by Aer-ki Jyr
She was a commando, first and foremost, and needed to get in the fight in a way that mattered. She might have been the only Archon left in the strikeforce, but the warship Captains were more than capable of handling the naval affairs alone if need be, even though she admitted that the fleet would be better off if she was around to direct the battles if and when they resumed. So far the Nestafar fleet had kept well clear of lower orbit, but continued to lurk around the higher zones…those that hadn’t outright left the planetary microsystem and strengthened the fleets assaulting the other Calavari planets.
Morgan knew they needed to hit at least one of them before they left the system, but she also didn’t want to leave with only a few drone warships remaining. Repairs were continuing on several damaged in the preliminary fighting, while the wreckage of the others was being harvested and recycled as much as possible to boost the raw materials carried in storage. Even if she got all those damaged ships repaired it was going to be a slug fest with all the other Nestafar ships in the system, and she was half expecting them to show up on her doorstep at any time now looking for revenge.
But the tactical training her mind had absorbed told her otherwise. If the Nestafar pulled ships away from their current deployments they’d leave openings that the Calavari and Kvash fleets could exploit. Even now both sides were dug in defending key installations in orbit and trying to interfere with each other’s reinforcement efforts on the ground. 2 of the 7 planets were nominally held by the Nestafar, with the other 5 still largely in Calavari hands. Sri’ka counted amongst the 5, and had been providing troops and resources to armies seeking to reclaim a larger foothold on the embattled worlds before the recent Nestafar jumpship drop.
Those troops and walkers deployed had put Sri’ka up for grabs, albeit after a very long campaign, for the planet was huge, but the point was Sri’ka was no longer bolstering the other worlds and had become heavily contended itself. This took pressure off the Nestafar in other locations throughout the system, and if they came hunting Morgan’s fleet they’d forfeit that advantage…which the keen strategist would never do.
Alien minds, though, the trailblazer reminded herself, did not always see ‘logic’ the same way, which was probably why she had the feeling the Nestafar were going to jump them at any time now.
As she sat and scrolled down through the list of new requests one jumped out at her…timestamped 2 minutes ago. A series of Calavari building/cities in the mountains were being overrun, with the Calavari requesting any and all units in the area to assist…nothing specific about Star Force in there, so it must have gone out on all Alliance channels in order to have become imbedded in the data stream.
Morgan followed a link to the coordinates, as well as the most recent intelligence reports that the Red Ranger’s crew were gathering from all sources in the system, cataloging the ongoing activity into a rolling brief for the Captain and her to monitor as they chose…as well as for filing purposes, documenting the war for further analysis of enemy tactics at a later date.
According to the data, which was being updated every few seconds, there was a cluster of 8 cities in various valleys interconnected by tunnels and walkways over and through the mountains separating them. Each city was a massive structure, similar in the way they had constructed the Alliance base on Daka, and housed millions of civilians that had nowhere to evacuate to other than the desolate mountain terrain that consisted of little more than dusty rocks and patches of snow.
Growing more interested by the moment, Morgan typed in an active request for live surveillance data…with one of the drone warships in orbit being nearby enough to pull line of sight sensor recordings on the location. Fortunately there was little cloud cover on the planet and the location was currently on the day side, for Morgan got back a morphable image prompt on her command screen, linked through to the random set of quarters in the sanctum that she was currently bunking in.
She adjusted the map and had it zoom in on one of the cities tagged with the highest level of enemy activity, with the drone warship responding and adjusting its telescopic sensors accordingly. An image of what looked like a giant orange rose half buried in between two mountain ridges filled the screen. Zooming in further the top of the rose became elevated rings of walkways, landing pads, and massive walls, all of which tiered around a central dome that was opaque.
Asking the cameras to move in further, Morgan enlarged the rings, seeing dozens of tiny specs spread out on them…then realized that those specs were protomechs and fully grasped the size of the facility. A quick move around the live streaming map and she tagged the landing zones that held Nestafar dropships, some of which already had ID tags assigned as the Red Ranger’s crew processed the tactical applications.
Morgan looked around, seeing a chaotic mess taking place and almost no Calavari resistance. Zooming back out she chose another city, working her way through the other 7 in turn and seeing that not all of them had yet come under heavy attack. Two of them hadn’t been touched, as far as visuals could confirm, but she did see a single fighter landing on one of the decks and being pulled underneath a protective overhang. She caught a glimpse of battle damage and sent a request over to the analyzers to give her numbers of enemy and allied starfighters in the area.
2 minutes and 15 seconds later she got a tally sheet back.
0 Nestafar/14 Calavari
That meant the Alliance had air superiority, weak as it was…which meant Star Force also had an opportunity to act.
Morgan activated her earpiece as she darted out of the quarters and ran over to the sanctum’s armory. “Captain, I want every available dropship from all four warships prepped for civilian evacuation and I want Knight guards accompanying them to protect the LZ…and have them equipped with firearms, otherwise the Nestafar will fly up out of reach and pick them to pieces.”
