by Jyr, Aer-ki
The pylon on her arm extended on mental impulse, with a blue nub glowing to life just before impact. Her own plasma weapon hit the lizard in the side of its exposed head, discharging into its skin and eating all the way through to blow out the far side, killing it instantly as she swam by.
A quick redirect to the left brought her up against another lizard in the tightly packed swarm that was hovering a few dozen meters over their seafloor buildings. Jeimae popped out her shield, with the physical construction changing from a rod into a fully elongated oval nearly the size of her body. The water drag against it was significant, but the lizard’s jab with his plasma rod caught on it as planned, with her swimming herself and the shield into the enemy before reaching around the side with her arm and jabbing it with her own weapon.
A quick tap to the chest was all it took, then she retracted her shield in flash and swam a few more meters before popping it back out again and repeating the process. Her speed and agility within the water was beyond anything the lizards could manage, and the same went for their Human compatriots that were fighting not far away. Given that they breathed air they had their own aquatics warships, hard armor, and different tactics, but they were all on the same team…the Elarioni were just better, and should have been, given that the water was their natural environment.
That was why the Elarioni were being deployed against the heaviest infantry while the Humans were sent to take out key facilities that had less massed resistance, for their mobility was centered on jet propulsion and straight line trajectories. They couldn’t truly swim, and more often than not required arrowheads to be effective against lizard swarms. The little craft could move quickly and ram the enemy, racking up a lot of kills in a short amount of time, but the Human infantry being deployed were mostly in their armor and not the small craft, given that they intended to enter the buildings and clean them out.
They did have one advantage, and that was their armor. The Elarioni needed their speed and flexibility and weren’t about to give it up for the hard carapaces that the air breathers wore, but those defenses, which included an energy shield that the Elarioni lacked, allowed them to take many hits before penetration. She knew the Humans were more than a match for an equal, or even double number of lizards, but they weren’t in the Elarioni’s league…not even close.
Their addition to Star Force had taken a primitive aquatics division and amped it up to respectable levels in terms of infantry, and even made some decent addition to their ships that were respectable to begin with, but there was simply no getting around the fact that the Humans couldn’t swim worth crap, so whenever there was combat involved they played support and the Elarioni were the hunters.
Today was no exception and as Jeimae used her physical shield to knock a lizard’s legionnaire energy shield aside and slip through the small gap her agility and speed made it clear why they were superior. With a quick retraction of her own shield she swam inside the turtled-up formation of some 9 lizards and punched/blasted them from inches away as she slithered around and between them, demonstrating her flexibility and skill.
She took one hit to her tail armor before swimming out of the corpse ball and looking for the next closest target. A light telepathic prompting brought her attention to several of her sisters that had swam lower and were down near the buildings. They were being pursued by some type of craft that she’d never seen before, but it nearly matched their speed and was firing small projectiles at them.
Jeimae swam down after it immediately, as did several other Elarioni, bypassing lizards attempting to block or jab them as if they were little more than stationary objects. The lizard craft was about the length of five of them and was elongated like a fat sea snake, with the little projectiles firing out the front end only. Her fellow Elarioni were dodging about half of them as they shot by on their own little propulsion units while taking the hits from the others against their shields.
Those explosions were not small, and she knew their shields wouldn’t last against those weapons for long. The others sensed it as well and swam hard for the target, coming up alongside and behind it as they pulsed their armor jets for even more straight line speed. Jeimae got to the side of the dark craft along with one of her sisters on the other side and found nothing to hold onto, so she was forced to keep swimming fast beside it as she jabbed her right-arm mounted plasma gauntlet into the hull.
A tiny explosion of steam shot bubbles back and slightly up as the momentum dragged them away from the hit. When they cleared she saw a tiny divot in the craft and swung her arm again as more Elarioni caught up and they too began whacking at the craft with their weapons. It took Jeimae 8 hits before she made a small hole in the armor, then she slipped her fingers onto the edge and held on so she would no longer have to swim. With that finger hold she extended her gauntlet out into a short pike and jabbed it inside, seeing the glowing end disappear from view just as one of her sisters ahead got hit by one of the projectiles.
Grimacing with anger Jeimae jabbed and pumped blast after blast into whatever was inside, trying to sting the craft to death along with the others. It took far longer than it should have, but eventually the thing stopped firing and its speed slowed but the Elarioni didn’t stop there. They kept tearing at it until one of them got the cockpit open and killed the tightly packed pilot inside, insuring that the odd craft was truly dead in the water.
Jeimae pulled her arm out of the interior, for it had been fully buried inside trying to reach for more parts to trash, and swam clear looking for her next target. The battlemap inside her helmet gave her positions for the surrounding troops that she couldn’t all see, as well as priority and secondary targets. There were still a lot of lizards nearby, but she was more interested in finding any more of these new craft.
