by Aer-ki Jyr
“You came here to kill us all, correct?”
“We did.”
“Then why should I care what you want?”
“Why do you offer surrender?”
“Because we’re not the ones in the wrong and I don’t like killing those who are helpless.”
The purple bioluminescent patches along the J’gar’s spine flared at the word ‘helpless.’
“You should not even exist.”
“But we do, and not because of a sponsor. But because the V’kit’no’sat left our ancestors behind on this planet to die. Why, I do not know. There are no records of what transpired. We are here, and out of the chaos that this world was we have rebuilt it with the knowledge you unwittingly left behind. This is our world now, and this empire is our territory. You relinquished claim to it when you left. Go back to your empire and leave us to ours.”
“If you believe that you can defy us, it is you who are arrogant. Tell me, where did you acquire these altered Hadarak?”
“Public records say all I’m going to say, but I can assure you they predate the V’kit’no’sat.”
“And how many do you think you will require to defeat us?”
“We didn’t acquire them to launch an invasion. We acquired them to free them from their imprisonment…and to stop one from a rampage,” Roger added, “but bottom line is we don’t use people. We unite people. And now those Uriti are our friends. I don’t suggest you go and introduce yourself anytime soon.”
“The knowledge to alter Hadarak is beyond the V’kit’no’sat. Where did you get it?”
“We haven’t altered any.”
“Do not think you can mislead me. Your path is obvious now. You will need an armada of them to topple us, thus you must produce more even if you have not yet. If we are to die, tell us so we can know who to curse with our last breath.”
“It doesn’t have to be your last breath. I’m giving you the chance to live.”
“And what would that life look like?”
“I told your buddies they could take you with them in exchange for abandoning half their ships. Apparently they value them more than you.”
“And what deal would you offer us alone?”
Roger rubbed his chin. “That’s a good question. I could tell you that the Oso’lon are behind this and let you go back and cause all hell…but it just isn’t true, so I won’t. We built all this, regardless of whether you can admit it or not.”
“I could if it weren’t for certain aspects that are beyond the records left here. You have gotten outside help from someone.”
“Look, we can continue this conversation forever if you like, but you don’t have an unlimited amount of time here. I know you’re fishing for information but I’m not going to tell you anything you could transmit to the departing fleet.”
“Then you admit to holding something back.”
“Yeah, I do. Good luck guessing it.”
“The traitors will be routed out, one way or another.”
“And what if they’re your superiors?”
“Is that why you are offering us surrender? If so, speak it plainly now.”
“We haven’t had any dealings with the V’kit’no’sat. I’m offering you a chance to live, warrior to warrior…even if you are a giant fish…thing.”
“Come onboard yourself and we will see who is the superior warrior, Zen’zat.”
“Archon,” Roger corrected, “but if your Zen’zat onboard want to surrender, we’ll take them.”
“We will not give you prisoners so easily.”
“So why are we talking then?”
“I had hoped you would be naïve enough to give us more time, but no matter. Your ships cannot destroy the Mach’nel in time,” the J’gar said as the ship began to move slightly faster than Roger assumed it could in towards the planet. “If we are to die, then we die in the water.”
The comm cut off and Roger got a very bad feeling in his gut as he saw their line of movement. Their weapons were still shooting the surrounding stations, including the Tar’vem’jic, but they were on a direct route to the Pacific Ocean.
“Like hell you are,” Roger said, calling his fleet into action and blocking formations for the Ultimas that went racing out to catch up to them. He checked the internal progress of the aptly named cutters inside the Mach’nel, but they weren’t close enough to the remaining gravity drives. He was going to have to move the ship from the outside and there wasn’t much time to make an intercept before it hit the planetary shields and either crumpled on them or…
Just then he saw the Tar’vem’jic switch targets from the orbital stations to the planet, firing on the shielding over the Pacific Ocean and beginning to weaken a section of it prior to the Mach’nel ramming it…but not at kamikaze speed. That much mass was going to be hard to stop, but even if half of it crunched on impact the other half would survive as it crashed down into the ocean. It was too big to become submerged, but it would crush the cities on the sea floor and create such a huge tidal wave that it would have repercussions far from the impact site.
As bad as that was, he knew that if they could get to the ocean the J’gar were going to wreak havoc down there. As large as the Star Force aquatics fleet was, they didn’t have anything to match a J’gar…which made the Elarioni look like bugs in comparison. They were going to go down fighting, and if they could get to the water they would have a significant advantage. Not enough to survive, but enough to kill a lot of people and wreck a lot of equipment before they were eventually taken down.
Roger watched in mind’s eye as the big dot that was the Mach’nel got closer and closer to the planet, accelerating as it went and not bothering to slow down. He calculated that it wouldn’t until it was only a few hundred miles away, then it’d bleed off just enough energy to keep it from destroying itself but retaining enough to punch through the planetary shields. That impact would slow it considerably, but if enough momentum was held coming through…
The trailblazer stopped thinking through the ramifications, for there was no way to know for sure what would happen and it was all moot anyway. He had to stop that ship before it hit the shield and he was thankful he still had some Ultimas nearby to pull on.
