by Aer-ki Jyr
“Pfff…” Paul said, making a noise of disbelief. “You’re in our territory. Of course there are more ships comings. Did your egg get cracked before you hatched?”
“It’s just a matter of time before your worlds fall. For your sake, your ships had better arrive soon…if you have enough to spare.”
“Simultaneous assaults have their advantages…Rovo’kor,” Paul said, finally finding a name. “And their weaknesses.”
“So you have heard of me?”
“Just now,” Paul said honestly. “Your record is…sketchy. I can probably lure you into a trap by swinging my control ships close. Dumb Era’tran are always trying for them, and I don’t see anything to suggest you’re otherwise.”
“You know very little of the V’kit’no’sat if you think us dumb. We possess something called Sav that few others can even comprehend.”
“As do I,” Paul reminded him, pointing at his sparkling grey Mvor eye alteration.
“This I know, which is why it is a fair fight…compensating for your lack of ships. I shall score our efforts afterwards to determine who has accomplished more, though the overall outcome is fixed. If you believe otherwise, feel free to prove your dominance with deeds rather than words.”
The Era’tran cut the comm one smartass comment sooner than Paul was going to, but he’d accomplished his purpose. For whatever reason, the intelligent Era’tran had always been pushovers for Paul. Not so much for the other trailblazers, and no one knew for sure why Paul was different against them other than his methods seemed to piss them off to no end. That little conversation set the stage for what the Era’tran expected to happen, so now all Paul had to do was exceed it and he’d succeed in getting under his thick red skin.
If naval combat occurred freestyle, with ships determining their own targets and movements, they could do a lot of damage but would get picked apart by a coordinated fleet even half their size. Warships had to move like a school of fish, and how that school moved and cycled within itself was determined by the race and commander within the V’kit’no’sat. Era’tran were smart and aggressive, and arguably one of the harder opponents to face within the enemy empire, but this fleet was made up of more than just Era’tran. There were 34 different races here, including a few Oso’lon ships. They were the toughest, in that they were a mix of aggressive and patient, and they too had the Sav psionic that increased their intelligence.
The fact that an Era’tran was commanding this fleet instead of an Oso’lon said that Rovo’kor was very experienced. What record of him Paul had access to was over 100,000 years old, but even then his name was notable enough to be included in the V’kit’no’sat battle acumen, with a full skills profile detailing a blunt, but not sloppy tactician that was well suited to coming in with a numerical advantage and making the most of it. He wasn’t inclined to waste ships or time, finding that perfect balance between the two that left the mission accomplished and the assault force intact, though diminished. Rovo’kor wasn’t one to shirk from losses when necessary, and the fact that he was assaulting 3 planets simultaneously attested to his professional impatience.
He knew the longer he was here the more Star Force ships would dribble in from other systems, so he was pressing as hard as he thought he could without overreaching. There were 6 planets in this system and he wasn’t going after all of them. According to battlemap records he hadn’t even sent a ship into orbit over the other three yet, and from the number of troops on the ground it appeared he had plenty to assault 3 planets at once.
He wasn’t overly cautious and he wasn’t overly aggressive, but he definitely tilted towards aggression and if he was a telltale Era’tran he would go more that way when his dominance was brought into question.
But this wasn’t a good situation for Paul. He was outmassed 7 to 1 in terms of ships, and the anti-orbital weaponry only came into play if Rovo’kor was stupid enough to fight him over it. He’d have to in order to break through the other 3 planetary shields and establish footholds there, but for these planets Paul doubted he would be able to entice him inward unless he could endanger the ground troops…some of which were already under intact segments of the planetary shield and working their way through urban combat.
Paul could run his ships down just above shield level and try to target those exposed, but from the positioning of Rovo’kor’s fleet he could tell the Era’tran was anticipating that tactic and had interceptor groups just nudging out from the center of his formation that could drop directly into the conduit down to the surface, taking some hits before they got low enough to skim the surface and cover the ground troops long enough for a costly fight to break out between both sides that would result in an expansion of the foothold zone to the point where ships could come and go without getting hit from adjacent regions.
Rovo’kor hadn’t pushed it that far because he was hoping to accomplish the same expansion with his ground troops. Paul could force that fight, but it wouldn’t be enough. He needed to get the V’kit’no’sat over an intact section of the planet with full offensive firepower…and he really didn’t expect that to happen.
That meant he had to nibble away on the fringes, which wouldn’t accomplish much very fast, but if the V’kit’no’sat chased he could always run down to just above the planetary shields were they would not go, meaning he had safe haven to work out of for the simple reason they didn’t want to force that costly fight unless needed to establish a foothold.
This was a double-edged sword that Paul was smart enough to use to his advantage, and the multiple ‘flower petals’ were already heading out to start nipping away at the planetary defense fleets and the stellar orbit partial blockade they had set up. Those would take longer to run to safety, so Paul expected more activity there, but the fleet over Ennvor held the flagship and a slightly higher number of ships, meaning it was going to be the toughest nut to crack and Paul knew they’d be interested in taking him out now that they knew which ship he was on, for Paul wasn’t hiding the Excalibur’s identifiers either.
