by Aer-ki Jyr
She held it up over her head like a mage and stared at the enemy troops outside, picking the closest tank, and yelled with as much confidence and bravado as she could muster.
“You…shall not…pass!” she said, augmented by the armor’s vocal programming to sound as close to Gandalf as she could get without prep work, as she launched the orb and blew apart the tank outside.
Standing behind a barricade further back, commando level 36 Colt Harrison was firing his plasma rifle at the enemy infantry needing, he guessed, about two or three shots to get through their shields, then another 10+ to get through their armor, so long as you fired on the same spot. That meant the Scionate weren’t going down quickly, with him and the other commandos around him team firing on individual targets that one of the others were highlighting on the battlemap so they would know who to shoot without the delay of talking.
He had a trio of Knights standing behind him that had four times already taken on Scionate that had leapt over the barricade, leaving Colt and the others free to keep shooting, but the stupid cats were proving too tough a challenge and he knew it was just a matter of time before they were overrun, with him thinking more about where to flee to than holding his position.
When he saw the red something or other ahead of them kicking the crap out of the enemy in the brief gaps of vision visible through the infantry directly ahead that he was having to quickly shoot down, he wondered who it was and what the hell were they wearing, figuring it was an Archon of some sort but never having seen that variety of armor. The red was too deep and the figure too slim, with the Archon helmets being distinctive in shape and size, while this one looked like he was wearing a skin-tight hat…but whatever, he had aliens to shoot and keep from getting hit, having already taken a plasma blast to the face that luckily his armor’s shields held up against.
Then the enemies in front of him thinned out considerably, enough for him to see the strange armored fighter climb out on top of a heap of the dead cats with what looked like a funky plasma orb forming in his hands. Colt had definitely never seen anything like that before, but then his comm opened up and he heard a deep, powerful voice bellow out a movie reference that he hadn’t heard in a very long time, with his HUD tagging the strange warrior as the one speaking.
He threw the plasma orb at one of the tanks outside and it exploded on contact, sending a chill down Colt’s spine along with a resurgence of confidence…along with a laugh. Whoever that was, they had a sense of humor packed in with those crazy weapons, and suddenly Colt was no longer thinking about where to flee to. With half an eye on the combat occurring at the breach, he and the other commandos and Archons took careful aim and killed the last of the Scionate infantry between them and the wizard they’d seemed to have picked up.
Colt didn’t have a clue who he was, but with his assistance it looked like they might be able to hold this position after all.
“Did you hear that?” one of the other commandos asked.
“Yeah I did,” Colt said, keeping his sights focused ahead as he reloaded his rifle with a spare clip.
“Who is it? They’re not showing up on the battlemap.”
“That’s the Queen of Diamonds, you rookies,” one of the Archons nearby answered. “Otherwise known as Kara-317.”
“What type of armor is she wearing?” Colt asked.
“Something alien that she picked up. One of a kind. I didn’t even know she was here, but count yourself lucky. Rarely do you ever see that amount of badass,” he said as the raven standing a few dozen meters behind their barricade line fired another plasma streak out the gap as a wave of infantry ran forward, which Colt and the others couldn’t see.
“Heads up,” the Archon warned, just before a sea of Scionate came over the mound of their own dead in lemming fashion…too many for Kara to shoot down at once, meaning Colt and the others were about to get busy again.
“You heard her,” the Archon reiterated. “They shall not pass. First five of you that get killing sprees get 10 credits.”
Despite the wave of powerful aliens running towards them at superhuman speeds Colt laughed, his fear of them gone, now replaced by gritty determination as he started placing shots on the leaders tagged in his HUD. He and four others nearby him took one down within 3 seconds, then moved onto the next as a few of the Scionate got through the initial plasma fire and jumped over the barricades with the Knights swarming them instantly.
The raven fired all its weaponry down into the hoard ahead of them, busting up the wave and giving Colt and the other ground troops a thinned group of enemies to target.
With the Scionate fleet continuing to succumb to Paul’s hit and fade attacks, they eventually called in reinforcements from their six worlds insystem, despite the fact that they already outnumbered the Star Force defense fleet. When more warships began arriving Paul brought his two warship/jumpships forward and into the fray, both as bait and to include their bloon launchers in the battle. Previous to now they had been sitting far back, remotely controlling the drones that had come from them and assisting with others as their pilots were freed up when their vessels got taken out.
Paul tagged the remaining battleships for their attack, with the two big ships heading straight into the enemy fleet and drawing an immediate response. The enemy fleet pulled up towards them, exposing a gap between the atmosphere and their fleet that the trailblazer had been hoping for. As the remaining Star Force drones formed up around the two warships and took it directly to the enemy fleet, even as its reserves were pouring into orbit to supplement them, Paul plotted a course diversion for the Sentinel, time stamped to begin a drop towards lower orbit in a few minutes.
