Star Force: Foothold (SF25)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  Two skeets flew overhead, dropping what looked like large bombs from underneath their hulls. The objects fell down through the ‘trees’ and impacted with a pair of thuds, but no explosions.

  Morgan and her Archon team wound their way through the gigantic fungi that Ricopal sported, ducking under several large teacup-shaped ‘trees’ before seeing the first hole in another where the supply pod had punched through. The Ranger pointed to it and ran off in search of the other while part of her team began securing the site.

  The second one had fallen into what looked like a garden of razorblades, though fortunately the fin-like fungi weren’t sharp, though they were hard to walk through. The soft, orange material rippled and crumbled under each step, and the damn things were tall enough to cover Morgan’s knees, not to mention they were spaced only a couple of inches apart from each other, meaning that she and the others had to literally plow their way through to the shallow impact crater.

  Morgan leaned to the side and pushed over several of the fungi fins, then stepped them down further, breaking through two before her foot was supported. From there she yanked on the supply pod, trying to set it upright but the vitamin-shaped capsule didn’t want to budge. She kept rocking it back and forth, but the fungi underneath were acting like springs and absorbing the momentum she was putting into it. It wasn’t until Nito-1493 got on the other side and added his strength to hers did they get the thing pointed upright.

  “Vaca, Sati,” Morgan prompted, with the two other Archons moving in and forming a four-man carrying crew that managed to heft the pod up onto their shoulders and slowly trample their way out of the fungi fin field. When they got back on solid ground, moist as it was, they walked the second pod over to where the first was already set up and placed it a few meters away, pulling out the extendable stabilization legs and making it appear like an old school science fiction rocket.

  Morgan opened one of several doors on the pod, finding rations, water bottles, and ambrosia packets inside. The next one down contained plasma and lachar ammunition rounds, as well as a solitary box of stingers. Below that was a weapons cache with additional rifles, pistols, grenades and even portable rocket launchers stowed in compact form. At the bottom was another door that opened into a small compartment containing comm gear and other technical devices.

  The first pod also had rations, water, and ambrosia, but the other compartments were different, containing equipment rather than weapons…including jump packs.

  “Movement to the north,” a whisper came through her armor’s comm.

  Morgan whipped her plasma rifle off her back and spun around the way they had come. “What have we got?”

  “Patrol group, 6 infantry, probably looking for what the skeets dropped.”

  Morgan thought for a moment, knowing they needed to take this group out quickly before they could comm in their location. Her 10-man team was pressing towards a Nestafar base that they’d literally carved out of the Ricopal fungi forest, along with a single wide path leading down to the plains kilometers away where most of the action was. Star Force mechs and heavy walkers were currently engaging the Nestafar counterparts in major actions around two small Calavari cities on the plains while other engagements were occurring across a long front…all of which avoided the major Calavari infrastructure.

  Morgan’s assault fleet had gotten dropped off here late, well after the Nestafar had arrived and set up shop on the surface, but surprisingly they hadn’t gone for a forward assault on the planet, choosing to occupy several small, rural districts where they had set up some impressive prefabricated bases that they were fighting and expanding out of as more reinforcements continued to arrive from orbit.

  Morgan’s warships had put a stop to direct reinforcement, but rather than engage her superior naval force directly the Nestafar warships had scattered and moved up to higher orbits, then whenever a new jumpship arrived they would rendezvous with it and provide cover for the dropships as they made blockade runs through the Star Force lines…which were not set up for that type of interdictment scenario. Her captains did their best to disrupt the Nestafar, and had succeeded in killing a few of their warships, but a planet was just too large of a place to completely block off and there was no way they could keep all of the reinforcements from finding a way through down to the surface.

  Normally the Calavari fighters would have at least scared some of the incoming dropships away, but the Nestafar had brought in overwhelming numbers of their own fighters, augmented with Valeries, and had established air superiority early on. Morgan gave them credit for knowing their own weakness and finding ways to work around it…but they stupidly refused to change their basic army tactics and equipment that left them vulnerable to air strikes.

  By the time Star Force arrived the Calavari didn’t have many fighters left to harass the Nestafar with, leaving their armies to roll across the plains and sweep up several more small to medium sized settlements with ease, but as soon as hundreds of skeets started picking the enemy’s fighters out of the sky the same old/same old scenario began to play out with it being a race to see who could sow enough destruction first…the army conquering cities or the fighters blasting apart the army.

  Morgan was glad the Nestafar were stubborn, because if they retooled their walkers with effective anti-air they’d be extremely difficult to deal with. Star Force had the advantage of numbers in this campaign, due to her bringing her entire fleet here as a starting point to launching other offensives to pry the Nestafar off the Calavari’s throats on some of their smaller worlds before going to the aid of the larger ones where the Nestafar didn’t hold so great of an advantage.

  That said, most of her armada was still tucked away deep within the star system. She didn’t want to waste resources by just dumping them on the Nestafar, so she was bringing down what she felt she needed and updating those amounts on the go.

