both of those she immediately put on hunting duty for the Lurker heading towards the fight brewing ahead, and maybe if her Clan was lucky they might actually bag one…but only if it got stupid, and so far she hadn’t seen any such naivety among that breed of Hadarak.

  Her ships waited at the rally point long enough to sync up with the approach speed and position of the incoming warships…of which there were now 32 on approach to the Hadarak formations, but they only needed to get one of them through. That one was vividly highlighted on the battlemap behind a wall of drones that were going straight in ahead of them to engage the Hadarak and provide part of the distraction. Sara had to provide the other part. The larger part. And she had to time the convergence correctly to avoid either group from having to fight the Hadarak alone.

  “Engage,” she said calmly, seeing her ship accelerate ahead as rapidly as it could given the position of the system’s gravity wells. The Mighty Mouse fleet came with her, flying off the flanks in a 4 point ‘V’ formation, making it look like her ship was the capstone on a pyramid with the two Avengers flying in the safety of its interior.

  The Hadarak responded at once, but they didn’t risk coming within weapons range of the Castle, so they repositioned and waited for the Clan warships to come out far enough…then the Mainline and minion ships surged into the approaching formation and engaged at close range.

  The Lurker did not, instead going after the incoming ships as Sara guessed it would. They really didn’t want to let anything in, so it was probably going after the primary target. Their sensors were damn good for biological ones, perhaps even better than Star Force’s in some regards, and they knew which warship the courier had docked with, so it was going to zip in, destroy it, then zip out again, as was normal for Lurker protocol.

  The Avengers didn’t even need an order from Sara. As soon as they saw it move off they accelerated and punched little holes through the minion swarms ahead using their Essence weaponry and zipped right through, leaving trails of carnage that the Hadarak didn’t even seem to notice. The holes were swallowed up again as multiple nebulas of darkness tried to engulf the High Admiral’s ships…until they were within weapons range and both sides lit up the intervening space with a multitude of glowing weaponsfire.

  The gore was immense off her flagship’s bow, for there were so many weapons batteries that a Christmas tree would look dull in comparison, and into that bright inferno the swarms slammed into the ship like a dark waterfall, physically hitting the shields and dying either from the impact or from getting hit with washes of Dre’mo’don energy that expanded their disintegrated bodies into small explosions that actually pushed the others back temporarily and made them stationary targets…which only added to the vaporization effect as it snowballed.

  Sara watched as that confrontation hit on three parts of her elongated hull and spread until nearly a third of her ship was covered with minion swarms, through which the Mainline units tried to approach. The spike balls especially liked to use the gory cover to get in close, but she had plenty of experience keeping them at bay and focused her weaponry on the areas where she knew they were coming and cleaned out those sectors while allowing the minions free shots at others.

  Once an approaching spike ball or their launched ramrods were in the clear they were targeted with special anti-heavy weaponry that was not good against minions but very good against large, solid targets. Never the less, two ramrods made it through to hit the hull and both penetrated the shields there, slamming into the armor and bouncing off. The shields had killed enough of their momentum that they could not penetrate, but once it was clear they were not getting through both detonated, killing their own minions in massive blue/white fireballs more than a mile wide.

  The dreadnaught’s hull cracked at both points, but the Yeg’gor only got scraped off a few meters deep. The cracks in it ran much further, but they were only a few inches wide and too narrow to target with anything other than goo.

  But the goo came in shortly and began sinking in down inside the ship, either eating away at the Yeg’gor or moving to try and get at the crew. Either way, she had an internal fight on her hands now and the High Admiral directed the appropriate response teams to the areas affected, knowing they’d handle it.

  Her mission was to make a hole, and that’s what she was doing. Her ships were spreading the Hadarak units around the central area of the ‘pyramid’ behind her, and soon the primary warship carrying the courier was nearly in ramming position ahead.

  The dreadnaught belched out a wave-clear attack, one that had to be recharged over the course of 19 minutes, but it eviscerated so many minions around the front tip of the hull that the incoming warship was able to buzz her ship close enough that it had clear enough space to pass through without a single minion being able to get in the way.

  The pass by happened so fast she couldn’t see it with her eyes, but as soon as it did the warships on the far side of the battle immediately bugged out, turning out to deep space while Sara ordered her ships to do the reverse, pulling back with her dreadnaught being the
last in line, now traveling in reverse at full speed thanks to the omni-directional nature of gravity drives, and firing all the way.

  The Hadarak didn’t want to let them go, pounding away at the ships until they got close to Castle weapons range…but they lingered a little too long, staying outside of standard range but not outside her bounce range.

  Sara contacted the Castle and ordered a shot fired on her ship, from which she extended an armature out of the top rear section. It looked like a tuning fork similar to the Era’tran ships, but it was pointed straight up…

  Alden watched as the courier ship was safely carried through the Hadarak lines as the Avengers circled back and punched their own holes through. They’d gotten one good shot at the Lurker before it peeled off, and now it had a chunk of its forward hull missing, but the shot had missed its central brain, meaning it would live and regrow what was gone, though that would take a considerable amount of time.

  His Clan had performed beautifully, and even now as they retreated Sara was getting in one last shot as the Castle activated its primary weaponry and produced a Ysalamir charge towards the center of the construct, then launched it out towards the enemy that was hilariously far away and out of range. The energy cascade, which looked like thick lightning, would have spread out and dissipated had it not hit a spherical target inside the Castle’s web. When it did it absorbed and was redirected in a slightly different direction.

  It bounced from point to point through the Castle over the following seconds, reaching out towards the enemy but coming up short. It launched from the last orb on the edge of the web too far away to make it to the Mainline Hadarak units still harassing the Mighty Mouse warships along with waves of minions that were so expendable they’d be fighting all the way to their deaths.