Before that transition could begin, for it would draw immediate attention from the Scionate, he called for his ace in the hole, knowing that he had to bust up this fleet before the enemy got majorly reinforced. As the battle with the two warship/jumpships continued in earnest, with their massive hulls eating up a lot of weaponsfire that otherwise would have been targeting the drones, thus extending their battle life, another warship pulled an insanely difficult jump into the gap between the enemy fleet and the planet, braking so hard that Paul could see the stress levels on the ship’s status display when it finally popped up.
That warship immediately began to release drones…new drones, for it was a new warship, fully equipped with not only bloon launchers but cleansing beams, maulers, and even its own Ta’lin’yi. The Mk. 32 variety was the most lethal yet, and some 21% bigger than previous models. That cut down on its available jump speed, but with progressively better gravity drives being developed it nulled out the disadvantage, leaving a ‘normal’ warship with a much larger carry capacity.
It disgorged 126 drones in a plume falling behind it as it too dove into the enemy fleet targeting their battleships, simultaneously with a second warship jumping into the planet on the topside of the enemy fleet…a much easier jump to accomplish, with the now four warships bracketing the Scionate on three sides and putting them in a momentary disadvantage that Paul pressed. He had more warships to call on if needed, for he’d brought a lot into the system in case the Scionate didn’t respond well to their diplomatic complaint, but he didn’t want to show his full hand yet.
That said, he needed to take advantage of opportunities when they arose and take as many enemy chess pieces off the board as possible, which the torch-enhanced drones were beginning to do in earnest.
The four warships were manned, of course, meaning this ploy was a bit of a gambit. If those ships were destroyed, tough as that was to accomplish, he’d be losing people, and that was something that Star Force abhorred. But with him monitoring the situation on the planet below, he knew he had to aid the ground troops…which was why as the Scionate were suddenly getting more resistance than they could handle in orbit he sent a third warship in to the planet at a location some 1000 miles off, having it brake not far above the atmosphere and send its drones skimming across the top and over to the engagement zone.
There they made a dive into the planetary gasses and headed towards the surface, with only a few Scionate warships moving to intercept them. Some of the drones pulled back up and intercepted the enemy warships in a high altitude brawl with the others moving down to surface level. Paul watched all three fleet engagements closely, but knew that he had to get to the Scionate ground troops before they got safely inside the cities…with a tone sounding that informed him that the Sentinel was now repositioning. It wasn’t a warship, and couldn’t move all that fast, but putting full power into its gravity drives would allow for some slow jumps between planets.
So with its drives cranked up as high as it could manage, it sucked itself down towards the planet and put itself on a descending track that would bring it towards the enemy fleet in approximately 27 minutes. That was slow compared to what the drones and warships could do, but it was going to be enough. Now the Scionate had a choice to make…wait and fight until it arrived, or leave now and try to hit somewhere else in orbit.
They decided to fight on for several more minutes…then they took an approach that Paul had thought was of low likelihood, but none the less effective in the short term.
With the Scionate fleet beginning to even out its disadvantage with the influx of a lot more ships, they suddenly broke off…not leaving to a higher orbit or going after Star Force’s shipyards or other facilities, but moving down into the atmosphere, passing the warship Paul had positioned there and moving towards the surface to engage the drones that had slipped by them.
Morgan’s neo was all but trash, having lost her shields more times than she could count and now down 3 emitters, leaving her left leg permanently exposed. Her left mauler was gone, with the sword blade in that arm locked into deployed mode. She could still use it, but couldn’t retract it, meaning her hand in that arm was now useless for the blade stuck out from underneath the wrist.
Her armor had damage everywhere, but none had gotten below 25% in any spots, though there was a deep cut in her back that was registering at 34% thickness. She’d gotten that damage running away from a group of tanks that otherwise would have killed her, given that there had been some 22 of them that she’d felt like trimming down to 20. Now that kind of seemed like a bad move, but it had provided a distraction for two trios of other neos to take down some smaller groups, all the while wading through the suffocating, self-sacrificing infantry that was constantly trying to slow them down.
Morgan had stepped on more of them than she cared to remember, not liking to kill enemies that way but they were giving her no choice. Even one of the hoths had taken a leg hit that made it unable to walk, but it was still standing and fighting…forcing her and the others to change their tactics to fight around it or leave it behind. She’d chosen the later, pushing forward with the still working one while leaving a pair of madcats behind to assist the hoth with the infantry that kept trying to overwhelm it.
Morgan hadn’t had time to think about much else, let alone look at her battlemap, which meant it was a huge surprise and relief when the sun was suddenly blotted out by a rectangular cloud that started firing down into the tank formations with mauler blasts that literally melted them on explosive contact.
It wasn’t until a bright torch beam swept across the infantry hoards that she realized it was coming from a warship overhead…with her amending that sentiment as she checked the battlemap and saw multiple drones coming down from orbit and beginning to annihilate the enemy troops. She wondered how in the hell Paul had managed that with the enemy fleet sitting up there…which was when she also saw on the battlemap that they were coming down into the atmosphere by the hundreds.
