Star Force: Counterstrike (SF18)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  The trailblazer issued a quick, preset order that he’d compiled earlier, ordering that fleet to dispense with the bombardment and hit the cruisers as hard as they could. Meanwhile the other, higher fleet continued its bombardment. Paul was not going to bring the two fleets together, so if the lizards were going to stop them from penetrating the base’s shields they were going to have to fight two separate engagements.

  Minutes went by and no challenge to the upper fleet manifested. The 13 warships he had in the lower group essentially negated the pair of cruisers, driving them off heavily damaged while retaining only 3 equally damaged ships of their own. One still had its rail gun online, but its engines had taken damage and it was no longer able to maintain the hover orbit required. It kicked in its plasma engines and limped up into a conventional orbit, while the other two gained altitude intent on rendezvousing with the second fleet and offering what little weaponry they had to its defense.

  As time went on and the orbital bombardment continued Paul began to crack a smile. It was a small one, unsure of itself, but growing in confidence as each additional rail gun slug hit the lizards’ shields, draining them of energy and further destabilizing the matrix.

  No assault on the upper fleet was forthcoming, and Paul knew he’d pushed the lizards past their limit. Even if they did have another cruiser or two incoming from other locations, they couldn’t take the fleet he had assembled alone, which meant they’d either have had to hold back their first two cruisers and wait for the reinforcements, which would have let the Star Force ships pound on the base with two fists, or send out what they had against the weaker of the two fleets, hoping to be able to destroy it and then move on to the second with the help of the reinforcements.

  The damage done to the two cruisers made that impossible…or maybe the lizards didn’t have any reinforcements available. Maybe the two cruisers up north were all the others they had on planet. Paul didn’t know which, and at the moment it didn’t matter, because the southern base’s shield was showing up on sensors, meaning the energy matrix was being disrupted close to the breaking point.

  Paul’s eyes flipped back over to the northern assault as the second cruiser moved off from the base, but only a short distance. A frown replaced his thin smile, wondering what the warship was doing. None of the mechs, heavies or otherwise, were in that region, only forest.

  When Jasmine finally emerged from the path and into the clearing that surrounded the lizard base the snow suddenly cut out, widening her view to where she could see all the mechs ahead and their weapons fire, along with a few salvos coming from the other cruiser off to her far right. Up above her was a flat wall of white where the shield was stopping and accumulating the snow overtop the base while gusts continued to blow in from the perimeter on the far side. She could see the angled wall of white filtering in underneath the shield edge, but thanks to the wind direction this half of the base was all but clear of blowing snow.

  Her battlemap was constantly being updated with targets from the mechs inside and Jasmine chose to head left around the perimeter of buildings and tackle a section of icons that seemed to have been ignored up to that point, offering them fresh targets as most of the mechs coming out with them veered right towards the distant cruiser. A few headed straight in towards where the two trailblazers’ mechs were located and highlighted by a thin gold ring around their blue dots on the map.

  Her star followed her without complaint or question across the plain to the buildings, then ducking inside to tackle one of the base defense turrets with good coordination. From there they split up into two groups with Jasmine taking one of the thors with her. They teamed up on another turret, this time a small anti-personnel version that could do little to stop them, before a blanket of snow dropped down on the entire base, covering the mechs, buildings, and streets in half a meter of the white stuff, knocking down roaming lizards on impact but doing little to the mechs other than distract their pilots as the blowing snows followed it down, dropping their visibility down to 20 meters or so.

  “What the hell?” Jasmine said just before a series of explosions muffled their way through the storm. She couldn’t see what was being hit, or much of anything else for that matter, so she focused on the position of her star. “Report status.”

  “Green,” her wingman said, echoed by similar statements from the other three mechs half a block to the west.

  Suddenly targeting coordinates flashed on her madcat’s display with Cora’s signature attached to the four closely placed points in the sky. There were no laser points to follow, nor could there be with so much snow in the air, but what was provided were precise position coordinates being measured off of three widely spaced mechs being used as reference for the targeting computers in every mech in the assault force.

  “Hit it hard,” Jasmine said, walking to the side to clear a building and get a line of sight on the target, though in truth she couldn’t see a thing through the snow. She fired off two sets of her missiles, adding up to her 3rd quarter of ammunition spent, then fired repeated plasma shots off at the designated targets before a group of lizards appeared on the ground, trudging through the fallen snow to get at her mech.

  “Eyes down, tangos on the deck,” she said, dropping her mech’s arms while twisting her torso around to her left. She melted both the lizards and the snow around them with two closely placed blasts then spun her head around in the cockpit, checking every directional image she had looking for more lizards as an explosion nearby rocked one of her star’s mechs, taking out the blue dot on her battlemap.

  “Kevin?!” she half yelled into her comm.

  “He’s down,” the other madcat pilot answered. “Det pack.”

  “Pull back,” she sniped, angry at the situation and her rotten luck. “Outside the buildings. If we can’t see the ground troops coming we’re sitting ducks in here.”

  Her madcat twisted around to the right and began walking in a sharp turn, ducking into a street that would lead her back out into the clearing around the base.

