by Aer-ki Jyr
The pair couldn’t see them yet, but one more turn and the 13 Zen’zat came into view, one of which knocked a leg out from under one of the Arc Knights with a telekinetic slap, then a wall of Dre’mo’don shots came their way, pounding their shields as they scrambled backwards…but it had been just enough of a distraction that a Frieza-level Archon dropped down from the sky into their midst and blew them all off their feet with a Jumat blast so strong it even threw the Arc Knights back a bit as it ricocheted around the corner.
They immediately turned around, intent on helping their team leader with the kills and made two tackles when they got back into view, wrestling with the Zen’zat their own size and delaying them long enough as the Death Mistress herself broke V’kit’no’sat armor with single blows while disabling the Zen’zat with her mental psionics in a way that no other Frieza could hope to do.
The two Arc Knights fought hand to hand, buying time rather than trying to make kills and let her do most of the work as they took a few hits to their armor after their shields went down, but the Zen’zat didn’t survive long enough to rough them up too much. Soon there were 13 corpses on the ground with the trio putting additional shots into them to make sure the Kich’a’kat in their armor didn’t revive them.
“Back,” Ginsi-500289 ordered, giving them a waypoint a few blocks over in the Star Force city that had held up against V’kit’no’sat attack for 2 straight months. Others on the planet had fallen, but Ginsi had been moving back and forth with her advanced combat team holding key shield generators and blunting the V’kit’no’sat advance. At present they owned only a third of the planet and were making meager gains on the ground while the naval fight had already been lost.
The Lothcat System had been hit in the second wave of V’kit’no’sat attacks with no roaming fleets available for backup and had only a single planet with decent defenses, but not enough to stop the enemy from punching through then withdrawing as their armies attempted to do the rest of the damage. Ginsi had been coming back from the rim and enroute to another battlefield when Lothcat had been invaded and decided to reinforce them here with her two jumpships and one troopship that she and her unit operated out of.
They were amongst the most badass Commandos in Star Force. Some were Regular Commandos, Arc Commandos, Knights, Arc Knights, and more Archons…with all of her kin ranked higher than her, save for her specialty. Archon ranks were based on the lowest score of the 5 divisions of the military, but where most Archons trained evenly in all disciplines Ginsi did not. She didn’t completely ignore the other four, but most of her training was focused on the Commando skillset, and in that subcategory she was the highest ranking Archon in the empire.
Her physical skills were so advanced that her Frieza armor had to be custom made with kinetic armor. It wasn’t as strong against energy weapons, but was better suited against physical impacts. She had to have it now, for she’d been cracking her own armor on some body blows delivered to others and needed the extra rigidity because when an Archon went up against larger opponents, firepower was always an issue. Ginsi needed to use her own body as a weapon and be able to conserve her energy ammo…which she didn’t even bother to use on the Zen’zat they’d just killed until the final death shots.
Right now the Arc Knights were moving to a rally point while she summoned others to another location, rotating her supports in and out to keep them fresh and their shields full while she bounced from point to point within the city where needed to assist the army of Star Force ground troops holding up the insane numbers the V’kit’no’sat had deployed. They shouldn’t have held out this long, but Ginsi had personally taken down everything from Kar’ka to Era’tran with a little help…but she was going to need a lot for the Oso’lon ahead.
There were three of them, two of which mechs were sparring with while another was pressing further into the city towards a high-up tower turret that was pouring fire into fights more than a mile away. She could see that he was going to solo it from below, where it couldn’t defend itself well, and if he took it down it would take a lot of pressure off his buddies further back.
With the other two Oso’lon fighting and mostly winning against three stars of mechs there was nothing to stand in the way of this mass of brilliant green battle armor aside from static defenses and some infantry that she was already signaling to back off, for they’d be easily kills for the quadruped juggernaut. The old, old references to the Brontosaurs in Human lore didn’t do them justice. They were the most dangerous of all races on the land and had the most psionics, including Jumat, which could wreck small buildings in a single blast.
