Star Force 82 Hradeiti (SF82) (Star Force Origin Series)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  They’d purchased the ships from various manufacturers, then had others rebuild them to their liking up until they had gotten a working shipyard capable of doing that themselves. Right now that still incomplete shipyard had taken over producing the drone warships in its own right, which were coming in quite handy on the frontier mercenary missions that they were currently testing them and their troops in…though those were all small scale engagements. Nothing even close to 85 lizard cruisers.

  The two control ships for the drones were converted jumpships, both armed to make them combat capable and heavily armored to allow them to take quite a beating, but they didn’t have the kinetic stopping power of dampening shields. That was a Star Force tech that hadn’t been shared with the ADZ despite it not being a weapon. The shields that were available to the public were solid, multi-purpose models and every ship in the Hradeiti fleet had been outfitted with them for just that reason, but if you had to stop a kamikaze cruiser you needed dampening shields, meaning Bra’shom had a very real concern about losing crews if the lizards turned and rammed something other than the drones.

  The key here was to beat the lizards in this first engagement before they could learn enough about the Hradeiti ships to exploit their shortcomings. No Star Force ships had entered the system with them, but for some reason he didn’t doubt that they’d be here when needed…if they could secure orbit and a foothold on the planet. The Hradeiti hadn’t been told where the help would be coming from or in what form, but he knew Star Force wouldn’t go back on their deal. How soon they’d get here after confirmation was made was the question mark, so the fleet commander knew he might have to hold off lizard reinforcements for a short period of time on their own if those reinforcements were already on the way here for scheduled operations rather than in response to a distress call.

  The system did NOT have an interstellar communications system, meaning that a ship would have to be sent out to alert others and Bra’shom intended not to let any of their jumpships get away. If a cruiser wanted to make the slow trip that was one thing, but their big, fast carrier ships could not be allowed to get escape.

  But where were they now? The scout in high orbit wasn’t showing them on this side of the planet. Were they sitting on the other side or somewhere else within the system? Or were they off to other locations and not needed to be sitting and babysitting this planet? Were they even now bringing more cruisers back here to supplement the defense fleet?

  That last option concerned him, but if they truly weren’t here then there would be no distress call going out in any effective way.

  When the last of his naval fleet arrived he left a few ships at the jumppoint to defend the incoming cargo and army ships and immediately took the rest of his 2,384 ships out from the star in an orderly microjump into middle orbit around the planet and well above the cruiser formation that was obstinately not moving. Even when it was obvious that they were outmatched they didn’t alter from their parking orbit, which concerned Bra’shom. Did they have some larger plan in the works? Or did they just want to see who it was coming into their system.

  His ships were unknown models to them. Was it possible that other races with similar vessels were dealing with the lizards? If they weren’t sure the Hradeiti were enemies that could explain their lack of movement.

  The Scionate felt the odds of that were low, but he couldn’t understand why the lizards were just sitting there.

  He kept his fleet on station until all of them came out of their microjumps, then he got his formations arrayed as he liked, with the battleships leading the way and the drones pacing them ready to be shot on ahead if needed, but otherwise being held back so they wouldn’t be targeted initially given that they were the smallest of the fleet’s ships.

  Then the lizards moved.

  All of them, almost in synchronous movement, dipped down and headed for the atmosphere.

  Damn them. So much for reckless charges to the death.

  They’d guessed correctly. Bra’shom’s fleet wasn’t built for atmosphere. They could head down after them but their maneuvering capabilities were going to be hampered considerably, not to mention the fact that their hovering rates were average to bad and they’d be eating up a lot of fuel just to hold still, let alone trying to maneuver and chase down the lizard ships that were much better in atmosphere.

  Then we make them come to us.

  Of the three cities on the planet, only two were covered by the pair of anti-orbital batteries. Bra’shom put his fleet into a descending trajectory to get them into low orbit hover at an angle to the third city that would leave the big guns around the curve of the planet and out of range. If they came down directly over the city they’d be just within the firing arc, but offset themselves and the planet itself would shield them from the phaser fire that he knew his fleet could not stand up against. If he had to take down a lizard city shield, even a small one, before they could directly attack an anti-orbital gun, that gun would tear through too many of his ships to be worth the effort.

  But so long as he had a city that he could bombard without taking return fire he was going to make the most of the opportunity…and see if the lizard cruisers would just sit out of range and watch him slowly destroy it.

  The asteroid chuckers had not accompanied the fleet. Those ships and their painstakingly accumulated ammunition had been left behind at Ventress and saved for when they’d need to punch a hole in an anti-orbital grid. Here that wasn’t necessary, so they were going to use the cleansing beams to sting the defense shield enough until it gave way and they could pummel the city with impunity.

  Or not quite. As his ships set up and began firing their fire pale white lances down at the planet on a steep angle, missile plumes sprouted up around the city’s edge and a wave of long range weapons could be seen tracking their way.

