Star Force: The Admiral

by Aer-ki Jyr

  And there were several Urik’kadel units still in play, with their pilots being smaller than Humans. Approximately rabbit-sized, the Urik’kadel were on average better pilots than most other races and were able to fly superior craft due to their smaller cockpit size that allowed for more equipment in identical aerial craft frames.

  Typically Star Force would win aerial fights, for the V’kit’no’sat air divisions were not so dominant in equal numbers, but they had not come with equal numbers here, and even a small numerical advantage combined with their agility was a death knell for the V’kit’no’sat’s aerial opponents. Anti-air weaponry and especially a warship changed that, but they were a big asset to the enemy none the less, including the handful of Les’i’kron that were essentially aerial battleships when it came to fliers…but they would be easy pickings for a corvette even if it didn’t have fast tracking anti-air batteries.

  As Paul’s ships in orbit ran, he stayed mentally linked with those on the surface as he coordinated with the ground troops while turning over part of the soon to resume harassing attacks in orbit to other Archons. He’d keep an eye on it and intervene when necessary, but they could handle a lot of the same tasks with equal skill, freeing him up while he now had an active part to play in the ground warfare.

  But it had come at a cost. He’d lost 823 drones while the V’kit’no’sat had lost 13 full ships and saw significant damage to 182 more. Paul hadn’t stuck around long enough to take them out, because forcing that fight was going to cost him even more, but some of that damage they would be able to repair and the lost shields would now regenerate where his dead drones would not. In addition he had another 1048 drones with hull damage, 83 of which were so bad they had to be recalled to the controlling Warship-class jumpships for docking and repair, but Paul knew they would be permanently out of the fight without a visit to a shipyard.

  And the only shipyards in the system were the orbital ones that had been destroyed or surface yards that were not accessible due to the V’kit’no’sat blockades…and even if they were, it would be weeks to repair these. More likely they’d have to be disassembled and the useful parts repurposed to repair others, and a little bit of that could be accomplished on the jumpships even when they were in motion thanks to the IDF fields cradling the partially exposed docking section on the rear/underside of the elongated jumpships that somewhat resembled old school submarines, but with angular, hard faces and little ornamentation. They also didn’t have a conning tower, for the bridge and most critical areas were at the center and as far from weapons damage as possible.

  As Paul’s damaged drones limped back to their motherships, he kept reorganizing the ground defenses now that they had close-in warships support, but only a few hours in he got an alert ping from the ships he’d left roaming stellar orbit and playing with the few V’kit’no’sat ships that were also there. A seldom-used jumpline was showing activity, and one coming from the rim. No identification signals were showing and no updates had come through the relay grid, so this had to be bad news and the V’kit’no’sat must have circled around through systems that should have had detection systems set up. The fact that they could get here through Star Force territory meant they’d somehow gotten scouts in that had sabotaged…

  That train of thought ended when the first detected mass decelerated, with Paul seeing it on a time delay due to the signal lag. He raised an eyebrow when he saw it was a Paladin jumpship, larger than the ones he commanded by more than double, and it wasn’t alone. Several more came behind it, ended up at 37 in total, all with identification beacons disabled until the last of them had arrived, then they lit up with identifiers and Paul could see exactly who it was.

  A message from Viceroy Hannibal came through immediately thereafter, explaining that the rest of the Paladin were assembling at various waypoints so they could come in force, but Supreme Viceroy Thrawn had wanted him to come ahead with whatever he could to assist Paul immediately.

  That wasn’t what Paul had told him to do, because only in large numbers would the Paladin stand a chance against the V’kit’no’sat, but he was glad Hannibal was here now. It wasn’t a large addition to his fleet, but it was significant and the Paladin jumpships carried far more drones. That had been Thrawn’s decision when they built this design, and they had more engine power insystem than standard Star Force jumpships did…but at a cost. They were slow when full, meaning they couldn’t outrun the V’kit’no’sat or move about through enemy territory prior to a battle without getting run down.

  They had to stand and fight, with the drones anyway, which was a big reason why they’d never been used in the Devastation Zone, but Paul saw the jumpships immediately spilling out their drones in a mad rush, making them light enough to move around as necessary and not get caught.

  Their positioning was ok, as was the lack of arrival warning. Hannibal indicated that they’d instructed the relay grid not to transmit their location, which was why Paul hadn’t known they were coming…and couldn’t instruct them to go elsewhere. But if the V’kit’no’sat did have a hack somewhere, unlikely as that was, this small Paladin fleet was unknown to them.

  It wasn’t enough new ships for Paul to take on the enemy fleets here as he would have liked, but it did give him more to work with and he could put more pressure on Rovo’kor with the fleet of all heavy cruisers. The Paladin didn’t use multiple versions of drones, with their .78 mile long version being standard and shaped like a ‘+’ when viewed from the end. It was essentially two standard Star Force mainline drones, each of which was brick shaped, overlapped on one another. Not the most efficient shape, but they stacked against each other in the carrier bay and created niches on the surface to hide weapons batteries in.