“Single evacuation or round trip?” Wilkinson asked, already working through the logistical possibilities.
“There are millions of Calavari that need rescued, so the shorter the trip the better. See if you can find a safe location nearby on planet, if not we’ll have to make one and have the Calavari come pick up their people later. Up and down from orbit will take too long.”
“Where are we talking about?”
“City complex in the mountains under Nestafar assault. The Calavari have air superiority but they’re getting overrun on the ground and the civilians are getting slaughtered. I know we can’t save them all, but I want to get as many out as we can.”
“I need coordinates.”
“Sorry, I’m on the move here. Check the request feed, group of eight cities in the southern hemisphere’s primary mountain range, requesting any and all Alliance assistance. Not a specific Star Force request.”
“Timestamp?”
“About 12 minutes ago.”
The Captain was silent for several lengths of hallway then came back on just as Morgan was getting to the armory doors.
“I found it. Which of the eight did you want the evac to target?”
“Any aside from the one getting hit the hardest,” she said, walking into the armory and over to her personal storage lockers and the three sets of unscathed ranger armor tailored to fit her dimensions exactly. She pulled the boot section of one of them out and slid it on over her thin shoe in a quick and well-practiced choreography.
“Where will you be going?” he asked, anticipating her answer.
“Where the heaviest fighting is. I’ll thin their numbers as much as I can, just keep the dropships running as long as possible and make sure the Knights stay with them. They’re coming to protect our assets, not battle the enemy.”
“Understood. I’ll have one ready to go as soon as you can get to the hangar.”
On approach to the city swarming with Nestafar, Morgan had the pilot contact the Valeries in the area and organize a little diversion to give the eagle a patch of rooftop all to itself. The window of opportunity didn’t last long and the dropship’s shields to
ok a diffuse, long range plasma hit from a protomech, but it did drop down close enough to the pad for Morgan to jump out before rocketing off back into the air and across the mountains to one of the other cities where it would start to pick up evacuees and ferry them off to wherever Wilkinson had arranged.
That wasn’t her concern now, killing Nestafar and keeping them from transitioning over to the other cities en mass was…so she planned to make herself as big of a nuisance as possible. To that end, as soon as she was down on the pad she repositioned over to the edge and pulled out the rocket launcher from her armor’s rack, then disconnected her pack entirely and set it beside her, popping open the top so she could reach in for the extra rockets more easily.
There wasn’t any infantry in her exact spot, but there were a few buzzing around in the sky, keeping watch or passing to and fro over the killing fields that showed dozens of dead Calavari lying about…and she suspected the interior of the city was going to look much worse.
Morgan pulled the launcher to her shoulder and sighted in the protomech that had hit the dropship, tagging it with a targeting laser and firing off the round. She held the bead on the chest of the stubby, walking machine as it moved until the streak of rocket exhaust stretched all the way to the target and a concussive explosion occurred.
The trailblazer didn’t wait to see what happened past detonation, busy pulling out another concussive round and snap loading it into place. She twisted to the left about 20 degrees and targeted another a bit further away, fired, then picked up a plasma round and loaded it in. That she deposited into the side of a Nestafar transport three times further away than the protomechs but still in the same direction. It took an agonizingly long time for it to streak over to the target, but when it did a huge blue plume of plasma materialized and ate into the unshielded hull as it sat on the pad.
Morgan loaded and fired off her last remaining rocket, also a plasma variety, at another transport then ditched the launcher and picked up her pack, closing the flap and reattaching it to the back of her armor with a few quick clicks. She pulled her plasma rifle into hand and took off running as sounds of heavy footfalls from the opposite direction started to get painfully loud.
She ducked close to the wall blocking the view of the higher tier that connected via a sweeping turn of an ascension ramp that the protomech was coming down, then she darted off right and ran to the side of the ribbon-like walkway assembly and found a stairway over the side and down into the gap between itself and a higher inset ribbon that several specs of infantry were flying over…and coming down towards her position, preceded by several badly aimed red plasma blasts.
Morgan ran down the exterior catwalk made of some form of decorative concrete in the red/orange motif that seemed to dominate most Calavari architecture and ducked inside the city, removing herself from the firing lines of the protomechs and the flying infantry.
The hallways were larger than Star Force standard, given the size of the occupants, but she didn’t have much time to consider the view as the sound of weaponsfire drafted her way almost immediately upon entry. She followed it through the curvy hallways, spotting the occasional corpse, until the labyrinth opened up into a promenade that seemed to mimic the gradual curve of the surface rings.
There were bodies everywhere, with a pair of Nestafar flying low to the ground to keep their wings clear of the ornamented ceiling. Morgan snapped off a rifle shot at one, clipping a wing and sending it screaming in pain down to the ground where it landed on top a pile of the bulbous Calavari blood-slicked in deep orange.
Morgan ignored it and shot the other one, peppering it with three shots at distance to make sure she connected with either the torso or head, then as it fell she ran forwards, eyes on the other, and shot it dead about halfway across the gap. She took a moment to look around, still hearing weaponsfire but seeing none. She did a complete visual sweep in a slow, agile spin, then picked her best guess as to where the current fighting was going on and jumped her away across the bodies, noting very few Nestafar among them.
