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

by Aer-ki Jyr

  Suddenly Bra’shom saw one of the lizard cruisers dart forward, digging into the sand to the left of his battleship but he knew it wasn’t a crash course. The ship got hit by several lachars while the cleansing beam gunners were focusing on a pair of cruisers ahead that were pounding away at the forward shields. That let it get through all the way underneath the bigger ship, wedging itself between hull and sand and breaching the battleship’s shields with the contact.

  The phaser beams now started hitting armor from the pair in front even as one of the cruisers lost half its weaponry as a cleansing beam cut a critical power conduit. Bra’shom wasn’t worried about those ships, but he was scared as hell to have that cruiser underneath them. If it had a self-destruct it could…

  Suddenly the battleship began to gain altitude, and before Bra’shom could order full thrust down the cruiser pushed it up enough that another thick pink beam leapt out from the city and punched straight into the forward hull, burning through the armor there in a flash and cutting a tunnel half the length of the ship that blew out with the vaporized material into the surrounding decks.

  The bridge was about 30 meters away from the beam trace, which was too close. The whole leftside wall exploded and Bra’shom got slammed in the rear as it blew him and the rest of the bridge crew to the far was in a load of shrapnel and heat that killed them all within a matter of seconds.

  Commander Tyree was standing on the bridge of another battleship a couple kilometers to the south of the flagship when he saw it rise up above the combat ceiling and get slammed by the anti-orbital battery at maximum depression. It took him a moment to realize that there was a lizard ship underneath, crumpled and half buried in the battleship’s hull, but it had obviously pushed the warship up into the firing line.

  “Damn them,” the red/green Protovic swore, immediately punching buttons on his chair’s control console and assuming command of the fleet. With that he opened a comm channel to all ships while sending out his own placement orders and reconfiguring the alignment as he saw fit. Bra’shom hadn’t been an idiot, but Tyree had learned to fight differently and if they were going to get the fleet through this they had to take a different approach.

  “All ships, beware the cruisers diving beneath you. They just killed our flagship by moving it up into range of the city’s big gun. Drag bottom on the sand and push all gravity drives down if they do manage to undercut you. Crush them into the ground. If you drift up you’re good as dead anyway, so don’t worry about the damage to your ships. Smash them no matter what it takes.”

  “Helm, we’re going in. Follow the course I give you and please be accurate,” he said as he ordered six of the remaining drones into flanking positions, being flown by pilots in orbit, while the rest of the fleet continued slugging it out. “Scrape bottom on approach, I don’t care how much armor you grind off.”

  “Are you sure about this?” the helmsman asked, seeing the course just given him.

  “I trained directly with Archons,” the Commander said with all confidence. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Calavari said as he surged the battleship forward and slightly north, dipping it down to drag on the ground while the drones shot ahead of it and targeted the nearest cruisers. The battleship poured all its firepower into one of them, taking down its shields with a couple of cleansing beam hits then ignoring it at the last moment as a course correction brought the bow around to face the city directly. Speed poured on and the battleship traced a line through the sand heading directly for the outer buildings.

  The lizards saw it almost immediately, but the drones fired on and, in two cases, physically blocked the cruisers via collisions, getting slightly on top of them and using their engines to bury the front edges of their ships down into the sand, pinning them in place long enough for the battleship to slide between the outer buildings, ramming the edges of two further in as the gap became too narrow.

  The shields held up for a few seconds, carving out furrows in the lizard towers before the armor itself began to grind against them, with it holding up far better than the lizard building materials. The battleship forced its way into the city while staying low enough to avoid the big gun’s firing line as waves of wisps suddenly appeared and started firing down on the ship from above.

  Tyree didn’t call for air cover, knowing that they’d be hit with the city’s anti-air turrets as soon as they got in range. No, this was a task for the big ships…and right now they only had 2 battleships left.

  Punching their way through building gaps too narrow to hold the big vessel, the Commander forced his way up to the fat turret that held the anti-orbital gun, parking the front of his ship almost in contact with it and giving one of his cleansing beams a direct firing line at it while the wisps, tanks, and ground-based turrets chewed away at his armored hull plates.

  The cleansing beam shot out, melting through the turret’s armor plates and cutting its way inside while tracking to the left a few meters. The beam cut out, going through its recharge cycle, then picked up exactly where it left off and extending the cutting line a bit further. Again and again it fired while the rest of the battleship’s weaponry shot any and all vessels within range, including a pair of cruisers that flew up over the buildings but underneath the protective energy shield to take out the battleship before it could finish off the gun, but numerous cleansing beams angled up to tag them as they made themselves easy targets for the creeping Hradeiti fleet outside the perimeter.

  One of those fell on top of the battleship, albeit not intentionally. It slammed down on top, damaging both ships but not moving the larger vessel more than a few meters down and doing nothing to stop the forward cleansing beam from continuing to fire. A few minutes later and Commander Tyree gave the all clear long past when his gut told him the gun was dead, not wanting to make a mistake.