That was by design, not recklessness, for the more they focused on him the longer his drones would last, and his command ship was a lot more durable…but not expendable. That was the trick and the narrow line he had made an art out of walking, and it largely depended on what the enemy could do and what Paul expected them to do.
So while the ship count mattered, Paul was working this fight into a commander vs commander one, requiring Paul to win a 7 to 1 ratio just to pull even, but with a lot of tiny fights whose winability was even. A full frontal assault and slug fest would ultimately be determined by the ship count unless this Era’tran was overly stupid.
Paul wasn’t going to assume that, so he got to work with a few prickling runs against the outermost ships in Rovo’kor’s fleet, seeing how he would respond…which was to stand their ground and essential become turrets. That was something Paul could exploit, and with a few thoughts he sent out modifications to his fleet groups’ movements, beginning the naval chess match that had to be won before any help could be given to the surface…for Paul had no troop ships with him to land on the other side of the planet. Just a naval force that needed orbital bombardment capability.
And right now Rovo’kor’s fleet was blocking him from that.
Paul’s face altered slightly as he shifted into full immersion mode, his mind more in the computer than his own senses, and he began the long and tedious process of probing, learning, and countering this Era’tran and his multi-racial fleet, each segment of which micromanaged differently, but ultimately worked flawlessly under their commander’s strategy.
A pity that. Had they been less unified Paul could have exploited the cracks, but the V’kit’no’sat empire was too good. If they hadn’t been, the Devastation Zone never would have been expanded as far as it had and their empire wouldn’t span half the galaxy.
But they did have their psychological blind spots, as did Paul, but Star Force had learned more from the massive losses than the V’kit’
no’sat had the victories, and whenever Paul encountered a weakness in himself or his fleet he wanted to find it, chart it, and eliminate it. The V’kit’no’sat preferred to deny blind spots until they were thrown in their face, and hopefully this Era’tran still had a few. If not, this counterattack was going to take a lot of time to make any progress at, and the three planets under assault were on the clock.
It didn’t look good, but it was workable and Paul set himself to a more aggressive attack schedule, for he could sleep whenever he wanted by pulling his ships back between probing strikes. The combat would occur when he said, not when the V’kit’no’sat dictated.
So not fearing having to spend days straight in the command nexus he let himself fight freely, finding the lack of ships to also be an advantage as far as his mental strength as concerned. Less for him to fight with made it easier to concentrate, making for yet another double-edged sword that was going to cut the V’kit’no’sat so long as Paul didn’t make a mistake.
15
November 3, 4813
Karthus System (Star Force territory)
Requiem
Olivia rode in the command nexus just off the bridge as her command ship Yippie Ki Yay came out of its jump into the besieged Karthus System, glad to pick up some battlemap signals, telling her there was at least something left to defend…but the major damage had already been done, and even as there were V’kit’no’sat warships waiting at the jumppoint and her ship began to light up with weapon impacts her Sav-enhanced mind saw the condition on Requiem.
The fight in planetary orbit was over, with large bands of debris fields marking where the fight had gone down. Both V’kit’no’sat and Star Force ship rubble drifted there, some on escaping orbital tracks, with a huge breach in the planetary defense shields exposing a chunk of the planet’s surface. Several cities were now dark, with battlemap information detailing their fall, but some 83% of the planet was still in Star Force hands while a massive V’kit’no’sat army prowled the surface.
But not so large as it had once been. Requiem’s unique defense item had already been triggered days ago, with the empty plains that stretched between cities now nothing but destroyed ground…but it hadn’t been the V’kit’no’sat’s doing, rather a network of hidden explosives deep enough underground to be missed by all but a tight scan, yet shallow enough to catch the ground troops on the surface in a nova-like explosion.
It was a one time trick, for Oliva could see other pieces of the planet where the troops had not been blasted with precision strikes to take out the buried weapons, but at least that had delayed the troops’ progression, and the initial explosion where they were had killed or weakened over 120,000 of them as the ground under their feet literally threw them up into the overhead defense shield they were fighting underneath.
Those that survived had Star Force aerial craft on them in moments with a counterattack on the ground shortly thereafter, but the ‘R’ attack wasn’t going to be of use elsewhere aside from buying time.
Right now the Mach’nel was sitting back in high orbit and out of firing range of its Tar’vem’jic. It was good to see it wasn’t sitting a bit lower and firing into the still existing planetary shields, but from battlemap data she could see why. The shield strength was superior to the weaponsfire, meaning it couldn’t get through without help from the fleet, and their weapons’ range wasn’t greater than that of the planetary defenses. If Requiem’s shields had been less robust and their recharge rate was less than the Tar’vem’jic, then the Mach’nel could have sat above them and chipped away at it for weeks until they finally got a breach…but not here. The primary shields were too strong, so despite the fact that the entire defense fleet save the jumpships were destroyed, the planet itself was too big a threat for the V’kit’no’sat to close in on, hence the ground assault.