  That was an advantage and disadvantage, for while the enemy couldn’t pluck the weapons off the drones from as many directions, they couldn’t fire in as many directions from the same battery either. Many factions within Star Force had their own shape drones, but they all worked off the same rules. No crew, all remote controlled, and all carried within jumpships that housed the remote pilots.

  The Paladin version, while not different sizes, did carry different weaponry. Some were shield ships, with almost no weaponry and extra generators to make themselves harder to kill and so they could create parasol-like barriers to protect others. Some were heavily armored, making them damage sponges, while others were heavily packed with lots of smaller weapons. Still some had a single main weapon that required a long recharge period…but could deliver a massive strike in one hit.

  The Paladin had access to the same weapon tech as the rest of Star Force, but Thrawn, Hannibal, and the other old leaders that were born to the Li’vorkrachnika and not the Paladin had old habits from numerous battles against Star Force, and Paul had chosen to let them do their own thing, for sometimes it took an old enemy to see your true weaknesses and strengths. Plus their navy had to fit them, not Paul, and as long as it worked within Star Force parameters they could tailor it as they liked.

  Paul and the other 2s, who were responsible for developing the Paladin, knew that Thrawn and the other original masterminds would not tolerate inefficiency. For them winning was everything, so they weren’t going to create bad designs, and while they had a lot to learn initially about Star Force methods when viewed from within, Paul had no doubts about their effectiveness now. They weren’t Clan level, but they were solid and now that they were plugged into the battlemap system with a trailblazer in control, they would be all the more effective.

  “Welcome to the party, old friend,” Paul sent back as the Paladin fleet was still on its way to his position. “You were supposed to wait, but I’m glad you didn’t. We’ve got a mess here and probably more V’kit’no’sat reinforcements on the way. We have to hold the 3 intact planets while not abandoning the others, which means we can’t lose a lot of ships. I want a fresh assessment of the battlefield, so review the battlemap data and get back to me when you’ve finished.”

  “Do not
underestimate these bastards, Hannibal, but they are beatable. And expect them to test your jumpships. They haven’t chased them before and they may check for a weakness. Don’t get caught napping.”

  19

  February 4, 4814

  Karthus System (Star Force territory)

  Requiem

  Nathan-937 sat perched on a wall, clinging to it with the grip points built into his Archon armor as he waited with his Kgat psionic shielding his mind from view. He was still visible to the naked eye and Pefbar, but where Ikrid was concerned he did not exist and it was how V’kit’no’sat looked for enemies from medium range.

  Knowing this, the Piccolo-level Archon was waiting and watching with his eyes and passive sensors within an intact section of the cityscape around one of the shield generators. He’d originally come into the system at the head of a naval fleet, but during the fighting over the planet he’d lost most of his ships alongside the Sentinel defense platforms that had formerly ringed the planet. They’d all moved to blunt the V’kit’no’sat attack and keep the planetary shields up as long as possible, but the enemy had chosen to hit them straight on at high cost to both sides.

  Afterwards Nathan knew the V’kit’no’sat would not try the same thing to get the other shield generators down, and had transferred himself to the surface before Liam had the remainder of the system defense fleet run and then begin hit and run attacks, else they be wiped out entirely…which they had been before Olivia arrived, but they’d exacted far more damage on the exterior of the enemy fleet than getting themselves pinned in low orbit and target practice for a Mach’nel.

  Nathan had been right to get to the surface while he could, and now numerous V’kit’no’sat armies were hitting the various cities on the planet and hammering through their insane defenses, but it was the V’kit’no’sat infiltration teams that had been exploiting any crack in the defense lines and slipping through…where they then disappeared until the appropriate moment.

  So Nathan was clinging to the wall spiderman-like and waiting where he had a decent vantage point. He couldn’t sense with his own Ikrid while Kgat was active, but he needed to spot them before they spotted him, otherwise they wouldn’t come close enough. The nearest fighting was 18 miles away, but the second gen Archon had a gut feeling that this was the time they would hit the shield generator while most of the troops were up ahead and trying to slow the V’kit’no’sat advance that was pounding this way.

  If they couldn’t be stopped they’d run over the shield generator and take it down, exposing another chunk of the planet to orbital bombardment, hence the frantic defense, but that would be seen as an opportunity to sneak a sabotage team in and get the shield generator early despite the point defenses it had in place.

  The V’kit’no’sat had done this twice already in other locations, one for an anti-orbital gun and the other for a smaller city-sized shield generator. Nathan could be wasting his time here, but he thought the V’kit’no’sat were getting impatient despite the fast speed of conquest.

  Fast for Star Force, anyway, but for the dominant V’kit’no’sat they were probably getting sick of the constant effort and losses. Nathan couldn’t fight the larger V’kit’no’sat races head on or he’d get killed outside a mech, and they had plenty of good mechwarriors to man their limited number of war machines…meaning the place he could do the most good while Olivia and Liam were in system heading up the naval fight was right here, lurking in the shadows and hunting roaming Zen’zat teams.

