Star Force: Survivor (SF52)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  Their actual target was a small city that had been overrun by the Skarrons near the ocean’s edge, and one that was about to come back into Star Force possession given that the enemy had sent most of its walkers off to other targets. They were getting sloppy in their rollover of the continent, assuming that the Humans were simply going to keep pulling back in retreat, and now was the time to make them pay for that arrogance. Victor’s team was going to come up inside the city just as the attack on the exterior mounted. With the defenses down the Skarrons wouldn’t have much to work with other than infantry and a handful of walkers plus whatever fighter support they had in the area.

  That meant they’d all be headed for the perimeter to fight the enemy coming in…leaving the backdoor unguarded or maybe even unnoticed for the surprise team to come up out of and do a lot of damage. That was the plan anyway, and Victor was anxious to get to it.

  It took hours for the pod-cars to move across the underground of the continent, and it was fortunate that Star Force had taken the time to establish these subsurface links instead of relying on surface traffic and hover trains, for those routes were now shut down by the Skarron invasion. Their air cover was thick, and anything heading out without proper escorts was just begging to get hit. Victor was glad that Star Force prepped its worlds with multiple layers of infrastructure and battle planning, for right now it made all the difference. He didn’t care for tunnels, but having ground over his head meant no big weaponsfire coming down on him...and he was once again the dominant force on the battlefield.

  The Skarron elites would argue otherwise, but he could take one hand to hand if he had to. They were easier to take down as a group, but he’d wager on a Knight any day in that confrontation.

  When they finally arrived and the exterior assault begin in coordination with their placement on the battlemap, he got his chance coming up from below in the lead and running into a pair of unarmored Skarron guards with Hobbits surrounding them. They weren’t guarding the entrance to the tunnel, but rather running past enroute to somewhere on the perimeter. Victor dashed out from the side and ran directly into one of the Skarrons, knocking it askew but not down, and whacking one of its legs with his stun sword…which immediate collapsed numb.

  He blocked a plasma shot from one of the overhead arms on his shield as the commandos followed him out and took aim at the hobbits who were starting to pepper him with smaller plasma blasts. Victor ignored them and focused on the Skarron, numb-hitting its other leg and collapsing the left side of its body. He quickly hit the arms before jumping up on top and pulling out his pistol, then fired down into the top of its back between the arm sockets multiple times until it finally crashed down on its right side as its other arms fell limp.

  Victor walked off the top of the headless creature and sprinted into a Hobbit, bouncing him off his shield and rolling him across the ground like a ball before a commando shot and killed him while still on the tumble. After that Victor resumed the lead and pushed on, following the waypoints set down by their commander and heading towards the nearest enemy units tagged on the battlemap.

  Sally Hendricks was approaching the outside of the city, just having been dropped off by dropship with the other mechs in her drone star. She was seated in a chair control station half a meter behind Dravis, who was operating their Morpheus-class command mech and appropriately strapped into his control harness. Meanwhile she operated her control board piloting the four other drone mechs like she was playing a videogame…only one that she was in the middle of.

  The morpheus was the largest of the five mechs, with two slightly shorter brawlers, a madcat, and a rifleman…all without pilots or even cockpits, having been designed with enhanced weaponry given the extra interior space, as well as armor, making them pound for pound more potent mechs. She had the brawlers situated on either side of the morpheus and slightly ahead while the madcat brought up the rear and the rifleman was slung out to the left, giving its longer range weaponry a clear line of sight on the city.

  She triggered it to attack one of the walkers ahead, a Type-5, by placing a reticle on the enemy golf ball. In response the rifleman opened up with continual lachars, making four bright beams of the energy/particle cocktail that connected with and held on contact for some 12 seconds before recycling. That drained away a large chunk of the walker’s shields before the other mechs even got within firing range.

  Sally had the madcat hold off on its missiles, saving those for when the shields were down. Meanwhile other mech stars were operating at various points, coming in from the north and west sides of the city, while her group was coming in from the southeast. There was one other star with her, all with pilots, and they were pacing her morpheus about 400 meters to starboard, with their starbright just now beginning to open up with its plasma cannons now that they were coming into range.

  A little while later they began to take hits from several Skarron mechs’ plasma fire, then the mauler cannons came into play…and from there on it was a slaughter. The morpheus she rode in closed range and put the finishing touches on a Type-4 while she watched from her control board, having to mentally disconnect from the fact that she was in one of her chess pieces and let her pilot handle that part while she played coordinator.

  And as coordinator she was the first to see incoming transports on the battlemap…two of them, both of which appeared to be carrying additional walkers from an encampment not too far away.

  She keyed open the comm to all the mechs in play. “Heads up. Transports coming in. Let’s see if we can get a few pokes in before they get too close,” she said, suiting action to words as she ordered the drone madcat to get a target lock on one of them and fire off all of its missiles at the distant target.