  Having worked their way down to the far end of the plaza Jason and his double star of neos, now reassembled, were working in unison to take the last of the ring of defense turrets, creeping along the building walls to stay out of direct firing range and less than 600 meters away from the primary defense tower when its shield suddenly deactivated, dropping the snow trapped on top down on the base as well as letting the storm in at them. His vision diminished within 20 seconds down to what was barely acceptable for hand to hand fighting, let alone taking out turrets that didn’t want to show up on sensors.

  Nor did the buildings, or much of anything in the base, all having been made of sensor-resistant materials. Before he could worry about finding the turrets again based off the battlemap alone or, worse yet, wandering out into their field of fire, the tower started taking hits from the cruiser, blowing large chunks off that Jason’s mech could track even though he couldn’t see.

  “Cora?” he asked, hoping she was ‘seeing’ what he was seeing.

  “Targets incoming,” she said as she conversed with the mechs on the southwestern perimeter still playing tag with the cruiser. It was moving in over the clearing now that the shield was down, and as its forward edge came over the mechs on the ground they marked the location of its weapons batteries that the snow was obscuring from the other mechs’ view.

  When the icons lit up on Jason’s faceplate he immediately fired both his cannons even as the cruiser was continuing to deconstruct their own tower via plasma impacts. Now that the shields weren’t covering the mechs they were in a more vulnerable position, even with the damage already done to the huge ship, meaning they had to deal with it now or be sniped to death from the air.

  Flashes of blue plasma were visible around Jason in the snow, coming from his two stars even though he couldn’t see most of the mechs. They poured fire into the snow-shrouded target until the bombardment of what was left of the defense tower ended and Cora called off the massed attack a
s the wounded cruiser moved off according to Jason’s battlemap.

  To his left one of the neos started firing again, followed by a familiar explosion that liquefied all the snow in the air for 100 meters, giving him and the others nearby a brief glimpse of the point of detonation.

  “Backpackers are moving up,” the mechwarrior that had blown up the lizards warned. “And they can get pretty close now.”

  “Don’t forget the turrets,” Jason said before they started moving around to look for lizards. “Push ahead along the buildings. We’ll take the turrets down one at a time while the last man watches our flank. As long as we keep walking it’ll be hard for them to catch up. Watch the side streets as we pass, and look for tracks in the snow. If they’re hiding in wait they’ll give away their position.”

  “You two with me,” he said, referring to his two wingmen that had been fighting alongside him for the duration of the battle. “Everybody else get in line and follow close. If you can’t count the arms and legs on the mech in front of you you’re too far back, so keep it snug and arms wide. You see a little black suit shoot it on sight.”

  Jason walked his mech to the left until he was a few meters away from one of the buildings ringing the large plaza and began to follow it forward to the next point on his battlemap that indicated a turret, grateful that the lizards hadn’t been smart enough to equip their troops with white camouflage, otherwise they’d never see them in all the snow.

  9

  Paul gave a quiet little fist pump when the holographic command center wrapped around him and his control pedestal showed the surface impact of a rail gun round penetrating the southern lizard base’s shields. A few more were deflected at various points across the field, then another got through, and another…then another was blocked, followed by a final half splatter whose remains fell through to the base below as the shield matrix finally disintegrated underneath the impact stress.

  Paul checked the ammo counts his ships had left and saw they still had a third of their rail gun rounds remaining. With a quick order typed out on the control pedestal he ordered the fleet to expend all of their remaining ammunition on the now defenseless base.

  Jasmine and her three other remaining mechs held position outside the buildings as the snowstorm continued to rage, forming the four corners of an improvised landing zone for the incoming mantises to home in on. Flying on sensors alone three of the transports set down between the mechs and began disgorging armored Knights and Archons that had obvious trouble trudging through the deep snow, but Jasmine was glad to have the backup. Inside her cockpit she highlighted the comm units on all their armored suits and grouped them into what she labeled as ‘ground,’ then opened a comm line to those troops only, rather than broadcasting to every Star Force unit involved in the assault.

  “Ground force, who’s in command?”

  “That would be me. Archon-219. Which building do you want to hit first?”

  Jasmine created a ‘ground command’ comm option for him, then switched to it. “We need to establish a perimeter several buildings deep to keep their suicide squads at distance. Start with the small building to your left and work out from there. Let me know how you want to handle fire support.”

  “We’ll identify targets and call for fire when we need it, otherwise just hang back and look intimidating. Do you know if there are any turrets near the target building?”

  “It’s clear.”

  “Actually, could you do us a favor?”

  “Name it.”

  “Melt some of the snow around the building entrance.”

  Jasmine smiled. “Easy enough,” she said, walking her mech a few steps to the side and twisting around to face the building in question. She walked a bit closer to spot the nearest entrance through the blowing snow, making sure not to step on her own troops in the process, then fired off a single plasma blast at the ground near the building. It hit and flash vaporized the snow for several meters in diameter, soaking the ground beneath in excess water around the edges of the circle. She fired several more times, taking away the knee-high snow from the Archon’s path.