  The biggest problem they’d encountered so far was the Nestafar’s mobile bases. They were literally assembling what were premade forts cut up into pieces and they were building them as fast as putting together a set of Legos. More and more were coming down in the cargo shipments and being erected while the walkers and mechs fought it out, buying the enemy time to set up defensive positions that were not easy for Morgan’s armies to take out.

  In addition to heavy plasma cannon turrets and missile pods, their bases were well equipped with anti-air towers…a lot of towers, meaning the skeets couldn’t get anywhere close to their bases. Morgan’s mechs were systematically taking down one base after another, denying the dropships secure landing zones while having the skeets harass any that landed elsewhere.

  Which all came back to the base in the forest. Mechs couldn’t assault it except from the single road…which was a suicide run. Knowing this, the Nestafar were diverting more and more of their dropships to the base, knowing it was their most secure LZ and fighting their way out of it into the surrounding areas where they were erecting more forts while ones further out were being assaulted. This newer, closer formation of bases were reinforcing each other and creating a blanket of air cover that gave the skeets very narrow flight paths between the bases, unless they chose to go high and look down, unable to contribute aside from dropping bombs.

  Morgan didn’t have many of those available and she didn’t want to waste the ones she did have unless absolutely necessary, but to top it off the Nestafar bases were fully shielded and proving to be tough nuts to crack…and if they didn’t stop the flow of supplies the enemy very well might grow a zone of power on the surface that Star Force wouldn’t be able to push back against save for bringing in a mass of troops for a very destructive melee.

  Morgan’s armada was large, but her equipment was limited due to her inability to replace it. Every mech, skeet, and plasma rifle in her care, once lost, were gone for good, so the more losses the Nestafar cost her here, the less planets she could help the Calavari defend later, meaning she had to get devious and drop the hammer only as a last resort. />
  In typical fashion, her deviousness manifested itself in the form of a commando raid on the crucial base in the forest. Due to the positioning the Nestafar didn’t have a hoard of walkers defending it, only the road, so a small team could theoretically approach from the fungi fields and slip inside…if the Nestafar remained unaware of their approach.

  Which was where this infantry patrol could be a problem. They were only a few klicks away from the base now, after having hiked over 50 in a circuitous route to disguise their approach. The supply drop had been necessary given that they’d had to fight their way through a group of Nestafar to get to the forest. The rest of the battling mechs and Archon infantry had remained as a diversion while Morgan’s team innocently slipped away. So far it appeared they’d gone unnoticed, but they needed resupply, biologically and technologically, before they tried to hit the base, especially since all their heavy weapons had been delivered via the pods.

  “Stingers only,” Morgan ordered over the comm, keeping her external speaker silent. “Call out your targets and wait for my signal.”

  “Far left,” Prion-1736 whispered.

  “Back left,” another Archon said, with the others following suit so they wouldn’t miss any in what had to be a simultaneous salvo, else they’d have a chance to report in their position or signal via plasma fire.

  Morgan doubled up targets with Sati-1354, a Clan Croft commando specialist that she’d tagged for this mission due to her experience fighting the lizards on several clandestine raids. The pistol the trailblazer and other Archons carried wasn’t the most accurate weapon at range, but given the height of the fungi the Nestafar were going to have to come right to them in order to spot them, so if the Archons waited long enough accuracy shouldn’t be a problem.

  Just as Morgan heard the first trace of wing flaps a flash of plasma fireworks shot by laterally overhead, quickly followed by the skeet that had fired the scattergun blast. Five of the six Nestafar fell to the ground, leaving only one left alive to spot the Star Force infantry at that point, though there were numerous other patrols in the area.

  Morgan kept her eyes on the sky through the gaps in the cup-like trees, wondering how many of the dead ones were really dead, and if they had fallen into the cups out of sight. She picked up a wideband report from the skeets, which all Star Force units could receive but which was meant for her team’s sake, detailing the infantry around the base that it was hunting down along with a dozen others that had been deployed to provide visual cover for the supply drop, as well as to thin down the patrols that they’d have to get past.

  The lengthy message detailed the perimeter around which the skeets couldn’t fly within or risk being hit by the base’s anti-air, as well as the number of individual infantry they had taken down thus far. All of it was for show, with bits and pieces necessary information for her team, given that they couldn’t see much from the ground. She didn’t answer back, for the signal might be picked up. Unlikely as that was, all of her team’s helmet comms had been dialed down in intensity so they’d only effectively reach 100 meters or so, allowing them to talk without being heard on site, and without alerting all but the most sensitive detection gear to their electronic presence.

  “We down to one?” she asked. “I don’t have eyes.”

  “One in the air, the others are down,” Rees-2810 answered from 30 meters further north. “It’s hovering low, trying to stay out of sight of the fighters. Permission to engage?”

  “Can you do it quietly?”

  “If I can’t, Cev has a shot.”

  “Confirmed,” the other Archon agreed.

  “Go,” Morgan said, holding her position and waiting intently. “Any sign of movement from the downed ones?”

  “Two in sight, both shredded,” Vaca reported, with others chiming in with similar negatives.

  Soon Morgan heard an ever so slight crash, slightly enhanced by her helmet’s auditory sensors.

  “Tango down,” Cev-1181 said evenly. “No other signs of movement.”

