by Aer-ki Jyr
But it still bothered Paul and always would. Shooting people who couldn’t defend themselves, even if they were refusing to surrender, just didn’t feel right. Protecting his people on the surface did, and as long as the V’kit’no’sat were actively attacking them he had no regrets about smoking them as fast as possible.
It was the ones that weren’t currently fighting but not surrendering that he didn’t like killing, so he kept repeating the offer of surrender that went unanswered save for a few ‘fuck you’s from the ones that felt like insulting the ships they couldn’t shoot. But Paul didn’t have time to play games with more systems under attack and him not being able to leave here until the ground troop threat was neutralized.
And he wasn’t going to let these troops buy time for other fleets with their lives. They either surrendered or were killed as quickly as possible. That’s the way this war had to be fought when Star Force didn’t have an advantage. Mercy was a luxury of the dominant, and when the V’kit’no’sat were out to kill every last person in Star Force and actively attacking them…then their empire deserved what they got.
It was the individuals within the V’kit’no’sat that Paul worried about, which was why he continued offering surrender throughout the slaughter until the very end…with not one of the bastards taking the offer as they lashed out at anything they could find around them in one final act of defiance before they were all destroyed.
24
September 1, 4814
Karthus System (Star Force territory)
Requiem
It’d been three days since the bombardment had stopped. Three days since Nathan had dug himself out of his supposed grave to find a smoking, rubble-strewn landscape that had recently been the city he’d fought to defend. Three days since the V’kit’no’sat had gone and moved on to the other few remaining targets on the planet, and now Nathan was running towards one of them as he saw the distant flashes of light every time he came up over the edge of a crater in the wastelands that Star Force had created when they used the subsurface explosives.
Up and down and he ran, carrying with him in his broken pack a scattering of foodstuffs and two bottles of water that he had remaining from the bits of salvage he’d found in the city that had been spared underneath slabs of building that hadn’t vaporized. He’d spent most of the first day looking around, trying to find what he could whether it be supplies, survivors, or a way down to the tunnels beneath the city.
He hadn’t found any of the latter two, and while he was out of ambrosia he’d filled his stomach enough to otherwise replenish his body and fully heal his injuries…but there was nothing left for him to do other than search for more buried supplies, and those couldn’t last him indefinitely. If he was going to die here he’d prefer to go down fighting, so Nathan had chosen to spend the last two days running across the fucked up terrain towards the nearest intact city, which he was about 8 miles away from now.
The V’kit’no’sat were assaulting it from the north and west, with him coming in from the east and allowing him a straight shot run towards it. That at least meant he didn’t have to circle around and waste more time, for the longer he was out here the more time the enemy had to notice him and scratch him off the list of the living with a quick aerial strike. His armor was designed to be resistive to sensors, but it wasn’t invisible and now it was broken. Every step he ran caused a screech of rubbing parts across his back underneath the makeshift pack he’d cobbled back together, and there was no way the sensor stealthing there could be fully effective.
Little bits of body heat would be leeching out, and the pack itself was no longer whole. It wouldn’t pick up as much notice as him, but anything moving tended to get noticed quicker and he had no choice but to run as fast as he could in and out of the craters to cross the landscape in time to get to the fight before this city fell.
Nathan was exhausted after so much running, but he rarely stopped for more than a few minutes to eat and drink. He need to get to the city wall and signal them to let him in. If he couldn’t do that he’d just be stranded out here to die, for he didn’t expect the V’kit’no’sat to finish with this planet and leave before he starved to death. One thing about Archons that was a slight negative was their food requirements. Their metabolisms were so high it would take a while to adjust them downward into a survival mode, and Nathan could have done it with the half burnt supplies he’d found, but then it would be a waiting game with no sure hope of rescue.
And it wasn’t like he had a lot of body fat on him to sustain himself either, so it was either take a gamble and wait it out or take another gamble and try to get to the nearest city and back into the fight. That meant running for hours upon hours over unforgiving terrain, but that was something he could fight. Time he couldn’t, so for the Piccolo-level Archon there wasn’t really anything to think about.
His new tissue in his legs slowed him down considerably. While fully healed they just weren’t as strong before but the powered setting in his armor was at still functional and he was using that to help him climb up the crater walls whenever he encountered them, though most of the time the jagged pieces of bedrock were too steep, sticking up out of the ground like crude statues that he had to run around. He hated having to detour away from his direct line, but if he flew he’d be too easy to spot.
Nathan half wanted to anyway, but with I’rar’et and Keeva visible in the sky he knew they’d be on his ass in a moment if he went even a few meters off the ground and he had to pick routes that kept him as low as possible even when on foot. Several times he had to stop and take cover until they drifted on elsewhere, but at least they were easy to see in the sky as moving dots beneath the unmoving ones that were the miles-wide warships far overhead in orbit.