  Bra’shom wasn’t worried. Against other ADZ warships those would be a serious problem, but the Hradeiti had painstakingly outfitted all of their ships with ample anti-air defenses for just this reason, not to mention the need to defend themselves when they were in atmosphere against the lizards’ wisp aircraft.

  Bra’shom had to wait for the missiles to cross some 179 miles before his ships’ defenses were within range. The lachars bit out at the missiles and chewed them up gratifyingly, not allowing a single weapon through to one of the other battleships that seemed to be their singular target.

  “Well done,” he told his bridge crew. “First test passed. Now let’s get that shield down,” he said as another round of missiles came at them, a much larger one this time, but it to failed to get through the fleet’s overlapping cover fire.

  “Here they come,” a Critel officer announced, with Bra’shom noting as well that the sensors were indicating that the lizard cruisers were no longer staying near the planet’s surface. They were redirecting back to orbit in order to meet the attackers before the city’s shield could go down. When they got closer another wave of missiles shot off, with the intercept time going to be just after the lizards got to the ships.

  “First priority is those missiles. Do not let them through,” he underscored. “Cease bombardment and focus all cleansing beams on the leading lizard cruisers. We have to take them out fast or we’ll lose ships. Bring the drones up to flanking positions and order them in to cover for retreating ships. Full cycling protocols, people. I don’t want any ship losses that can be avoided. We have a numerical advantage, so let’s make use of it.”

  Even as he said the words he knew they were still in jeopardy. Not in losing the fight, but in getting their nose bloodied. And from their incoming tracts it looked like the battleships were going to be the primary targets.

  Go for the big ones first? Fine with me. Come right into our guns and we’ll get this over with quickly, he thought, though his gut disagreed with him. By the time his brain recognized the problem it was too late to do anything.

  The missiles the lizards had fir
ed were now blocked by the leading lizard cruisers, which allowed them to get more than half of them to their targets before the warships blew past the battleships, firing as they went, then disengaged and began running back down to the planet.

  The missiles slammed into one and only one of the battleships, not Bra’shom’s flagship, but the one situated to his left. He watched in horror as the lizards’ phaser shots weakened its shields enough for the missiles to punch on through and blast into the armor plates. Some of the cruisers, even now under heavy fire, circled back around and closed to pointblank range to finish off what the missiles had left. Those six cruisers were destroyed, along with two others that didn’t escape the mass of cleansing beam and lachar fire coming from the Hradeiti fleet.

  More cruisers were damaged, but still mobile and retreated down into the safety of the atmosphere despite a few ranged cleansing beam shots hitting home before the distances grew too great to target accurately as they flew in an evasive path.

  The Scionate snarled with contempt, cursing the lizards as well as his own overconfidence. One of his four battleships now sat, mostly intact, but with craters blown into it from all angles. More than a third of its mass was missing and now debris floating into nearby ships, but the overall shape of the ship was still there, now looking like a zombified version of its former self, with no active weaponry nor a connective comm signal.

  “Organize search teams,” Bra’shom growled. “If someone is still alive on that ship I want them off there now! Meanwhile commence orbital bombardment again and redeploy the fleet into formation Gamma 7. They’re not pulling that move on us again.”

  The Scionate paced around the bridge, waiting as his orders were carried out and the pale white lances began connecting with the distant spot on the planet’s surface again. More missiles came, but no cruisers with them, leading them into an overwhelming anti-air response that didn’t allow any to get through. The lizards were probably firing them off rather than losing them when the shield collapsed, which it did less than 12 minutes later under the sustained assault.

  Lizard shields had gotten considerably stronger over the years, but even with his vastly inferior fleet compared to Star Force standards, they were more than the defenses could hold out against. When the circular plate went down they immediately targeted the shield tower, ensuring that it was destroyed and would not be regenerating another charge. After that they hit the largest buildings and as many smaller targets that they could given their accuracy limits.

  After that they just pounded the location repetitively, hoping massed shots would compensate for lack of pinpoint accuracy and eventually hit everything in the city that needed destroying. Without explosives the damage was more needle strikes shooting through buildings and carving out holes, meaning the structures would still be there afterwards, more or less, unless Bra’shom wanted to stay up here and waste so much energy that even the buildings would be ground down into the orbital equivalent of sand.

  As much as his ire would have approved of that he knew they couldn’t waste ammunition…even in the form of reactor power that fed the cleansing beams. There were two other cities that needed destroying and they both were under the protective umbrella of those anti-orbital batteries that could wreck half of his fleet before they got through the shield and took it out.

  He almost regretted leaving the asteroid chuckers behind, but knew what he had to do. Landing ground troops was the best way to take out those guns, after which the fleet could pound the two cities into dust at their leisure, but he still had the enemy cruisers in atmosphere. He had to get rid of them before this system would be secure, and right now they didn’t seem inclined to rush up and fight it out.

  Damn them. They didn’t control orbit until those ships were neutralized, and he didn’t dare risk landing ground troops with them in play. One cruiser could wreck their ground forces in short order if left unchecked. So what was he going to do?