The surviving jumpships…which were most of them with a few key absences…were holding position on the far side of the planet in a high orbit under Liam’s command. She knew that he had them in that position to allow them to run quickly if needed, and Olivia could see that some of them were taking in dropships from the surface, evacing key personnel as the number of cities was being reduced and those remaining filled up with survivors from the others. Liam would be packing in as many people as he could, and at the moment the V’kit’no’sat were letting him do it.
Olivia knew they’d be hard pressed to actually catch the jumpships, but why let them evacuate?
Then she got it. They wanted witnesses to survive and report back what happened here. How the V’kit’no’sat had come in with their massive fleet centered on a Mach’nel and blown away one of the most heavily defended planets in Star Force territory. That was typical V’kit’no’sat methodology. Prove dominance and not care about the scraps that got away, though by the number of dead ship hulls in orbit they’d paid a very heavy price to get through the planetary shields.
The fleet they still had was nothing to take lightly, even without the Mach’nel, and right now it was split between protecting their key chess piece and blockading the jumplines. Thankfully Oliva had come in first in line, with her heavy command ship taking the hits as several jumpships came out behind here and began deploying drones. There were so many jumplines into Karthus that the V’kit’no’sat had decided to place ships over most of the main ones, splitting up their numbers enough that they didn’t have the teeth needed to really hurt her, though the Yippie Ki Yay’s shields were getting dangerously low by the time one of the jumpships moved out in front to help absorb the incoming fire while responding in kind.
More V’kit’no’sat ships repositioned towards the jumppoint, but they were far too late. With nothing more than weakened shields to show for it, Olivia won her fleet a foothold in stellar orbit and the few dozen V’kit’no’sat ships there had to back off or be quickly outnumbered. The first real fight broke out a couple hours later as they rallied their forces and tried to hammer away at her lines, but her foothold was too strong and she had Liam’s help, meaning they couldn’t get through to the ships coming in and ambush them.
The group with the Mach’nel didn’t respond, holding position over the planet, which told Olivia that the stellar defense portion of the enemy fleet was going to retreat after they’d done what they thought was decent damage, and she did what she could to make that sooner rather than later as more and more drones were released to her mental command. Olivia shifted as many simple duties, like aiming a particular weapon or maneuvering to a waypoint, to the crews on the controlling jumpships and those on her command ship as she split the overall controlling duties with her fellow trailblazer. She wasn’t as good as Liam, but Naval was her second best division out of the 5 that made up an Archon’s rank, and her Clan McClane ships were used to her fighting style, with them pushing back hard against the V’kit’no’sat immediately while Liam pulled off a lesser amount of drones for his existing jumpships to command as he came out to meet them while the rest of his jumpships continued to evac the far side of the planet.
Olivia always had her Clan ships up front while moving in convoy, so if there was resistance at a jumppoint they’d be with her for that fight, but most of her current Defender fleet was not made up of Clan troops. McClane formed a solid, but small core around which was a conglomeration of fleets from multiple factions. Calavari made up the largest section, with Axius and Bsidd following that, and smaller amounts of Mainline, Scionate, Tolsoi, and Australian ships. All were Star Force and worked together seamlessly in the battlemap system under her direction, but Clan troops were the best and most of them were in the Devastation Zone.
But she was a trailblazer, and when her mind melded with the fleet it took on new meaning and everyone knew it, having no fear coming into this system with her, despite going up against a Mach’nel. Fortunately it wasn’t waiting for them at the jumppoint, but Olivia had something at the back of her entry convoy that was going to get its attention immediately.
So with increasing numbers of ship
s at her disposal and Liam beginning to poke in odd places, Oliva fought out from their foothold around the jumppoint and eventually triggered the retreat that had the bulk of the stellar orbit blockade fleet surviving and regrouping with the main force around the Mach’nel as the rest of Olivia’s fleet came in. Apparently they were going to wait for Star Force to come to them while the ground war continued under their careful naval watch…as well as to throw some orbital bombardment down when the next section of planetary shield was disabled on the surface, which was something a low powered Tar’vem’jic blast was perfect for because of its range.
And while Olivia’s fleet continued to spew out of the jumppoint that indeed happened, with the shield generators being taken by the ground troops and deactivated, then the Tar’vem’jic casually shot the anti-orbital batteries that were now exposed along with a few select locations that didn’t endanger their own troops on the ground as they moved on towards the next location with the Star Force army fighting like hell to keep them back.
But the V’kit’no’sat had brought a huge army with them, far more than their ships normally carried, and as Oliva took stock of their fleet she saw several specialized troops ships. They certainly weren’t skimping on the numbers, and as a result Requiem was falling in rather quick fashion, attesting to the level of firepower the V’kit’no’sat were dropping to the surface in the form of armored dinosaurs, several of which were their Ultra varieties, standing taller than some buildings and lethal enough to scare King Kong if the mythical monkey were here.
Requiem was taking a beating, and this was clearly a fight the V’kit’no’sat had to win and win convincingly. Others would see an unstoppable force, but she saw a bit of panic. The V’kit’no’sat had to regain dominance, and this assault, more than the others across the front, was intended to illicit that. This was the lynchpin on the entire invasion, and Olivia really wished she could see their faces when a huge contact came out of the jumppoint.