All along the perimeter of the promenade there were compartments, most of which had their doors open. She assumed the Nestafar had searched through them all, killing any Calavari they’d come across. Part of her wanted to check the closed ones, seeing if there were any survivors inside but she knew it would be a waste of time. Even if they were still alive she couldn’t get them out of here. In truth, the Calavari in this city were as good as dead…she was here with the sole purpose of killing Nestafar and buying time for Star Force and whatever Calavari transports were available to evacuate the other city/buildings.
She knew they wouldn’t get them all out and she didn’t want to guess at the percentage, but she knew it would be low. Had they been Human they could have squeezed more people into each dropship, but the Calavari’s larger size was going to diminish the amounts they could carry per trip.
Then again, as Morgan ran towards battle, she noticed a large number of smaller Calavari amongst the dead, guessing that they were their females until she got a clear view of one of their heads and confirmed the theory. That, at least, would increase the numbers of potential evacuees…as well as meaning those still left alive in the city wouldn’t be as much use in hand to hand combat if a large number of them were female. Even without weapons, the males were still dangerous to the Nestafar, especially indoors.
She didn’t know who was left alive, but someone was shooting it out ahead because she heard the varying pitches of both the Nestafar and Calavari plasma weapons. Not their rifles, but one of the smaller, single hand pistols that some of their techs and support personnel carried.
Morgan followed the sounds down another staircase and off the promenade, then wound her way back down underneath it, coming up behind several dozen Nestafar on the ground, wings tucked, and taking cover behind various pieces of what looked like sculptures in some sort of indoor park laced with trees and other greenery.
The Archon didn’t waste time and started blasting away at their backs, taking three down before the others even noticed her presence. The rest didn’t last long, some of which were hit by the hidden Calavari as they turned around and rose up to fire on Morgan as she dashed back and forth evasively, while methodically downing the enemy with precision chest and head shots.
“Clear,” she announced when the last of them was down, then she walked out into the space between where the two groups were fighting, which was already clogged with bodies, suggesting that this wasn’t the first firefight to take place in this location.
“Our thanks,” a Calavari male said as he came out from behind a tree, behind which a pair of females was cowering down in the crook of a wall segment. Elsewhere a few more armed males came out of cover, followed by even more unarmed ones, several of which were oozing their bizarre orange blood. “Are you…Human?”
“Rescue?” another one asked eagerly.
“Human yes, rescue no,” Morgan said, walking through the lot and spying an exit out the other side. “I’m here to kill as many of them as I can while we evacuate the other cities. This one is lost.”
“How many of you are there? Can we not evacuate from your landing zone?”
“Just me,” Morgan said, not wanting to waste time but not wanting to abandon them without explaining herself. “Find some place to hide and hope they don’t find you. I’ll distract them as much as I can.”
“How are you getting out?” one of them asked as she walked past them, glad that she didn’t have to look them in the eye with her helmet in place.
“I’m fighting my way out,” she said, disappearing out the doorway.
5
March 23, 2405
Brokal System
Sri’ka
Wilkinson was waiting in the hangar bay when Morgan’s dropship arrived, bringing her back from her 5th solo mission on Sri’ka. When the boarding ramp lowered and she walked out he was taken aback at how much damage her armor had. The formerly green plates were covered in black cha
r from plasma strikes and some impact points were showing the softer blue inner armor ballistic gel layer seeping through. Her helmet also had a nasty melt spot on the left side, but by her casual movements as the Archon walked over to him he didn’t think she’d been injured.
“You look like hell,” he offered, falling into step beside her as she walked towards the inner doors.
Morgan pulled off her helmet and flipped her ponytail loose. “Busy couple of days.”
“The O’Neill’s raid was a success. I haven’t seen the telemetry data yet, but apparently they got the jumpship on the first try.”
The trailblazer glanced at him. “Pleasant news. What’s their current status?”
“Holding their stellar orbit for the moment. They’ve disabled the ship’s gravity drives, so it isn’t going anywhere.”
“What’s the range of the Calavari transports?” Morgan asked as they transitioned out of the bay and into the warship’s hallways.
“I just made an inquiry…seems they’re capable of interplanetary travel. The Calavari also extend their thanks for your recent efforts.”
“Has the jumpship surrendered?”
“Not as of yet. Captain Morai is applying the necessary pressure. The Kvash are also requesting our assistance with the fleet orbiting Dar’ma.”
“What are we looking at?” Morgan asked, trying to remember the last intel reports from the 2nd planet in the star system.
“They want to move a jumpship into orbit and open up a ground campaign, but they said they can only spare four cruisers as escort. There are currently 56 Nestafar vessels in low orbit, with another pocket of 23 stationed around one of the moons…though it won’t take much to redeploy their larger fleets elsewhere if they want to counter the counter invasion.”
“Did they get another jumpship in system?”
