by Aer-ki Jyr
“Where’s Tyrenk?” she asked.
“Buying us time,” Rammak said as they creeped down the tunnel further and further away until Esna finally saw a golden dot of armor in the distance sprinting towards them. He looked like he was almost laying flat to the ground in order to get enough leverage on the ice, but however he was managing it he was moving at them so fast it only took a minute for him to catch up as a few long range shots from the Zen’zat flew into the speeder and hit a shield covering the front of it, but one went higher and got over it with the green energy orb slamming into Esna’s helmet.
Rammak immediately swung her off to the side and out of the firing line as much as he could, but there wasn’t much room to wiggle around. Other than being freaked out Esna wasn’t hurt, for her shields had caught it all, but before she could comment the Archon got to them and jumped on, taking Rammak’s hand and hanging onto the side with a foot on the floor as his only attachment point, for there was no other room left.
The speeder then accelerated hard, with both Tyrenk and Esna nearly scraping the walls on either side as Rammak held them both on with his four arms.
“That was close,” Esna commented, but the Archon used his free hand to pull a rifle off his back and carefully swing it underneath him so he wouldn’t lose it on impact with the ice wall inches beyond his left shoulder. He aimed the weapon behind them and Esna suddenly got worried.
“Pursuit?” Rammak asked, not seeing anything.
“There are Ari’tat back there.”
“What’s that mean?” Esna asked, looking back from her Calavari perch.
“They’re smaller than Zen’zat and use their own personal speeders to travel large distances. Smaller than this one, so they can move through the tunnels.”
“They’re easy to kill,” the Archon added, “but dangerous in numbers. Right now we’re all tucked on this speeder…”
“You expect them to travel faster?”
“Yes,” he answered the Calavari. “And to scout. Get ready to drop me.”
“What?” Esna asked.
“They can’t carry Zen’zat on their speeders, so it’ll just be them and we can’t have them following us. All it’ll take is one good position trace and they can shoot us with orbital bombardment. I’ll kill whatever is coming and you can send the speeder back for me later.”
“Don’t you want help?”
“She does have spirit. I’ll give her that,” Tyrenk said to Rammak, “but she doesn’t understand the gold armor yet. Educate her,” he said, then without a word Rammak threw him behind the bike and into the middle of the tunnel where he quickly began to shrink in size, but Esna didn’t see him fall. It looked like he was floating behind them as he disappeared in the distance when the tunnel curved ever so slightly.
“What was that?” she demanded.
“He’s a Titan, Esna. His armor color denotes his rank.”
“That’s not one of their higher ranks.”
“It puts him at a far higher level than anyone else here. It also means he has Jumat.”
“What’s that?”
“The very powerful psionic that he knocked you down with earlier. In an enclosed space like this, he is very hard to get to, and if he has to run he can probably outrun the Zen’zat given his shorter height in these tunnels. If anyone stayed with him they’d be a hindrance in this situation.”
“Why didn’t you wait for him to tell you to let him go?”
“He did telepathically.”
“Oh,” she said, having forgotten to turn her own countermeasures off that blocked telepathy and other enemy psionics. Rammak had made her get into the habit of turning them on whenever the Zen’zat were nearby and it hadn’t occurred to her that he’d been doing the same thing. She guessed the Archon could tell when it was on or not, because it would stop his…
“Wait. How did he knock me down with my countermeasures on?”
“They don’t work on physical collisions, that’s what your shields and armor are for.”
“He used energy to knock the ice out didn’t he?”
“Concussive energy. It hits things like a physical punch. The countermeasures are for other types of attacks. You’d need a dampening field to stop Jumat from moving you, and there’s no way you could fit that into armor.”
“What’s a dampening field?”
“The same thing warships use to keep ships from ramming into them, but it takes a whole lot of power and has to expand around them like a balloon.”
“What’s a balloon?”
“A gas bag.”
“You mean a hapbit?”
“Yes,” Rammak said, laughing.
“What’s funny?”
“That word. I know where it comes from.”
“And?”
“Some balloons were used as decoration at parties by Humans and other civilians picked up the practice and their holidays. One is called a birthday.”
“What’s that?”
“The yearly anniversary of the day you were born on. Most Calavari don’t celebrate it.”
“I don’t know what day I was born on. Neither did Teren.”
“The people that celebrate that day would say ‘Happy Birthday’ as a greeting to that person whenever they saw them and since balloons were used, somehow after Mace fell ‘happy birthday’ became ‘hapbit’ and people thought that meant ‘balloon’ rather than the holiday.”
“Seriously?” the Protovic right behind Rammak asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s hilarious.”
“Without proper instruction many things got skewed after Mace was destroyed.”
“Is he going to be ok?” Esna asked, worried about Tyrenk.
“Archons are survivors,” the Protovic said confidently. “And if it’s Ari’tat that come after him, he’ll own them.”
“How long before the next speeder gets back?”
“I don’t know. Probably a few hours.”
“Can you hold me that long?” she asked Rammak.