  The Knights led the way, less encumbered by the resistance due to their greater height and strength. They were virtually invisible in their white armor, and only their identification tags stood out on Jasmine’s display, otherwise she would have stepped on them. When they got to the melted patch in front of the building they spread out three wide behind their shields while a fourth made his way up to the entrance and pushed his way through a bit of snow before getting hung up with the door handle.

  One of the Archons came forward and fired his plasma rifle into the locking mechanism several times, but the door still wouldn’t open.

  “Mech leader, would you mind shooting the door open for us?”

  “Stand clear,” Jasmine warned. “These cannons only have one setting.”

  She waited until all the little icons on her screen scurried off to the sides, jumping into the deeper snow and wading away from the firing line. Jasmine trigged a single plasma shot and hit the door square on, melting/blasting it apart as well as melting the remaining snow and connecting the doorway to the rest of the small clearing.

  “Go,” she said, giving him the all clear while walking further to the east to keep an eye on the next side street while staying back far enough to watch out for lizard ground forces. The Archons and Knights poured into the building through the breach she’d just created while the other three mechs milled about behind her, watching over the mantises and not really knowing what else to do.

  A few minutes later her comm activated again.

  “Mech leader, ground troops coming up on our position. East radial street from the building. We’ve got a spotter on the roof, coordinate with her for fire support.”

  The comm line, Jasmine noticed, was a 3-way with the ground leader’s portion cutting out, so she assumed the other was the spotter, which she tagged in her comm screen as such. “I’m in position at the entrance to the street but can see nothing more than snow. Give me a range estimate starting from the outer edge of the building and heading in towards base center.”

  “250 meters,” the spotter said. “Aim dead center.”

  Jasmine adjusted her firing controls and aimed using an estimated position in lieu of a line of sight. “Calibrate,” she asked, firing off her first shot.

  The blue plasma streak flashed by the spotter’s position on the corner of the building’s narrow top, then hit more than 50 meters back of the group where the spotter couldn’t see through the snow.

  “Overshot. Adjust 50.”

  The second shot hit too short by 20 meters, but it did succeed in making the lizards run for cover. They slithered up next to the buildings and dove down into the snow…as if that would protect them.

  “Mark position and repeat fire.”

  Several more blue lances came down the street, not one of them hitting in exactly the same spot. They coated the area with plasma, boiling off the snow and creating a fog cloud that took the storm winds several seconds to blow away, after which the spotter could see several lizard corpses along with many more still alive and retreating back down the street.

  “Mech leader, move up to the intersection and secure position. You’ve got them on the run and we’re advancing into the next building.”

  “Copy that,” Jasmine said, switching to her star’s comm. “Ryan, stick with the mantises and make sure none of those lizard squads get close enough to do damage. Korna and Marrick, advance to my current position and stand by. We’re leapfrogging our way back into the base as the ground troops clear buildings out.”

  Paul watched the ammunition counters on his orbiting fleet dwindle, dismissing each ship back to the shipyards for rearming when it ran out of rounds while arranging for other warships around Corneria to take their place within the day. Even though the base shield was down, the turret that produced it wrecked, and the rest of the base heavily damaged he always wanted to have ships in close o
rbit should they need to call down fire support. It was the one major advantage they had over the lizards and he didn’t intend on wasting it by getting caught out of position.

  When the last of the ammunition was fired Paul sent orders for the skeets to move in, as well as sending the go orders for the dropships to start descending from their parking orbit.

  Jason surveyed the damage to the defense tower from his mech six hours after the battle had begun. The storm had slowed enough to increase visibility up to 400 meters, allowing the mechs to move around more freely and finish off the remaining turrets. Numerous buildings still had to be cleared and secured, and there were many lizards still roaming about, far too many for what Jason would have guessed they had available, but then again there was little that they understood about their enemy, let alone what their standard troop deployments were.

  The cruiser had done a good job of wrecking the tower. It was unsalvageable, which was what he figured was the lizards’ aim. When the cruisers left they were pretty much conceding the base to the Humans, but they didn’t want them to possess the defense shield…suggesting to Jason that they intended to come back at some point and didn’t want to have to beat their way past it when they did.

  There was a small clearing around the tower that had collected most of the debris, though some of the surrounding buildings had been hit by smaller, lighter pieces that the explosions had tossed farther out, but they all appeared intact from his point of view, though the continuing snowfall was probably obscuring some of the damage…as well as making it difficult for the ground troops to move around. In addition to what had collected on the shield and then dropped down to the ground, the continuing storm was depositing several new inches of snow per hour, and though the intensity wasn’t what it had been earlier, the storm wasn’t predicted to stop for several days.

  That was going to make things interesting if there were still lizards moving about. He didn’t doubt the things could burrow through the snow if it was deep enough, and already it was getting to that point. Jason had been experimenting in the open area around the tower remains on how to kick or push aside the snow with his mech’s hands for the past half an hour. His plasma reserves were running low, so most of the remaining lizard hunting was going to mechs with greater supply…mostly those that had come in with the second wave. However, Jason had just discovered a way to add to his available ammunition.