Star Force: Intimidation (SF17)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  He pulled it again to be sure, then tossed the rifle aside, its ammo gone. Backstepping a few meters, he grabbed one of the dead lizards’ weapons and took off in pursuit. The trigger assembly barely held his gloved finger, but fortunately he and the other Archons had gotten in some practice with the enemy’s weapons that they’d recovered from earlier engagements. The plasma was more powerful than their own, but the firing rate was slower and the internal magazine only appeared to carry about 120 shots. With this one coming directly off the ship Harrison assumed it would be full, but there was no way to tell short of disassembling it on the run and checking the illuminated internal counter…something he didn’t have time for.

  Suddenly there was a series of large booms behind him followed by a blast of air that he felt hit the back of his armor and propel him forward a few steps, but it didn’t topple him. Without even needing to look he knew the kirbies had just been targeted from orbit and probably destroyed. He’d expected Control to send skeets after them, but apparently Paul had kept a warship or two in a nearby orbit just in case.

  He knew those couldn’t have been the only landing ships, given the angle the attack was coming from. This was probably a secondary assault vector designed to hit the south side of the colony while the others fought on the north. The lizards he’d been running from had been coming in from the northwest over the ridgeline and descending down the ravine. At that time there had been no reports on assaults from the southern half of the complex, meaning these were probably new additions that the other Archons wouldn’t be in position to hit.

  “Control, any activity on the south side?”

  “Negative. Attack vectors from the northwest around to the east.”

  “Well, we’ve got incoming south of the creek. I’m trailing them about a kilometer off. Expect an assault at any time.”

  “Copy…damn, perimeter sensors just went off,” the man said to someone else before he got the mic turned off.

  Running a bit harder Harrison followed the footprints of the lizards left behind in such numbers as to make a distinctive trail through the mossy forest floor as a large explosion boomed from ahead, but this wasn’t orbital bombardment. This was explosives and it was coming from the colony.

  Harrison only had a moment to think about what might had been hit when he came across a backguard of lizards, their weapons rising up into firing position before releasing several plasma blasts that flew over his head as the Archon jumped forward onto his belly. He fired one equally green lance back in midair, then let himself hit the ground and stabilize his aim before he fired again.

  He punched the trigger rapidly, often having it not fire at all while the internal capacitor recharged. Laying flat on his gut he presented a much smaller silhouette for the lizards to target, but he was also immobile, which wasn’t a good thing. A blinding flash of plasma crossed over his right shoulder but Harrison focused only on the four lizards ahead of him. He took down two of them before taking a hit to his helmet, which then forced him to roll aside and claw for cover.

  The top portion of his visor was now distorted, but most of his vision was still clear. He felt a hot spot on his head but no pain, meaning the plasma hadn’t eaten all the way through. Back on his feet again he made like a rock and froze, listening intently trying to figure out which way they were moving. After a long pause he jumped back out onto the trail and took aim…only to find that they had retreated after the others.

  “Damn,” he said, chasing after them. He stooped down to pick up one of the dead alien’s weapons, grasping it with one hand. It was heavy, but his arms were strong enough to wield the pair of rifles one handed for a short period of time before fatigue would skew his aim.

  Another explosion rocked the muted sounds of battle echoing through the ravine, this one also coming from the direction of the colony. Whatever was going on up there wasn’t good, and the extra lizards coming in weren’t going to help matters.

  Harrison chased off after them but didn’t catch up to any more until he got to the small clearing around the colony. Barely more than ten meters of forest cut back to allow for work crews to move along the perimeter, the open air and sunlight displayed in great detail where one of the explosions had occurred. Further down towards the creek, off to Harrison’s left, was one of the surface entrances to the colony. He could see several Knights still there, fighting it out with some of the lizards that appeared to be coming in from the north and crossing over the creek/river, but much closer to his position there were several trees that showed damage from a blast on the partially constructed exterior of the colony.

  A big, gaping hole now led into the colony, with the lizard footprints heading directly into the breach. They must have used a det pack to blast into the construction zone…for since this part of the colony was continuing to expand it had no armor over the exterior, only basic temporary wall plates to keep the weather out.

  “Perimeter breach,” Harrison said over the comm and he ran inside after them. “We have lizards inside the colony, south side.”

  5

  As two of his fellow Archons fired their plasma rifles at a wave of new lizard reinforcements coming out of the forest towards the northeast entrance, Paul followed a pair of Knights, protected by their overlapped shields and hiding between their towering bodies, as they charged up and over a small hill that the lizards were congregating in before circling around and attacking the entrance directly. As they broke over the top edge Paul could see the inside of the Knights’ shields heating from the plasma hits, then suddenly they were gone as the Knights parted and left Paul exposed.

  He sprinted forward into a cluster of the lizards, kicking one back off his feet and throwing the alien two meters away into another of its kin as the trailblazer spun around, flinging his large stun sword in an arc and catching three more lizards in the head or arms. With the charge set high, all three went down on contact then Paul jumped to the side and forearmed another in the face, not hesitating to take stock of the situation, but rather moving from one target to the next so fast that they had trouble predicting where he would go next and lining up a shot to take them down.

