Star Force: Foothold (SF25)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  Jason tapped the control podium steadily, resisting the urge to punch it in frustration. His remote pilots were bringing the battle under control and the numbers of lizard fighters in play were significantly thinning, but once again the bastards had succeeded in doing far more damage than they should have.

  As the last of the fighters thinned out the heavy cruisers resumed their long range attack on the defense station, lancing it with the pure white cleansing beams until all of its primary weapons on the near side were destroyed. After that the rest of the Legolas’s fleet moved into plasma range and, keeping within the shadow of the dead batteries, unleashed a torrent of blue orbs that systematically destroyed the battle station, clearing planetary orbit of the last lizard presence, now that the other warships had finished off the cruisers.

  Recalling all attack drones, and then the remote-controlled warships, back into formation around the Legolas, Jason’s section of the armada moved into a parking orbit while Kyler’s and Emily’s dropped down closer to the planet and began setting up for orbital bombardment. Meanwhile Jason’s damaged ships were pulled into the service area of the jumpship two at a time to begin making repairs. Smaller support craft were sent out from the Legolas to retrieve Star Force debris, along with an escort, while his other two warships moved about all three battlefields picking up what salvage they deemed necessary or just clearing the orbital lanes of it for navigational purposes.

  Emily’s image appeared as a small hologram above the control pedestal in the command nexus, indicating to Jason that she also stood in the one aboard her own warship. “What happened?”

  “Remember those det packs the lizards like so much? Well, they adapted them to their fighters for use against our capital ships…trouble is there’s no visible difference between the poppers and the regular wisps. They send a cloud of several hundred at you and you’re left guessing which ones to shoot first. Guess wrong and they take a chunk out of your ship.”

  Emily raised an eyebrow. “Nukes?”

  Jason shook his head. “Rad signature was wrong, but the yield is comparable. I’d guess a level 8 shipbuster.”

  “How would they fit that inside their hull?”

  “I don’t know, and I’ve only now just begun to sift through the sensor records.”

  Emily’s hologram suddenly shifted to the left, off center, as Kyler’s appeared beside it, both of them standing about 18 inches tall.

  “We’ve got trouble, I think,” he said as his image jabbed his finger forward multiple times, punching buttons that the hologram didn’t show. “We’re pulling a more detailed scan of our first target zone and found this.”

  A small hologram appeared alongside the Archon’s image and Jason highlighted it, bringing it up in the background where the orbital tracking grid lay. A portion of the red-dirted planet replaced it, dotted by hundreds of lizard bases in fairly close proximity.

  “There are an awful lot of them down there,” Jason agreed.

  “Not what I meant,” Kyler said.

  “Oh shit,” Emily swore when she saw it.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Kyler echoed. “I don’t know if it’s transmitted yet, because I’m pretty sure it needs line of sight.”

  “Damn,” Jason said when he finally noticed the comm building…no, make that complex that was as large as a base itself. They’d never encountered one before because they’d never seen a planet this infested with lizards. It was something well up their tech tree that Star Force was aware of because of the blueprints and other data they’d taken from captured lizard databases, but it wasn’t something they’d expected this far away from the lizards’ core systems. “They’re making a major move into this region.”

  “That’s what it looks like,” Kyler agreed. “Question is, why? Do they need room to expand or are they coming after us?”

  “Or trying to flank the others,” Emily suggested. “None of this makes sense…especially why the Hycre didn’t know about it.”

  “I’m starting to think the Hycre are more in the dark than they’re letting on,” Jason mewed, looking over the well-developed infrastructure on the planet’s surface. “I’m also seeing some umbrella shield generators down there.”

  “We may not have enough ordinance to get through all of them,” Emily suggested. “I think we need to smash them as hard as we can now and send back a courier requesting reinforcements.”

  “To Namek or chasing after the others?” Jason asked.

  “We have 6, so why not both?” Kyler suggested.

  “Send three,” Emily amended. “One to Paul, two after Rafa. Greg’s group is too far away.”

  “I’ll make out an info packet,” Jason offered, “and take care of the one to Paul.”

  “Thought you might,” Emily said with a grin. “I’ll send both of mine after Rafa, and let’s hope he hasn’t come across any more planets like this one.”

  “Jason, might want to have your warships start eating lizard debris and see if we can’t get enough materials to make a few more rail gun rounds.”

  The trailblazer nodded. “Now I’m glad Paul insisted on installing the upgrades in place of the auxiliary shield generator…assuming the micro-factories work. I don’t think they’ve ever been tested.”

  “No time like the present,” Emily said, glancing down at her unseen pedestal. “I’m going to pick an umbrella and see how much it actually takes to get through it. Kyler, if there’s a chance that thing hasn’t transmitted yet, smoke it before it does.”

  “That’s the plan…though it’s under 3 overlapping umbrellas, so it’s going to take a lot to get through short of a ground invasion, and I don’t think we should try anything other than orbital bombardment for now.”

  “Ditto,” Jason echoed. “If you need more ships let me know, but that transmitter has to go.”