It was late morning now, with a hazy blue to the air that didn’t quite cover their presence. They were easy to miss if you didn’t pay attention, but Nathan could see them even without magnification and make out some of their racial alignments. The Brat’mar were the easiest, for their ships were giant discs, and the Era’tran had a unique tuning fork shape that he was also able to distinguish from a distance, but others were less noticeable at this range. Nathan knew there were Nax ships up there, but their bent H-shape could easily be mistaken for others and at this point it really didn’t matter. They all had the firepower to snuff him out of existence had he not been underneath the city shield by now.
It was invisible, for it wasn’t being attacked at the moment, but the V’kit’no’sat fliers were underneath it and he hoped the warship sensors wouldn’t pick him up because of it. That or maybe they just weren’t looking all the way out here, but all it would take would be one word and an I’rar’et would swoop down and strafe his position as many times as necessary to get him…and he had precious little to fight with.
Tired as he was, he was still making decent speed and knew the moment of truth was almost on him. Could he get to the city wall and beneath their halo of defenses on the intact side or would he get spotted first? He knew he could take off flying and try to race there, but he wasn’t sure how much strength he had in him. Running was still far easier than flying, and while his Yen’mer tissue hadn’t been taxed over the past 3 days he’d been shaky even levitating up a few meters while searching the rubble. That impact he’d suffered during the bombardment had hurt him in ways that weren’t easily flash healed and he needed sleep…but time he didn’t have, so he was running on a fried brain and a body that desperately needed rest.
If he needed to fly he would, but the closer he could get on foot increased his chances of making it to the wall that he knew would still be manned and had anti-air defenses. The fliers weren’t getting close to it and keeping to the attack zones on the other side for the most part while swinging around wide in patrol loops. It was those loops that had been troublesome, but now the bulk of the city was starting to…
Without his battlemap sensor telemetry Nathan almost didn’t notice, but the sky above him began to subtly c
hange as the enemy ships that had been parked far above unmoving were beginning to reposition, making him wonder if he was too late and they were going to begin bombardment of the city. His fatigued mind took a moment to process that out, for they didn’t need to reposition to do that. They’d been in bombardment position the entire time, so Nathan stopped alongside a bit of cover and looked up, triggering the magnification on his helmet that thankfully still worked.
The dots in the sky got much larger, but only when he got to maximum zoom did he notice the flashes of light around the edges of the V’kit’no’sat fleet and the scattering of tiny dots so thick that they looked like clouds from which the lightning was coming from.
“Drones?” he said aloud, looking for sign of the control ships. Unless they’d gotten reinforcements poking a fight with that mega fleet was suicide, but over the following seconds as Nathan scanned the sky and made out what he could minus his missing battlemap data he finally spotted one of the jumpships. It was tiny, but he could tell by the shape that it wasn’t Mainline, and by the blue coloration that only one faction had painted on their hull he confirmed it.
Most jumpships were grey/black, regardless of faction, but if he was right then these were the largest regular jumpships that Star Force fielded and Nathan looked around trying to find another. It was hard with just the magnification of his helmet, but eventually he found several more that were just elongated dots until the swarm of drones got company as one of the jumpships moved directly into the combat zone and opened fire.
“What the hell?” he said, seeing clearly that it was a Paladin jumpship. They’d never fought the V’kit’no’sat before and this Captain must have lost his mind, for the enemy ships immediately redirected their attacks towards it. The 32 mile long mass absorbed the weaponsfire, but it was no match for the V’kit’no’sat warships. They didn’t have internal space devoted to carrying drones, meaning their massive bulk was all fighting ship with very little room for cargo, and while a Paladin jumpship could survive a while it was not suited for this type of fight.
But then Nathan saw more enter…a lot more. First three, then another two, then five more. They were all coming in with the drones in what had to be a desperation move. Nathan didn’t know how many Paladin had arrived, but if they were fighting like this then something was really wrong.
Nathan looked back towards the city, seeing the fighting there continuing as if nothing was happening in orbit. He bit his lip, thinking, as he gave his body some badly needed rest. He could make for the wall or wait here. If Star Force was attacking then there must be a plan…and if there was a plan he really didn’t want to get killed running the last few miles up to the wall. And to be honest, how much fighting could he do once he got inside in his present condition?
Some, he knew, for he could just sit still and use a few of his psionics to help out or get a new suit of armor and guide other troops from afar. He ached to get back into the fight in some way, shape, or form, but prudence told him to sit tight and see what happened in orbit…and he really wanted to know what the hell Liam and Olivia were up to, assuming the Paladin didn’t go rogue. That was more likely than them choosing to send jumpships into close combat, but to be honest nothing made sense right now and his head wasn’t in the best shape either.
Nathan slumped back against a mound of dirt, sinking in a few inches before it stabilized his weight as his fatigue suddenly hit him. He was worse off than he’d thought, and if he tried to get to the city now he knew he could make it unopposed, but even a tiny Ari’tat with good aim could kill him in his weakened state.
“Easy boy. You’ve survived this far. Don’t blow it now,” he said, reaching back and untying the makeshift strap on his pack and reaching in to get some water. He’d take half an hour at least then reevaluate. Until then he needed fuel and some rest as he watched the skies for V’kit’no’sat aerial assets and tried to gleam what sort of madness was going on in orbit.