  To make matters worse, the two giant white Knights were bashing the others with sword, shield, and fist, taking many plasma strikes to their shields and armor, but covered as they were they were almost impossible to take down unless you could flank them…and between the two of them they kept each other’s back covered, making the pair even harder to kill.

  Given time the lizards could have maybe managed the takedown with enough numbers and a good strategy, but with Paul jumping to and fro as a wildcard they didn’t stand a chance. A couple of near misses singed his armor, but beyond that they couldn’t hit him with so much tree cover available. He used it better than they did, ambushing them when their backs were turned or catching them on the run…for as many that were fighting them, even more were simply rushing past trying to get at the entrance using hoard tactics.

  This more than anything kept Paul virtually unscathed and he pressed his advantage, knowing he had to take down as many as possible before they circled around the edge of the hill and assaulted the entrance. The two Archons and three Knights he had guarding it would soak up most of them, but hammer them enough and they’d be forced to retreat inside else face plasma blasts at point blank range. As good as their armor was, it couldn’t stand up to much of that.

  Paul wacked another lizard in the face as it ran past so hard that he heard its neck snap, never mind the stun charge being delivered. He then brought the hilt of the sword forward and punched another with it before snapping the blade back down on the third as he ran between them, making himself as much of a moving target as possible all the while staying within a loose radius around the Knights. If they got separated they would be more vulnerable, and they’d already lost enough people by now that he didn’t want to risk any more by getting sloppy with his battle spacing.

  He tripped another lizard with his booted foot then brou
ght his sword down on top of its chest, knocking the wind out of it while rendering it unconscious as a large explosion on the other side of the colony shot a plume of smoke and debris in the air. Paul saw it in his peripheral vision but couldn’t slow down to take a proper look, knowing that it meant trouble and that he had enough enemies in front of him right now to deal with.

  A group of a dozen or so lizards ran past his position, heading for the Knights a few meters back with one of them taking a shot at Paul. He saw the rifle being raised at him and flicked his sword out to redirect the blast…which hit another lizard in the back as Paul stepped forward and downed the shooter with a quick kick to the chest. Another two steps forward and he jabbed it with his sword as he saw a backpack wearing lizard slip past him.

  He punched another with his free hand then ran backwards, looking for the pack and finding it three lizards ahead of him in the flow. He chased it around the hill, knocking down all those in his path with either fist or sword and got to it just as he was entering the entrance kill zone.

  Paul jumped at it and grabbed it by the shoulders, pulling it to the ground as blue plasma flashed by, hitting other lizards. As they hit the ground he reached an arm up around its neck, felt the familiar tension and jerked, killing it before the lizard could find the detonation button. He’d have to thank Jason for insisting that they implement the training dummies in all the sanctums so they could practice the unarmed killing blow that his friend had taught himself after running out of ammo against the Chinese back on Luna two centuries ago.

  A gout of green plasma hit Paul in the left calf as he extricated himself from the lizard corpse. Before he could get to his feet he threw his sword at the shooter, taking it down as the tip hit the creature in the chest and soaked the stun charge right through its armor. Another lizard fired at him, missing a half meter to the left as Paul clawed his way to his feet, getting tripped up in the backpack wearer’s tail momentarily.

  Before the lizards could shoot him again one of the Knights from the entrance ran out and implanted his shield in the soft ground in front of Paul, then began punching the nearby lizards, breaking bones on impact or delivering a stun charge through his armor’s gloves as all Knights were capable of doing.

  Paul kicked the tail aside and stood up behind the shield, pulling his rifle off the clasp on his back and firing on the nearest lizards as he walked out to where his sword lay. Without a word of thanks he and the Knight both kept on fighting, the latter of which quickly retrieved his shield and used it as a weapon in its own right, crushing alien after alien with its narrow, armor-hard edge as he fought his way back towards the entrance.

  Paul pushed up to the edge of the hill, taking down six more lizards on the way to bring himself out of the firing line. As soon as he did the blue plasma fire behind him increased, mowing down more of the lizards as they swung around the corner, often tripping over the bodies of their comrades. Paul spied another backpack wearer and took it down with a sword blow across the knees, not wanting to hit the pack even with stun energy for fear of it going off. He didn’t know what kind of explosives it contained, but from earlier reports one had vaporized most of the armor off a Knight, so he knew that him being anywhere close to the point of detonation would be lethal.

  Paul hopped over one of the bodies he’d downed earlier and fought his way upstream, bashing everything that came within range of his sword until he got into a comfortable position to use as a killing zone. With the pair of Knights behind him, picking up some of what got by, Paul took the brunt of the attack and broke it up expertly.

  Juking left and right, jumping out from behind trees at random, and never staying in the same spot, the Archon staked out a nice little patch of ground through which the somewhat orderly enemy formation totally crumbled. Most of the lizards still got by him, but they got to the Knights with gaps in their spacing and their attention focused back on him, sometimes allowing them to be taken by surprise. He took some more plasma hits in the process, but he was breaking them up sufficiently that the guards at the entrance had begun to advance with another Archon coming up to assist the Knights.