  He ordered the battleship to rise to test his theory before anyone else did, and the big vessel had to apply a lot of power to shove the cruiser off of it, which fell into and pancaked a nearby building leaving the Hradeiti ship with a huge chunk bitten out of the top of it.

  Gaining enough altitude to clear the buildings but still staying below the shield cap, the Protovic ordered all weaponry to pound the turret and the exposed firing mechanism on top even as a few more cruisers headed towards them. If it could get off a single shot he had to prevent it from killing any of the other ships, and his battleship was already thoroughly trashed. Take out the gun and this battle was going to shift suddenly, making it the primary task even as the pink phaser lances cut into his shieldless ship from multiple sides.

  The gun didn’t fire, didn’t toast his battleship, with Tyree knowing he had succeeded but needed to take out another target.

  “Helm, get us to the shield tower. Take it out with whatever weapons we have left, and be prepared to ram it if necessary,” he said as multiple thumps were heard from behind the bridge. “I think we’re going down regardless.”

  As he said that a couple of destroyers flew in behind them, targeting the cruisers and leading a flow of other Hradeiti ships into the city now that they didn’t have to worry about the big gun. Fortunately the shields covering the shield tower itself weren’t too difficult for the pair of big cleansing beams that the battleship fortunately still had functioning to take down, then the rest of their weaponry and some missile streaks from a frigate punched into the side of the tower and suddenly the shield above them disappeared.

  “All ships, get some altitude. Primary target is the cruisers. Swarm them with cleansing beams.”

  He turned to look at his helmsman. “Keep us on the deck. If we go up I have a bad feeling we’re coming back down real fast. Find some place we can land soft.”

  “Outside the city?”

  “If you can get us there. Gunners, take down everything you can on the way. We’ve accomplished our mission, everything else from now on is bonus.”

  “Sorry, Tyr
ee,” a Calavari voice said over the comm. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  The Commander frowned and looked at the display screen that was now only operating off of battlemap relay, for most of his ship’s sensors were destroyed. He saw their only remaining battleship come racing across the top of the lizard city and tag a nearby cruiser that was doing its best to finish off Tyree’s ride.

  The other battleship knocked it down, pancaking another building where it landed, then flew in and took position directly overhead its sister ship, blocking most of the incoming fire while the surrounding buildings helped do likewise.

  “Don’t waste your ship trying to save this one,” he complained. “We’re already toast.”

  “You’re still in the air and I intend to keep you that way, toast or not.”

  “Stupid Calavari.”

  “Stupid Protovic. Now shut up and let me save you.”

  Tyree cracked a grin that his fellow battleship captain couldn’t see. “Kill the cruisers, will ya?”

  “We can do both,” he said, with the cleansing beams continuing to fly and the cruisers now falling like flies under the combined firepower of the fleet as it got back to low altitude and no longer had buildings or dunes blocking their firing lines.

  Then he saw it. They both did. A cruiser that was about dead was making a kamikaze run against their position and there was no time to shoot it down. Two more cleansing beams hit it from above but that didn’t stall its momentum as it slid in underneath the intact battleship and rammed Tyree’s already critical ship.

  He cringed, waiting for the explosion and getting an earthquake in its place. Most of the bridge instrumentation went out, then a second quake hit that was far worse, knocking him out and down from his chair onto the floor where he smashed his head as the battleship hit the surface.

  Tyree got to a knee and looked around, feeling warm blood on his head but still being very much alive.

  “Find out what sections of the ship are intact and evacuate there. Unless we have to we need to avoid going out into the city. We’ll be target practice.”

  “Intercomms are down.”

  “Get the handheld backups. Poll every piece of the ship and find out where we have people and damage,” he ordered, crawling over to the side of his chair and popping a panel out on the bottom of it. Inside was survival gear, including a short range comm device of his own. He reached past it and got a medkit, attending to his own wound while the crew on the bridge were dealing with others more heavily wounded than him.

  “I hate lizards,” he whispered as he opened the kit and got a healing patch applied to his forehead.

  9

  February 19, 3149

  Velcor System (lizard territory)

  Adrak

  Commander Tyree, now onboard a destroyer, had brought in a portion of the other half of the fleet that had remained in orbit while sending those ships flight worth from the fight back into space to keep them from running out of fuel. That included their lone battleship, though Tyree wasn’t going to dispossess Commander Vantrech even if that ship had been suitable for this next assault. It was too big to fit under the defense shield that the lizards had lowered to its minimum height, which was now smashing flat some of the surrounding sand dunes and almost making the third lizard city a sunken pit.

  But there were gaps in the perimeter. Too small for a battleship, but without any lizard cruisers in contention or swarms of wisps to counter them, the naval warships had the upper hand so long as they stayed below the firing depression of the city’s main gun. The second city, which was even now under assault by ground troops…or rather what was left of it after they got through 10 hours of point blank bombardment…was still not fully clear as far as airspace was concerned. Landing ships had to come down far from the city and come over land to get into the safe zone, for the final anti-orbital gun still reached out to cover it at the higher altitudes.