  “I’m on it,” he said with a nod before his hologram disappeared.

  “How’s the head?” Emily asked before she signed off as well.

  “Three nights ago was the worst it’s been. Today is only moderately bad.”

  “Still no pain meds?”

  “That’d defeat the purpose,” he reminded her.

  “Unless you just need a break from the stress?”

  “It’s bad, but not that bad. I’m not knuckling under just yet.”

  “Keep me updated.”

  Jason nodded then Emily’s hologram cut out as well, leaving him with an unobstructed view of the lizard transmitter complex and the bases ringing it. There were three of them that had a huge shield generator at the center, and from the data displayed in front of him he could tell that they were already activated, invisible as they were to the naked eye. The battlemap had a dotted ring indicating the outer edge of each shield, and all three crossed over the transmitter, intentionally he assumed, given that other than sending courier ships, the transmitter was their only way to send messages back to the rest of their empire.

  According to the data they’d recovered, a transmitter like this sent a self-accelerating signal off in an extremely narrow cone designed to blanked a single star system on the other end where a very sensitive, and large, receiving station in space would pick up and decipher the message, whether it be long, short, or a continuous stream of data. That station would then retransmit the messages through their standard communications channels within the system, and if it needed to be relayed on it would be shuffled over to that system’s transmitter and the process would repeat.

  Given that there was no receiving station set up here, Jason assumed that either they hadn’t gotten around to building one yet, which was unlikely given that the transmitter was far more complicated than the receiver, or this system only had a transmitter so it could keep the rest of lizard territory up to date on what was happening on the frontier. Jason suspected that the local lizard bases and ships all passed through the Eritath System regularly to drop off information that would then be sent back through the network to the lizards masterminding the entire war eff
ort.

  He knew why the transmitter was on the surface…to protect the critical and costly piece of infrastructure from naval attack, but the downside was they had to wait for the planetary rotation to carry them around into range of the system they wanted to contact. Not knowing where that was, but assuming it was pointed rimward, they might have arrived in the system after the transmitter had rotated out of alignment…based on Jason’s guess it was a close call, but then again, if they had a receiving system set laterally or above the planet it wouldn’t matter.

  Better safe than sorry he knew, and he was sure Kyler would be able to take it out eventually. If they had sent a signal it would still take weeks, if not months to work its way back to the lizard homeworld. Lizard specs indicated that the speed of transmission was roughly 4x that of their jumpships. Alliance relays, built a bit differently but still based on a self-accelerating signal, were supposed to be 3x faster than the lizard version…but until Star Force got access to the grid there was no way of confirming that boast.

  Until then, and probably a great after then as well, the Humans were going to have to rely on courier ships to carry messages back and forth between systems. Each of the trailblazers had brought two along with them, knowing that as they spread out communication would be even more critical to coordinating their counterfront assault on the lizards. Each of the micro-jumpships was 3 kilometers long and nothing more than engines with a pathetic amount of cargo and personnel space tucked up underneath the nose cone. Weaponry was akin to that on a cargo ship, while the shields were adequate…of course they had to be for a jumpship, else they’d risk losing the ship to small debris while in mid jump.

  The couriers were slightly faster than the warships or cargo jumpships, though not by a lot. An empty cargo model was actually a touch faster, due to the size of engines that the smaller couriers simply couldn’t match…and the naval specialists couldn’t bring themselves to design a 10-20 kilometer long ship just to ferry messages back and forth. Mass for mass, they could get 50 couriers out of one such gigantic ship, though the gravity drive components were much harder to come by.

  The 6 couriers accompanying this group flew separate from the warships, then refueled out of their ample stores when necessary, allowing them extra range and mission durability due to the fact that they couldn’t haul around a massive amount of fuel without it slowing them down further than their designers liked.

  Two days later, with addition information gleaned about the lizards’ surface bases, Jason dispatched all three couriers with the data packet he’d assembled along with a personal message for Paul, bringing him up to date with his recent mental breakthrough…and subsequent setbacks.

  10

  April 14, 2404

  Eritath System

  3rd planet

  Kyler watched from the bridge as the orbital bombardment of the second Umbrella-class lizard shield generator penetrated the thickest part of the variable defensive field. The rain of rail gun slugs passed through and down onto another, smaller shield beneath covering the base that contained the larger shield generator that even now was trying to restore power to its matrix.

  The trailblazer could see on the computer-enhanced surface images that the outer portions of the umbrella shield were still active, including the pair of shipyards that were this attack’s primary targets. Assaulting them directly would have meant hitting a weaker portion of the umbrella and punching through to get to them, but in doing so the umbrella would continuously regenerate, soaking up additional rounds all the way up through the final destruction of the shipyards…and then cover over their remains.