“I have plenty of arms to rotate between,” he said sarcastically.
“Right. We lost a lot of crates, didn’t we?”
“Some. But there will be more stashed ahead.”
“Until we run out of tunnel,” she argued.
“We have a long way to go before that and there are Star Force ships in orbit. They’ll find a way to get us out if we can stay alive.”
“I hope so,” Esna said, looking down the tunnel as it stretched out behind them at dizzying speed.
Three weeks later…
A cloaked V’kit’no’sat Kaeper-class scout starship was parked in orbit around the Orlero System’s star as more and more allied and enemy warships came out of their jumps periodically and traveled to the ice world where the captured Star Force base was drawing the heretics out of their hiding places across the Devastation Zone so they could fight them in the open. Gradual increases in their own ship count had been arranged previously, but this Kret’net Kaeper was sitting here undetected for one reason and one reason only.
The communication system that the V’kit’no’sat used to link their empire together didn’t extend out here, so communication from star to star had to be accomplished via courier. Already a few other single ships had been dispatched to send word that the battle had begun, but this Kaeper was left waiting for the big Star Force fleet to arrive that the Era’tran had predicted would be lurking somewhere nearby.
And now it did, with an unending stream of jumpships coming into the system and laying claim to a portion of stellar orbit as they looked to be angling out in a patrol pattern that would allow them to ambush incoming ships and essentially blockade the system. The Kaeper knew it had to leave before then, but managed to stay around long enough to catalog over 8,000 jumpships arriving along with a slew of command ships, one of which was plainly identified as the Excalibur.
The Era’tran had hoped that ship would arrive here, for it meant a trailblazer came with it. Now it
was up to the Kaeper to get the nearby star system where the bulk of the newly arrived V’kit’no’sat fleet waited and signal them to come at once. They had to get here before the survivors from the base could be rescued else the Star Force fleet would run and scatter again. The V’kit’no’sat ships here could do the same and survive, but it was only while the ice planet was held hostage could they force Star Force’s into giving them the fight they wanted away from the strong planetary defenses along the current border.
Here would be an even fight, and an even fight meant a V’kit’no’sat advantage.
The Kaeper moved to its outgoing jumpline before the Star Force ships could congregate there to great extent and went low into the gravity well, so deep that the stellar radiation was eating away at the shields at an alarming rate, but the more gravity a ship had to push off against the faster it could travel and the destination system had been chosen because it also had a larger than average star on which to brake against, meaning even less time spent in interstellar space for the courier ship.
When it was in position the Kaeper activated its gravity drives and was flung away from the star like a slingshot so fast the nearby Star Force ships had no chance of intercepting. They would have had to get to it before it got on the jumpline, but with its cloaking shield that wasn’t going to happen anyway, though the other V’kit’no’sat ships in the system were more or less trapped here now, or would be a few hours later when the Star Force fleet wrapped itself around the entire star and poached the jumplines to the nearby stars.
But the plan wasn’t for them to escape, the plan was to draw them in and now Star Force had their big fleet here. It wasn’t all their ships, but it was enough to severely weaken them should they be destroyed, and if they could do that it would give the V’kit’no’sat a better chance of taking Grid Point Stargate…the #1 obstacle to pushing into Star Force’s remaining territory and a location they guarded more heavily than any other system on the border.
Destroy the Excalibur’s fleet here and it wouldn’t be able to come to Stargate’s aid when that assault was launched. Fail to pin and fight the Star Force fleet here and victory at the Grid Point was not guaranteed.
So it was with all haste that the Kaeper traveled at maximum possible speed to get to the waiting V’kit’no’sat armada before time ran out and the pesky vermin escaped their grasp once again.
18
July 30, 4812
Orlero System (Devastation Zone)
Tauntaun
Esna hopped off the speeder again, glad to finally stretch her legs after standing for hours in the same place as her group of evacuees retreated to yet another minor outpost further up the line. It was nothing new, just some hollowed out ice chambers with stacks of supplies inside that would replace and augment what they were carrying with them ahead of the inevitable V’kit’no’sat pursuit.
Help was so close now with the Star Force fleet now owning the system, but the V’kit’no’sat had gotten enough reinforcements in that they were able to cover the surface base with ground troops now that they had control of Star Force’s own planetary defense shield. It was active and protecting those underneath, including many of their warships that were not going to let any Star Force ships get to the surface to rescue those in the tunnels.
Already there had been fight, with the V’kit’no’sat warships staying under the cover of the shield and firing out well past Esna’s location and downing Star Force drone warships that tried to get in close, but the overlapping firepower was too much. If the drones couldn’t surround the enemy warships then they couldn’t damage them enough to take them down, and with the energy shield covering their top sides and the ground their undersides, there just wasn’t enough room to fight. The V’kit’no’sat were dug in and all but daring Star Force to attack the base directly.