And there were several popping up on the battlemap as they rose up from buildings on the surface. Nearby one of her wounded sisters swam slowly with escort back up towards the huge battleship more than a kilometer away towards the west. A quick word and she knew she’d made it back, for her escort wasn’t going to let her get ambushed, nor would the rest of them. Once she was clear Jeimae swam down and killed three more lizards, with one of them actually giving her a bit of trouble with its own shield, causing her to take an extra six seconds before she made the kill.
That one was more skilled than the others, but it had only been delaying the inevitable. Even if Jeimae hadn’t had armor she and the others would have come out victorious simply for their superior swimming skills, but one thing they’d learned since their voluntary transfer to Star Force was that having the extra defense allowed you to fight more aggressively than normal in situations like this, and that was something she definitely liked. Especially so when there were Humans or other lesser warriors in the water fighting alongside her.
There weren’t any in the immediate vicinity, but there were two of those new enemy craft. Swimming off towards the nearest one she saw her sisters nearby giving it a wide berth, then the warning highlight on her battlemap caught her attention and she too stayed back, but still close enough that she’d be able to move in and help if/when they decided to attack it…which they had to. It was keeping them away from a larger infantry formation and peppering the shields of those closest. They couldn’t sustain that damage and the little weapons appeared too fast to dodge with certainty.
She waited in a holding pattern, swimming in a shallow circle while deciding whether or not to head off towards some of the scattered infantry nearby and help clean up when she spotted one of the Human arrowhead formations headed towards them. Jeimae smiled inside her helmet, realizing that they’d been holding off until they got the reinforcements. The Elarioni were dominant infantry, but going up against armored craft wasn’t in their skillset…nor did they have the right weapons.
She glanced up, seeing the shadow of a lizard aquatics cruiser exchanging fire with her battleship, shooting off swarms of missiles/torpedoes while the shield columns from the Star Force vessel flashe
d with light, making it look like a one sided battle. Her battlemap tagged the drones from the battleship and she saw that they were busy with a growing lizard fleet closing on the big ship, which was probably why the Humans were responding instead.
Jeimae and the infantry were low enough not to be effected by the war up top, but that could change in an instant if one of those ships moved down. Its missiles and especially the larger torpedoes wouldn’t be able to target them individually, but an area of effect detonation could cause them serious problems. At the moment the big ships seemed consumed with the battleship, and rightly so, leaving the infantry below to fight it out above the seafloor infrastructure on their own.
Three of the Human arrowheads shot through the water faster than even she could swim with her armor boost jets, with the trio breaking up prior to arrival at the first craft. Two went wide to go after other targets with Jeimae getting an attack prompt. As soon as it flashed on her battlemap she swam in a half circle and sprinted ahead, putting as much tail flip into her momentum as her adrenaline could produce.
When she was halfway to the target she saw the arrowhead take a hit from one of the small projectile just prior to the V-shaped personal craft ramming the lizard vessel. In the past the Humans had only stun weapons on the craft, but tech upgrades and some gentle head slapping by the Elarioni had them redesigned with a corrosive gel canister weapon system, so as the arrowhead grazed and bounced off the hull of the craft a line of material was painted onto it that flared into a bright green flame 2.7 seconds later.
That flame ate into the hull for a couple of heartbeats then went out, making it safe for the infantry to approach and touch. Jeimae wasn’t the first there, with her seeing two others swim up alongside the twisting lizard craft as it chased after the arrowhead and latch on with their armored fingers before taking their gauntlets and pushing them through the breach in the armor the gel had made.
She got up to it just in time to add a few shots of her own before the propulsion unit on the thing went out, then it was just a matter of time before they got the cockpit open and killed the pilot, which now seemed to be the ultimate objective being shared over the comm channels that periodically popped up with chatter. The Elarioni were professional enough to know not to spam the channels, leaving whatever was being said as important information that Jeimae listened to rather than toned out, regardless of how busy she was fighting.
With the lizard craft neutralized and the other one nearby suffering a similar fate the Elarioni moved on towards the nearest high priority target in the lizard infrastructure and the swarm of infantry guarding it, with Jeimae and the others swimming hard and then boosting forward with their hip jets. The living missiles shot directly into the swarm then curved around at sharp, impossible angles, not attacking any of the lizards at first and just throwing them into a frenzy before each finally chose a target and went in for the kill.
As the other Elarioni caught up the chaotic mess quickly became a kill zone, with the lizards no match for the fin-tailed infantry. They were the masters of the oceans for a reason and it was becoming quickly apparent as to why.
Once the swarm of enemy infantry was turned into a floating corpse field they moved down on the priority target and broke their way in through the available hatches before calling for support. The Elarioni held the entrances until Human infantry arrived and they let the more heavily armored troops take the lead, given that the tighter confines didn’t allow the Elarioni as much of an agility advantage.
That said, a few stayed with the Humans as they entered the facility while Jeimae and the others swam back up to a higher level and raced across the submerged cityscape with the battle between the Star Force battleship and the lizard fleet still ongoing overhead. The battlemap had another location for her and her sisters to go and secure, with multiple units, both friendly and enemy, moving about everywhere Jeimae looked.