  Both shoulder-mounted missile boxes exploded into a wash of fire and smoke as two darts of exhaust stretched out towards the horizon, traveling at high speed past the range of all the other mechs’ weapons. When they got close to the first transport some of them were taken down by anti-air fire, but enough got through to weaken the shields…then when more missiles hit from the mechs on the outer side of the city the transport started to take hull damage and stopped its advance, moving down to the surface and deploying its four Type-4 walkers immediately.

  Well, at least they’d made it put them down further out. The other transport came in closer, fending off some lachar fire from a pair of riflemans and deposited a pair of Type-3s before landing all the way on the ground and disgorging infantry…but not as many as it could have carried, which Sally guessed meant they had rounded up everyone on hand to send them out as quickly as possible without enough prep time to counter this attack.

  Problem was they were coming in together. They’d just jumped the defense walkers because they’d been spread out and all Type-4s and 5s. The pair of incoming 3s were going to be a handful, but right now those would have to wait, and not just because they were out of weapons range. Their mission right now was to take down the walkers and get the infantry into the city. The first half of that was complete, but the enemy had barricaded the entrances where they’d blown them apart previously, meaning they now needed to blast back inside.

  Dravis took care of that personally on their side, moving the morpheus right up next to an intact city gate and pounding on it with its plasma streamers, literally melting through the metal like a squirt gun into a snowbank. It took a while to carve out an entry hole big enough to get a mech through, but as soon as he did the neo in the star next to theirs went through and started chewing up the infantry on the other side as a wave of commandos and Knights followed it in.

  Rio followed the Knight ahead of him as the backside of the neo functioned as their tracking beacon. When he got up to the burnt-out gate he stepped lightly, knowing the metallic rim was still hot and not wanting the softer armor of his boot tread to melt. He took one step onto it and jumped the rest of the way, glad his foot didn’t melt/stick. Most of the color had faded from the metal, but had he been wearing normal shoes he was s
ure that there would have been enough residual heat to damage them.

  Now inside the city and somewhat pinned between buildings, he and two other commandos broke off into the door of a factory and cut through to the other side, finding it uninhabited, and exiting on another street. While the battle was going on they had a side mission. Apparently there were a handful of survivors that somehow had never gotten evacuated during the initial assault. Just less than 10 minutes ago they had made contact via comm and Rio’s trio was tasked with getting to and protecting them.

  Their tracking signal, now active and potentially traceable by the Skarrons, though he doubted they would bother noticing with everything else going on up top, was coming from the subsurface section of the city. Rio’s team got to a descending stairwell and headed down multiple levels before finally coming out into what was essentially a maintenance area that allowed access to the major infrastructure from underneath.

  It was a network of tunnels, tunnels, and more tunnels…no real rooms or sections, just a forest of machinery that the tracking beacon led Rio through. When they eventually came up on it they found…no one, just a small comm device sitting in the middle of the walkway, with Rio immediately going on guard and raising his plasma rifle just a tad higher, searching for trouble.

  “Over here,” a voice said, walking out halfway and raising a hand into view from several meters down. Rio ran up and turned the corner where the man was standing.

  “We have wounded,” the very thin man said, leading him through several twists and turns to some place well away from the beacon…which Rio realized had been done in case the Skarrons came looking for it. Smart move, especially if you had people that couldn’t easily be moved around.

  “Why didn’t you evacuate with the others?” one of the commandos with Rio asked.

  “We tried, but got cut off in an explosion. The comm device I had I lost, and the other one was damaged. I had to search the city for that one, and by then everyone was already gone,” he said as he pointed to a crate set up next to a wall. “Push this aside.”

  Rio stepped in and moved it aside, revealing a nook in the wall where six other people were sitting…four of which were covered in bloody healing patches and the other two were younglings.

  “Are they mobile?” the other commando asked, who outranked Rio by 18 levels.

  “If we have somewhere to go, yes.”

  “We have a dropship standing by on the perimeter. We can call it in once we get topside…assuming the air cover doesn’t change. Come on, we need to get moving,” he said, glancing at Rio.

  He nodded and headed back out, becoming point man/skirmisher, and knowing that it was up to him to find and head off threats before they could get anywhere close to the wounded…for they would make for easy targets.

  As he moved ahead he began plotting out an evac route on the battlemap…which was when he saw the infiltration team coming up from within and saw them near the underground lines. He quickly put two and two together and reassessed their evac plan, knowing it would be slower but infinitely more safe if they could take their wards underground rather than flying them through the air…not to mention avoiding the fighting up top.

  Using his battlemap he got an open comm line to one of the commandos in that group, thankful that the relay nodes in the city still worked for they were a ways off, and inquired as to the status of the rail cars. Once he got the availability confirmed he commed the other two commandos with him and got the green light from them, then began working their route over there, seeing a small pocket of subsurface combat ongoing with a section of the infiltration team.