  He really didn’t have a choice. Time was on the side of the lizards. Eventually one of their ships would arrive, bringing with it additional resources, reinforcements, or just the ability to jump out and rouse a call for help. The initiative was with the invaders, but so was the responsibility of finishing this fight before it could escalate. A stalemate was a loss, so Bra’shom had to act.

  He wasn’t going to waste his ships against that gun. Better to retreat and admit defeat than spend the lives of his crew like that, not to mention the waste of ships.

  No, they had to take the gun via the ground, and to go to ground his troops were going to need naval cover…

  “Bring in the troop ships,” he ordered. “It looks like we’re taking this fight in atmosphere whether we like it or not.”

  8

  Chamsen sat in the tiny cockpit of the hovertank he’d been training in for the past 3 years, rolling in formation with six others as they raced across the desert landscape, keeping the dunes between them and the lizard cruiser sitting almost on the ground outside the target city. It was staying low enough that that anti-orbital gun could cover it, so that if the naval fleet eased up over the curve of the planet to shoot it they’d have to face the big gun too.

  That was a stalemate as far as the naval battle went, but with that cruiser parked there they were going to have a damn near impossible time fighting their way past it on the ground. Knowing this the fleet commander had ordered an unusual attack, which Chamsen and his tanks were getting in position for while about half the fleet crawled over land to stay below the anti-orbital gun’s firing depression.

  They were going to have a low ceiling to work with…a very low ceiling, but it was the only way to remove the cruiser ahead of Chamsen’s tanks, not to mention the others that had parked themselves around the perimeter. Plenty of dunes were providing them cover, meaning that the fleet was going to have to get very close in order to get open firing lines on them.

  As was prudent, the naval drones were going in first with the manned ships following up, but there was also a large contingent of wisps and lizard tanks to deal with as well. It would take a while, but they could take down a warship if left to chip away at it long enough. Not to mention the limited perimeter defense turrets…all of which were sitting underneath a high, flat shield that was blocking the city against orbital bombardment.

  A few minutes ago a missile attack was conducted, probing the lizard city and seeing that they did have anti-air capability, for the missiles were knocked down before they hit any buildings. That meant the Hradeiti fighters couldn’t go in there just yet. This was a mess of an assault, but the Calavari didn’t know any better way to go about doing this without Star Force backup…which they weren’t going to get. The Hradeiti had to do this on their own, and he just hoped they hadn’t bitten off more than they could swallow on this one.

  When one of the drones came around the side of a dune that shallowed out, it immediately drew pink phaser fire from two nearby cruisers as it responded with a single cleansing beam and a series of lachars, the latter of which glowed bright red. Following it was another drone, then a larger destroyer, and that was all that Chamsen could see before his tank formation ducked behind another mountainous dune and turned to the right following a bit of a valley as the big ships began slugging it out at nearly pointblank range all along a 10 kilometer line.

  The 6 tanks were outside the northern end of that line, heading towards a washout that would lead them directly to the city’s nearest point. Fortunately there was no wall around it, meaning all they had to do to get into the buildings was to drive right up to them. But there were plenty of defenders in the way, so while the big ships occupied each other’s attention the tanks snuck around and got a firing line on one of the perimeter turrets that was pumping phaser shots into a warship somewhere off to the far right.

  Chamsen flew his tank out wide of the sandy hill, making room for the others to get firing lines on it as well. He held his weapon secured until they all got
into the open, then together they shot dual heavy lachars at the turret, hitting it with 12 red beams within the first second and blowing armor plates off like it’d been hit with a shotgun. The second salvo silenced the weapon, but the tanks didn’t stop there. They blasted it until the turret was visibly junk, then they pulled back into the cover of the dunes before a cruiser could take a shot at them and moved on further through the sandy canyons looking for their next opportunity for a sniping attack further away from the brawl that was attracting all of the lizard cruisers, the rest of which were abandoning their positions on the other side of the city and flying directly over it to come down on the Hradeiti warships.

  By the time Bra’shom’s battleship pushed its way through the tip of a sand dune in order to stay below the firing ceiling of the anti-orbital gun the fight was already old and with multiple ships from both sides laying broken on the sand. The bigger cleansing beams his flagship carried leapt out immediately, drilling two pale white daggers into the side of an already damaged lizard cruiser and cutting a swath through it as one popped out the far side and tattooed one of the city buildings beyond.

  A giant pink beam passed within 20 meters of the top of the battleship, missing it and streaking off into the distance behind the fleet as the big gun tried to get a glancing shot in. Fortunately it wasn’t as big of a gun as the ones he’d seen in action in the past, and wasn’t situated on top of a huge tower. This one was lower to the ground with several buildings actually interfering with its lowest firing lines. Depress as it could, the battleship was still under its firing line and Bra’shom was glad his crew were holding to that navigational mark meticulously.

  Seeing all the devastation and ongoing carnage playing out before him, the Scionate figured they had the lizard cruisers beat. They were getting hit hard in the process, but they had numbers and the city defense turrets weren’t adding a lot to the fight. It looked like this is where the lizards were planning to make their last stand, and…