“Oh shit, Paul,” she whisper swore. “You better know what you’re doing.”
5
One of the remote pilots stationed on the planet, situated in a city that was currently under attack, was flying one of the drones sent to that location. It was odd for her to see where she was from above, not to mention he hoard of enemies outside and now in, given that the city wall had just been breached. Her corvette was descending rapidly through the atmosphere, now only a handful of kilometers in altitude as she and the rest of the fleet had been given orders to engage the enemy ground forces directly.
That was an unusual order, but one that they’d trained for extensively…and given the current situation one that she agreed with wholeheartedly. There were Knights guarding their building in order to keep the enemy from cutting off their control of the drones, and given dire enough circumstances they would tell them when to evacuate, so Kaleigh didn’t have to worry about looking over her shoulder, but she was apprehensive and being able to contribute to her own defense was immensely helpful. That way she could actually do something rather than sit and wait to be shot or blown up.
“Assuming direct control,” a deep, dark voice said into her earpiece and suddenly she no longer had helm control of the corvette. In fact she wasn’t linked to it at all, now pushed into a waiting cue to be placed somewhere else within the fleet remote systems.
“What the hell?” she asked, feeling like the universe was just plain being unfair until she saw the ID tag on the top of her primary screen that had bumped her from priority control. It wasn’t a higher ranking pilot, nor even an Archon…but the Admiral himself, bringing a confused frown to her face as her display shifted to a targeting program for a weapons battery on a cruiser that was just now engaging a trio of Scionate warships of equal tonnage in the upper atmosphere.
She didn’t have time to think, dropping into her new role on cue and controlling the single battery, as opposed to the 3 or 4 that a gunner would usually control. Being given one meant that there were a large number of pilots to a small number of ships with the duties being split up for greater efficiency.
Kaleigh sighted her mauler cannon on the position of a targeting tag and fired, opening up the enemy shield for another mauler blast that hit a moment later. Together she and the other unknown gunner chewed a hole in the side of the cruiser along with a lot of others before the ship finally lost power and began to fall towards the planet…with Kaleigh mentally crossing her fingers and hoping that it wasn’t about to come down on her head.
From the command nexus Paul took control of the closest warship to the second city breach, dipping it into an even steeper nose dive as he passed out targeting orders to the pilots handling the weapons. He assumed control over the torch along with the helm, but left the secondary weapons to the others, knowing they could do a better job with them than him trying to mentally control them all…which he was capable of doing with ships far larger than a corvette.
The Scionate were taking a big gamble bringing their warships into the atmosphere, and Paul knew that regardless of how that turned out he had a small window to target the ground troops without immediate reprisal. He was going to make use of that then turn his attention to the Scionate warships that, for the most part, were not configured for atmospheric flight.
But that didn’t matter at this particular moment, because the second city breach had just occurred and there was only one Queen of Diamonds around to plug holes with, so as he brought the rectangular cube of a warship down over the city its knife blade-shaped shields reformed into their normal blocky configuration and he drifted the corvette down past the curve of the bubble shield and directly over the heads of the enemy infantry and tanks outside…with the latter turning their weapons skyward and blasting into the underside of the warship.
It blasted back, with Paul using the torch as its namesake implied, targeting the tanks like a painter making long brushstrokes, punching right through the shields and armor on impact as if they were little more than plastic toys. With the remote pilots hitting the others with maulers and the anti-air chewing up the surrounding Valeries, the corvette made its dominating presence known as more and more tanks turned their weapons on it and covered its shields with plasma.
Paul watched the shield strength closely, knowing that with enough hits the tanks would get
through, given that the corvette wasn’t all that much bigger than them. Still, it had superior tech and could take a beating even after it lost shields, and Paul knew he had to take pressure off the troops inside the city fighting the enemy infantry…which was being ravaged by one of the mauler cannons that he had assigned to that task.
It was coating the area outside the breach with its destructive blue energy, vaporizing the ground and creating huge plumes of moisture and dirt littered with bits of Scionate. The pilot kept pouring more mauler blasts on the area, effectively creating a wall of destruction that kept additional infantry from getting past…though he couldn’t target inside the city without lowering the bubble shield, and doing either one was fraught with problems.
With the corvette’s shields near to breaching on the underside Paul shifted energy from the top to reinforce them, then informed his gunners to target the infantry exclusively while he continued to pick off tanks with the torch. All the other weapons onboard, including the anti-air lachars, began picking off the armored cats by the hundreds, then Paul moved the warship out into the midst of the formation before drifting left, cutting a path towards the edge were a group of mechs were fighting.
With the corvette’s shields finally going down the ship began taking light armor damage, but the weapons batteries themselves were now exposed, save for small redundant shields covering them when they weren’t firing. Those shields would delay the weapon strikes but a smart enemy would shoot the weak points and clip his offensive capability rather than trying to burn through the thick armor first. Knowing this Paul drifted the ship over the mechs, helping them out while simultaneously gaining escorts to protect his underside, though the warship was still the primary target of the tanks.