This was no small-scale engagement, and the mix of adrenaline and fear inside the Elarioni made her feel more alive than she’d ever been before. Trusting in her skill and training, she swam on with her sisters, confident that if they kept their wits about them they’d win out and rid this planet of the lizards…but right now it was clear that a single misstep could get her killed. She was superior to the lizards, but that didn’t make her safe.
With one final glance at the huge ships overhead battling it out and the rain of debris slowly sinking all around her, Jeimae swam in information with four other Elarioni as they were just getting within vision range of the next lizard infantry group already engaged with a Human assault force. It looked to be more or less an even fight…but that wasn’t going to last for long.
4
March 19, 2692
Jafat System (lizard territory)
Ulmed
Trevor-52118 twisted aside, dodging the thrust of a lizard plasma rod towards his face. His movement was slower than it would have been on land, but he managed to get enough of a head start that the glowing green bulb of plasma missed his faceplate by an inch. As it passed he reached out with his right hand and grabbed the rod just below the tip, locking it in place so he could then spin the opposite direction, pressing his armored back against the exposed shoulder of the lizard and whacking it in the back of the neck with his left elbow.
That momentary blow was enough to stun it in place sufficient for Trevor to get spun completely around so he could jab his right gauntlet into its back and fire off his own plasma nub. When physical contact was made with the thin armor vest it wore the shield bubble containing the plasma breached and the superheated krypton burnt through the armor and into the lizard under enough pressure to carve out a hollow inside the enemy infantry while causing a flurry of bubbles to shoot up around the impact point where the water leaked in through the crude seam.
That made for a 1-hit kill, with Trevor leaving the isolated lizard where it floated in the hallway as it died over the next few seconds, stunned from the pain and destruction of its internal organs but taking some time for the blood loss to render its brain inoperable. The Archon moved on through the facility, not having expected to find this one here but patrolling none the less with his Ikrid stretched out to look for more ahead and through the walls.
His troops were back near the main entrance, with Elarioni skirmishers outside watching the other exits. The majority of the fighting was over, but there were handfuls of lizards moving about with considerable skill at evasion. Out in the open water they were vulnerable, but moving within the buildings or hopping from one dome to another across the seafloor they were being evasive and trying to stay ahead of the sweeper teams. The one he’d just killed had tried to ambush him as he swam by one of the rooms, coming down from above given that the hallways connected via both sides and from above and below.
Trevor had known he was coming at him and had been prepared, but he hadn’t expected such a forceful jab that had covered more distance than expected. The lizard hadn’t had sight on him, but had known exactly where to jut towards coming around the blind corner. It could have been luck, but based on the actions of a few others he was starting to think they were getting some kind of intel from security monitors. Each of the lizards had an earpiece comm, but there was no way to know if they were getting active intel or not.
The Archon arched his back and rolled over, forcing his line of movement down into a floor doorway as his armor’s jets trolled him along at a slow pace. Once inside the room he saw that it was another large hangar filled with workstations. These were industrial ones, similar to the others they’d been seeing in other domes, but the configurations were slightly altered. Techs would sort out exactly what it all did later, but Trevor got the feeling these were prefabricated domes specifically set up for mass production. The lizard colony wasn’t that old, so it made sense for these to be standard package for a startup.
Stretching out his Ikrid into spotlight mode he ignored the area behind and around him and used the wide beam to search the area section by sectio
n, eventually finding no minds present. He swam around a bit to have a further look at what was here, but with no enemy troops in the chamber there was no reason to stick around. He spotted another circular entryway on the floor and swam down, entering a horizontal hallway and swimming on until he came to a dead end.
There he found cutting gear and exposed bedrock, with this looking to be as deep as this dome’s structure went. Apparently they’d just begun cutting out the entryway when the attack arrived for the mostly handheld equipment was strewn over the floor as if it had just been dropped and left to float down to the ground.
Trevor backtracked to a different junction and moved on, with his battlemap logging and updating the structural map as he went, showing him and others where he had been as well as the blank areas that had yet to be searched. His connection to the grid was in and out, for the signals would only pass so far through the infrastructure, so it wasn’t surprising when a dot suddenly popped up ahead of him along with a whole new section of map filling in as one of his Elarioni swam towards him.
“Any trouble?” he asked over the comm, with the computerized translation happening in realtime. The difference between Human and Elarioni vocal cords didn’t allow either one to mimic the other’s language so they either had to talk through translation or the backup hand signals they’d learned in case of equipment failure. The same was true of a few other races, most notably the Hycre, but the Elarioni were the only ones in Star Force who could not speak English…excluding a number of varied individuals within Axius.
“No casualties. 17 targets neutralized,” Kameena said within her own helmet. The mixture of high pitched warbles sounded like the aquatic version of R2D2, but Trevor didn’t hear them, only the synthesized voice…which ironically was still the Disney version from ‘The Little Mermaid,’ though Trevor and most others never caught the inside joke for they were too young to be familiar with the source material.