  A few hundred bodies later the reinforcements ran out. Paul didn’t know where they’d all come from, but he was glad for at least a little respite…not that he was going to take it more than a few seconds of it.

  “Control, report,” he asked over the comm.

  “Paul, we’ve got a security breach, south side. It’s contained at the moment, but there’s a big entry hole blasted in the side of the building that they can pour reinforcements in at their leisure. All entrances are currently engaged and holding, but I don’t have anyone to cover the new one they made.”

  “We’re clear here. Where exactly is the hole?”

  “High side on the west, off the warehouse. That’s where we’ve got them pinned for now.”

  “Copy. Redeploying now.”

  “You, with me,” Paul said, pointing to the Archon. “You two, stay here and deal with the bodies. Weapons go over to the exit and stay sharp.”

  Paul glanced at Kali-1388 and tilted his head, indicating that she should follow as he ran off around the perimeter of the colony through the narrow, treeless gap that allowed them good footing and a chance to get up to speed. He glanced back over his shoulder to see that she was keeping up, then accelerated a bit further, seeing how fast she could go.

  He found out sooner rather than later, having to cut his speed back a bit so he didn’t lose her as they came out around the northwest corner of the roughly rectangular complex. He pulled a tight left and began running downhill towards the creek as he saw another assault taking place 100 meters or so below them.

  Paul found her comm tag on his heads up display and isolated the comm from him to her. “Blow through, hit what you can on the way. We’re going up the far side.”

  “Copy, boss,” she said, her breathing heavy as she struggled to keep up with the lightning fast Archon. The stories of his speed hadn’t been exaggerated in the least.

  Paul reached back and pulled his rifle off his back as he ran, then at the last moment he ducked off into the trees, disappearing from Kali’s view. She followed him in, then saw him shoot three lizards that hadn’t yet reached the entrance fight. He got a fourth before he ran past, drawing several more after him and away from the entrance defenders.

  Kali got one on the way in, then killed the four that had veered off to follow Paul. She lost sight of the Archon so she decided to move back over to the perimeter clearing. When she did she saw him way on up ahead, sprinting faster than she thought possible and launching himself across the creek/river.

  He fell in 3/4 of the way across, sinking in up to his knees but remaining upright as he trudged the rest of the way out then began to climb the shallow hill on the other side up towards the smoking entrance where Kali could see a line of lizards entering their home.

  She pushed back at her fatigue and launched herself towards the water with as much speed as she could muster, but she only made it halfway out through the air, sinking below the waterline at the deeper center and having to swim/walk her way up to the opposite shore fighting the strong, muddy current. When she got out the Archon saw Paul already up this side of the ravine and tossing lizards left and right as he broke through the fighting at a lower entryway, bypassing the trio of Knights holding this attack at bay and sprinting up the hillside towards the others.

  Kali followed as quickly as she could, taking the time to shoot half of dozen of the lizards assaulting the Knights as that attacking line began to thin out. She saw there was just a handful left, so she continued up the hillside towards Paul who was swinging away with his sword at the blast site, surrounded by a sea of the shorter creatures. Several flashes of plasma were visible, then Paul cut off into the woods where she couldn’t see him.

  Climbing the muddy terrain wasn’t easy, but she made it up the hillside quickly enough with one of the Knights trailing her now that their previous battle was over. She shot
two of the lizards at range as she ran, but the numbers still pouring in made her sick to her stomach. Their security forces were average and competent, but throw too many numbers at them and they’d crack…especially when they didn’t have strongpoints to work out of. This breach point was behind their internal lines, meaning they’d probably been caught off guard by the first wave. She only hoped that they’d recovered their cohesion and were now holding the lizards at bay from running around and shooting everyone in sight…or worse.

  When she got to the blast zone she shot another two, then stepped up next to a thick tree that had half its trunk blown out and hid behind it, shooting the next lizard that came past in the back. She did the same to several more who were so focused on getting into the colony that they didn’t bother to look behind them.

  One must have seen her plasma fire as it approached, because as soon as it cleared the tree it turned on her and fired. It was close enough that she was able to knock its weapon aside with a reflexive punch to the barrel, then she brought her knee up into its chest and knocked it back to the ground where she shot it dead before turning and killing another one approaching with three well placed shots to its center of mass.

  Kali took up her ambush position behind the blasted tree and worked to increase her kill count, wondering how many had gotten inside and where Paul had gone off to.

  His sword now empty of any stun charge, Paul resolved to use it as a bludgeon as he ambushed wave after wave of the lizards. There were so many coming in he really wanted to know where they were coming from but couldn’t take the time to look around. He had to kill or disable as many as he could to stem the tide, otherwise the defenders inside would be in a world of hurt, if they weren’t already.

  He reattached his sword to the latch on his armor’s beltline and pulled his rifle back into his grasp, firing off a few more shots at range to thin the numbers he was taking hand to hand. His ammo was running dangerously low, but without any stun left in his sword he couldn’t take the lizards down fast enough so he had to risk it. Once the plasma ammo was gone, he’d be completely unarmed and unable to do any considerable damage.