  It was an impressive piece of technology and was proving difficult to eradicate, but Star Force was quickly learning what it took to deal with them and appropriating sufficient firepower as Kyler, Emily, and Jason’s fleets spread out around the planet hitting a variety of targets. Each umbrella they brought down would expose a small region of the planet and the bases it contained, then those bases would have to be assaulted and their individual shield generators breached in order to actually get at the lizard infrastructure, making for an ammunition heavy assault…but worth it, considering that Star Force had naval superiority at the moment and was annihilating the lizards piece by piece without having to land any ground troops.

  The transmitter had been the hardest target to take down to date, given that they had to destroy 3 umbrellas to get at it and the very far edges of the umbrellas had overlapped on top of each other’s generators, meaning they had to punch through 4 shields in total to knock out a generator. It had taken Kyler’s forces 2 days of continuous bombardment to get through, though part of that timespan was given to trial and error because they didn’t know how strong the shields were to begin with.

  Since then the targets had been falling more rapidly, though each shield still took a while to drain of enough energy to form a temporary breach point and that meant thousands of rail gun rounds having to be expended. As it was Kyler’s armada had already blown through their entire armory stores and were having to rely on makeshift replacements constructed from the warship debris. This was causing significant time gaps between the various assaults, but all three trailblazers had agreed that waiting and stretching out their ammunition would be pointless. Better to hit and annihilate what they could rather than give the lizards time to plan and adapt.

  In all, Star Force had managed to hit 8% of the lizard bases on the planet, cherry picking the most critical ones. They’d also discovered a number of subsurface ones as well, though how many of those were present was an ongoing reconnaissance matter. None of them had been targeted, given how precious the rail gun ammunition was, but if and when they got reinforcements they were going to need as accurate maps as possible to plan out further orbital bombardments.

  Kyler stuck around long enough to see several rail gun rounds catch and repierce the umbrella shield as it tried to reform, with most of them passing through and hammering the base shield beneath. Given the number of ships firing on target it didn’t last long, and finally the first of the metallic slugs got through and buildings began to smash under the random kinetic impacts. He wished they’d have been able to target specific structures, but given the distance they were firing from and the ballistic nature of the rounds, cluster fire was their only option and eventually one of the slugs landed on top of the umbrella generator.

  The dotted outline around the base and the surrounding area disappeared in an instant, leaving only the small one over that individual base in play, though it also winked out a few moments later when its shield generator was hit.

  Knowing that the base was all but dead now, and the shipyards soon to follow, Kyler left the bridge and their eradication to the warship’s Captain and headed over to the sanctum for his morning workouts that he’d delayed slightly so he could oversee the assault, unnecessary as that was now. Still, when dealing with the lizards you had to expect the unexpected and he didn’t feel comfortable being out of the loop for too long.

  “Sir?” his earpiece said as he was halfway there.

  “Go,” Kyler said, stopping in the hallway.

  “Line from Archon Emily.”

  “Put it through,” he said, taking a step to the side and leaning on the hallway wall while a pair of crewers passed.

  “Kyler?”

  “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “We just picked up a lizard jumpship entering high orbit and pulling a U-turn. It’s gone from our sensors now and I’d bet you 50 credits it’s running back to tell the others that we’re here kicking the crap out of the planet.”

  Kyler frowned, then realized that Emily’s fleet was on the opposite side of the planet, meaning if the lizards had jumped in there they’d have been blocked from his fleet’s sensors…still, they should have been sharing telemetry between the three fleets on a constant basis. “Why didn’t my people see that?”

  “We almost missed it too. That damn sensor stealthing hid it until we did a narrow beam scan followin
g a comm signal. I think they stuck around just long enough to ask the planet what was going on then ran like hell.”

  “So much for keeping this under wraps,” Kyler said, lightly punching the wall with the base of his fist. “Now it’s a race to see whose reinforcements get here first.”

  “You think they’ve got enough ships close enough to try and take us on, or they’ll have to send for a fleet from home?”

  “I’d guess the latter, but I wouldn’t put any money on it. I think we also need to station a few ships on the jumpline from the star for detection purposes. If they can get a jumpship here without us noticing we’re positioned all wrong.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Emily offered, “but if they come with enough ships to bother us they’ll make themselves known.”

  “True. You bring Jason up to speed yet?”

  “No, I’ll fill him in later. He’s in secluded training at the moment and this wasn’t urgent enough to disturb him.”

  “More mental training?”

  “Detox is more like it. He’s getting hit pretty hard.”

  “You think we’re all in for that eventually?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  Jason lay on the floor of the training chamber, pushing around the pain in his head as he tried to find a thought or impulse that would drain the pressure building near overload inside, then he pressed his hands to the ground and brought himself up into an inverted ‘V’, bending at the waist. He held that posture for a bit, feeling the blood start to flow into his head and move the pain around further, then he leaned forward and kicked up into a handstand and fought to regain his balance, both physically and mentally.

  Paul preferred this posture more than he did, and he hoped his friend was on to something because he was virtually at his wits’ end with this nonstop mental war that he was losing badly. Nothing he did seemed to work and his mind kept getting more and more fragmented, not to mention raw. The 3d sense literally wouldn’t turn off now, no matter how much he tried, and it felt like it was burning his brain out in the process.