Star Force: Empire (SF58)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  Admiral Laver had been part of 3 previous campaigns to hunt down pirates, slavers, and other scum from the ADZ, all of which had been under the command of an Archon. This tour, however, he was in sole command. He figured it was due partly to the limited number of the super soldiers and the vast scale of the ADZ that had them going all over the place with significant travel lags in between, but he also knew that his fleet would never have been assigned this duty solo if they weren’t trusted. The previous campaigns had been the Archon using the Australians in lieu of other ships and troops they didn’t currently have available, but it had also been a test.

  Apparently one that Laver and the others had passed, for the previous 4 months had been missions similar to this yet lesser in scope that had the Australians dealing with assignments completely without oversight. Most were ship interdictions with a few surface raids, but this was the largest strike given to them yet, with indications that there were thousands of pirates on the planet below that either had to be captured or killed…and he knew from previous experience that pirates didn’t like to go down without a fight.

  This lot had been responsible for well over 50 hijackings of starships passing through Epsilon Region, all non Star Force, for the pirates weren’t stupid enough to try and take one of those. No, they preyed on the ever-increasing traffic from the other races in the ADZ, often picking off ships and getting away before anyone even received a distress signal. Star Force did belatedly monitor all transit between inhabited systems and had picked up at least faint sensor recordings of the attacks, along with the jumplines the pirate ships had taken when leaving with their bounty, which was sometimes cargo or passengers, or even entire ships.

  There were becoming fewer and fewer places in the ADZ for starships to hide, with virtually every attack that occurred being followed up and those responsible found and dealt with eventually…yet more kept coming as if they didn’t care or didn’t follow the news. It was very difficult to hijack a ship in the ADZ and not have it noticed by Star Force unless you did it insystem, for it was just a computational twitch to match up entry and exit signatures and see if there was an anomaly. If there was, that was red flagged and a closer scrutiny of the sensor logs was taken up, with those in question having led Star Force security to this planet.

  They’d done a thorough recon then left the system, noting that the military capability of the pirates was beyond what they could have dealt with on their own, and referring it on to others more suitably equipped. The mission was eventually farmed out to the Australians, which were doing a considerable amount of pirate hunting and other cleaning duties within the ADZ given that they weren’t deemed fit enough yet to take part in combat on the front or beyond.

  That still left the Australians sour, but Laver knew that they were being slowly let off the training wheels for a reason. No Archon oversight on this campaign highlighted that, as well as the fact that this strike was way down on the priority list. Still, it had to be done and done soon else they’d let the pirates run rampant in the shadows and that couldn’t be allowed.

  Australia was more than happy to step up and contribute, freeing up other Star Force units for higher priority tasks while giving the junior members some greater standing within the ADZ. Previously Australia had been little more than a closet member of Star Force, neatly tucked away where no one could find them, but over time they’d been stepping out and attaining some new colonies of their own. Nothing large, but they were outside the Core Region and allowed them to begin to interact with other parts of the ADZ as the independent entity that they were.

  They were still Star Force, there was no disputing that, but within the empire they were a semi-independent piece, similar to the Kiritas but not the Kiritak. Australia had to operate within the boundaries that Davis set for them, but so long as they stayed within the coloring book lines they could paint whatever picture of their society that they wanted. They had taken a lot from standard Star Force protocol but diverged in a number of places, creating a separate identity that many had not liked.

  Australia’s current population now ran a little over 3.7 billion, but with an outflow that at some times had exceeded their growth rate. Many individuals born into Australia eventually chose to leave for either Axius or a mainline Star Force colony, finding the pure openness to be more attractive than the somewhat traditionalized Australian society. It had taken a lot of trial and error on the part of Australia’s leaders to keep their population at home, but eventually they began attracting more immigrants than they suffered in losses…and they did so by offering things that the rest of Star Force didn’t allow.

  They couldn’t go so far as to legitimize contraband, for that would put them outside the coloring lines, but they did offer alternatives to many people who didn’t like the Star Force take on life, with the biggest selling point being hybrid maturias. Nearly all Australians were born and trained in Star Force standard maturias, or at least the Australian version of such, but eventually a secondary program was instituted for those individuals that wanted, and sometimes loudly protested for, the ability to keep a family connection with their offspring.

  What the Australians eventually offered was the ability for a parent or parents to become low level trainers and work in the maturia where their child was present, maintaining a connection to them until they became old enough that they were allowed to live in a separate facility with them during off hours, yet they would still be part of a maturia and all the rigorous training that it required.

  That familial connection that the Australians allowed was the first big move the Australians made, with Davis’s approval, away from the typical Star Force model and it attracted so many immigrants that it prompted the Australians to begin reshaping their nation into a Star Force alternative and experimenting with new things to both try and distinguish themselves from the rest of the empire, as well as to attract more immigrants to replace those that were continually leaving.