“Are you sure about this?” an Arc Commando that she’d summoned asked over the comm.
“Stick to the plan and you’ll be ok,” she assured him.
“I’m worried about you.”
“First time for everything,” she said, flying up to the top of a building and running across its roof. Even though she hadn’t qualified for all the psionics based on her Archon rank in previous centuries they’d been given to her anyway and now she was going to need those well-honed and developed skills to try and slow this monster down.
Ginsi hesitated at the edge of the roof, seeing the Oso’lon coming down the street and soon to be beneath her moving in a lumbering run that made for good speed. She assumed he saw her, but to make certain she used her Wequay psionic, sending out a telepathic signal that immediately pulled the attention of whoever it landed on. Lesser minds would be fixated upon it, ignoring all else, but to the powerful Oso’lon it only got its attention on her as she jumped off the roof and dove towards it as her shields were hit with a shot from its armor’s turret weaponry.
Ginsi took the shot, seeing her shields drop 22% from the heavy firepower that a V’kit’no’sat this size could carry in its gigantic armor. Someone smaller than a Zen’zat like her didn’t stand a chance against an Oso’lon and the V’kit’no’sat knew it, expecting to bat her away with a Jumat blast after shooting her a few times, but Ginsi released her own Jumat blast ahead in a focused cone to mostly nullify the bit of the huge Jumat wave that hit her, bouncing her up a little but not enough to keep her from getting on the Oso’lon’s back.
She released her own Saven before the Oso’lon could, momentarily jamming its mind with white noise as she skated on the energy shields covering the armor between turret positions to avoid getting shot…save for the one on the back of the neck. That sent beam after beam of Chi’parat energy into her, but she managed to dodge a few that hit and drained a bit of the Oso’lon’s own shields.
Ginsi was taking too many hits, but she needed to draw attention away from the street below as the Arc Commando and 18 others from her unit swarmed nearby and fired rocket launcher-like shoulder weapons at its legs, then ran like hell before they could get swatted away as the detonations produced physical clouds that hardened into concrete-like masses that clung to the four limbs of the Oso’lon but weighed almost nothing.
Ginsi could see it hesitate, wondering what the hell those things were even while shooting at her, then on a command sent from her helmet the four shackles pulled together, essentially bonding to one another on touch and becoming 4-way handcuffs that tripped the Oso’lon up enough that it leaned forward and face planted as Ginsi ran up and jumped off its neck, dropping an Ubven on its head along with another Saven flash as she ran off and behind a building.
The Oso’lon negated the Ubven after a second, pulling through it using its own immunity because it had the same psionic as it got on its front knees and reached its head around so it could look directly at the front cuffs, then using the high powered weaponry on its cranium plates blasted away, freeing itself completely after 20 seconds, then it stood back up and continued to head towards the turret tower as the lower defense weapons at the base began firing on it.
The Oso’lon’s shields held up easily, and it fired back…a Uit streamer that deposited a cloying energy matrix over the base of the turret that, after a moment of contac
t, exploded so hard Ginsi bounced into the sidewall as the earthquake knocked her feet out from under her. That single attack took out the anti-mech defenses on this side of the turret base, then the big guns up top stopped shooting far and ratcheted down as much as they could, pumping one good shot into the gap between buildings where the Oso’lon passed before it was too far under to shoot again.
That shot hurt, for it was a bloon launcher and Ginsi knew it was loaded with shield-piercing energy…which was when she took her next chance. The Goku-level 398 Commando signaled her supports to attack again, this time with damaging weapons, and as they fired at the legs she scrambled up a wall and jumped off it, landing on the shields covering the Oso’lon’s tail while taking another armor turret shot to the face as she released as much Jumat energy as she could.