  “Find the bodies, I want a head count,” Morgan insisted with the other Archons all coming up out of their hiding spots to start searching the area where the patrol had last been seen. After a few minutes they had four accounted for, then Morgan’s suspicion about the cup trees was proven true when the other two were found, one of which was still alive.

  Sati made quick work of it, putting the wingless and legless thing out of its misery with a pair of stinger shots followed by a snap of its neck, fairly confident that it hadn’t been able to see and report anything from its position in the puddle at the bottom of the giant fungi bowl.

  “Load up,” Morgan said as they walked back over to the supply pods and took off her helmet as half the others spread out in patrol mode to cover those dealing with the supplies. She downed half a bottle of water then tossed the rest to Gary-933 as she pulled out a ration bar and several small ambrosia cakes. After getting refilled of sustenance she extended the courtesy to her plasma rifle and other weapons, then took a moment to find a concealed spot to relieve herself before rejoining the others and packing some of the heavy weapons onto her already loaded pack.

  The others did the same and a few minutes later they were ready to move out, stashing the empty supply pods out of sight underneath the cup trees and walking forward as opposed to their normal jog. They were so heavy with gear now that running was problematic, and they didn’t want to arrive at the base overly fatigued. Morgan didn’t like feeling as if she were a turtle, but everything she was carrying was essential, not just for entering the base but for what would probably be a prolonged firefight afterwards. If things got hot she could always ditch the gear with the emergency release on her armor’s rack, but a lot could happen in the 2 seconds that took and she much preferred to stay mobile and lethal at all times.

  The other Archons formed up into a staggered line with Morgan third man back, all of them silent and listening to the surrounding forest for any hint of approaching infantry. Occasionally the Nestafar would move on foot, but usually they’d be dropping down from the air, so the team had to be alert for detection from all angles.

  In addition to the tall fungi trees and other Dr. Seuss knockoffs the terrain was wavy, with a number of small hills and ravines that kept the base out of sight most of the time. This was advantageous to the assault team, but it also left them navigating by battlemap most of the time, otherwise it would have been very easy to get lost. Morgan didn’t know if the Nestafar had a similar navigational system, but she hoped they preferred line of sight and would keep to the air as much as possible, allowing them to slip by underneath without too much trouble.

  They came up and down 6 more hillsides that offered them a brief glimpse of the base before they finally stopped for a moment and took stock of their position. The edge of the base, which was a solid, vertical wall rising up some 15 to 20 meters, was half a mile away with the defense turrets easily visible rising up around the perimeter but set inside the wall. Like the others, this prefab structure was identical in layout, so they knew what to expect based on the others they’d destroyed/seized.

  They had no defense against infantry, other than the wall, which was sufficient to keep them out and thick enough to take hours to burn through with plasma rifles at pointblank range. Explosives would be quicker, but not quick enough, giving the Nestafar infantry or mechs out on the plains plenty of time to react. Here in the forest, which had not been cleared out around the base for more than a handful of meters, the Archon team would have the advantage in that the heavy defense turrets couldn’t depress low enough to target them if and when they got up right next to the wall, which the uncut forest would hopefully allow.

  If they could get that close undetected the first part of their mission would be accomplished, though from their hilltop perch the Archons had spread out on they could see several patrol groups roaming about, floating across the treetops like clusters of flying monkeys. When they got to the wall they could be a problem, bu
t if they could discern a pattern to the patrols then they might be able to time it just right.

  “Start looking for a gap,” Morgan instructed. “We need to keep this as covert as possible.”

  5

  Morgan ran up to the wall, placing her fingertips on the metallic surface for spacing purposes to get her half a step away, then she bent at the knees and readied her muscles. She tagged the chest button on her jump pack and leapt up, using the anti-grav harness to boost her height. It carried her all the way up and above the wall, whereupon she dialed it down and slowly fell back beneath the edge…which she reached out and grabbed with her right hand. Still partially powered, the jump pack helped lift her up and over the edge until she was standing on the flat, narrow top.

  She took a step in and dropped a meter or so down onto the walkway that ringed the inside of the wall as the other Archons came up and over…with Cev timing it perfectly so that his jump arched up and over the ledge, dropping him directly down on the walkway, rocket launcher in hand.

  Morgan walked down a few steps, searching the area for signs of the enemy and found several immediately, further off into the courtyard that served as the LZ for the base…but they were so far away at the moment, with several buildings partially blocking the view, that they didn’t appear to notice the commandos so Morgan led the team along the wall further to the north until they were literally standing meters away from one of the heavy plasma cannon turrets.

  With some quick hand signals they split up into 5 pairs, all of which went separate ways. Morgan and Sati stepped off the ledge and floated down to the ground in between turret and wall where there was a narrow foot path. From there they poked out from the edge and sprinted to the next closest building and swung around it on the far side, firing their plasma rifles at a group of three Nestafar infantry lounging nearby.

  All three went down within a second, then as their rifles fell silent Morgan and Sati heard more weaponsfire coming from other locations as the Archon teams fought their way towards their initial targets…theirs of which was the anti-air tower fifty meters inside the wall.