  Semi-independence had its privileges, but it also had its down side as well, with the Australians faced with the risk of losing pretty much their entire nation if too many of their citizens decided to leave. And with the Australians having to make every ship and building themselves, what mainline Star Force colonies offered looked a lot more appetizing to most, hence the push to attract the discontents and offer them up alternatives.

  It had been a long process, but eventually Australia had etched out an identity for itself and was now pushing for a greater role within Star Force, with that being them taking on some of the responsibilities of keeping the spacelanes safe and hunting down pirates where others wouldn’t or couldn’t, for most races in the ADZ didn’t care about anyone other than themselves, leaving Star Force and a few others as the guardians of all.

  That was a responsibility that Star Force took very seriously, which further indicated that the Australians’ status was increasing given that Laver had been given this solo campaign, low key as it was. This bit of it was going to be a milestone, one way or another, because to date nothing like this had ever gone down without an Archon running the show, and today it was going to be an all Australian affair.

  He just hoped everything went smoothly.

  “Lock in the drop points and get the transports moving,” the Admiral ordered after watching the track of the ascending transport for a bit. “Deploy the fleet into standard containment formation and inform the planet that we’re here to remove some squatters,” he said, almost word for word mimicking similar orders given by the Archon that he’d worked with in previous years. “Get me air cover preceding our ships and everyone stay alert. We need to bag these guys before they get a chance to run and hide.”

  The Australian jumpship wasn’t large, for they’d had to construct it themselves and virtually every ship in their fleet was undersized compared to the mainline Star Force navy. While they had access to nearly all Star Force tech, the more recent and impressive developments were withheld from them until they showed they could mas
ter what they’d already been given…and ‘given’ in terms of blueprints rather than actual machinery.

  They had tech assistance as well, with many mainline and even Canderous techs helping them design and get their own machinery up and running. Given the necessary disconnect between the two, Australia’s equipment looked and was designed differently than what the mainline troops had, just as Canderous’s differed as well. The Australians didn’t fare well in the comparison, but they did have competent, solid ships that had gone through numerous revisions and upgrades as the most junior member of Star Force slowly cut its teeth on a handful of missions and assignments.

  It was aggravating to most Australians how newer members of Star Force got privileges that they didn’t, with the Lacvamat and especially the Scionate being rushed into prominence. It was true that neither of those pieces of the ever growing Star Force empire would be independent, but rather constructed and run by the mainline section just as the Kiritak were. That meant they didn’t have the freedom to experiment and deviate from standard protocol the way Australia did, but they were being given so much in terms of resources and tech that it rubbed many Australians the wrong way.

  Laver had once been one of them, but he’d gradually come to see just how juvenile Australia was compared with everyone else as he moved around the ADZ with the Archon, gaining bits of insight here and there and realizing how much the Australians still had to learn. They were like kids being allowed to play in the sandbox, but when it came time for the volleyball match they weren’t allowed to play in the same sand at the same time.

  Laver was one of the three highest ranking military officers Australia had, and as such he held a significant voice in their decision making and future planning, with him lecturing the others constantly on how and why they were behind the rest of the empire and even falling behind the other ADZ races. It was simply a matter of drive, for while Australians had everything they needed others did not and were power hungry. That was not necessarily a good thing, but it drove them forward while the Australians metaphorically just laid out in the sun getting a good tan while complaining about not being treated as equals with the rest of Star Force.

  What Laver hadn’t originally understood was that all of Star Force was working its butt off in some way or another, while Australia was consumed with the civilian aspect of Earth. Civilians reaped the benefit of others’ hard work, and if Australia wanted to be one of the big dogs they had to get out of the ‘taker’ mentality and start becoming a ‘provider.’ There had been some very long and loud arguments over that point, but eventually Laver and a few others had made their case and several expansion programs had begun to be formed and implemented.

  They were still in their infancy right now, but first on the list was an increase in military production. He was pleased with the fleet that he had, and obviously the Archons felt the same otherwise they wouldn’t have been calling on them for duties in recent years, but in overall numbers their fleet was tiny and that had to change.

  As he watched from his command chair four pieces of his ‘half-sized’ jumpship broke off, leaving him with a skeleton of a ship between the forward cone and the rear engine compartments. It was still armed and decently shielded, but the jumpship was little more than a mobile command center and not a true warship. Those were being deployed elsewhere in orbit with each carrying its own small drones, none larger than cutter class and most being the equivalent of oversized starfighters.

  After those warships broke off from the jumpship and moved out of sight to their assigned positions a series of hatches on the underside of one of the neighboring jumpships opened up and released golf ball-like dropships of decent size that began descending into the atmosphere. Soon the other four did likewise and sprinkled the planet with descent craft carrying the Australian army down to the surface to contend with the pirates up close and in person.