  Knowing that they’d soon have that handled he set the route directly there, then held up and kept within a reasonable distance of his wards as they slowly walked out of their concealment, all of which were malnourished and surviving off a handful of rations and med kits they’d been able to scrounge. Rio knew not to expect anything out of them, so he began making search patterns ahead of them, running back and forth through the machinery and visually scouting out a wide area, hoping to draw out any potential ambushes against himself rather than let them get the jump on the others.

  Nothing occurred on the way over, though he did come across several bodies…mostly Human but a few Kiritas and Hobbits as well. This area was too constricted for Skarrons to enter, given their size, which made it a good place to hide…just not good enough for these few, and Rio wondered how many others had gotten left behind and how. Star Force wasn’t sloppy, so something must have gone seriously wrong here.

  5

  January 20, 2549

  Reesi System

  Metropolis

  Sally and Dravis ran up into the hold of the Eagle-class dropship with spurts of plasma fire missing behind them. A few moments later an Archon in silver armor joined them, with the boarding ramp rising immediately and the ship taking off before it had even closed halfway. The two dispossessed mechwarriors had just gotten back into the city after their morpheus had gotten toasted and nearly left them stranded in the kill zone that the outskirts had become. A nearby madcat had covered for them and they’d run unarmored across the open ground to a checkpoint on the wall that had allowed them inside.

  After that they’d been sent directly to the improvised spaceport that had numerous dropships coming in and evacing personnel. The Star Force counterattack had hurt the Skarrons badly, but apparently they were committed to retaking the city and had been pouring reinforcements in nonstop. Sally and the other mechwarriors had been chewing them up to no end, but eventually the attrition wore down their mech and a Type-5 had ended their three day campaign. There were still a handful of mechs in deployment, but they were covering the pullback and would be the last ones out via dropship.

  Since Sally and Dravis no longer had a mech they were sent with the various troops and civilians that were being pulled out…and as she looked around she was having a hard time figuring out why there would be any civilians here at all.

  Not content to wonder she walked over to one of them and sat down next to where he was leaning back against the wall, with a look that said he wasn’t in very good condition.

  “Hi there,” she said, getting him to open his eyes and look at her. “I’m Sally, and I was wondering what you were doing here. I thought all the civilians had been pulled out long ago.”

  The man sighed. “We were supposed to be…name’s Chad, by the way. I’m a maturia handler and this is the second time I’ve had to evac. First was with my younglings, then I was supposed to move out with them again and got caught up in an explosion and blacked out. By the time I came to and dug myself out of the debris everyone had gone and the Skarrons were coming in.”

  Sally’s eyes widened. “You got left behind?”

  Chad nodded. “I lost my commlink, so I guess they had no way of finding me.”

  “What kind of explosion?”

  “Something big…inside the city. It knocked out a huge crater several levels deep but with no shaft to the sky. It made a mess of things. I don’t know how many people died, but I hid out from the Skarrons in a restroom until you guys came back. Big thanks to that, by the way. I wouldn’t have made it much longer.”

  “You’re welcome, but nobody should have been left behind. The counts…”

  “I don’t know either, but it happened.”

  Sally put a hand on his very thin shoulder. “Are you going to be alright?”

  “Now that I’ve got some foodstuffs in me, yeah. I think so.”

  The mechwarrior nodded. “Kudos for staying alive as long as you did,” she said, standing back up and working her way through the crowd over to where Dravis was standing. When she got to him she was slowly shaking her head.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “There were people left behind in the first evac. He’s one that survived the Skarron occupation.”

  Dravis whistled. “That is not supposed to happen.”

  “I know,” she said, at a loss to explain i
t. “He said there was an internal explosion and he blacked out. Nobody came from him.”

  Dravis frowned. “That might partially explain it.”

  “What?”

  “If the explosion took down some of the internal relays then their comm signatures wouldn’t register at range…and if they were assumed to be dead from the explosion.”

  “Still there should have been a visual inspection,” she said in an angry whisper.

  “During an attack? If the Skarrons were already in the city blowing things up then they probably didn’t have time for more than a light recon of the area. If you want to hide from that you can, fairly easily, and if he was knocked out that’s pretty much the same as hiding, in so much that you’re not up, looking around, and waving your hands to get people’s attention.”

  “He wasn’t the only one.”

  “We always check,” Dravis said firmly. “That doesn’t guarantee we always find everyone.”

  “I’ve never heard of this happening before.”

  “Nor have I, but we’re getting our asses handed to us here for a second time. Messy fights don’t leave a lot of time to double check.”

  “I still don’t like it. At all.”

  Dravis sighed. “Nor do I, but I doubt we dropped the ball. Sometimes bad things just happen.”

  “Tell that to him.”

  “We’re spoiled in that when a mech goes down people immediately notice. A few people in a city of millions don’t show up when something goes boom and they’re probably dead. You can’t wait around and count corpses when the enemy is on your throat.”

  Sally dipped her head. “You’re right…I. I just hate that we left people behind, even on accident.”