When they got into range they targeted only the gravity drives still functional, cutting out their power but leaving so much inertial momentum remaining that they weren’t going to stop it from impact…then in a desperate maneuver Roger lightly rammed half his fleet into the port side of the egg-shaped monster and began pushing with all of their gravity drives in a delicately balanced effort that took his Sav-enhanced mind’s full attention with him having to readjust constantly to keep the ships from crushing themselves and to start to redirect the Mach’nel into a decaying orbit.
At first there wasn’t much movement, but Roger quickly got the stresses under control and upped the gravity drives to the drone hulls’ breaking points as the rest of his ships covered for the Ultimas and blasted away at another section of the Mach’nel’s shields. When that thin barrier finally dropped he sent more drones to make contact with the hull there and add to his maneuvering options…all the while the Mach’nel’s weapons were shooting at whatever drones they could and the Tar’vem’jic was hammering away at the Ultimas.
Roger was going to deal with it shortly, but first he had to get the enemy ship off its collision course with the planet. The numbers were on his side now, but he couldn’t keep losing Ultimas. If the Mach’nel got even one gravity drive back he’d lose this tug of war.
As they angled away from a direct line to the planet they passed within range of several Sentinels that Roger ordered to strike at the Tar’vem’jic. It was still protected by a shield and the long range shots weren’t pinpoint accurate, but eventually they got past the primary shields and were making a few hits against the weapon’s last defense as Roger finally got the damn ship turned enough, missing the atmosphere by a mere 80 miles as the lateral movement kept increasing and the momentarily contai
ned Mach’nel began inching up in altitude while racing through the sky appearing bigger than the moon to those below on the surface looking up.
With the Ultimas holding the Mach’nel in a neutral coast, Roger redirected his hull damaged drones and whatever Sentinels were coming in and out of range to taking out the Tar’vem’jic while the rest physically blocked for the Ultimas with the trailblazer seeing their number ticking down ominously. At the same time the cutters inside destroyed power conduits and generators, blacking out tiny bits of the Mach’nel’s hull and creating safe zones for the drones to move into…with Roger repositioning some of the Ultimas there while maintaining their IDF cones over the huge gravity drives that were essentially spinning their wheels with no gravity effect to push against.
Getting through the Tar’vem’jic’s shields took longer than the other batteries on the ship, due to the fact that it was obviously the primary target and it contained 28 different shield layers, all of which were dropping and raising with precision each time it fired and destroyed another drone. Eventually with no primary shields to cover it and a lot of concentrated fire, Roger’s fleet broke through and put it out of commission, leaving the rest of the weaponry to contend with, but having taken out the main threat to the Ultimas.
Roger breathed a huge sigh of relief when that weapon went down, but he didn’t flinch from the work that followed. The J’gar didn’t contact him again and he didn’t bother to repeat his offer of surrender. If they had a change of mind he’d consider it, but he wasn’t going to bend over backwards to save the people who had come here to kill them. If the J’gar wanted to go out in combat, then that’s what he was going to give them.
As the cutters dug deeper and deeper inside the ship they created pathways like ants digging through the dirt while drones outside chewed on the Yeg’gor armor around the openings, expanding them so larger drones could fit in. Slowly more and more entered the ship while the external defenses were plucked around certain areas, then Roger didn’t even bother taking out the others, knowing not to waste the drones on them as his little army of ants began to snowball inside.
It took another 18 hours of internal chewing before the Mach’nel was truly dead, both in terms of crew and equipment, leaving it in a close orbit around earth and giving the planet’s sky a second, oblong moon to look at while Roger began to organize boarding parties using resources and personnel on Earth. He was going to look for survivors and take prisoners if possible, but he needed to get his people inside and gain as much intel as they could on V’kit’no’sat tech updates and their history past the point where Earth had been abandoned…plus any other secrets they could stumble across.
That said, Roger put it all together and left the internal exploration to others while he raced to get his drone fleet loaded up into jumpships and over to the exiting jumpline the fleeing V’kit’no’sat fleet had taken. He had to get after them and hopefully catch up and kill some of their ships before they could flee Star Force territory. It was clear now that they were out for blood, and letting them regroup with another fleet would only be to Star Force’s disadvantage…not to mention the possibility of that still sizeable fleet hitting a lesser defended target on the way out.
Roger had already sent word ahead, but he needed to stay on their heels to make sure they left at the minimum. As for the other trailblazers, he wished he could go down to Earth and help them, for while the V’kit’no’sat fleeing the crashed ships had successfully been destroyed, they were starting to get reports of Zen’zat saboteurs far from the impact point and moving through the undercity where mechs and aerial craft couldn’t go.
They were going to have to hunt them down on foot, and given some of the reports of how easily they were blowing through security forces, Roger knew they were going to need him and as many other high ranking Archons as they could get to take these guys down quickly, for they’d already destroyed one shield generator complex and a couple of planetary defense batteries...not to mention killing thousands of people along the way.