  Unlike Star Force shields, lizard varieties of this small size were always flat circles placed overtop their cities. That gave them far more strength than domed shields, but left ground assaults with easy access to the buildings. The lizards counted on their own ground forces and wisp swarms to cover that approach, along with cruisers to keep any attacking fleet in orbit where they belonged, but so long as the Hradeiti were already on the ground Commander Tyree figured they might as well hit the lizard base from there as well rather than mount a traditional army attack to take down the shield and big gun.

  The lizards obviously knew what they were doing and had lowered their shield height as far as they could, meaning the warships would have to shoot their way through it to get into the city. That would take a lot of time and if they raised up just enough in altitude they’d get smashed by the anti-orbital gun. Some of the dunes would insure that happened, for the only way over them was to climb into range. That left specific approaches that could be used, some with holes where the dunes didn’t meet the shield, so that’s where this small contingent of warships was going while Commander Vantrech oversaw the rest of the fleet back up in orbit.

  Tyree wasn’t bringing any troop ships with him, not wanting to split the ground forces and increase the danger to them. If they managed to take down this city’s defenses they could have the fleet in orbit come down to bombardment height and lay waste to it, then move in with the troops later to clean up.

  With a few drones leading the way to draw out ambushes, Tyree took his 22 ship task force slowly over land, skimming dunes and being patient as they gradually approached the city traveling in a single file line that curved to and fro in order to keep the minimum altitude as they traversed the dunes. When the first drone eventually came into sight of the curved valley that cut under the depressed shield it immediately came under a mass of pink phaser fire.

  Tyree frowned, then saw a cluster of tanks sitting at the entrance as the remote pilots fired back in a one-sided slugging match, but he called off the drone and cycled another one in its place before they managed to get its shields down and do some damage. It took some time for them to swap out without gaining altitude, and both of them had to drag in the sand to accomplish it, but the second drone lowered its shields first to not drain them, then popped them back up just before it came within sight of the remaining tanks and finished them off quickly.

  “Send it in and keep your distance. The lizards are renowned for traps,” he cautioned.

  A minute later, when the drone dipped under the edge of the shield over top the burnt out tanks their debris exploded…into a wash so big that the drone disappeared and the surrounding dunes blew apart like sand clouds.

  “Damn it,” Tyree whispered, glad he’d insisted on sending a drone in first. “That was no tank.”

  “No, sir,” one of the bridge crew confirmed. “Looks like explosives planted below ground. A lot of them.”

  “Is the drone gone?”

  “We’re getting some telemetry, but it’s now immobile and not responding to commands.”

  “And blocking the entrance?” he guessed.

  “More or less. The dunes have moved now.”

  Tyree couldn’t see that on the visuals, for the dust cloud was still covering everything, but on sensors he could see the change.

  “Target these coordinates,” he said, manually placing a waypoint on the limited battlemap that the Hradeiti used, “and blast away some more of that sand.”

  “With what, sir? We don’t have any missiles. Nor do the drones.”

  “Use the cleansing beams and lachars.”

  “That’ll take forever.”

  “Just widen the gap a bit.”

  “Yes, sir,” the weapons officer said, giving orders to the next drone in line to begin firing on the sand to the left of the now dead one.

  The beam cut into the sand easily, making a small ‘poof’ on entry, but it sliced right through and out the other side without moving a lot of the material.
That small hit up close was a decent amount, but nothing that a missile or other explosive would have managed. More shots were fired, with added lachar strikes of much weaker power, adding to the dust cloud but not doing much for moving the sand around.

  “Aim lower. Direct the sand by undercutting its support.”

  The beams drifted to the bottom and began slicing into and carving out a ditch, into which a whole section of sand suddenly slid down like an avalanche.

  “Better. Keep at it until we get another 10 meters width, then get ready to send the drone in.”

  The remote pilot did as ordered, then the firing ceased when a bit of the dune had been removed and the dust cloud was now a permanent resident given that the shield was blocking out most wind from dispersing it.

  “Send the drone in and backside that debris. Push it out and clear the passage.”

  “That’s going to be a tight fit.”

  “Wiggle her in if you have to.”

  A moment later the drone began taking fire from the inside as it approached the gap and pressed into the sand so it didn’t scrape the debris.

  “Shields are about to go down.”

  “Understood. Plow the road even if we lose this one…but don’t give them a second blocker.”

  Tyree held his breath, not expecting the lizards to have any more explosives at that spot and knowing the defense turrets couldn’t take down a warship very quickly, even one with its shields down. Before long the junked drone began moving out, visible only on sensors, with the intact drone shoving it from behind and plowing a furrow in the sand until it came clear of the opening.

  “Move it aside. Bury it in a dune if you have to,” he said, waiting for that order to be carried out to his satisfaction. “Rotate that drone back and give me another forward, then we follow it in. Rest of the ships after us in tight staggered formation. Light up the sand ahead of us with lachars probing for more explosives. We can’t get caught like that again.”