Rammak had told her that a trailblazer was now in the system, and not just any trailblazer, it was ‘The Admiral’ himself. He wasn’t actually an Admiral, for he outranked all of them, but the nickname had stuck from long ago due to his insane naval skills. His name was Paul-024 and even now his fleet of drones was chasing the orbital V’kit’no’sat warships, long gone from their blockade position, and fighting them everywhere in the system they could catch and engage, but the Viks were losing ships and had nowhere to go, for Star Force now controlled stellar orbit and were ambushing any additional V’kit’no’sat ships arriving, forcing any survivors to either leave or flee elsewhere in the system to join the group already on the run.
But those closest were turtled up inside, around, and overtop the captured Star Force base and essentially holding Esna and the others fleeing through the tunnels hostage. They were beyond the edge of the defense shield now, but not outside of weapons range. If they took an offshoot that led to the surface they’d be shot dead as soon as they were spotted, with the smoking hulks of drones dotting the snowy landscape underscoring that fact.
Every time one hit nearby there was another quake, but fortunately the trailblazer was keeping them back far enough so that they wouldn’t fall on the evacuees…even though he didn’t know exactly where they were. Tyrenk said he had enough firepower in orbit to take down the base’s shields and obliterate it along with the V’kit’no’sat, but he wasn’t going to do that without knowing the position of the survivors…and if the survivors sent even a single comm message out the nearby Vik ships could pinpoint their location, zip out over top of them for a few minutes and end them with saturation bombardment that would liquefy a square kilometer of ice before the drones could do them much damage.
And the orbiting ships couldn’t fire down on the Viks unless their targeting was very good, for if they missed they’d hit the surface. That was why there were thousands of drones hugging the surface in a giant wide ring around the base so they could shoot laterally and not endanger the evacuees in the tunnels or even the base. Paul had no idea where any of them were, and for all he knew some of them were being kept captive inside.
But Rammak said he’d find a way. The question was if he’d find it before they ran out of tunnel and the Zen’zat caught up with them.
Esna walked off to a corner of one of the ice chambers and flopped down on the ground, just happy to get off her feet for a moment despite the low gravity. She wiggled her arms and legs as her armor slid over the ice, then kicked her legs up and into a handstand position that she held for a few seconds before losing balance.
Someone caught her leg and kept her upright, but it wasn’t Rammak. She saw a golden boot beside her and realized it was the Archon.
“Stiff?” he asked.
“Yes. Am I in your way?”
“No. Just wondering how you’re holding up?”
“Sick of living inside armor,” she said, still upside down.
“I was told you spent most of your life inside armor to hide your Human physiology?”
“Only in public…and most of the rest of the time. Guess I just got used to living in a Star Force colony where I didn’t have to.”
“Still haven’t learned to do a proper handstand?”
“Never had the low gravity to learn.”
“Sure you did. We have training chambers where you can adjust the gravity levels up and down as much as you want.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Headrush?”
“A little.”
“It helps to look at something. Closing your eyes is harder.”
“Thanks. I’ll remember that. Can I come down now?”
The Archon laughed, then Esna felt her leg get tugged. Her body swung completely around in his grip and suddenly found herself landing feet down on the ice next to him. “Better?”
“Thanks.”
“If you need a workout, better get some tunnel running in now. I’m not sure how long we’ll be able to stay here.”
“How far back are they?”
“Pav’ley has rear guard. If they come up on us he’ll give us a heads up, but the first wave of techs are going
to leave in a few minutes. We can’t risk getting bunched up again.”
“Which way are we going…at the next divide?”
“We’re heading to the hangar.”
Esna frowned. “We’ll be able to fly away?”
“Not with the Vik ships nearby. We’d need a distraction or pickup, but if we do run out of tunnel I’d rather have a ship we’d at least have a chance of escaping in rather than being cornered and having to fight it out.”
“What about the others?”
“There are only a few ships stashed out here. Most can’t get to them. Paul has to win this before they can be rescued, but at least the V’kit’no’sat can’t decide to just bombard everything within a few hundred miles of the base. We own orbit now.”
“Are you sure they can’t track us when we get signals from the fleet?”
“Totally. We’re all in passive reception mode save for short range battlemap and comms. You’d have to be within a few hundred meters to pick them up through the ice. As long as we stay silent they can’t find us down here except by following the tunnels. We’re in a tough situation, but we do have a few advantages. How much running have you been doing?”
“Half an hour a day to keep from going crazy.”
“Take an hour, half out half back. We should be ok for that long. If not I’ll be out ahead of you getting my own run in, so you’ll have friends on both sides.”
“How far are you going?”
“Not enough. I haven’t gotten a good workout in in over a month. You have no idea what that does to an Archon.”
“Are you ok?”
“Annoyed more than anything, but staying alive is the priority. Making us miss workouts is just another reason to hate the Viks. Remember that if they catch up to us and you need to shoot them.”
“I lost my big gun.”
“I know. It was put to good use though. Get some water in you then get running.”
“As ordered,” Esna said with a bit of humor as she ran off to one of the tents.
“Is that one ok?” a Bsidd asked the Archon.