7
June 13, 3602
Solar System
Earth
Kaalo ran through the Star Force undercity at the head of a group of 8 Zen’zat, all in Brat’mar service, while the others were split up into similar groups and moving through adjacent regions so not all of the 236 surviving Zen’zat would be in the same spot at the same time and make for a tempting target for a pinpoint orbital strike or explosive attack. That said, they were all within half a mile or so of each other and moving with coordination as they approached another shield generator, knowing it was going to be better defended than their previous targets, for Star Force was beginning to anticipate their attacks and reinforce the most important facilities.
But this time the Zen’zat were coming in as low as possible in the infrastructure and forcing the defenders to fight them there in what would be a bad approach normally, for it constricted the Zen’zat’s movements, but close quarters fighting was to their advantage and going in where the enemy expected you was not wise. Kaalo and the other elite Zen’zat leading this attack knew that they were going to die on this planet, but they intended to do the maximum amount of damage prior to that, so they couldn’t get sloppy.
Kaalo’s group came up to a blast door that had been shut across the corridor, stopping them in their tracks and forcing them to go through it. He hated the delay, but allowing the enemy to control their movements by what doors they dropped in their path would have been a mistake, so he and the other 8 Zen’zat started firing into the wall frame outside the door in order to burn through to the key mechanical components that they could see with their Pefbar. Their combined fired took a couple minutes to burn through, then only a few seconds to junk the locking mechanism, freeing the door and allowing two of the Zen’zat to pull it aside with their ample muscle strength…then the 9 of them were through and running again as they approached the first of the emitter chambers where they intended to do their damage.
Odds were Star Force would be able to repair most or all of it before another V’kit’no’sat fleet got here, so the Zen’zat were trying to score as many hits as they could. Unfortunately they didn’t have the explosives needed to do a lot of damage to multiple targets and the frustrating design of the Star Force infrastructure resisted any attempts to get it to overload. That left them as more than vandals now, but they were still able to kill a fair number of people that hadn’t been evacuated out of their path…and those they’d make sure that they couldn’t be revived.
What Kaalo was waiting for was the more elite troops to get to them, and striking at these targets…even if they would be repaired…was a way of drawing them out. At least that’s what Kaalo was looking forward to, though the other Zen’zat had higher ambitions regarding the infrastructure. He wasn’t going to object to that, though now that they were down here he didn’t see a way of doing enough damage to matter in the long term and no one knew of a second fleet nearby to call on for aid, though the forces eliminating the Li’vorkrachnika were the closest. If they could mount enough ships in a short enough amount of time then the damage they were doing would be very important, but that was a slim hope now.
What Kaalo wanted was Rio, but when they encountered enemy infantry ahead he wasn’t so lucky. It was more of their weaker troops with a few Archons sprinkled in. They were carrying heavier weapons and utilizing barricades to delay the Zen’zat while throwing down damage…a decent tactic…but it didn’t stop them as they simply charged ahead, using their Lachka to disrupt the aim of the troops enough for them to get up to the barricades and physically dislodge them.
The defenders retreated back to another set, all the while trying to wear down the Zen’zat’s shields but Kaalo didn’t care. They took the brunt of the attacks up until he spotted explosives hidden behind the next set. He called a halt to their advance, then all 9 of the Zen’zat used their Lachka to pick up one of the barricades and throw it into the explosives, dislodging them from the wall but not
detonating them. The Zen’zat then picked up the explosives themselves and eviscerated the components from afar.
Still they didn’t explode, but when thoroughly trashed the Zen’zat moved forward and past the shredded devices, moving up to the last section of barricades and breaking through with the cowardly Star Force troops retreating and giving them access to the emitter area…inside of which was a huge field of equipment rising multiple stories high and connected by catwalks. The Zen’zat were coming in on the lowest level and had solid floor beneath them, with two other Zen’zat teams already here but out of sight. This emitter was 6 miles wide and 4 long with plenty of equipment to trash. It was a pity they could only destroy a small fraction of it, but by now they knew where the soft spots were with Kaalo’s team headed to the nearest capacitor.
No more hidden explosives were found here, for good reason, though Kaalo would have torn this entire place up in order to get at them if he was the defenders. Apparently they weren’t so inclined to come after them just yet, and he hoped that meant higher level troops were nearby and inbound.
When they crossed through an intersection in the emitter ‘city’ they got shot from the flank by the troops that had just been running from them…but this time there were no barricades set up to slow them down and the Zen’zat went after them, sprinting so fast the white-armored troops and their scattering of Archons couldn’t get away this time. Kaalo was going to kill these then head back to the capacitor and continue doing so with as many infantry as they sent his way.
They’d made a mistake getting this close and they were about to pay for it, but as the Star Force troops fired on him while running backwards they crossed another intersection that Kaalo thought might hold an ambush…but there were no minds on either side so he didn’t worry about it until he was close to engaging and flicked on his Pefbar.
He had two strides to ready himself as a Zen’zat-sized body flew out from the left and rammed him. Kaalo managed to duck down and flip the black/gold armored individual over his head and into the far wall a meter past the intersection, but the collision also threw him to the side as well, with another identically armored ‘Knight’ coming in and tackling him.