  Following them out of the jumpships came, sometime later, squadrons of Australian fighters that dove into the atmosphere and raced to meet up with the slower dropships to give them air cover as they began landing near the six pirate bases. As expected enemy aircraft began to take to the sky and a beehive of activity began to show up on Laver's sensor scans. The pirates weren’t going to go down easy, but he sent a message ahead of the arrival of his forces demanding they stand down and surrender both themselves and all equipment that they had.

  The Admiral expected no response, for there usually was none in cases like this, but one of the pirates bothered to reply with a curse-laden spiel accented by various unkind gestures. What otherwise would have been somewhat ironically humorous was anything but given the pure vitriol being displayed. These pirates had no intention of submitting to Star Force and were either arrogant or ignorant enough to think that they had the right to go around stealing from and murdering travelers.

  These weren’t valiant rogues, but savages…and Laver didn’t like thinking ahead to what he suspected his troops might find down in their bases, but this was work that needed to be done, and while it occasionally turned his stomach he wasn’t going to relent. Australia needed to prove its worth, even if it meant taking out trash like this that preyed on the weak, but who had no real chance against the troops he was sending against them.

  4

  Timothy heard the crack of the dropship door a moment before he saw the light coming in from outside as the big ramp began to lower. The luminous intensity was twice that of a ‘normal’ planet and made his eyes wince despite the auto-glare cutdown in his mech’s cockpit. He was viewing the outside of the bipedal machine via camera relays while he sat within a protective cocoon inside the Bushwhacker-class mech, one of a handful of favorites the Australians produced out of more than 320 models that Star Force had come up with over the years.

  “I’ve got point,” he told his fellow mechwarriors as he walked out of his receptacle in the improvised mechbay inside the dropship and over to the now half lowered door. He waited until it finished deploying then walked his hunched mech down and onto the planet’s heavy surface. Gravity here was 1.3 and caused his mech’s footfalls to be a bit sluggish, but the computer automatically adjusted and allowed him more or less normal ‘driving’ as he ramped up his speed and put some distance between himself and the big spherical dropship behind him.

  9 other mechs followed him out, which formed up into two stars of five. Timothy had another bushwhacker and three ravens with him, while the others had a thor, maddog, and another three ravens. All the mechs were intended for the pirate base a few kilometers to the north while other dropships were bringing down more mechs and troops for the other five locations on the planet, all of which were situated in a geographical band running a few hundred miles through a wild section of the planet and far from the population centers.

  Timothy’s bushwhacker stepped heavily through the marshy ground upon which they’d landed, for there was little else around the base that made for a suitable landing site. The area was heavily forested, with only the cutout for the pirate base and these swampy, almost shallow rivers bisecting the forest in numerous locations. Those were going to be the roads the mechs came into the base on, for a direct drop would have been impossible.

  The pirate bases weren’t just hideaways, but armed firebases. They had enough point defense weaponry to roast any dropship coming down on top of them and even now were giving the fighters havoc as they attempted to strafe some of the defense turrets now that they’d cleaned up the pathetic pirate craft. Timothy saw one hit by what looked like plasma fire and go down before the others eventually broke off and held to a perimeter that the mechwarrior could see on his battlemap. They were still in the air and nearby to call for assistance, but it was made clear that they couldn’t take out the bases defenses on their own, even before orders came over the comm.

  Their overflights had tagged a number of additional batteries that they hadn’t noticed from orbit, with all of them going through analysis by the ships in orbit and then filtered back down to the m
echs as priority targets. Timothy had a slew of them highlighted on his battlemap before all of the mechs were offloaded, and was well prepared for what he was going to face and have to knock down as his star began sloshing their way through the marshy gaps in the forest.

  The mechs weren’t subtle, standing some 10+ meters tall at the smallest and making a lot of noise walking through the shallow water and muck, but they slowly made their approach, working through the twists and turns of the natural waterway as contacts began popping up on the battlemap and headed their way…fast. Analysis soon identified them as hover tanks that were also following the marshes, though without any hindrance given they were operating on anti-grav instead of legs.

  “Ok fellas, let’s see how many prizes we can bag,” Timothy said, adjusting his weaponry accordingly as he saw the stand down order for the fighters. These were going to be pure mech targets. “Disabling shots only.”

  “Can’t we blow up at least one?” Ellie asked from the raven to his left sarcastically.

  “Save it for the turrets,” he said, seeing the first of the tanks come around the bend ahead. It was more of a giant sled than a tank, but it had three enclosures with weaponry mounted on top, all of which opened fire with orange plasma lances that leapt out and hit the ground, air, and left leg of Timothy’s mech.

  The one that hit the ground resulted in a plume of vaporized water that created a short lived cloud, but the impact on the bushwhacker’s leg merely sucked away some shield strength as Timothy pointed the nose of the squat mech towards the tank and fired off a single lachar blast. The bright streak of red hit the body of the tank and punched a hole in its thin armor plating but did little other damage as three more tanks came around the bend and began to take aim.