25
Thrawn sat in a personal chamber, his tail draped over a floor ‘nub’ seat designed for Paladin physiology as the dark of the room was interrupted only by a series of small lights on a control board in front of him. It was tiny, for the chamber was mostly used for holograms, but at the moment Thrawn was seeing through the mental link he had with the ship. He didn’t have telepathy like the Archons or Protovic did, but Star Force technology had advanced so far that all mechwarriors now controlled their war machines using mental controls and even naval fleet remote pilots used them at least in part.
Here, he was linked into the Paladin fleet command, not guiding individual ships but sitting back and intervening when necessary. Mostly he was observing, trying to read the V’kit’no’sat and learn how they fought. He’d studied their attacks ever since the initial assault on Earth, but those were always past actions played out by other people. Now he had a chance to alter the way his fleet fought in order to provoke reactions, which was the best way to learn an opponent.
But he didn’t have one opponent here, he had 18 different V’kit’no’sat races out there and they all fought a little different. Their overall fleet coordination was very good, but there were differing tendencies in how they moved and focused on targets. It had taken three days to get all his ships insystem and Liam had finally given him leave to attack while he and Olivia held back and looked for an opportunity to get some drones down to the surface and help the last survivors there.
The V’kit’no’sat were not obliging, and as the Paladin fleet ran head on into their thickest formation the other ships blockading the planet held firm, not giving them an opening to exploit. That meant Thrawn needed to do something, but what? His drone swarms were doing a lot of damage as they engaged the outer levels of the V’kit’no’sat fleet, but the larger ships kept cycling back before they could be destroyed and Thrawn couldn’t send his drones deeper without them getting hammered from all sides.
His glowing red eyes got brighter as his eye ridges raised curiously. He knew that he couldn’t fight as well as the Archons using their methods, and that his greatest power lie in taking what they’d learned and combining it with his own experience…meaning he wasn’t always going to act like them.
And one thing they never did was let their jumpships take a beating outside of emergency circumstances.
Thrawn saw the continuing advance of the ground forces towards the final two cities, now inside both defense walls with ample reinforcements marching in to replace whatever troops were lost. They were going to fall if something didn’t happen soon, and when that happened the last planetary shield segments would come down and the surface would be fully exposed.
That could be described as an emergency situation, enough anyway for the V’kit’no’sat to hopefully buy the gambit he’d just concocted.
His orders were sent out quickly, with his fleet groups not yet close enough to engage reshaping as they gave cover with their mass so the V’kit’no’sat sensors couldn’t see what was happening deep within as dropships began to be exchanged between jumpships as they evacuated some of them. Thrawn couldn’t let the V’kit’no’sat know that, so he made sure to keep the drone swarms so thick that no sensor beam could get even a snippet of vision within, then he gradually reformed the fleet in a way to not advertise that something had occurred within.
That thickest grouping of his fleet slammed into the V’kit’no’sat lines with the abandoned jumpships now being flown by remote pilots on other jumpships. The heavy weaponry on them was being brought directly into play, and the massive vessels dug deep into the V’kit’no’sat lines soaking up so much firepower many of the drones were ignored entirely.
That allowed Thrawn’s Paladin pilots to pursue the weakened V’kit’no’sat ships that were cycling backward and make the kills, for as he expected, the enemy was focusing on the jumpships with a ferocity born of impatience. Over a thousand years of war and they’d rarely ever gotten a shot at a jumpship, with the number of actual losses countable on his fingers as far
as fleet combat was concerned. Now he was giving them 22 of them here, with another 8 around the perimeter of the planet going in with more drone fleets.
It was those 8 that he was most interested in, expecting to lose all 30 eventually but it was a calculated loss. The amount of weaponsfire needed to kill them would spare so many drones that it would be worth it, but it was those 8 that he was gambling on the most…and the V’kit’no’sat didn’t disappoint. Their desire for the jumpships saw the blockading ships split, and while not leaving any section of orbit unguarded they did thin their numbers so they could concentrate on the smaller fleets that looked to be trying to punch a hole through their lines.
Thrawn knew he didn’t need to say anything to the trailblazers, and about 9 minutes later he saw their ships move in a microjump so fast it surprised him. They hard braked the last bits of their momentum in the atmosphere itself, popping into fireballs as they engaged the blockading ships from pointblank range while getting a few additional ships all the way through to the planet’s surface.
Their advantage didn’t last long, for huge sections of the main fleet broke off to go after them, but it didn’t matter. Several drones made it beneath the planetary shields and immediately went to assist the ground combat. Thrawn knew that would cause the shield generators to hold up longer, but if they didn’t remove this fleet it wouldn’t matter. The naval fight must be won, and he’d brought so many ships with him Thrawn knew the Paladin could do it, but there were no guarantees.
So many decisions had to be made that they could still lose, and lose badly, but there were two trailblazers in the system so Thrawn had no worries. If he failed they would take command of his ships, but for now they were letting him retain full command of his fleet.