  Others would have felt bad sitting while others were fighting and dying, but Nathan knew better. This planet was falling, and the most good he could do was stall the eventual fall of the final shield generator, for once it was down they were all dead. The one he was guarding now wasn’t the last, but they were like a row of dominoes and continually going down to this invasion, so if he could protect this one even an additional hour it would delay the fall of the final one and be worth more than him duking it out with Brat’mar and Wass’mat in a mech.

  Nathan had been waiting here for 3 hours already, moving around a little bit but staying in the northwest region where he guessed an assault force would come through. The main blockage was in the undercity, with a lot of makeshift defenses down there in addition to the original ones because you couldn’t fit a mech in most of those tunnels. It would be hand to hand and the best place for Zen’zat to try and push through.

  But they knew that too, which was why Nathan felt they were going to try to go over the surface building to building during the night when they’d be harder to visually spot. Sensors wouldn’t care, but if they were wearing stealth suits…

  Then he saw one. Or rather a shadow cross from a window high up on a skyscraper to the building on the far side of the wide street. It was a jump, for there was a slight curve to the trajectory, and to Nathan it looked like little more than the lights on the far side winking out, for he could see nothing but a disturbance in the nighttime cityscape that had remained unmoving for the past 43 minutes that he’d been in this perch.

  Then there was another, and another, with Nathan checking the battlemap and seeing nothing on the city sensors, but when he brought up the view of cameras he saw the same dark blots jumping across, already up to more than a dozen, and he knew they were null fields that absorbed all sensor signals, light, and anything else sent their way. That meant there would be no return signals for sensors to see, but properly attuned sensors would notice the lack of normal returns off the far buildings.

  The city sensors weren’t set up that way aboveground, for they were designed for aircraft that didn’t make a habit of hiding…and that’s probably why the V’kit’no’sat were crossing high, for the sensors on ground level were configured to check for anomalies when the streets were clear, as they were now.

  Nathan jumped off the wall, deactivating the grip pads so he didn’t stick there awkwardly, but unlike the Zen’zat he didn’t fall. Instead he continued to ascend, flying using the Yen’mer psionic that no known Zen’zat had ever achieved, let alone knew was in their own genome. It’d been put there by the Zak’de’ron when they led the V’kit’no’sat, but when they betrayed the dragons and killed them all they lost that knowledge. With the help of a single Zak’de’ron survivor that Star Force discovered they’d indirectly gained such knowledge, giving Nathan a big advantage…with him being grateful that this team of Zen’zat couldn’t fly, otherwise they would have been much more difficult to track.

  What they could do was float, for their armor had limited gravity drives enough to enhance their jumps and save them from falling from extreme heights. That was how they were jumping from building to building, and they had their own grip pads that allowed them to climb and cling as he had. But right now they were in a specific building and still coming across the gap, with it being a facility that housed ground troops. Normally it would have been a very bad place to go…but right now all the troops were out fighting and the building was nearly empty save for a few techs.

  Nathan thought the Zen’zat would pass them by to avoid detection, in addition to the fact that it was the shield generator they needed down. Once it was and the lesser city shield was taken down later, those techs and everyone else could be taken out with naval guns, so what was the point of stopping and killing people that would be as good as dead anyway if they completed their mission?

  Nathan didn’t have anyone nearby to call for help, and he certainly wasn’t going to pull troops off the defense of the shield generator and create a breach for another Zen’zat team to sneak through. No, he was on his own, and he hoped these Zen’zat weren’t too advanced. Even with his plethora of psionics he was not guaranteed victory, and many he had encountered already on this planet were physically stronger than him, meaning close in hand to hand fighting was out when they could potentially get him in a stranglehold. He was going to have to hit hard and run, but he could do this…assuming there weren’t too many and not too many badasses. If more than one of them had Jumat th
en he’d have trouble, but Jumat was rare and he didn’t know if these Zen’zat were sent because they were expendable or because they were that good.

  He was going to find out soon, flying straight to the building and entering via the roof, then running down flights of stairs as he killed his Kgat and stretched out with his own Ikrid, immediately getting hits on the Zen’zat. He used a light probe, one that only experts would be able to pick up on, and right now hopefully the Zen’zat were too busy running and staying stealthy to notice, for he didn’t feel any Ikrid probes coming from them.

  But there was a problem. Already there were 34 of them in this building with more jumping across. Nathan didn’t risk that powerful of an Ikrid probe to see into the far building, but this was too many for him to take on directly. Fortunately they were strung out, so he decided to hit them in the middle, forcing them to split or turn around to engage him.

  He got their approximate positions in his memory then engaged his Kgat again along with his Da’nu that would negate their ability to see him in their Pefbar fields. They could see the null space within them, but they couldn’t see him specifically, so when he came into the hallway they were passing through he was able to get close before they realized what he was.

  As soon as they saw his green/purple Archon armor they visibly twitched, recognizing the threat, and as they shot him with their forearm mounted Dre’mo’don orbs he sprinted and ran headfirst into the chest of one of the 8 foot tall monsters. He stood just a little over 6 feet tall, but when he hit the shadow that the null field made them look like, he accelerated and flew through it, using his head as a battering ram, and knocked the 380 pound Zen’zat back down the hallway onto his back.