With the draining done to the shields by the turret tower they were weakened, and the little shots by her unit added a bit more damage with the energy reserves over the tail flowing forward to fill in other areas. That didn’t leave the tail exposed, but it did make the energy barrier weaker and Jumat was also a shield piercer. Ginsi didn’t have much of a window to work with, so she pressed into it as hard as she could and was relieved to feel her hands pass through and touch the armor below.
“I’m on!” she yelled over the comm, seeing the shield reform around her wrists and essentially lock her in place. She also felt an Ubven fall over her…then the tail whipped to the left and smashed into a building.
Ginsi negated the field enough for her to move and used her Jumat to weaken the shield so she could climb around the tail just enough to avoid the hit as she fired both wrist-mounted Bra’hems that drew power out of the pack on her back. Tiny spots in the armor melted, but not enough to get through before the Oso’lon rolled over on its side and Ginsi had to jump off or get smashed into the ground…but not before leaving a little device behind that emitted its own Lachka jammer so the Oso’lon couldn’t pry it off.
The power cell in the ‘tag’ wouldn’t last long, and on its own it couldn’t do much, for it was a special variety built specifically for her to use on Oso’lon. She’d never had the chance, but it had worked on an Era’tran that also had Jumat. Most of them didn’t have it, so he had to have been one of their elite troops. All Oso’lon had Jumat, and without it being able to telekinetically rip the foreign device off there were only two options. Roll over and try to rub it off, or the quick option was to summon a Jumat blast in the tiny gap between device and armor and blow it off.
Oso’lon used Jumat their entire lives, so she wasn’t surprised when it took that delicate approach, for the emission line had to be very fine…and like a typical Oso’lon they didn’t use small amounts of Jumat. This one summoned a wall about five meters wide beneath the 3 inch device, intent on ripping it off with such ferocity the annoying Human wouldn’t dare try and put another on it.
The force was so great the tag disintegrated…but the Jumat energy reacted with the otherwise benign components and turned it into a bomb. And a bomb that detonated with no shields, for the Jumat couldn’t be released with them up. The Oso’lon had to momentarily drop them over that spot, which was another reason to use excess Jumat to knock any physical objects away that might try to slip in at that moment.
So the explosion, fueled by the intensity of the Oso’lon’s own Jumat, punched a hole a meter wide in the armor with a few inch-wide spots in the crater that had gone all the way through and hit flesh.
That was when Ginsi flew back and dove towards the weakness as the Oso’lons shields flashed back up, blocking her as she took a few more shots, the last of which fully dropped her own shields that she was going to have to lower anyway as she covered herself in Jumat energy and tried to push through as the Oso’lon flicked its hind quarters side to side to try and shake her.
At that moment her team attacked again, firing at the legs along with a pair of Arc Commandos coming out behind and firing at Ginsi. They hit her with a deployable shield, with the sticky goo landing on her back and emitting a shot lived defense as her hands were already in the crater. Her gloves withdrew as she also covered herself with Rentar, making her immune to a telekinetic attack as she touched her bare fingertips into the bleeding wounds.
Ginsi knew she didn’t have long, so she threw a Saven then activated her own Kgat, isolating her mind from any exterior counterattack as she physically connected her mind to the Oso’lon’s nervous system…allowing her mind to fight against the much larger one directly.
From her team’s point of view the Oso’lon suddenly became punch drunk, still shooting at them but with less accuracy and stumbling steps as Ginsi grappled with it internally. They didn’t wait for a signal from her and came out of their cover, using their own limited psionics and the heavy weaponry they carried to do what damage they could while the Oso’lon was in a weakened state…
27
September 27, 4814
Lothcat System (Star Force territory)
Voran
Paul’s fleet had arrived 4 days ago, having picked up a massive group of Paladin ships along the way from Antelin. Part of the Defender fleet he’d claimed he’d left in that system to make sure no V’kit’no’sat ships doubled back and gave them trouble, for while the system invasions had been going on there had been relays in uninhabited systems going dark, creating zones through which the V’kit’no’sat could move undetected. Star Force had deployed scouts to those areas, but even if they found something they’d have to run to the nearest system with a comm relay to transmit, increasing the lag times involved.
Unfortunately the relays in Star Force territory were constantly transmitting and easy to find…though not easy to get to so far out on the peripheries of those systems. The V’kit’no’sat were making the effort, and more often than not would show up without warning near the relays before destroying them. That told Paul that there was a high number of stealth vessels in play inside their own territory, and he really wished they’d gotten more Guardian-class relays built along the front.
Those were much larger and had the amount of weaponry equal to a Sentinel defense station. The guns were automated and would shoot at anything that approached without clearance codes, meaning a single V’kit’no’sat ship wouldn’t have been enough to destroy one. A few Guardians were sprinkled along the front, but Star Force didn’t have the luxury of ‘wasting’ so many resources when drone production was the highest priority.
Right now that meant so long as the V’kit’no’sat could get out to the relays they could kill them with even the smallest of warships…and with no roaming fleets available to intercept them they could move about plucking them from the starmap without resistance. Normally the location would have been a problem, for any ship making the long trek out to a relay would effectively be pinned there with only one way back into the system. It was a long road out and a long road back without a gravity well at the destination point, meaning that the relay could detect the approaching ship and send for help.
But with all available ships fighting at the invasion points and most V’kit’no’sat ships too much for a Ma’kri to handle, they were getting away with it for the most part. A few ships had been turned away by the Ma’kri that roamed the front under their own stealth systems, but with each week that passed Paul could see more and more empty systems on the map that he was getting no data from.
And there was no way he was going to leave Antelin with only a handful of ships, for a savvy commander would sweep in after he’d left and hit the system again. The Paladin support more than made up for the piece of the Defender fleet he left behind, so despite the losses his fleet had suffered he actually came into Lothcat with more strength than he’d left with.
The naval battle had been a rout, and the V’kit’no’sat had engaged his fleet as it came into the system, probably knowing what was coming and trying to delay it as much as possible as some of the ground troops were evacuated, but they couldn’t get them all out. Paul thought about letting
them go, but he didn’t want those troops dropping on another planet and outnumbering the defenders there so he sent subgroups of his fleet out to intercept or drive them off, stranding over a million V’kit’no’sat on Voran where they continued to fight even as the remains of their fleet fled the planet on any jumpline they could access.
Many of their ships did not make it out, for Paul wasn’t feeling generous and knowing he had to make every kill here he could when he had the advantage. Surrender options went out even as his ships were chasing, but the V’kit’no’sat didn’t even respond to insult them. They just ran, having done considerable damage to the planet but not nearly as much as they should have. They’d had over 2 months on the ground and more than half the shield generators were still intact.
That hadn’t happened on any other planet so far in this invasion campaign, and Paul quickly figured out why as his fleet bombarded the planet and he along with a lot of other Archons in his fleet went down to relieve the very battle fatigued troops that had successfully defended the planet for so long. Had they only fought well the entire planet would have been exposed and bombarded weeks ago, and Paul couldn’t overstate that fact enough as he met with members of the ground team…who had no idea what was going on elsewhere.
They thought they were losing, and technically they were as the V’kit’no’sat inched forward, but compared to everywhere else where the overwhelming number of enemy troops were steamrolling across planets to pluck their defenses and let the fleet do the majority of the destruction, Voran had held their ground and made them fight extremely hard for even the smallest of gains.
The planetary defenders still couldn’t comprehend that, for the wounds and fatigue were still too new and the fact that they’d lost more than a third of the planet did not reinforce victory, rather the opposite, but coming from a trailblazer the praise was not ignored and as some of those troops got rest breaks they began to digest what had happened here and had a chance to look through battlemap data from other systems, beginning to see the magnitude of what they’d accomplished.
